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An Age of Reform. Society, Women, and Abolition. Improving Society. During the 1830’s, many Americans became interested in social reform, or organized attempts to improve conditions of daily life. Most attempts had both political and religious elements.
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An Age of Reform Society, Women, and Abolition
Improving Society During the 1830’s, many Americans became interested in social reform, or organized attempts to improve conditions of daily life. Most attempts had both political and religious elements Beginning in the early 1800s, a new generation of ministers began challenging traditional beliefs. Many Protestants believed in predestination, or the idea that God decided the fate of a person’s soul before birth. Jacksonian Democracy took on new life as calls for expanded voting rights, eliminating the property ownership requirement, became popular. This era of challenging traditional Protestant beliefs became known as the Second Great Awakening (1830s and 1840s).
Impact of the Great Awakening The Great Awakening brought a message of reform. Charles Finney, the most well-known preacher of the time, held the first of his revivals, or huge outdoor meetings in 1826. These large gatherings allowed ministers, and others, to begin discussing other reforms, including social reform, educational reform, and women’s rights.
Social Reform Many reformers supported the temperance movement, an organized effort to end alcohol abuse and the problems that come with it. Although most reformers preferred temperance, or moderation, some called for prohibition, a total ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol.
Social Reform Another major area of interest for reformers was the prison system and care for the mentally ill. Dorothea Dix, pictured below, was a Massachusetts schoolteacher who committed herself to the cause of reforming prisons. She lobbied for new, sanitary, and humane prisons. In addition, she wanted to see criminal law reformed to prevent debtors and petty criminals from serving jail time. Dix was also outraged that the mentally ill were housed in prisons. She urged officials to build separate facilities, called asylums, for the mentally ill where they could receive treatment, instead of punishment.
Education Reform In the mid 1600s, Puritans passed a law, requiring all large towns to build schools and hire teachers. In this way, Massachusetts set up the first public school system, access to free schooling supported by taxes. Education had always been important, supported by the Protestant faithful as a part of religious education. The problem? Most rural farmers or those from poorer classes could not afford the education. Horace Mann took the lead in education reform. He was appalled by the low literacy rates in the United States, with the majority of Americans unable to read or write. j Horace Mann “Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, - the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” Horace Mann
A Call for Women’s Rights In 1820, the rights of women were limited. They could not vote, serve on juries, attend college, or enter certain professions like law or medicine. Married women could not own property or keep their own wages. Most Americans, men and women, believed that a woman’s place was in the private world of the home. Lucretia Mott (left) and Elizabeth Cody Stanton (right) Many women felt they had important contributions to make to society. Two women in particular made important contributions: Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cody Stanton.
Women’s Rights Furious at being excluded from the convention, they agreed on the need for a convention to advance women’s rights. In the summer of 1848, both attended the Seneca Falls Convention, the first convention to specifically address gender equality in the United States. Mott and Stanton met at an antislavery convention in London. Mott had traveled from America while Mott had accompanied her husband, who was a delegate to the conference. When Mott and Stanton went to attend the convention, they were shown to the balcony as women were not permitted to take an active role in the proceedings. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal…[W]e are assembled [here] to protest against a form of government existing without the consent of the governed – to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in government which we are taxed to support.” Stanton’s argument was the beginning of a long battle for women’s suffrage, or the right of women to vote. The Seneca Falls Convention launched the women’s rights movement in the United States, an organized effort to improve the political, legal, and economic status of women in America.
Reform and American Literature The reform movements in America received support not from literature, but through it. American Literature began taking on a form of its own, breaking from the longtime tradition of modeling its style and content from European-style writing. Transcendentalism – a movement that sought to explore the relationship between humans and nature through emotion rather than through reason. Individualism – the unique importance of each individual Civil Disobedience – the idea that people should peacefully disobey unjust laws if their consciences demand it. A group of small but incredibly influential authors helped turn America’s attention to its own identity.
American Literature To place in context the contribution that this group of authors made consider the list of their names and their works. Authors: Washington Irving James Fenimore Cooper Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Herman Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne Louisa May Alcott Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Walt Whitman Works: “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” & “Rip Van Winkle” Last of the Mohicans Walden Moby Dick The Scarlet Letter Little Women “Paul Revere’s Ride” Song of Hiawatha Leaves of Grass
The Hudson River School Literature did not have ownership over the arts. Thomas Cole and his Hudson River School of landscape painting left lasting impressions.
The Fight Against Slavery The issue of slavery had long been controversial. In 1780, Pennsylvania became the first state to pass a law officially ending slavery. By 1804, every state North of Virginia had abolished or pledged to abolish slavery entirely. Congress had outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territory and Ohio was the first state admitted to the Union that banned slavery in its Constitution. There was still work to be done however. Northerners publically stated they opposed slavery, but their factories still relied on cheap cotton from the slave South. It would take a dedicated group of abolitionists – reformers who wanted to abolish, or end, slavery – to finally make an impact.
Colonization Movement A group of abolitionists, members of the American Colonization Society proposed a bold new plan. The Colonization Plan proposed slaves be freed gradually, then be returned to Africa to the colony of Liberia. Most slaves, now second and third generation, did not consider themselves African and had no desire to return. America was their country now. The movement was a complete failure.
William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison, a deeply religious Quaker, adamantly opposed slavery, pushed for full political rights for African Americans and published a well-known abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD. “Assenting to the "self-evident truth" maintained in the American Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights -- among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population.” William Lloyd Garrison
Frederick Douglas Frederick Douglass is probably the most well-known black abolitionist. Born into slavery, Douglass broke the law by learning to read, and eventually escaping to the North. Frederick Douglass became the leading figure in the northern abolition movement and published his own newspaper, “The North Star. “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.” He was invited to speak before a huge crowd on July 4th, 1852. This is how he opened his speech to thousands…"This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?" Frederick Douglass
David Walker A former slave himself, Walker knew the horrors of slavery. His approach was far more radical though. David Walker believed that slaves should rebel against their masters, if necessary, to gain their freedom. “See your Declaration Americans! ! ! Do you understand your won language? Hear your languages, proclaimed to the world, July 4th, 1776 -- "We hold these truths to be self evident -- that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL! ! that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! !" Compare your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers and on us. . .they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us. . . therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed. . . and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to kill a man who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty.” “Let no man of us budge one step, and let slave-holders come to beat us from our country. America is more our country, than it is the whites-we have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears: -- and will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood? They must look sharp or this very thing will bring swift destruction upon them. The Americans have got so fat on our blood and groans, that they have almost forgotten the God of armies. But let the go on.” David Walker
