REFORM MOVEMENTS OF THE 1800S

Which reforms of the era had the most lasting effect on the civil

rights and liberties of Americans?

• The first half of the nineteenth century was a time of “movers and shakers,” people who saw injustices in American society and worked to abolish those injustices.

• These reforms would change the lives of many individuals.

What were the major reform movements of the 1800s?

• Treatment of the mentally ill

• Temperance movement

• Abolition of slavery

• Women’s rights

• Education

Vocabulary to Know

• NINETEENTH CENTURY– 1800s

• ABOLISH– eliminate; get rid of

• INJUSTICE– unfairness; inequality

• REFORMER– someone who changes something by

correcting faults and removing abuses

TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL

Leader: Dorothea Dix

GOAL: better treatment of persons with

mental illnesses

REASON: the mentally ill were badly

treated

TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL

• In the early 1800s, Americans viewed the United States as a land of unlimited opportunity. Many believed that those who failed did so because they had bad characters.

• As a result, debtors, children who were offenders, and the mentally ill were often locked up in jails with murderers and thieves.

• Dorothea Dix and other reformers worked to change Americans’ ways of thinking about these institutions and their inmates.

TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL

• Dorothea Dix first observed prison conditions while teaching Sunday school at a Boston prison for women in 1841.

• She wanted to find out if all the prisons in the state were as appalling.

• Over a two-year period, Dix investigated more than 800 prisons, jails, and poorhouses.

TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL

• She found the prisoners were often living in inhumane conditions.

TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL

• Prisoners were often chained to the walls with little or no clothing, often in unheated cells.

TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL

• To Dorothea Dix’s horror, she learned that some of the inmates were guilty of no crime—they were mentally ill persons.

• Dix made it her life’s work to educate the public as to the poor conditions for both the mentally ill and prisoners.

Dorothea Dix Hospital, Raleigh, NC

TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL

• Dix decided to appeal to the Massachusetts government for help.

• In 1843 she addressed the following report to the state legislature:

“I proceed, gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of Insane Persons confined…, in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained,

naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience…”

TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL

• As a result of Dix’s report, Massachusetts passed a law to build mental hospitals where mental illness could be treated as a disease rather than a crime.

• By 1852, she had persuaded 11 states to open hospitals for persons with mental illness.

Vocabulary to Know

• MENTALLY ILL– psychologically ill

• CRIMINAL– lawbreaker; offender; delinquent

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• Leader: American Temperance Union and religious leaders

GOAL: to eliminate alcohol abuse

REASON: alcohol led to crime, poverty, abuse of family

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• Religious leaders stood at the forefront of the war against alcohol.

• Public drunkenness was common in the early 1800s.

• Alcohol abuse was widespread, especially in the West and among urban workers.

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• Reformers blamed alcohol for:– poverty– breakup of families– crime– insanity

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• Another effect of the easy-to-get alcohol was the abuse of wives and children.

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• Alcohol abuse was widespread during this time.

• Employers often paid part of workers’ wages in rum or whiskey.

• Workers took rum breaks similar to today’s coffee breaks!!

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• The reformers began a campaign against drinking.

• The campaign was

known as the

temperance movement.

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• The American Temperance Society was formed in 1826.

• Within a few years, about 1000 local organizations sprang up across the nation.

• Some groups took a moderate approach and asked people to drink less alcohol.

• Other groups insisted that the sale of alcohol be banned altogether!

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• Northern and Southern temperance societies used propaganda to win support for their cause.

• They held meetings, gave speeches, and distributed pamphlets.

• They even sang songs such as “Drink Nothing, Boys, but Water,” and “Father, Bring Home Your Money Tonight.”

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• State legislators took the reformers’ message to heart. By 1857 several states had passed prohibition laws. Many Americans protested the laws, and most of the laws were later repealed.

• The temperance movement stayed alive, though, and found renewed support later in the century…….

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• with individuals like Carrie Nation.

