reform movements, technology, culture, and everyday life in america

Reform Movements, Technology, Culture, and

Everyday Life in America

War on Liquor

American Temperance Society, formed by Protestant ministers (Lyman Beecher) in 1826-Encouraged drinkers not just to moderate their drinking but to take a pledge of abstinence.

1820’s- average adult male drank half-pint of liquor a day Washingtonians, formed by recovering alcoholics, argued that alcoholism was a disease

that needed practical treatment-Also was made up of working class people after that Panic of 1837.

Teetotalism and Martha Washington Societies (no smooch if you drink the hooch!) By 1834 some 5,000 state and local temperance societies were loosely affiliated with

the American Temperance Society. By the 1840s the various temperance groups had more than a million members. German and Irish immigrants were largely opposed to the temperance movement. Factory owners supported temperance to increase production As more people joined the temperance movement, anti-alcohol crusaders shifted form

calling for individuals to abstain from alcohol but to demands that cities, towns and states ban all traffic of liquor.

Maine became the first of 13 states to prohibit the sale of alcohol before the Civil War in 1851.

Rate of consumption in 1840s was less than half of what it was in the 1820s.

Click icon to add picture

Public School Reform

District schools in small towns enjoyed popular and financial support from rural communities. But school reformers thought schools needed to equip children for the emerging competitive and industrial economy.

Horace MannSecretary of the newly formed MA Board of Ed, he promoted a sweeping transformation of public schools. Goals included: shifting the burden of financial support from the families to the state, classifying pupils by grade, extending the school term from 2 or 3 months to as many as 10 months, introducing standardized textbooks, and making attendance mandatory.

Schools would not only educate, but would provide moral education and teach them uniform cultural values (punctuality, competitiveness, industry, honesty, sobriety, patriotism).

McGuffey Reader: a series of elementary textbooks that extolled the virtues of hard work, punctuality, honest, patriotism, and sobriety.

Though Mann’s reforms had little effect in the South, much of the North remodeled their schools along the lines advocated by Mann.

Objecting to the Protestant tone of the public schools, Roman Catholic groups founded private schools.

Reform also lead to more women entering teaching, until by 1900 , 70 percent of all teachers were women.

Most black children who were fortunate to get any schooling, were schooled in segregated schools.

Lesson Learned in School

“Idleness is the nest in which mischief lays its eggs.”

Horace Mann


Abolition

Antislavery sentiment was high during the Revolutionary period but declined in the early 19th century.

American Colonization Society was formed in 1817, but it showed little moral outrage against slavery, but proposed gradual emancipation, with compensation to the slave owner, and the shipment of slaves back to Africa.

Didn’t have nearly enough money to liberate but a fraction of the slaves. Between 1820 and 1830 only 1,400 blacks migrated to Liberia, and most of these were already free. In contrast, the American slave population increased from 1,191,000 in 1810 to more than 2,000,000 in 1830.

How can I be sent back to a continent I never left?

Liberia


Abolition

1821, Quaker Benjamin Lundy began an abolitionist newspaper, Genius of Universal Emancipation.

In 1828 he hired William Lloyd Garrison, who, in 1831, began publishing his own paper, “The Liberator”.

Garrison called for immediate liberation. ¾ of the Liberator’s subscribers were black in the early

years. In 1833 Garrison and other abolitionists created the

American Antislavery Society (will be divided on whether or not to enter politics as a party and the role of women)

Frederick Douglas – “The North Star” Sojourner Truth

William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator


Frederick Douglass and The North Star


-Frederick Douglass

“I appear before the immense assembly this evening as a thief and a robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master, and ran off with them.”

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883): Ain't I A Woman?Delivered 1851Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about? That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full? Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them. Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.

Abolition

White abolitionists didn’t always call for social equality between the races. Most antislavery societies didn’t allow blacks.

Abolitionists often faced violence-angry mobs

Abolitionists drew from the language and tradition of revivals, denouncing slavery as a sin.

Abolition

American Anti-Slavery Party James Birney – Ran for president for the newly formed Liberty Party Garrison started the New England Nonresistance Society in 1838. Said slavery depended on

force and that all governments ultimately rested on force. Since force is the opposite of Christian love, he Argued that Christians should refuse to vote, hold office or have anything to do with government.

The role of women also divided the American Anti-Slavery Society In 1837 Angelina and Sarah Grimke, daughters of a SC slaveholder, started a lecture tour

throughout New England. Spoke in front of men and women. Clergy chastised them for lecturing to men.

