Era of Reforms

THE GREAT AWAKENING

• 1730-1740
• Religious movement that swept through the colonies
• Impact: Growth of churches forced colonists to be more tolerant of religious differences
• Spread of democratic feelings in the colonies

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The Second Great Awakening

• Revival of religious feeling
• Differed from the 1st by introducing the idea that everyone could be forgiven for their sin –
• Free will rather than predestination - doing good deeds could help you gain salvation
• Helped jump start reform movement
• Americans believed they could act to make things better

Transcendentalism

• Transcendentalism: the belief that the spiritual world is more important than the physical
• People can find truth within themselves through feelings and intuition
• Civil Disobedience – Leaders urged people to peacefully refuse laws they considered unjust
• Helped jump start reform movement

Religious Reform - Mormons

• Mormons: founded by Joseph Smith – Started in New York and ended up in Salt Lake City. Utah
• Beliefs:
1. New version of the Bible
2. Believed in polygamy (more than one wife)
3. Practices common to Mormons include studying scriptures, praying daily, fasting regularly, attending Sunday worship services, participating in church programs and activities on weekdays, and refraining from work on Sundays when possible.

Violence Against the Mormons

Religious Reform - Shakers

• Shakers: founded by Ann Lee – Waterville, New York
• Beliefs:
1. Equality amongst the sexes and races
2. Live free of sin
3. Communal Living
4. Celibate (No Marriage or Children)
5. Pacifists
6. Known for their simple living, architecture, and furniture

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Religious Reform - Millerites

• Millerites: led by William Miller – Dresden, New York

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• Beliefs:
1. Jesus Christ would be returning to Earth in the “Second Coming”
2. World would end in 1843 (No exact date)
3. The Great Disappointment - October 22, 1844, the day Jesus was expected to return came and went
4. No formal Millerite Church exists today

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Temperance Movement

• Organized because consumption of alcohol significantly increased & caused social problems
• Goal was to encourage moderation in the consumption of alcohol
• Some groups pressed for complete abstinence
• Heavy drinking led to many social problems
• Movement was led by churches and religious groups
• Propaganda focused on the sufferings of innocent mothers and their children

Temperance Unions

• Groups that pushed for total prohibition
• Considered drinking to be morally wrong
• Believed it should be prohibited by law
• Their demands led to experiments with more strict laws
• The Civil War stalled the movement
• Temperance was later revisited during the 1890’s-1920’s

Prison Reform

• During the late 1700’s to early 1800’s the general belief about human nature was that people were generally good and capable of improvement
• This new belief was a big shift from the earlier Puritan belief of humans as naturally sinful
• This idea brought many changes for prisoners and the disabled

Dorothea Dix

• Before the 1800’s, the mentally ill were kept at home or imprisoned
• Dorothea Dix, a Boston school teacher , was asked to teach Sunday School at a prison
• She found a room full of mentally ill women neglected and left without heat during the New England winter
• Dorothea Dix spent two years investigating jails and asylums in Massachusetts

Mental Asylums

• Dix spearheaded the campaign to establish publicly funded insane asylums to help the mentally ill.
• In response to her efforts, 28 states maintained mental institutions by 1860

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Helping the Imprisoned

• Dix and others also worked to reform American prisons.
• At the time most people viewed prisons as a place to punish criminals.
• Reformers argued that society would benefit more from rehabilitating prisoners than punishing them
• Would also help our economy because prisons could double as workshops for profit

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From Prison to Penitentiary

• The prison reform system is sometimes called the penitentiary movement.
• Focus on “Rehabilitation”
• At the Auburn prison, in Central NY, in the 1820s, prisoners worked with one another during the day in strict silence
• Completed roads, and improved the city
• Slept in individual cells at night.

Early Education in America

• Early Schools
• Short-term schools from the colonial era
• 10-12 weeks per year
• Provided basic instruction
• Charged a fee along with community funding
• Preferred teaching white boys
• Schooling was costly and religiously based
• was designed for the privileged
• Parents were considered the primary educators
• Families relied on each other and churches for additional learning

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Education Reform

• The leaders of the Second Great Awakening preached that their followers had a sacred responsibility to improve life on earth.
• One of the most popular reform movements was in the field of education.
• There were no public schools that children were required by law to attend, most children did not go to school.
• The Public School Movement sought to establish a system of tax-supported public schools.

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Reforming Education

• Reformers argued that INFORMED CITIZENS were needed for our republican GOVERNMENT TO THRIVE
• Workers wanted their children to have a chance to pursue the “American dream”
• Horace Mann promoted PUBLIC SCHOOLS as the only way to EQUALIZE SOCIETY
• He argued that it was impossible that educated people could remain permanently poor

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Horace Mann

• Horace Mann argued for:
• Adequate school funding
• State oversight of local schools
• Standardized school calendars
• Abolishment of physical punishment
• Establishment of well-educated, professional teachers.
• Government-supported public schools became the norm across the nation.
• The percentage of American children attending school doubled.