Vocabulary Terms to Know

• TEMPERANCE– restraint when using alcohol; abstinence from

alcohol

• POVERTY– state or condition of being poor

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY• Leaders: Quakers, Frederick Douglass,

Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, anti-slavery groups

GOAL: end slavery

REASON: it is immoral for one person to own another

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

• By 1840, nearly 2.5 million enslaved people lived in the South.

• At one time, the North also had slavery. By 1804 every Northern state legislature had passed laws to eliminate it.

• The Southern economy, though, depended on slave labor.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

• An organized antislavery movement did not begin until after the Revolutionary War.

• A religious group, the Quakers, started the abolition movement. Quakers had opposed slavery since colonial times. In 1775 the Quakers organized the first antislavery society.

ABOLISH

SLAVERY!

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

• The American Colonization Society, founded in 1817, wanted to help free African Americans.

• The society set up a colony for free African Americans in Liberia, in western Africa.

• It was not successful because many African Americans wished to remain in the United States, their home.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

• In 1831 white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison founded The Liberator, a Boston anti-slavery newspaper.

• In the first issue, Garrison demanded the immediate emancipation, or freeing, of all enslaved persons.

• He urged abolitionists to take action without delay.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

• The North had many prominent African American abolitionists.

• Isabella Baumfree, although born into slavery in New York, gained her freedom when New York abolished slavery. She changed her name to Sojourner Truth and vowed to tell the world about the cruelty of slavery. She began a tireless crusade against injustice.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY• The most important

spokesperson for the cause was Frederick Douglass.

• Born into slavery, Douglass secretly taught himself to read, although Southern laws prohibited it.

• He escaped from slavery in 1838 and settled in Massachusetts.

• He captivated audiences by talking about his life in bondage.

• He spoke out against the injustices faced by free African Americans.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

• In addition to his public speaking, Douglass edited a widely read abolitionist journal called the North Star.

• Douglass’s speaking and writing abilities so impressed audiences that opponents refused to believe he had been a slave!

• In response, he wrote three very moving autobiographies.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

• Many abolitionists, like Douglass, did more than lecture and write. They became “conductors” on the Underground Railroad.

• The Underground Railroad began around 1817. It was not an actual railroad but a series of houses where conductors hid runaway enslaved persons and helped them reach the next “station.”

• Enslaved African Americans made their way to the North or Canada on the railroad.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

• Harriet Tubman became the most famous African American conductor on the Underground Railroad.

• Tubman fled from slavery in 1849. Later she explained why she risked her life to escape:

“There was one of two

things I had a right to, liberty

or death; if I could not have

the one, I would have the

other.”

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

• Tubman helped others escape. She returned to the South 19 times and led more than 300 enslaved people—including her own parents—to freedom.

• Slaveholders offered a reward of $40,000 for her, dead or alive.

• But she managed to avoid discovery time after time.

Vocabulary to Know

• ABOLITIONIST– a person who works to abolish, or get rid of,

slavery

• ENSLAVED PERSON– someone who is kept in bondage; a person

with no freedom

• EMANCIPATION– liberation; a setting free

Women’s RightsLeaders: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia

Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth

GOAL: obtain equal rights for women, including suffrage, right to own property, and education

REASON: women did not have the same rights as men

Women’s Rights

• Their involvement in the antislavery movement and other reform movements gave women roles outside their homes and families.

• They learned valuable skills, such as organizing, working together, and speaking public. (Note: it was considered “unfeminine” to speak in public!)

Women’s Rights

• After attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 and not being allowed to participate in the discussions, Lucretia Coffin Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton spent hours talking about women’s position in society.

• They realized that they could not bring about social change if they themselves lacked social and political rights.

Women’s Rights

• On July 19, 1848, the first women’s rights convention opened in Seneca Falls, New York.

• Both male and female delegates attended the convention.

Women’s Rights

• The delegates issued the Seneca Falls Declaration that “all men and women are created equal.”

• Then the declaration listed several resolutions. One of them demanded suffrage, or the right to vote, for women. After much heated debate, it passed by a narrow margin.

