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The Age of
Reform
Changing American Life in the 19th Century
2nd Great Awakening
Revival – Frontier camp meeting to reawaken religious faith
People came to hear preachers
People came to pray, sing, weep, & shout
Men & women became eager to reform their lives & the world…led to new reform movements
Temperance MovementMany were spending most
of their wages on alcohol
Reformers blamed alcohol for society’s problems Poverty, breakup of families,
crime, & insanity
Called for temperance Drinking little or no alcohol
Temperance crusaders used many methods Lectures, pamphlets, & revival-
style rallies
Many states passed temperance laws banning manufacturing & sale of alcoholic beverages
Industries & LaborFactory work was noisy, boring, & unsafe
Workers organized for better conditions
Example: Lowell girls went on strike in 1836 demanding lowered rent and better conditions
Other workers called for shorter hours and higher wages
In 1835 & 1836, 140 strikes took place in the eastern U.S.
Seal for the Knights of Labor, first organized union in America
Reforming Education"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1805
Only New England provided free elementary school
Others had to pay or send to schools for the poor – some refused out of pride
Some communities had no schools at all
Illegal in the south to teach slaves to read
Southerners feared a rebellion by educated slaves
Area where Pilgrims & Puritans settled (placed a premium on education)
Leader of education reform Horace Mann Massachusetts Board of Education
He offered many ideas to promote higher learning and increase opportunities Lengthened school year to 6 months Improved the curriculum Doubled teacher’s salaries Developed better teacher training methods
Three basic principles of public education (by the 1850’s) Should be free & supported by taxes Teachers should be trained Children should be required to attend school
Leading the Education Movement
The English School of Boston, first public high school in America
Caring for the Needy and HelplessDorothea Dix –
Discovered mentally ill often received no treatment
Often times they were chained or beaten
Treated like criminals
She traveled around the country on behalf of the mentally ill Reforming mental hospitals
Others tried to help people with other disabilities Deaf/Blind
Others tried to improve prisons
Caring for the Needy and Helpless
Ending Slavery in AmericaAbolitionist
Reformers worked to abolish, or end, slavery
American Colonization Society 1st large-scale antislavery
effort Resettling black Americans
in Africa by raising money and settle a colony in Africa called Liberia
They did not want to go back to Africa Slaves wanted to be free
in American society
Abolitionists in America
William Lloyd Garrison White abolitionist who called
for the “immediate & complete emancipation”
The LiberatorCountry’s leading
antislavery newspaper
Frederick Douglass Most widely known black
abolitionist/former slave Edited an antislavery
newspaper called the North Star
Counseled Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War
Sojourner Truth Used personal narratives and
worked for abolitionism & women’s rights/former slave
Southerners fought abolition continuously
Underground Railroad Network of escape routes from the South to the North Traveled through the night on foot
Harriet Tubman Most famous conductor of the Railroad
Abolitionists in America
Women’s Rights Movement
Many wanted to improve the lives of women
Lucretia MottQuaker women who
lectured in Philadelphia
Spoke for temperance, peace, worker’s rights, & abolition
Elizabeth Cady StantonWorked with Lucretia
Mott
Susan B. Anthony Daughter of a Quaker
abolitionist Called for equal pay &
coeducation Special contribution – give
married women rights to their own property and wages
Seneca Falls Convention Declaration of Sentiments Mott, Stanton, & others
called for women’s equal rights
All rights were unanimous except women’s suffrage
