Making America a better place for all people who live here is part of the American dream. During the early 1800s a series of religious revivals known as the 2nd Great Awakening swept through the United States. People came from all around to attend week long outdoor church services called camp meetings to hear emotional preachers who "rode the circuit" promoting personal conversion. Reformers believed they could improve society by sharing religion and education with the less fortunate. Upper class men and women in the northeast led the effort. The most powerful reform movements were led by abolitionists and by suffragists. The abolitionist movement gained support during the 1830s and 1840s. At the same time, women realized their position in society needed reforming. The suffrage movement emerged as a result. Abolitionists in the U.S. sought freedom for African-American slaves while suffragists sought equal rights for women, particularly the right to vote. Reformers also strove to correct unfair labor practices; improve living conditions for the poor, the imprisoned, alcoholics, and the disabled; and ensure that education was widely available. These are the problems that the reformers wanted to fix:
1) Slavery-preachers said it was a SIN!!
-->SOLUTION: Abolitionist Movement
2) Unequal rights for women
-->SOLUTION: Suffrage/Feminist Movement
3) Bad mental hospitals
-->SOLUTION: Hospital Reform
4) Bad prisons
-->SOLUTION: Prison Reform
5) Inadequate Public education
-->SOLUTION: New Public Schools, Education Reform
6) Excessive Drinking
-->SOLUTION: Temperence Movement/Prohibition
Reformers who became frustrated with their attempts to effect change sought refuge in their own Utopian societies, ideal communities where they could live by their own standards of conduct. Some of these societies included:
1) Shakers--communities all over the northern US; known for wooden boxes and furniture; almost all of their communities are gone because they do not believed in being totally celibate. Click here for more information about the Shakers. Click here to visit a Shaker village.
2) Oneida Community--located in NY, they became known for silverworking (Oneida flatware) Click here for more information about the community.
3) Brook Farm--located in MA, this was a communal farm. It is now a state park and may be visited. Many transcendentalist authors, including Hawthorne, lived here for a time. Click here for more information about the farm.
16-1: Liberty for All
1. Political Ideas behind Anti-Slavery Movement:
went back to the Revolution:
"all men are created equal"
slavery contradicted this statement from the Dec. of Independence
2. Religious Ideas behind it
Quakers who claimed that all people are equal in God's sight
Preachers of the Second Great Awakening called it a "great national sin"
3. Slavery ends in the North
by 1804 all states from Penn. north had made provisions end slavery
50,000 slaves in the North, 1 million slaves in the South
South was more dependent on slavery for cotton
4. American Colonization Society
goal: to end slavery by setting up a colony in Africa for freed slaves
Liberia (Latin for "free")
promised to pay owners for slaves they freed
Colonization Fails:
most blacks opposed it (didn't want to live in Africa because they were born in America)
was very expensive
only a few thousand went
5. Abolitionist Movement
attacked slavery directly
wanted to end slavery (some said gradually others said immediately)
actually got its start in Britain
7. Opposition to Abolition
feared that free blacks would come north and take jobs away from whites
northern businessmen depended on cotton
discrimination
8. Southern Justification
essential to Southern econ
claimed slaves were better off than and better cared for than Northern factory workers
couldn't live on their own
6. Underground Railroad
a network of abolitionist "conductors" who secretly helped runaway slaves to reach freedom in the North & Canada
16-2: Women Are Created Equal
1. Women's Rights in 1800s
could not vote or hold office
women's property & wages belonged to her husband
no protection from domestic violence
2. Define "feminism"
Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes
3. Abolition-->Women's Movement
As women abolitionists fought for the end of slavery, they realized that they lacked full social and political rights themselves
"The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own." A. Grimke
Women reformers were criticized for being outspoken and assuming the "place & tone of a man"
This criticism made women realize that they needed to fight for equality
4. Seneca Falls Convention
to draw attention to the problems women faced
200 women & 40 men discussed the social, civil, & religious rights of women
marked formal beginning of women's rights movement
5. Declaration of Sentiments
Written by Stanton
Modeled after the Declaration of Independence
List of 18 grievances against men and 12 resolutions for action
6. Resolutions that Passed
equality for women at work
equality in educational opportunities
equality in church
right to vote
7. Educational Opportunities
poor girls had little chance
wealthy girls went to school but were taught dancing and drawing rather than the "serious subjects" (math, Greek, Latin)
no chance of college
8. Define: "coeducation"
Education in which men & women attend the same institution or classes.