Early Public Schools

• Despite reformers efforts, public school conditions were poor:
• Lacked funding, books, and equipment
• Teachers were poorly paid and often poorly prepared
• Kids that went beyond the elementary grades went to private academies
• Public schools did not become well established until after the Civil War

The Fight Against Slavery

• Many northerners objected to slavery on moral grounds.
• By 1804, all states north of Maryland had passed legislation to end slavery.
• The Atlantic Slave trade was outlawed in 1808
• Unfortunatly the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the cotton gin made both the North and the South dependent on slavery
• A growing number of Americans opposed to slavery began to speak out and wanted slavery abolished, or ended, so they became known as abolitionists.

Failed Freedom

• The American Colonization Society, founded in 1817, wanted to help free African Americans.
• The society set up a colony for free African Americans in Liberia, in western Africa.
• It was not successful because many African Americans wished to remain in the United States, their home.

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Abolitionist Movement

• By the 1830’s people began asking “how can America, ‘the land of the free’, still allow slavery”
• By 1830, nearly 2.5 million enslaved people lived in the South.
• Although the North profited from plantation systems and slavery, some white Northerners joined the Abolitionist Movement
• In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison founded “The Liberator”, a Boston anti-slavery newspaper.
• Garrison demanded the immediate emancipation, or freeing, of all enslaved persons and urged abolitionists to take action without delay

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“Uncle’s Tom Cabin” 1852

• Fugitive Slave Acts – Passed in 1793 and called for the seizure and return of runaway slaves
• “Uncle’s Tom Cabin” 1852 – written by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Uncle Tom Was a slave who was whipped to death by his master
• Shows the evils of slavery and the injustice of the Fugitive Slave Act.
• Book becomes a best seller in the north: saw slavery as a moral issue
• Book was banned in the South “did not show the true picture of a slave’s life”

Famous Abolitionists

• Abolitionists were both whites and African Americans
• Grimke Sisters (Sarah and Angelina): Grew up on a plantation but believed slavery was morally wrong
• Moved north and joined the movement
• Spoke out against slavery publicly even at a time when women were not supposed to speak in public

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Sojourner Truth

• The North had many prominent African American abolitionists.
• Isabella Baumfree, although born into slavery in New York, gained her freedom when New York abolished slavery.
• She changed her name to Sojourner Truth and vowed to tell the world about the cruelty of slavery.
• Drew huge crowds throughout the North as she spoke for abolition

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Frederick Douglass

• The most important spokesperson for the cause was Frederick Douglass.
• Born into slavery, Douglass secretly taught himself to read, although Southern laws prohibited it.
• He escaped from slavery in 1838 and settled in Massachusetts.
• He began speaking out and writing about the horrors of slavery

Frederick Douglass

• Started his own newspaper North Star – to speak out about the injustices faced by free African Americans.
• People who heard him considered him to be too educated and well-spoken to have ever been a slave
• In response, he wrote three very moving autobiographies.
• He captivated audiences by talking about his life in bondage.

The Underground Railroad

• Abolitionists, like Douglass, wanted to do more than just campaign for laws
• Many abolitionists became “conductors” on the Underground Railroad.
• The Underground Railroad began around 1817.
• It was not an actual railroad but a series of houses where conductors hid runaway enslaved persons and helped them reach the next “station.”

The Underground Railroad

• The Underground Railroad was series of escape routes from the South to the North
• Enslaved African Americans made their way to the North or Canada on the railroad.
• Travel by foot, wagon, boats, and trains
• Traveled by night and hid all day in “stations”

Harriet Tubman

• Harriet Tubman- one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad
• Tubman fled from slavery in 1849 and chose to help others escape.
• She returned to the South 19 times and led more than 300 enslaved people—including her own parents—to freedom.
• Slaveholders offered a reward of $40,000 for her, dead or alive.
• She was never captured, nor did she lose a “passenger”

Women in the 1800’s

• The Industrial Revolution changed the economy
• The growing middle class created new but different roles (jobs) for men and women
• Men went to work and women stayed at home
• Women's Rights
• Could not go to college, vote or hold most professional jobs
• Had no control over their children or property
• Needed husband’s permission to make a will, sign a contract, or file a lawsuit

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Women’s Rights

• Their involvement in the antislavery movement and other reform movements gave women roles outside their homes and families.
• They learned valuable skills, such as organizing, working together, and speaking public. (Note: it was considered “unfeminine” to speak in public!)

World Anti-Slavery Convention

• In 1840, many wealthy American women attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London
• However, women we not allowed to participate in the discussions and were forced to listen from behind a curtain
• They realized that they could not bring about social change if they themselves lacked social and political rights.
• This led to women's involvement in suffrage reform – the right to vote

The Seneca Falls Convention

• Two female reformers, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, decided it was time to stand up for women’s rights
• On July 19, 1848, the first women’s rights convention opened in Seneca Falls, New York.
• Both male and female delegates attended the convention.

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Seneca Falls

• The women wrote a document modeled after the Declaration of Independence stating, “all men and women are created equal.”
• It went over a list of complaints and ended with a demand for suffrage, or the right to vote
• The movement was ridiculed and the demand for suffrage was ignored
• BUT women did gain more rights when it came to property and wages

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Legacy of the Movement

• Seneca Falls helped create an organized campaign for women’s rights
• Reformers made slow progress
• New York gave women control over property and wages
• Massachusetts and Indiana passed more liberal divorce laws
• Some women began their own businesses
• However, women’s suffrage took decades
• 19th Amendment passed in 1920
• Only one woman present at the convention lived to vote