chapter 13: immigration, urbanization, social reform, 1820s-1850s 1© 2009 pearson education, inc

Chapter 13:Immigration,

Urbanization, Social Reform,

1820s-1850s

1© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Chapter Focus Questions

• What caused the immigration of the 1840s and 1850s, and what were responses to it?

• Why were cities so unable to cope with rapid urbanization?

• What motivated reform movements?• What were the origins and political effects of

the abolitionist movement?• How were women involved in reform efforts?


American Communities: Women Reformers of Seneca Falls Respond to the Market

Revolution

• In 1848, almost 300 reformers gathered for the Seneca Falls women’s rights convention.

• The participants passed resolutions calling for a wide range of rights for women, including the right to vote.

• Women’s rights was just one of many reform movements of the time that emerged to respond to societal issues raised by the dislocations of the market revolution.


Immigration and the City


The Growth of Cities• The market revolution

dramatically increased the size of the cities.

• “Instant” cities sprung up around critical points in the transportation network.


Patterns of Immigration • Immigration was a key part of urban growth.

• Beginning in 1830 immigration soared, particularly in the North.

• Immigrants largely from Ireland and Germany.


Irish Immigration

• First major immigrant wave to test American cities

• Reason for immigration: Potato Famine of 1845-49

• Lacking money to go inland to farm, most lived in cities under horrible conditions.

• Largest number of Irish came to New York, but Boston, being smaller in size and more homogenous, was overwhelmed by the influx.


German Immigration

• Initial migration started by invitation of William Penn in the late 18th century who was impressed by German industriousness

• 19th century began later than Irish, but by 1854 had surpassed them

• Reasons for migration: potato blight in mid 1840s and dislodging effects of market forces

• German settlement was relatively dispersed, settling in most regions except northeastern cities and the South


Wright’s Grove, shown here in an 1868 illustration, was the popular picnic grounds and beer garden for the large German community on Chicago’s North Side. Establishments such as this horrified American temperance advocates, who warned about the dangerous foreign notion of mixing alcohol with family fun. 9© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Chinese Immigration

• Many Chinese migrated to California in the early 19th century to reap benefits of Gold Rush.

• By the mid 1860s Chinese workers made up 90 percent of laborers building the Central Pacific Railroad.

• The Chinese tended to settle in ethnic enclaves in many of America’s cities.


Ethnic Neighborhoods

• Irish and German immigrants created ethnic enclaves to maintain cultural tradition and institutions.

• Ethnic clustering allowed immigrants to hold onto aspects of their culture but still transplant to American soil.


Part Four:

Urban Problems


New Living Patterns in the Cities

• The growth of immigration changed urban life by sharply contrasting social differences.

• The gap between rich and poor grew rapidly.• Economic class was reflected by residence as:

– poor people (nearly 70 percent of the city) lived in cheap rented housing

– middle-class residents (25-30 percent) lived in more comfortable homes

– very rich (about 3 percent) built mansions and large town houses


The Five Points neighborhood in lower Manhattan illustrates the segregated housing patterns that emerged as New York City experienced rapid growth. Immigrants, free African Americans, the poor, and criminals were crowded together in New York’s most notorious slum, while wealthier people moved to more prosperous neighborhoods. 14© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Ethnicity and Whiteness in Urban Popular Culture

• Immigrants greatly contributed to urban popular culture.

• Taverns and theaters were both part of the working class amusements.

• The working-class especially flourished at the Bowery.


This cartoon encounter between a newly arrived Irishman and an African American expresses the fear of many immigrants that they would be treated like blacks and denied the privileges of whiteness.


By 1855, half the voters in New York City were foreign-born. This 1858 engraving of an Irish bar in the Five Points area appeared in the influential Harper’s Weekly. It expressed the temperance reformers’ dislike of immigrants and their drinking habits and the dismay of political reformers that immigrant saloons and taverns were such effective organizing centers for urban political machines.


© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. 18

Seeing History Thomas “Daddy” Rice, Blackface Minstrel, Dances Jim Crow.

The Labor Movement and Urban Politics

• Worker associations became increasingly angry regarding their declining social and economic status.