16-3: Reform Sweeps the Country
1. Mentally Ill
kept in prisons like criminals
kept in dark, unheated cells because "lunatics" could not feel the cold
locked in cages, closets, cellars, stalls & pens, chained, naked, beaten with rods, lashed into obedience
2. Prison Problems
inmates crammed into cold, damp, dark rooms
prisoners sometimes went hungry unless they could buy food from the jailers
children put with adults
3. Debtors:
5/6 "prisoners" = debtors
if they are in prison how can they ever possibly earn money to pay off their debts?
4. Prison Reform
mental hospitals to care for the mentally ill (instead of prisons)
new prisons with only one or two inmates to a cell
cruel punishments banned
child convicts were sent to juvenile prisons
debtors taken out of prisons
5. Reforms spread to other states
Dix traveled to other states (VE, NY, CN, LA, IL, NC) to inspect jails & poorhouses & wrote reports for the state legislatures
6. Problems with Education:
few kids attended school
public schools only in NE
school year=a few months
teachers were poorly trained and poorly paid
all ages taught in 1 room
7. New York leads the way...
in 1820, ordered every town to build a grade school
even though the schools were not completely free they were a start
other states followed
8. Public schooling ended...
in 8th grade
very few public high schools
schools improved most slowly in the South
9. Education for Blacks
free blacks had little chance to attend school--even in N
few cities(Boston, NYC) set up separate "black" schools
few blacks attended college
1850s: black colleges open
10. Temperance Movement
campaign against drinking (either to drink less or to do away w/ alcohol altogether)
reformers had linked the abuse of alcohol to crime, breakup of families, mental illness, unemployment
11. Maine-Laws
temperance movements won a great victory in Maine banned the sale of alcohol
eight other states passed "Maine Laws" that banned the sale of alcohol
"prohibition"
The forbidding by law of the manufacture, transportation, sale, and possession of alcoholic beverages.
16-4: New Voices, New Visions
1. European Criticism
"Who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? Or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to Americans?"
Point: America lacked writers and authors of worth
2. Most American writers
got their ideas and inspiration from Europe until the early 1800s.
3. Changes in American Writing:
In the 1820s, American writers began to write stories with American themes and subjects.
New style: ROMANTICISM (themes included: emotion, imagination, individualism, nature, democracy, history)
4. Washington Irving wrote stories that poked fun at colonial New York. His most famous stories are "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". He was the first American author to gain international recognition. His stories are of a mystical nature involving events that couldn't possibly happen.
5. James Fenimore Cooper was the author of 33 novels full of excitement and adventure, many of which showed his love of the American frontier. The Deerslayer and the Last of the Mohicans were part of his collection known as The Leather Stocking Tales. What kind of an image did he paint of relations between Indians and whites? Romantic or Idealized
6. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote stories and novels set in Puritan New England, where his ancestor had been a judge in the Salem witch trials. His most famous novel is The Scarlet Letter, which explores the forces of good & evil in a New England town. He was very critical of the Puritans.
7. Herman Melville wrote the great novel Moby Dick, describing a whaling ship and its crazed captain's search for a great white whale. The book is a lesson in how rage can destroy a person.
8. Henry David Thoreau wrote a book about his time alone at Walden Pond (Walden), where he tried to live "deliberately" & self-sufficiently. He was thrown into jail when he refused to pay his taxes during the Mexican War and wrote an essay after his time in jail on the suject of "Civil Disobedience".
Liked being different and going against the flow.
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears...."
9. Define: transcendentalism
The idea that each person can know truth intuitively by transcending (going beyond) reason and the five senses & consulting the spark of the divine within us all.
10. Most early American artists studied in
Europe (London, Paris)
In the mid-1800s American artists began to develop their own style and to paint scenic landscapes. They became known as the Hudson River School.
