Reform Movements

Jackson’s emphasis on the common man as well as the Second Great Awakening stimulated organized efforts to reform society. Between about 1820 and 1850, American reformers devoted themselves to such causes as education, prison, and hospital reform, as well as temperance, women’s rights and the abolition crusade. These reform movements even inspired art and literature. The transcendentalist writers, such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson, stressed the relationship between humans and nature as well as the importance of the individual conscience.

Second Great Awakening (1820s–1840s) This was a period of great religious revival that extended into the antebellum period of the United States, with widespread Christian evangelism and conversions. It was named for the Great Awakening, a similar period which had occurred almost a century earlier. It generated excitement in church congregations throughout New England, the mid-Atlantic, Northwest and the South. Individual preachers such as Charles Finney, Lyman Beecher and Barton Stone, became very well known as a result. Religious participation in social causes fostered changes in American life in areas such as prison reform, abolitionism, temperance and others.

The Reforms Temperance Education Special Needs Hospital and Prison Abolition

Temperance The temperance movement was the war against alcohol, mainly led by religious leaders. They blamed alcohol for poverty, the breakup of families, crime and even insanity. They called for temperance, drinking little or no alcohol. Lyman Beecher, a Presbyterian minister from Connecticut, temperance movement leader, and the father of several noted leaders, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, was one of the biggest crusaders against the use of alcohol. Beecher was also a leader of the Second Great Awakening of the United States. The movement faded in the mid-1800s, but would reemerge in the early 1900s and lead to a constitutional amendment banning alcohol.

School Reform In the early 1800s, only New England provided free elementary education. In other areas parents had to pay fees or send their children to schools for the poor— a choice some parents refused out of pride. Some communities had no schools at all.

Education Reform Horace Mann— “The Father of American Education.” He was a Massachusetts lawyer who became an important school reformer in the early 1800s. As a boy, he attended school only ten weeks a year and had to work on the family farm the rest. As he grew older, he realized the need for improving education. His efforts led to a six month school year, improvements in curriculum, raised teacher salaries, and developed better ways of training teachers. Due to his efforts, Massachusetts founded in 1839 the nation’s first state-supported “normal school,” a school for training high- school graduates as teachers. Other states soon adopted the reforms that Mann had pioneered.

School Reforms led to 3 basic principles of public education: 1.School should be free and supported by taxes 2.Teachers should be trained 3.Children should be required to attend

Higher Education During the age of reform, dozens of new colleges and universities were created. Most admitted only men. Religious groups founded many colleges between 1820 and 1850, including Amherst and Holy Cross in Massachusetts; Trinity and Wesleyan in Connecticut. In 1827, a law was established that required towns with more than 50 families to provide public English high schools. Slowly, higher education became available to groups who were previously denied the opportunity. Oberlin College of Ohio, founded in 1833, admitted both women and African Americans to the student body. In 1837, Mary Lyon in Massachusetts opened Mount Holyoke, the first permanent women’s college in America. The first college for African Americans—Ashmun Institute, which later became Lincoln University—opened in Pennsylvania in 1854.

Educating those with Special Needs Thomas Gallaudet —He was a renowned American pioneer in the education of the deaf. In 1817, he helped found and was for many years the principal of the first institution for the education of the deaf in the United States, the Hartford School—now known as the American School for the Deaf. Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe —He was a prominent 19th century United States physician, abolitionist, and advocate of education for the blind. He developed books with large raised letters that people with sight impairments could “read” with their fingers. He headed the Perkins Institute, a school for the blind, in Boston. In 1829, the 1 st school for the blind was established in New England. This is the school Helen Keller would attend.

He approached Dorothea for advice. She decided to teach the class herself. What she encountered in the jail shocked her and changed her life. The jail was unheated and some inmates were chained to the walls with little or no clothing. Those incarcerated were not segregated; hardened criminals, feeble-minded children and the mentally ill all occupied the same quarters. Dix secured a court order to provide heat and to make other improvements. Her experience in the East Cambridge jail made Dix wonder about conditions in jails in less populated areas of Massachusetts. She was particularly distressed to learn that the mentally ill were commonly housed with felons. She prepared herself to embark upon a mission of reform, to call for decent accommodations for those suffering from mental and emotional disease. She made it her life’s work to educate the public as to the poor conditions for both the mentally ill and for prisoners. Prison and Hospital Reform Dorothea Dix A schoolteacher and prison reformer that learned through visiting prisons that many were living in inhumane conditions and that some were even mentally ill, not criminals. In March, 1841, a ministerial student, frustrated with his efforts to teach a Sunday class for women incarcerated in the East Cambridge jail, thought that a woman might better do the task.