Women’s Rights

• The Seneca Falls Convention marked the beginning of an organized women’s rights movement.

• Following the convention, women did not achieve all of their demands. They did, however overcome some obstacles.– Many states passed laws permitting women to own

their own property and keep their own earnings.

• Many men and women, though, continued to oppose the movement. Most politicians ignored or acted hostile to the issue of women’s rights.

Women’s Rights

• “We have good cause to be grateful to the slave. In striving to strike his irons off, we found…that we were manacled ourselves.”

• Abby Kelley, women’s activist

Women’s Rights

• Susan B. Anthony, a powerful organizer, joined the women’s rights movement. Her father encouraged her to get an education and so she became a teacher.

• A dedicated reformer, Anthony joined the temperance movement and worked for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

• She became one of the first to urge full participation of African Americans in the women’s suffrage movement.

• Through her efforts, the state of New York agreed to grant married women the guardianship of their children and control of their own wages.

• Today Anthony is one of the early movement’s best-remembered leaders.

Vocabulary to Know

• SUFFRAGE– right to vote; franchise

Education Reform

Leaders: Horace Mann

GOALS: to educate all Americans

REASON: more Americans were qualified to vote and needed to be able to make wise decisions about their government

“Education does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich; it prevents them from being poor.”

Education Reform

• American schools varied from section to section across the country.

• As early as 1647, Massachusetts passed a law requiring towns to provide schools for their children. The rest of New England adopted similar laws. The towns, not the states, paid for the schools.

Education Reform

• The Middle Atlantic states also took responsibility for education. Private societies in New York and Pennsylvania raised money to fund schools.

• The federal government required education for people in the Northwest Territory. In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Congress set aside a section of land in each township for the support of schools.

• Public schools in the North and West seldom had enough money to furnish good educations, though.

Education Reform

• Southern schools had even less support. In the South, families had to work so hard to make a living that little time or money was left for schooling.

• Well-to-do people in all sections of the country managed to give their children good educations. Many paid for privately operated schools.

Education Reform

• During the 1830s more Americans qualified to vote than ever before. Educational reformers argued that voters needed good educations to make sound decisions about their government.

• The reformers proposed raising the standards of schools across the nation and supporting them with taxes.

• To accomplish these goals, they started the common school movement.

Education Reform

• Not everyone favored common schools, also referred to as free, or tax-supported, public schools.

• In the 1830s few people paid state or federal taxes. As a result, many strongly objected to paying taxes for public schools.

Education Reform

• Horace Mann spearheaded the campaign for common schools.

• Mann was especially concerned about poor children. Their families could not afford to send them to private schools or to contribute to the support of schools in their district.

• Mann won over taxpayers to his way of thinking by pointing out the benefits to society.

Education Reform

• During the 1840s and 1850s, the flood of immigrants into the United States helped free public schools gain general acceptance. Many Americans realized that schools were the ideal agents to teach American values to the new arrivals.

Education Reform

• Even with reforms, for many Americans getting into any kind of school remained a struggle.

• Most areas of the country neglected the education of women, African Americans, and the physically challenged. Bold and far-sighted reformers, however, took up their cause.

Education Reform

• Girls generally received only a basic education. Even private schools taught girls morals and manners rather than science and mathematics. Eventually, women’s colleges were founded—such as Troy Female Seminary in NY, Mount Holyoke in MA, and Oberlin College in OH.

• Few places offered any kind of education to African Americans in the early 1800s. Almost all colleges barred African Americans from attending. Two exceptions were Amherst College and Bowdoin College in the northeast. Little progress was made in higher education for African Americans until years after the Civil War.

Vocabulary to Know

• COMMON SCHOOLS– free, tax-supported, public schools

What were the major reform movements of the 1800s?

• Treatment of the mentally ill

• Temperance movement

• Abolition of slavery

• Women’s rights

• Education

REFORM MOVEMENTS OF THE 1800s

Which reforms of the era had the most lasting effect on the civil rights and

liberties of Americans?