The American Reform Tradition

The American Reform TraditionAntebellum Reform MovementsThe American Reform TraditionIn the early 1800s, great changes affected American society.Rapid industrialization and urbanization, the growth of immigration, westward expansion, and rise of the cotton kingdom led to the development of serious problems which confronted American society.Reform movements grew in response to these changes and challenges in an attempt to correct the problems and injustices of American society. The Second Great Awakening

The Second Great AwakeningThe Second Great Awakening was a wave of religious enthusiasm or a religious revival which spread across America during the early part of the nineteenth century.The Second Great Awakening sparked a reform movements to abolish slavery, promote womens rights, and to limit the consumption of alcohol.

The Second Great AwakeningSecond Great Awakening preachers emphasized humanitys goodness and capacity for self-improvement.Second Great Awakening preachers stressed that each individual was a moral free agent who could improve both himself and society.This close link between religion and society awakened Americans to a variety of social and moral issues.Intense religious revivals were especially widespread in central and western New York. This region became known as the burned-over district for the frequency of its hell and brimstone revivals.Charles Finney emerged as the most popular and influential preacher during the Second Great Awakening. Finneys emotional sermons stressed that individuals could achieve through salvation and good works, ideas that strongly appealed to the growing middle-class. His emotional appeals persuaded thousands to declare their revived faith.The Public Schools MovementEducation ReformReformers recognized that if people were to govern, they needed to be educated.Under the leadership of Horace Mann, the state of Massachusetts led the drive for nineteenth century education reform.As Secretary of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education, Mann campaigned tirelessly for more and better school houses, a longer school year, increased preparedness and salaries for teachers, and an expanded, enriched curriculum.

The Public Schools MovementImpactAs his ideas spread, Manns reforms greatly influenced education in other states across America.Manns reforms promoted greater literacy throughout the United States, as more and more children were taught to read and write in public schools.By 1860, many Americans had at least an elementary education in all regions of the United States except the South. Temperance

TemperanceIn the early 1800s America had over 14,000 distilleries producing 25 million gallons of alcoholic drink each year.The temperance movement was inspired by a real problem: in 1830, Americans over age 15 were drinking the equivalent of seven gallons of pure alcohol each year about four shots a day and three times current levels.

TemperanceIn 1826, Protestant ministers and others concerned about the high rate of alcohol consumption and its ill effects on American life founded the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance (also known as the American Temperance Society).By the 1840s, thousands of state and local temperance groups had sprung up throughout the United States.As one of the most popular reform movements of the antebellum period, the temperance movement achieved noteworthy success in the nineteenth century. For example, in 1851, Maine became the first of several states to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor.Although the issue of slavery came to overshadow temperance reform during the 1850s, the movement regained strength by the 1870s.TemperanceWomen were at the forefront of the movement against alcohol, partly because their households suffered under its burden. And their protests were both radical and religious. In 1873, Eliza Thompson of Hillsboro, Ohio, led a group of women to kneel in the snow before each saloon and pray. Soon 9 of Hillsboros 13 drinking places had closed their doors in shame. The tactic spread.

TemperanceThe stakes were raised by Carry A. Nation, described as six feet tall, with the biceps of a stevedore, the face of a prison warden and the persistence of a toothache.She became famous for striding into saloons with a hatchet and smashing everything in sight.Another activist, Frances Willard, president of the Womans Christian Temperance Union, joined opposition to alcohol with advocacy for prison and school reform and womens rights.

TemperanceThe movement would ultimately go on to achieve national success with the passage 18th Amendment in 1919.Yet that movement altered the Constitution in a radical fashion, extending its reach to matters once considered personal and restricting freedoms rather than expanding them.In effect from 1920 to 1933, Prohibition drastically altered the legal system of every state, and overturned ordinary citizens behaviors and expectations.While claiming high virtue and utopian prospects, it ironically inspired spectacular violations and grotesque criminal violence.

The Asylums MovementIn the early 1800s, most mentally ill people were kept locked up in prisons with common criminals.During the 1840s, a Massachusetts reformer named Dorothea Dix studied the poor treatment of the mentally ill and reported her findings to the Massachusetts state legislature. In response to her shocking report, the state of Massachusetts authorized the expenditure of state funding for the founding of mental hospitals.Dix went on to travel across the United States as an advocate for the mentally ill. Her tireless crusade resulted in the establishment special hospitals in 28 states.Abolition

AbolitionIn the 1820s, the abolitionist (or antislavery) movement developed in response to the rise of the cotton kingdom and the spread of slavery.The abolition movement attracted a wide variety of activists including African Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth.

AbolitionWhite abolitionists included William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Lyman Beecher, and Angelina and Sarah Grimke.

AbolitionThe Underground Railroad

AbolitionThe Underground RailroadAbolitionists organized the Underground Railroad, a series of safe houses to hide escaping slaves as they made their way northward to freedom.Harriet Tubman, herself a runaway slave, was the best known conductor on the Underground Railroad. Tubman made 19 harrowing trips to the South to led fugitive slaves on their escape.

Womens RightsBy the 1830s, reform-minded women recognized that they faced discrimination even with reform organizations. For example, women delegates attending the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention were not allowed, after much debate, to speak at the Convention.Spurred to act on behalf of women, women activists took up the cause of womens rights.Womens RightsThe womens rights movement began officially when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.At the meeting, the first womens rights convention in American history, delegates discussed the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.

Womens RightsDelegates issued the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments. The document, closely modeled after the Declaration of Independence, called for greater divorce and child custody rights, equal opportunities in education, the right to retain property after marriage, and the extension of suffrage (voting rights) to women.We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equalThe history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of absolute tyranny over her.

Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, 1848Womens RightsIn 1853, Susan B. Anthony joined Stanton in the drive for womens rights.By the 1850s, the nations focus increasingly turned to the issue of slavery.Although activists would again take up the cause of suffrage for women and womens rights in the years after the Civil War, women would not achieve national success until passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.