1. Reforms of The Antebellum Period

2. The Second Great Awakening
- The 2nd great awakening refers to a time period in the 1830's-50's where many people felt that America had lost its way and had rejected God.
- In response there were many religious revivals that had 2 purposes
- These purposes were opposed to each other and they were
1. To oppose Women's suffrage and keep the idea of the traditional family and religion being the center of people's lives
2. To promote reforms that will help society become more equal and more like heaven on earth

3. 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

4. Second Great Awakening Revival Meeting

5. Republican Motherhood
The idea that an American woman was a mother to all Americans
It was her job to raise a good, moral, democracy loving child
Women were seen as vital to the Republic

6. “Separate Spheres” Concept
“Cult of Domesticity”
A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a refuge from the cruel world outside).
Her role was to “civilize” her husband and family.
An 1830s MA minister:
The power of woman is her dependence. A woman who gives up that dependence on man to become a reformer yields the power God has given her for her protection, and her character becomes unnatural!

7. What It Would Be Like If Ladies Had Their Own Way!

8. Women’s Rights
Women of the time period had few rights, they could not vote, or hold political office
There were many women and some men who tried to get female suffrage or the right to vote
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a Suffragist
She and Lucretia Mott held the Seneca Falls Convention in order to discuss women getting the right to vote
The Convention wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which called for equal rights between men and women

10. Mental + Prison Reform
In the 1840’s poor insane people lived in terrible conditions often being chained in pens to be supervised and whipped if they misbehaved
Dorthea Dix moved forward the idea of Mental Asylums
She also put forth the idea of Rehabilitation which would change or “reform” prisoners so they can re-enter society

12. Dorothea Dix Asylum

13. Education Reform
In the 1840’s in order to get a higher education than 8th grade you needed money.
Horace Mann pushed forward the idea of free education through twelfth grade
He will eventually succeed in universal education

14. Temperance
There will be some who wish to restrict the sales and drinking of alcohol
This idea is known as Temperance
Temperance Societies will be made mostly of women who believe alcohol ruins society

15. Abolitionists They believed in slaves being set free
Many abolitionists were also women’s rights activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The abolitionist movement was the largest movement of its time, and also the most divisive
People of the south saw it as a threat to their way of live, while the abolitionists saw slavery as a sin.

16. William Lloyd Garrison (1801-1879)
Immediate emancipation with NO compensation.
William Lloyd Garrison founded the Liberator an abolitionist newspaper
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17. Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was a free black and a leader of the abolitionist movement
Very good speaker, leader, and eventual friend of Abraham Lincoln

18. Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) “Moses” Helped over 300 slaves to freedom.
$40,000 bounty on her head.
A main “conductor” of the “underground railroad”.
“Moses”

19. Transcendentalism
“Transcend” the limits of intellect and allow the emotions, the SOUL, to create an original relationship with the Universe.
There are moral truths that must be understood, do not trust what you are told

20. Resistance to Civil Disobedience (1849)
Transcendentalist Intellectuals/Writers Concord, MA
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
Henry David
Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Disobedience (1849)
Walden (1854)
Nature (1832)
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21. Utopian Communities Some in the 1840’s attempted Utopian Communities
Attempting communal living Brook Farm, Oneida, and New Harmony were created
All will fail, often because of the idea of plural marriage

22. Social Life in the South
During this Antebellum period America North and South began to polarize
In the South there was the Plantation System
An aristocracy of wealthy southern planters ruled, under them were poor white planters, under them the slaves
The south grew increasingly Agrarian and distant from the north
Because of this Agricultural base the south grew slower in population than the north and had fewer railroads and telegraphs

23. Life in the North In the North there was an Industrial Revolution..
Factories brought in unskilled labor
Many immigrants flocked to the north to fill these jobs
Lowell Mass basically becomes a city because of the Industrial Revolution.
Germans and Irish were discriminated against as they began to move in and take jobs, many believed that only those born in the U.S. deserved these freedoms, this belief was called Nativism

24. Industrial Developments
1793- First textile factory- Pawtucket, RI
1794- Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin- leads to an increase in production, but also slavery
1804- Oliver Evans develops a high- pressure steam engine
1807- Clermont- first steamship- changes transportation
1844- Telegraph changes communication

25. Agriculture Innovation
1834- Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical reaper
1837- John Deere’s steel plow
1842- Joseph Dart’s grain elevator
All lead to an improvement in agricultural production