1. The American Reform Tradition
John Green 19th century reform movements

2. Reform Movements Education Women’s rights Care of mentally ill
Many areas of American life inspired reform movements. The ideas of civic duty, self improvement and improving the world were all inspired by the Second Great awakening which was a religious revival movement. Areas of reform include:
Education
Women’s rights
Care of mentally ill
Working conditions
slavery

3. Public Schools
People recognized that education was important to future of America
HORACE MANN, from Massachusetts, believed that every human had right to an education
MANN developed an education system with grades and teacher training. His ideas spread
By 1860 most people had at least an elementary education
Educational opportunities for girls and women also expanded

4. Care of the Mentally Ill
1800s most mentally ill people were locked up in prisons
Dorthea Dix, in 1840s studied the poor treatment of the mentally ill and reported her findings to the MA state legislature. The state authorized money for a state mental hospital.
Other states soon followed

5. abolition
Abolitionists: antislavery movement grew as cotton production became more profitable and slavery spread
It was stronger in the North than in the South
Not everyone in the North supported it. White workers were feared competition from freed or escaped slaves who were willing to work for lower wages

6. ABOLITION Famous abolitionists include:
Frederick Douglass – an escaped slave who lived in Rochester NY and had a newspaper The North Star, he lectured and wrote about the evils of slavery and his life experiences.
America Story of US - Douglass

7. Abolition
Harriet Tubman – an escaped slave who led 19 trips on the Underground Railroad. She had a bounty for her capture or death. After the Civil War she will work for the US Government on the Freedman’s Bureau helping former slaves and poor whites
America the Story of US- Tubman

8. abolition
Sojourner Truth is best known for her extemporaneous speech on racial inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?" delivered at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in She was an abolitionist and fought for Women’s rights.
Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter, Sophia. Her other daughter and son stayed behind. Shortly after her escape, Truth learned that her son Peter, then 5 years old, had been illegally sold to a man in Alabama. She took the issue to court and eventually secured Peter's return from the South. The case was one of the first in which a black woman successfully challenged a white man in a United States court.

9. Abolition – White Activists
William Lloyd Garrison spoke out eloquently and passionately against slavery and for the rights of America's black inhabitants.
He published the newspaper The Liberator an anti-slavery newspaper
PBS American Experience - William Lloyd Garrison

10. Abolition – White Activists
Angelina and Sarah Grimke were born in cradle of slavery on a plantation in South Carolina
Sarah converted to Quakerism and moved to Philadelphia in 1821; by 1829 Angelina had also become a Quaker and decided to move north to be with her sister.
In 1836 Angelina wrote her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South imploring white southern women to embrace the antislavery cause. Her writing drew the ire of southerners who opposed its abolitionist message and northerners who felt that women had no business writing or speaking about something as controversial as slavery. This outcry over women abolitionists prompted Sarah to write Letters on the Equality of the Sexes. By the late 1830s the Grimke sisters were known not only as abolitionists but also as proponents of women’s rights.
Although Sarah and Angelina did not attend the First Woman’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls in 1848, Sarah received an invitation to the event from Elizabeth Cady Stanton
PBS American Experience - Grimke

11. Abolition – White Activists
Harriett Beecher Stowe wrote the controversial book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which exposed the evils of slavery. PBS American Harriet Beecher Stowe
John Brown, radical abolitionists
PBS American Experience John Brown and Frederick Douglass

12. Women’s Rights John Greene US Women's rights
1830’s reform-minded women faced discrimination within their own organization
In 1840 women delegates to the World Anti-slavery Convention were not allowed to participate in the convention. Two of the women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott vowed to have a women’s convention
1848 Women’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls, NY. There they wrote the Declaration of Sentiments

13. Declaration of Sentiments goals:
End legal inequalities faced by married women
Men controlled women’s property
Men controlled women’s wages
Men controlled children
Declaration of Sentiments – document

14. Women’s Rights
1853 Susan B. Anthony joins the effort with Stanton and Mott

15. Temperance Movement Organized to eliminate alcohol consumption
Carrie Nation in 1890s marched into saloons destroying bottles with her hatchett

16. Other Reform People worked for: Creation of prisons Hospitals
Orphanages
Institutions to care for people who are disabled