Sarah published Letters on the Condition of Women and the Equality of the Sexes Angelina published Letters to Catharine Beecher Garrison supported women’s rights. The disruption in the American Anti-Slavery Society did nothing to slow down the abolitionist

movement. Abolitionists flooded Washington with petitions calling for the abolition of slavery in

Washington DC. This led to the gag rule in 1836, which tabled abolitionist petitions. JQA, then a representative from MA, fought against the gag rule and finally got it repealed in 1845.

Grimke Sisters


Angelina and Sarah Grimke


Women’s Rights

1830’sWomen could not voteIf married, had no right to property (even if it

was inherited)No right to retain their own earnings Temperance= take control of their homesAbolition=opportunity for public activity which

will inspire women’s rights movementWilliam Lloyd Garrison= ardent women’s rights

leader

Women’s Rights

Cult of DomesticityNew definitions of men’s and women’s roles soon

became an established norm in urban, middle class households. Men were expected to be responsible for economic and political affairs while women concentrated on the care of home and children. An idealized view of women as moral leaders in the home and educators of children.

Reform movements gave women the opportunity for public activity, though it often did not challenge the traditional notions of the woman’s sphere.

Women’s Rights

Early women’s rights advocates were the Grimke sisters, Philadelphia Quaker, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, and Abby Kelly

Lucy Stone was the first abolitionist to lecture completely on women’s rights.

In 1848, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention.

Declaration of Sentiments-modeled on Declaration of Independence- “all men and women are created equal”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelley


Penitentiaries and Asylums

Reformers thought prison could reform the criminals New jails were highly regimented Alms houses multiplied in these years to help the infirm

poor. Workhouses were built to help the able-bodied poor. Dorothea Dix appalled at the treatment of the mentally

ill and insane in jails and alms houses. With the support of Horace Mann and reformer Samuel Howe, she encouraged legislatures to build insane asylums. By the time of the Civil War, 28 states, 4 cities, and the federal government had constructed public mental institutions

Dorothea Dix


Utopian Communities

Utopian communities rose in the 1820s. Although created at first only for eccentrics, they exemplified in extreme form the idealism and hopefulness that permeated nearly all reform in the Age of Jackson.

Utopian Communities

In 1825 the British industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen founded the New Harmony community in Indiana.

Had gained a reputation from his management of cotton mills in Scotland and had managed to improve workers’ educational opportunities and living conditions.

Convinced that similar changes could transform the lives of working people everywhere.

If social arrangements could be perfected, all vice and misery would disappear.

Based on assumption that human character was formed by environment.

New Harmony was to have a perfect balance between work, religion and politics.

Community failed.

Utopian Communities

Experimental communities flourished amid the economic chaos of the 1830s and 40s. Brook Farm, near Boston, was formed by transcendentalists.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne were members.

Oneida community in upstate NY, was founded by John Humphrey Noyes.

Practiced communism. Men performed kitchen duties and women were allowed to work in stores and factories. Wives and husbands were shared in common.

19th Century Technological and Industrial Revolution

Eli Whitney’s Interchangeable Parts

Eli Whitney came up with a plan to manufacture muskets by using interchangeable parts made by unskilled workers, and was given a contract by the US government to produce 10,000 muskets by 1800.

The full potential of his idea wouldn’t be seen until machine tools came along in the 1830s.

These machine tools would lead to many industrial advances during these years.

Missed his deadline by 10 years. His system was used to make firearms, clocks and sewing machines.

By 1851 Europeans began to refer this as the American System. This system had two advantages: 1) if a part was broken it could be

replaced without having to replace the whole item. And 2) entrepreneurs could push inventions into mass production very quickly.

Eli Whitney’s musket


Industrial Revolution

Industrial Rev picked up in NE as the commercial economy was devastated by the embargoes before the War of 1812, and wealthy merchants began putting their money into manufacturing.

Men migrated west for work, leaving a surplus of women who supplied cheap industrial labor.

Cotton textiles became the biggest industry.

Samuel Slater had established the first textile mills in Rhode Island.

But the mills in NE differed because Slater’s mills only performed two of the operations needed to turn raw cotton into yarn.

He then contracted the weaving of the yarn to women working in homes.

The Waltham and Lowell mills turned out finished fabric than only required one additional step: sewing into clothes.

80 percent of the workers at Lowell and Waltham were young unmarried women

Lowell Mill Girls


Telegraph

Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph message from Baltimore to Washington in 1844.