• Workers’ associations became increasingly class-conscious turning to fellow laborers for support.

• Initially, urban worker protest against change focused on party politics, including the short-lived Workingmen’s Party.

• Both major parties tried to woo the votes of organized workers.

• Chart: Participation of Irish and German Immigrants in the New York City Workforce for Selected Occupations,1855


FIGURE 13.1 Participation of Irish and German Immigrants in the New York City Workforce for Selected Occupations,1855 SOURCE: Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City 1825 –1863 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,1994). 20© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

The Labor Movement and Urban Politics

• Workers organized trade unions and formed city-wide “General Trades Unions.”

• The local groups then organized the National Trades Union.

• The trade union movement was met with hostility and most collapsed during the Panic of 1837.

• Early unions included only skilled white workers.


Civic Order

• Americans grew concerned that the cities would become centers of disorder. Prosperous classes were frightened by the urban poor and by working-class rowdy-ism.

• Cities began to hire more city watchmen and to create police forces to keep order.

• Urban riots did break out, frequently against Catholics and African Americans.


Urban Life of Free African Americans • More than half of the nation’s free African Americans lived

in the North, mainly in cities, where they encountered:– residential segregation– job discrimination– segregated public schools– limits on their civil rights

• Free African Americans formed community support networks, newspapers, and churches.

• The economic prospects of African-American men deteriorated.

• Free African Americans engaged in antislavery activities, but were frequent targets of urban violence.


This appealing portrait of a musician, The Bone Player, evokes the prevalent stereotype of African Americans as innately musical, but it also clearly portrays a man who is proud of his talent. SOURCE: William Sidney Morris (American, 1807-1868), “The Bone Player ,” 1856. Oil on canvas, 91.76 x 73.98 cm (36 1/8 x 29 1/8 in.). Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Martha C. Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings. 48.46 Reproduced with permission. Photograph © 2006 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All Rights Reserved.


Part Five:

Social Reform Movements


Religion, Reform and Social Control

• Middle-class Americans responded to the dislocations of the market revolution by promoting various reform campaigns.

• Evangelical religion drove the reform spirit forward. • Reformers recognized that:

– traditional small-scale methods of reform no longer worked– the need was for larger-scale institutions

• The doctrine of perfectionism combined with a basic belief in the goodness of people and moralistic dogmatism characterized reform.

• Regional and national reform organizations emerged from local projects to deal with various social problems.

• Reformers mixed political and social activities and tended to seek to use the power of the state to promote their ends.


Education and Women Teachers

• Educational reformers changed the traditional ways of educating children by:– no longer viewing children as sinners whose wills had

to be broken– seeing children as innocents who needed gentle

nurturing. • The work of Horace Mann and others led to tax-

supported compulsory public schools. • Women were seen as more nurturing and were

encouraged to become teachers, creating the first real career opportunity for women.


Temperance

• Middle-class reformers sought to change Americans’ drinking of alcohol habits.

• Temperance was seen as a panacea for all social problems.

• Prompted by the Panic of 1837, the working class joined the temperance crusade.

• By the mid-1840s alcohol consumption had been cut in half.

• Chart: Per Capita Consumption of Alcohol, 1800-60


FIGURE 13.2 Per Capita Consumption of Alcohol,1800–60 The underlying cause of the dramatic fall in alcohol consumption during the 1830s was the changing nature of work brought about by the market revolution. Contributing factors were the shock of the Panic of 1837 and the untiring efforts of temperance reformers. SOURCE: W.J.Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press,1979).


This Currier and Ives lithograph, The Drunkard’s Progress, dramatically conveys the message that the first glass leads the drinker inevitably to alcoholism and finally to the grave, while his wife and child (shown under the arch) suffer.


Moral Reform, Asylums, and Prisons

• Reformers also attacked prostitution by organizing charity for poor women and through tougher criminal penalties but had little success.

• Another dramatic example of reform was the asylum movement spearheaded by Dorothea Dix.



