1. Chapter 8: A push for reform
The Big Picture: The religious revival called the Second Great Awakening set off one of the great periods of social reform in American history. Inspired to do good works, the reformers changed the face of America.

2. Chapter 8 section 1: new movements in America
Main Idea: A revival in religion in the early 1800s helped lead to an era of reform.

3. Religion Sparks Reform
The Second Great Awakening
1820s and 1830s revival preachers traveled across America calling people back to Christianity
Preachers like Charles Grandison Finney had thousands embrace his message
By 1850, twice as many Americans attended church than when Washington was president
People urged to live well and make society better in service to God-“their destiny lay in their own hands”  led to the Reform Era

4. The Temperance Movement
Movement to reduce the use of alcoholic beverages (temperance means moderation)
Reformers wrote books, plays, and songs about the evils of alcohol
Claimed it led to poverty, sickness, abuse and the break-up of families
12 states outlaw alcohol

5. Reforming Education Common Schools and McGuffey Horace Mann
Before 1840, public schools (called common schools) were poor and poorly attended
People began to push for better public schools
William McGuffey wrote a series of books designed to teach students both reading skills and morals
Over 100 million books were sold in the middle and late 1800s
Horace Mann
Was Secretary of Education in MA
Started state- funded schools
Compulsory attendance
Created normal schools to train teachers
Other states followed his example, and by % of white children attended public school nation-wide

6. Reforming Prisons
Dorethea Dix campaigned for humane treatment of both prisoners and the mentally ill
Mentally ill were often put in crowded, unsanitary prisons and were often abused
Starting in MA, states began building mental health institutions to house mentally ill citizens

7. Transcendentalism and Utopianism
Transcendentalist movement: the belief that knowledge is found by observation, reason, intuition and personal spiritual experiences
Ralph Waldo Emerson- leader of the movement; wrote that people should be self reliant and trust their intuition
Henry David Thoreau- tried self-reliance through living alone at Walden Pond and living simply
He also introduced the idea of civil disobedience: disobeying the government when you think they are wrong (went to prison for not paying taxes that would help fight a war he disagreed with)
Ideas are later adopted by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

8. Some reformers wanted to create brand-new, perfect societies (called utopias)
90 communities were founded in the early 1800s
Most famous were New Harmony and Brook Farm
Most successful were the Shakers
All were small and short lived (conflict among members)

9. Chapter 8 section 2: early immigration and urban reform
Main Idea: A wave of Irish and German immigrants entered the United States during a period of urbanization and reform.

10. Irish and German Immigrants
Push and Pull Factors
Pushes- reasons immigrants leave their home country
Most common are poverty, disease, war/persecution
Pulls- reasons immigrants come to a new country
Most common are freedom and economic opportunity (jobs)

11. Irish and Germans
: blight (disease) destroys the potato crop in Ireland
By 1850 more than a million die in the Great Irish Famine
More than 2 million leave Ireland, 1.5 million come to the US
Germans came to the US to escape poverty, religious persecution, and unrest (about 1.5 million came to the US)

12. The Lives of Immigrants
Irish versus Germans
Irish faced the most hostility
They were resented for their numbers, their poverty, and their religion (Catholic)
They also tended to stay together within cities
By contrast, Germans tended to be Protestant and were middle class
They tended to spread out across the country (settled in the Midwest)

13. Nativism and the Know-Nothings
As more immigrants entered the US nativism increased (fear/hostility towards immigrants)
Many viewed them as a threat to their way of life
Anti-immigrant sentiment led to the creation of the Know- Nothings
They later reformed as the American Party that ran on an anti- immigration platform
They had more than a million members by and ran a presidential candidate in 1856

14. Reform, Urbanization, and Industrialization
Urbanization and Reform
Urbanization- rapid growth of cities
Many were immigrants looking for work
Many city dwellers lived in tenements: poorly constructed, crowded apartment buildings
Tenements had problems with sanitation, disease, and crime
Some reformers tried to help tenement dwellers, but not much progress was made

15. Industrialization and Reform
Industrialization: making things in factories
From 1820 to 1850, the percentage of factory workers rose from 5% to 30%
Led to a rise in the urban working class, most of which were poor and uneducated
Workers began to organize in groups to demand better pay and working conditions, most of these efforts failed

16. Chapter 8 section 3: Women and Reform
Main Idea: After leading reform movements to help others, some American women began to work on behalf of themselves.

