1. 15.1 Social Reform

2. Causes of Reform movements: Impact of Jacksonianism
Celebration of common people
Equality of white males
Against elites
Empowered working white men
Political campaigns and expanded voting
Held allies and celebrationss
Anti-Bank – against concentrated wealth and power

3. Growth of the American Middle-Class
Increase in middle-class, particularly in north associated with industrialization and urbanization
Middle-class whites in northern towns and cities developed ideas about their role in society
Open to new religious movements
Organized and willing to project their ideas outwards on society: reform
Attempted to both control and change society

4. Impact of the Second Great Awakening
“Spiritual Reform From Within” [Religious Revivalism]
Social Reforms & Redefining the Ideal of Equality
Temperance
Education
Abolitionism
Asylum & Penal Reform
Women’s Rights

5. Spread of Religious Revivals
in Antebellum America

6. Revival Meeting

7. The Shakers Radical religious sect that began in 1740s or 1750s
Led by Mother Ann Lee and Lucy Wright
God is both male and female
Equality of sexes under God
Personal revelations from God
Called “Shakers” because of ecstatic religious movements and dancing
Members observed celibacy, simplicity, and creation of self-sufficient Shaker communities (utopian settlements)
Celibate – do not take part in marriage or sexual activity

8. Shaker Religious Meeting
Video – 8:00
VIDEO

9. Shakers Emphasized Simplicity, Practicality, and Utility

10. The Mormons (Church of Latter-Day Saints)
Based on Joseph Smith’s revelations from the angel Moroni
1823  Golden Tablets
1830  Book of Mormon
1844  Murdered in Carthage, IL
Persecution led to Mormon beliefs: chosen people, exile to Utah, self-reliance, and communitarianism
Smith said he found the plates on September 22, 1823, at a Hill, near his home in Manchester, New York, after the angel Moroni directed him to a buried stone box. Smith said the angel at first prevented him from taking the plates but instructed him to return to the same location in a year. In September 1827, on his fourth annual attempt to retrieve the plates, Smith returned home with a heavy object wrapped in a frock, which he then put in a box. Though he allowed others to heft the box, he said that the angel had forbidden him to show the plates to anyone until they had been translated from their original "reformed Egyptian" language. Smith dictated the text of the Book of Mormon over the next several years, claiming that it was a translation of the plates.
Shot and killed with his brother while awaiting trial. Shot, fell out of a window, died, and shot several more times. All suspects acquitted.
Joseph Smith ( )

11. The Mormons (Church of Latter-Day Saints)
Mormon Church mixed different strands of revival and reform
New religious sect (1st wholly American religion?)
Patriarchal church and family - stability
Only males could be church or family leaders
Polygamy as practice of patriarchal rule
Originally excluded blacks and Native Americans, similar to Jacksonian democracy

12. Transcendentalism Major beliefs:
“Transcend” the limits of intellect and allow the soul to create an original relationship with the Universe
Moral authority and feeling over rationality
Infinite benevolence (kindness) of God
Appreciation for nature - God can be seen in nature, both power and benevolence
Humans are divine, good, and changeable
Rejection of formal authority
Personal ethics and morality
Similar to Romanticism in Europe

13. Transcendentalism The role of the reformer
restore man to the divinity which God had endowed them
Humans had power over their own lives - they could remake themselves and their world in God’s image

14. Transcendental Agenda
All humans share part of a common soul; reconnect humans to one another and God
Reconnect humans with nature (and god)
Give freedom to the slave
Give well-being to the poor and the miserable
Give learning to the ignorant
Give health to the sick
Give peace and justice to society

15. Utopian Communities in America
Remaking the world to fit God’s image
Religious communities
Secular communities
Early socialist communes
Related to Puritan “City on a Hill” – John Winthrop saying the world was watching

16. Utopian Communities in America

17. Temperance Movement American Temperance Society
Attacked “demon rum” for:
Men’s wasted earnings
domestic violence
Prevented men from rational political participation
Prevented hard work and self-improvement
Raised legal drinking age in many states
“Do Everything” slogan for Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
Frances Willard

18. Figure: Annual Consumption of Alcohol

19. “The Drunkard’s Progress”
Step 1. A glass with a friend.
Step 2. A glass to keep the cold out.
Step 3. A glass too much.
Step 4. Drunk and riotous.
Step 5. The summit attained. Jolly companions. A confirmed drunkard.
Step 6. Poverty and disease.
Step 7. Forsaken by Friends.
Step 8. Desperation and crime.
Step 9. Death.
From the first glass to the grave, 1846

20. Educational Reform
Transition from religious training to secular education
Widening of education to general population
Massachusetts - always on the forefront of public educational reform
1st state to establish tax support for local public schools
By 1860 every state offered free public education to whites
US had one of the highest literacy rates in the world

21. “Father of American Education”
Horace Mann ( )
“Father of American Education”
thought children were clay in the hands of teachers and school officials
children should be “molded” into a state of perfection
discouraged corporal punishment
established state teacher-training programs
R3-6

22. Prison Reform
Dorothea Dix – educated the public about poor prison conditions
Quakers and others concerned with brutality of prisons and capital punishment
Separation of criminals and mentally ill
Penitentiaries intended to reform inmates and heal sick
Dix – school teacher that began visiting prisons in She found some prisoners chained to the walls with little or no clothing, often in unheated cells. She also learned that some inmates were guilty of no crime. Instead, they were suffering from mental illness. Dix made it her life’s work to educate the public about the poor conditions for prisoners and the mentally ill
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23. First Penitentiary, 1849

24. VIDEO