Begun in 1822, the castle-like Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was intended as a model of rational prison reform. Replacing crowded mass imprisonment of the past, prisoners were held in isolation from other inmates in separate cells. But instead of the expected repentance and reform, isolation bred despair and attempts at suicide.SOURCE: The Library Company of Philadelphia.

Utopianism and Mormonism

• The region of New York most changed by the Erie Canal was a fertile ground for religious and reform movements, earning the name Burned-Over District.

• Map: Reform Movements in the Burned-Over District• Utopianism:

– Religious utopians like the Millerites and Shakers saw an apocalyptic end of history. The Shakers also practiced celibacy amid a fellowship of equality.

– Conversely, John Humphrey Noyes’s Oneida Community practiced “complex marriage.”

– New Harmony and the various Fourier-inspired communities unsuccessfully attempted a kind of socialism.


MAP 13.2 Reform Movements in the Burned-Over District The so-called Burned-Over District, the region of New York State most changed by the opening of the Erie Canal, was a seedbed of religious and reform movements. The Mormon Church originated there and utopian groups and sects like the Millerites and the Fourierists thrived. Charles G. Finney held some of this most successful evangelical revivals in the district. Antislavery feeling was common in the region, and the women’s rights movement began at Seneca Falls. SOURCE: Whitney Cross, The Burned-Over District (1950;reprint,New York: Hippocrene Books,1981). 34© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Utopianism and Mormonism

• Mormonism:– Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830– Close cooperation and hard work made the

Mormon community the most successful communitarian movement.

– They migrated to Utah in 1846 under the leadership of Brigham Young due to much harassment over their practice of polygamy.


Part Six:

Antislavery and Abolitionism


The American Colonization Society

• Various antislavery steps had been taken prior to the 1820s.

• But they had not addressed the continuing reality of southern slavery.

• The ineffective American Colonization Society resettled a small number of free African Americans in Africa where they founded Liberia.


African Americans’ Fight Against Slavery

• Free African Americans rejected colonization.

• They founded abolitionist societies that:– demanded equal treatment– demanded an end to slavery– encouraged slave rebellions.


The different dates of these two widely used antislavery images are important. The title page of Thomas Branagan’s 1807 book includes an already commonly used image at the time of a male slave. The engraving of a chained female slave was made by Patrick Reason, a black artist, in 1835. The accompanying message saying, “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?” spoke particularly to white female abolitionists in the North, who were just becoming active in antislavery movements in the 1830s. 39© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Abolitionists

• William Lloyd Garrison headed the best-known group of antislavery reformers.

• Garrison denounced all compromise (including political action and the Constitution) and called for immediate emancipation on moral grounds.

• The American Anti-Slavery Society drew on the style of religious revivalists as they tried to confront slaveholders and lead them to repentance.

• Abolitionists mailed over a million pieces of propaganda that led to a crackdown by southern states and a stifling of dissent.

• Several abolitionists were violently attacked and one was killed.


In 1837, white abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy had placed the press he used to print his antislavery newspaper in an Alton, Illinois, warehouse in order to protect the press against a mob. This contemporary woodcut depicts the mob’s attack on the warehouse. Lovejoy died defending it.


Abolitionism and Politics

• Abolition began as a social movement but soon became a national political issue. Abolitionists inundated Congress with petitions calling for abolition in the District of Columbia.

• Congress imposed a “gag rule” tabling all such petitions, but it was repealed in 1844.

• Abolitionist unity splintered along racial and political lines.

• White abolitionists (other than Garrisonians) founded the Liberty Party.


Part Seven:

The Women’s Rights Movement


The Grimke Sisters

• Sarah and Angelina Grimke left their South Carolina home and traveled north to denounce slavery, becoming the first female public speakers in American history.


Women’s gatherings, like the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls in 1848, and this meeting of strikers in Lynn in 1860, were indicators of widespread female activism.


Women’s Rights

• Two decades of activity culminated with the Seneca Falls women’s rights convention in 1848 and the beginnings of the women’s rights movement.

• Historians have only recently acknowledged the central role women played in the various reform movements of this era.


Part Eight:

Conclusion


chapter 13: immigration, urbanization, social reform, 1820s-1850s 1© 2009 pearson education, inc

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