1. Social Reform in Antebellum America
Morality vs. Republicanism
Social Reform in Antebellum America

2. The Second Great Awakening

3. Growth of Evangelical Protestantism

4. Camp Meeting

5. The Second Great Awakening
Connection to the market economy?
New communication tactics
What was the message?
Populism
Emphasis on “free will”

6. Immigration

7. Anti-Catholic sentiment
Every Roman Catholic in the known world is under the absolute control of the Catholic Priesthood....And it is this...political influence, this power of the Priesthood to control the Catholic community, and cause a vast multitude of ignorant foreigners to vote as a unit, and thus control the will of the American people, that has engendered this opposition to the Catholic Church.
William G. Brownlow, 1856

8. Know Nothing Demands
“Americans must rule America; and to this end, native-born citizens should be selected for all state, federal, or municipal offices of government employment, in preference to naturalized citizens.”
1856 Platform of the American (Know Nothing) Party
Immigration be limited
Impose a 21-year wait be imposed before an immigrant could become a citizen and vote
Limit the sale of liquor
Restrict public-school teaching to Protestants, with the Protestant version of the Bible read daily in classrooms

9. Irish Response Political Educational
“the Irish in general are quick of apprehension, active, brave and hospitable; but passionate, ignorant, vain, and superstitious”

10. Reform Movements

11. Common Schools Horace Mann and Noah Webster Function of common schools
Equalize opportunity
“Civilize” the poor

12. Temperance

13. American Society for the Promotion of Temperance

14. Utopian Communities Why did Utopian communities emerge?
What did they have in common?

15. Prisons and asylums

16. Abolition American Colonization Society American Anti-Slavery Society
Gag Rule

17. Seneca Falls Convention
“a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of men toward woman.”
“he has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.”
Resolved, That woman is man's equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.
Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior, that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.