The Abolitionists Movement Abolish: To put an end to Abolitionist Movement: The effort to do away with slavery completely

Early efforts to end slavery 1775 —Quakers in Pennsylvania organized the first anti-slavery society in the US —Emancipation societies were formed in states from MA to VA 1787 —Slavery was prohibited in Northwest Territory 1807 —Importation of slaves was prohibited, according to a provision in the US Constitution 1817 —The American Colonization Society was formed by Southerners to encourage emancipation and to send free blacks to Africa. By 1860, about 15,000 blacks had been sent to the society’s colony, Liberia. In 1847, Liberia becomes an independent country and formed a government based on that of the United States, naming their capital city Monrovia after James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States. By 1840 —more than 2,000 abolition societies sprang up throughout the North.

William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He changed the earlier anti-slavery efforts when he started abolitionism in Boston in He founded The Liberator, a newspaper demanding the immediate abolition of slavery.

The Grimké Sisters Sarah Grimké and Angelina Grimké Weld known as the Grimké sisters, were 19th-century American Quakers, educators and writers who were early advocates of abolitionism and women's rights. The Grimké sisters were born in Charleston, South Carolina. Throughout their life they traveled throughout the North, lecturing about their first-hand experiences with slavery on their family's plantation. Among the first women to act publicly in social reform movements, they received abuse and ridicule for their abolitionist activity. They both realized that women would have to create a safe space in the public arena to be effective reformers, and became early activists in the women's rights movement.

Frederick Douglass Born in 1817, he learned to read and write while he was a household slave. He later escaped and became one of the most effective abolitionists. He also founded an antislavery newspaper, The North Star. Douglass was an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. He was one of the most prominent figures of African American history during his time, and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history. Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, or recent immigrant. He spent his life advocating the brotherhood of all humankind. Douglass campaigned for the extension of the vote for blacks as well as for women.

Sojourner Truth ( ) She was born a slave named Isabella Baumfree, but was freed at age 28 due to a New York law. She joined the Anti-Slavery Society and became an abolitionist lecturer and a speaker for women's rights both black and white. She changed her name to reflect her new mission—“traveling” to “tell the truth.” After the Civil War, she spoke for equal rights.

The Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was a network of secret passages by which African slaves in the 19th century United States attempted to escape to free states, or as far north as Canada, with the aid of abolitionists. Other routes led to Mexico or overseas. At its height between 1810 and 1850, an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 people escaped enslavement via the Underground Railroad, though census figures only account for 6,000. The Underground Railroad has captured public imagination as a symbol of freedom, and it figures prominently in Black American history.

Harriet Tubman Born about 1820 as a slave, she later escaped and became one of the Underground Railroad’s most famous conductors (people who led slaves to safety). She made 19 trips risking her own life to lead 300+ slaves to freedom, becoming known as “the Black Moses.” Bounty hunters were constantly after her, hoping for the reward of up to $40,000 for her capture.

The Abolitionists crusade of the 1830s is responsible for accidentally sparking a woman’s rights crusade that radically changed American society. Women abolitionists met opposition to their right to speak in public. Rejected as equals by male abolitionists and barred from their organizations, women formed female abolition societies and began to speak for their own rights as well as those of blacks. ***We will talk about the women’s rights movement later***

Cultural Trends Social changes in the United States also influenced art and literature. American artists began to find their own style instead of looking to Europe for inspiration. Beginning in the 1820s, American artists began to explore American themes and develop their own style. The American spirit of reform influenced Transcendentalists.

Transcendentalists stressed the relationship between humans and nature as well as the importance of the individual conscience. They added to the spirit of reform by urging people to question society’s rules and institutions.

Transcendentalists Writers & Poets: Margaret Fuller Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Walt Whitman Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Emily Dickinson