Reform and Reformers

A Demand for Rights and Equality

ReligionDuring the Second Great Awakening, religious leaders like Charles Finney led a war against alcohol. Alcohol abuse had become common in the early 1800s, especially in the West and among labor workers. People blamed alcohol for poverty, crime, and the breakup of families. The temperance movement warned people of the effects of liquor. In 1851, Maine passed a law banning the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Other states passed similar laws but they were soon repealed.

EducationIn the early 1800s, only New England provided free elementary education. Reformers began to push for a system of public education (government funded schools). The leader of this push was Horace Mann, a lawyer who made improvements in the school curriculum, doubled teachers’ salaries, and developed better ways of training teachers.

At first, most females received limited education because parents kept their daughters at home, arguing that a woman’s role was to become a wife and mother.

Eventually, a few higher learning schools (colleges) were built specifically for women and African Americans.

Transcendentalists

The American spirit of reform influenced transcendentalists-people who stressed the relationship between humans and nature and the importance of the individual conscience. Leading transcendentalists included Sarah Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.

Fuller supported women’s rights through her writing while Emerson urged people to listen to their inner voice and break the bonds of prejudice.

Thoreau put his beliefs into practice by refusing to obey laws he thought were unjust, Civil Disobedience.

A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Adopt the pace of Adopt the pace of nature: her secret nature: her secret

is patience.is patience.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

What you get for achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

In the 1800s

It is, however, certain that in whatever situation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to her grave, a spirit of obedience and submission, pliability of temper, and humility of mind, and required from her. -The Young Lady’s Book, 1803

She feels herself weak and timid. She needs a protector. -Sphere and Duties of Women, 1854

A really sensible woman feels her dependence. She does what she can, but she is conscious of inferiority, and therefore, grateful for support. -Woman in Her Social and Domestic Character, 1864

Woman, Man’s Best Friend

Woman, A Being to Come Home To -Essay titles in women’s magazines, 1800s

[Marriage is] that sphere for which woman was originally intended, and to which she is so exactly fitted to adorn and bless, as the wife, the mistress of a home, the solace, the aid, and the counsellor of that one [her husband] for whose sake alone the world is of any consequence. -Letters to Young Ladies, 1800s

suffrage

It is unwise, unfair, and unjust to force upon a majority of women, a measure which is obnoxious to all their ideals of womanhood. -Ohio Association Opposed to Woman’s Suffrage

I do not believe in woman suffrage. I think it best for all women to leave to man politics, and, as far as possible, the affairs of government. It is my belief that women will soon tire of the ballot in states in which they have secured it. A fad, I do not believe it will last.

Women’s rights

Lucretia Mott was a Quaker woman who gave lectures in Philadelphia calling for temperance, peace, workers’ rights, and abolition. At the world antislavery convention in London, Mott met Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Together, these women organized the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. About 200 women and 40 men came together and issued a Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions that declared “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.”

Women’s rightsThe resolutions called for an end to laws that discriminated against women and demanded that women be allowed to enter the all-male world of trades, professions, and businesses. Stanton also wanted to include a call for women’s suffrage (the right to vote) but most attendees thought it was too radial of an idea. After much debate, the Declaration did include a demand for suffrage.

Throughout the 1800s, many men and women joined the women’s movement. Susan B. Anthony called for equal pay for women, college training for girls, and coeducation-the teaching of boys and girls together.

Women’s rightsTogether, Stanton and Anthony led the women’s movement and made progress; some states began to grant women the right to vote on state issues but it was not until 1920 that women could vote everywhere in the U.S.

The Industrial Revolution changed the way people lived by separating work from the home. Men left for work while women typically stayed and tended to the house and children, a job that religion taught was women’s responsibility because of their kinder and more moral spirits. However, women who did work received lower pay than men who did the same job.

Women’s rights

Women in the 1800s made gains in the area of marriage and property laws. Some states recognized the right of women to own property after their marriage and some states passed laws permitting women to share guardianship of their children jointly with their husbands. Indiana was the first of several states that allowed women to divorce their husbands if they were chronic abusers of alcohol.

Despite their accomplishments, women in the 1800s remained limited by social customs and expectations.