Antebellum Reform Notes for US History Course

Antebellum Reform Notes for US History Course

1. Antebellum Reform
Aim: What impact have
Reform Movements had
on American society?

2. Second Great Awakening
From 1801 for years a blessed revival of
religion spread through almost the entire
inhabited parts of the West....The
Presbyterians and Methodists in a great
measure united in this work, met together,
prayed together, and preached together....
- Peter Cartwright

3. Second Great Awakening

4. Second Great Awakening
Goals:
–Religious revival
–Preached self-improvement and that all people could
achieve perfection (Perfectionism).
Leaders:
–Charles Grandison Finney; Joseph Smith (Mormons);
Brigham Young (Mormons); William Miller (Millerites)
Impact:
–Undermined traditional Calvinist doctrines; new
religions; influenced social reform

5. Transcendentalism
Goals:
–Intellectual and spiritual movement
–Taught people to transcend & overcome the limits of
their minds and society, to search inward & undergo
spiritual discovery
–Encouraged self-reliance and relationship with nature
Leaders: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo
Emerson
Impact: First philosophical movement in
America; influenced anti-slavery movement; led
to Pragmatism.

6. Temperance
Alcoholism is the sin of our land, and, with out
boundless prosperity, is coming in upon us like
a flood; and if anything shall defeat the hopes
of the world, which hang upon our experiment
of civil liberty, it is that river of fire, which is
rolling through the land, destroying the vital air,
and extending around an atmosphere of death.
- Lyman Beecher, 1826

7. Temperance

8. Temperance
Goals
–Believed alcohol caused most of society’s problems—
debt, abuse, etc.
–Pushed for laws to prohibit manufacture and sale of
liquor
Leaders: Rev. Lyman Beecher; Neal Dow
Impact:
–formed American Temperance Society and Women’s
Christian Temperance Union; Alcohol consumption
sharply declined; Maine Law, 1851; 18
th
Amend.

9. Public Education
I believe in the existence of a great, immortal, immutable
principle of natural law...which proves the absolute right to
an education of every human being that comes into the
world; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of
every government to see that the means of that education
are provided for all....
Massachusetts is parental in her government. More and
more, as year after year rolls by, she seeks to substitute
prevention for remedy, and rewards for penalties. She strives
to make industry the antidote to poverty, and to counterwork
the progress of vice and crime by the diffusion of knowledge
and the culture of virtuous principles.
- Horace Mann, 1846

10. Public Education
Goals
–Public education for all citizens would result in an educated
citizenry
–Higher education for women
Leaders: Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, Noah Webster,
Emma Willard, Mary Lyon.
Impact:
–Free, tax-supported education in most Northern states
–Standard textbooks (McGuffy Readers), longer school years,
teacher training, etc.
–Colleges for women

11. Prison and Asylum Reform
I proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the
present state of insane persons confined within this
Commonwealth, in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens!
Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into
obedience....
I have seen many who, part of the year, are chained or
caged. The use of cages all but universal....I encountered
during the last three months many poor creatures
wandering reckless and unprotected through the country.
- Dorothea Dix, 1843

12. Prison and Asylum Reform

13. Prison and Asylum Reform
Goals:
–Mentally ill and criminals were crowded into prisons
with horrific conditions
–Wanted to rehabilitate prisoners (w/ rigid discipline,
solitary confinement), not just punish them.
Leader: Dorothea Dix
Impact: Conditions in prisons improve (Auburn
System); Mental institutions were created.

14. Utopian Communities
Goals: Encouraged educated, hardworking
people to share property and live in harmony.
Practiced moral perfection and gender
equality.
Leaders: Robert Owen, John Humphrey
Noyes
Impact: Commune movement. Examples:
New Harmony, Oneida.

15. Women’s Rights
Goals: Suffrage; legal and economic rights (property,
jobs); access to education; overcome “Cult of
Domesticity”
Leaders: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott,
Catherine Beecher, Susan B. Anthony, Grimke sisters
Impact:
–After experiencing sexism within abolitionist movement,
women organized Seneca Falls Convention (1848)
–Drafted “Declaration of Sentiments”
–Beginning of an organized women’s rights movement
–Women began entering colleges and professions