By 1852 more than 15,000 miles of lines connected the country.

Railroads

First commercial railroad began operation in England in 1825. Were cheaper, faster, and able to reach more places than

steamboats. Between 1840 and 1860 the size of the rail network and the power

and convenience of trains underwent a dramatic transformation. Track increased from 3,000 miles to 30,000 miles.

Flat-roofed cars replaced open-air cars. Kerosene lamps made night travel possible. Increasingly powerful engines made traveling up steep hills possible. Telegraph wires reduced delays. (Time zones wouldn’t be introduced

until 1883.) But schedules were erratic, and individual railroads used different

gauge track, necessitating many changes of train. Railroads propelled cities like ATL, Chattanooga and Chicago, as well

as spurred the growth of small towns along the routes.

The introduction of machine tools, power driven machines that cut and shaped metal, fueled a flurry of industrial advances in 1840-1860.

John Deere Invented a steel-tipped plow in 1837 that halved the labor to clear acres to till. This led to increased settlement in the Great Plains and the rise of the wheat crop

in the Midwest. Cyrus McCormick Patented a mechanical reaper in 1834 and began mass producing them in 1847. Harvested grain 7 times more rapidly than traditional methods with half the labor

force, and therefore guaranteed the pre-eminence of wheat on the Midwestern prairies.

During the Civil War the reaper would help the North keep agricultural production high at a time when labor shortages would otherwise have slashed production.

Isaac Singer Patented the sewing machine in 1851. Factories

John Deere Steel Tip Plow, Cyrus McCormick Mechanical Reaper, Isaac Singer Sewing Machine


Social Implications

Standard of living increased for most Americans. 25% rise in real income between 1840 and 1860

thanks to lower prices for commodities due to technological improvements.

Steam power allowed factories to operate in all seasons and therefore offer more work to laborers.

This increased the annual income for working families.

The growth of cities led to employment opportunities for women and children.

Culture and Art in the mid 19th Century

American Renaissance in Literature

James Fenimore CooperNovels about frontiersmen and IndiansNatty BumppoLast of the Mohicans (1826)The Pathfinder (1840)The Deerslayer (1841)


Ralph Waldo EmersonLeading light of the transcendentalist

movement, an American offshoot of Romanticism

Called for literary nationalism that would depict the lives of ordinary Americans

Started to see that the young nation could produce art and literature on par with Europe


Henry David ThoreauAn EmersonianEmerson not adventurous in action, but

Thoreau was a doerCivil Disobedience (1849)-defended a

citizen’s right to disobey unjust lawsWalden (1854)-canoe trip which revealed

that material and moral progress were not at intimately related as American liked to think


Margaret FullerWoman in the Nineteenth CenturyBreaking with the prevailing notion of

separate spheres, Fuller contended that no woman could achieve the kind of personal fulfillment lauded by Emerson unless she developed her intellectual abilities and overcame her fear of being called masculine


Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass Nathanial Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Edgar Allen Poe set their

fiction outside of present-day America Saw individuals as bundles of conflicting forces that, despite the best

intentions, might never be reconciled Their pessimism led them to create characters obsessed by guilt,

pride, desire for revenge, or quest for perfectionNathaniel Hawthorne Scarlet Letter Herman Melville Moby DickEdgar Allen Poe Wrote both fiction and poetry Much set in Europe The Tell Tale Heart

American Renaissance in Art

Since America lacked the mythic past that European artists drew on, ancient Greece and Rome, etc…, Americans subordinated history and figure painting to landscape painting.

Hudson River School flourished from the 1820s to the 1870s.

Thomas Cole Asher Durand Frederick Church

Thomas Cole Paintings

Asher Durand Paintings

Frederick Church Paintings

Popular Entertainment

NewspapersTechnological advances increased the

supply of paper and the speed of printing presses.

Prices went down and circulation went up.

The number of weekly newspapers went from 65 in 1830 to 138 in 1840.


TheaterMinstrel ShowsStarted in Northern cities in 1840’s when white

men in blackface took the stage to present an evening of songs, dances, humorous sketches

Borrowed some elements of African American culture but most of songs were born of white culture

Reinforced stereotypes and prejudices (stupid, clumsy, obsessively musical)


PT BarnumStarted the American museum in 1841

(magicians, ventriloquists, albinos)Tom ThumbSpoke out against alcohol and gained a

reputation for good family entertainment

reform movements, technology, culture, and everyday life in america

Documents