Early Reform Movements

Second Great Awakening

•Second Great Awakening•Period of rapid and dramatic religious revival, 1800-1850

•Revivals •Intense, “Born again.”•Emphasized personal connection with God.•Reject “predestination,” preach salvation through personal growth.•Charles Finney

1800 1 in 15

Americans belonged to

a church.

1850 1 in 6

Americans belonged to

a church.

Transcendentalism• Sought spiritual

insight through glorifying nature.– Called

“Romanticism” in Europe

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Henry David Thoreau -”Walden”

• Declared that humans were naturally good, so reform was natural. -Walden Pond

Roots of Reform

Social Reforms & Redefining the Ideal of Equality

Temperance

Prison Reform

Education

Women’s Rights

Abolitionism

Spiritual Reform From Within

(Second Great Awakening / Transcendentalism)

Temperance

• Temperance Movement– Campaign to eliminate alcohol consumption.– Why?

• Early 1800s, Americans were consuming more liquor than any other time in their history.

• Alcohol consumption was seen as a threat to family life.– 1815-1840s

• “Temperance societies” emerged all over USA.– 1851

• Maine became first state to outlaw sale of liquor.

Education/Prison Reform

• Education– Movement begins in

1830s by eastern states, spreads to all states by 1850s.

• School districts

• Prison– Movement to put

mentally ill in separate asylums.

-A 19th Century Schoolhouse

Labor Reform

“I regard my workpeople just as I regard my machinery.” - Lowell Textile Manager.

• People began to be concerned with inequalities within the new factory system.– Long hours! 7am-

7:30pm– Low pay.

• Labor Union– Organization of workers

formed to protect the interests of its members.

• National Trades Union (1834)

• Commonwealth vs. Hunt (1842)– “Strikes are lawful and not

criminal conspiracies…”

Women’s Movement

• Inequalities…– “Cult of Domesticity”– Limited Rights

• Women can’t vote, own property.

• Seneca Falls, 1848– Meeting for Women’s

Rights Movement– Elizabeth Cady Stanton

writes “Declaration of Sentiments”

The Declaration of Sentiments…“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal;

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

“The 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 an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men--both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead…”

Abolitionism

What is abolitionism?

• The movement to end slavery in the USA.

Early AbolitionismAs early as colonial times, some in the USA

were calling for the abolition of slavery.

By 1807, all states north of Maryland (including NW territory) had abolished slavery.

Early Abolitionism

• The Genius of Universal Emancipation (1821) – Edmund Lundy– Called for:

• Stop spread of slavery to new states

• Stop slave trade within USA

• Colonization of Liberia– Established African colony in

Liberia for emancipated slaves.

Radical Abolitionism

• William Lloyd Garrison– Creates American Anti-Slavery

Society– Establishes The Liberator in 1831.

• Calls for immediate emancipation by government means.

– “Slavery is a great national sin.”• David Walker

– Appeals to the Colored Citizens of the World, 1829.

– “The man who would not fight… ought to be kept with all his children or family in slavery or in chains to be butchered by his cruel enemies.

Two Important Abolitionists

• Frederick Douglass– Former slave, escaped.

• 1841 – Told his story to American Anti-Slavery Society.

• 1846 – Publishes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave

• Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree)– Freed slave

• Began traveling all around USA to preach the gospel and how it relates to abolitionism.