17. Limits on Women’s Lives
Women had legal, economic, and cultural limits in the 19th century
Legal: Women were not allowed to vote or hold office; the only legal contract they could enter into was marriage, but they were not usually allowed to divorce and the husband gained custody of the children if they did divorce
Economic: not allowed to own property; many women worked but they received low wages that technically belonged to their husband

18. Cultural: women were pressured to remain in the home taking care of children and household tasks; books and magazines praised women who stayed at home and obeyed their husbands (called the cult of domesticity)
Society feared industrialization was threatening the American family by taking women out of the household

19. Women in the Reform Era
Despite being excluded from most of public life, women did play an active role in the reform movement (saw it as an act of ‘mothering’ society)
Middle class women began forming reform societies in the 1830s and 1840s to promote social reforms like moral improvement and aid to the poor
Women like Catherine Beecher worked for better educational opportunities for boys and girls
Oberlin College: 1st American college to admit women (1833)
Mount Holyoke: 1st women’s college (1837)
women also work in labor movements to win better pay and working conditions in factories
Women worked passionately in temperance reform because of the effects of alcohol use on families

20. The Seneca Falls Convention
Held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, NY; marks the beginning of the women’s movement
Women believed that having more political power would help them achieve the reforms they were working towards
Convention was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott after they were not allowed to speak at an anti-slavery convention and were segregated from the men
300 attended the meeting and drafted the Declaration of Sentiments; modeled after the Declaration of Independence, it listed abused men perpetrated against women and demanded equality and the right to vote (suffrage)

21. Chapter 8 section 4: fighting against slavery
Main Idea: The movement to end slavery dominated the Reform Era.

22. The Lives of Enslaved African Americans
Work
Slavery existed in every American colony and in the North until the 1840s
1860: 4 million slaves in the South
Most lived on farms and plantations cultivating cotton
Slaves in cities were usually hired out as day laborers or in factories; the money went to the owner
Life Style
Worked from sun-up to sun- down
Poorly fed, clothed, and sheltered
Abuse was common and families were frequently split apart
Major source of hope lay in their Christian religion and music
Focused on the Exodus story

24. The Antislavery Movement in the South
Revolts
: over 200 slave uprisings, most short lived
1830: Nat Turner’s Rebellion- most deadliest slave revolt in US history (killed dozens of white people before being captured
White people in the Virginia community killed 100 slaves unrelated to the revolt to prevent future actions
About 40,000 were able to escape to freedom in the North before 1860
The Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad: an informal system of escape where free blacks and sympathetic whites would aid runaway slaves as they traveled North
Quakers, a religious group that disagreed with slavery were very active in the movement
most famous ‘conductor’ was Harriett Tubman- led hundreds to freedom

25. The Abolition Movement
Roots and Leaders
Second Great Awakening led many Northerners to believe that slavery was evil and should be abolished (ended)
This was the LARGEST reform movement of the reform era
William Lloyd Garrison: wanted immediate emancipation (not gradual); published the anti-slavery paper The Liberator
Grimke sisters: Southern white women opposed to slavery
Frederick Douglas: run-away slave who spoke against slavery; wrote an autobiography to answer critics who claimed he was too well educated and well spoken to have been a slave

26. Opposition
Southerners, even those who did not own slaves, saw the abolition movement as an attack on Southern livelihood (money) and way of life
Some tried to use the Bible to justify slavery
Most claimed it was a economic necessity
By 1860 cotton comprised 55% of all US exports and Northern factories were dependent upon cheap Southern cotton
Not all Northerners were pro-abolition (feared job competition)