Reform Movements in 19th Century America

Religious Sources of Reform •  Second Great Awakening – religious

revivals among Protestants. – Arminian, rather than Calvinist. Salvation was

a matter of choice

•  Focus on Second Coming of Christ. Need for reform of society

•  Biggest impact among women. Evangelical mission gave women more status, purpose.

•  Frontier revivals featured emotional appeals and provided social meetings for settlers.

New religious groups formed as instruments of reform

•  Utopian societies created in reaction to urban growth and industrialization. Emphasis on community and withdrawal from society.

•  Shakers-Socially radical. Abolished families, practiced celibacy, full of sexual equality.

•  Mormons – Organized by Joseph Smith in 1830 – Cooperative Theocracy with himself as the

Prophet

– Smith and his followers moved from New York to Ohio to Missouri, to Illinois.

– Smith was murdered by angry mob – Brigham Young took over, led Mormons to

Utah

Non Religious Utopian Societies •  New Harmony, Illinois 1825

– Socialist center founded by Robert Owen to be self-sufficient

– Failed after several years

•  Brook Farm Experiment – Transcendentalist in orientation – Rejected society’s standards and

Enlightenment thought – Emphasized individualism and the mysteries

of nature – Famous members: Emerson, Thoreau,

Hawthorne, Melville

Other areas of Early Social Reform

•  Temperance – Mov’t changed from Moderation to Abstinence

to Prohibition – Led by women but supported by factory

owners who had massive absenteeism

•  Education – Compulsory education in every state by 1860 – Horace Mann, secularized the curriculum and

made it more practical

•  Women’s Rights – Women were considered so inferior to men

that they were not allowed to obtain higher ed., vote or control their own property

– Grimke sisters (1838) began with abolition, then turned to attacking the subordinate position of women

•  Seneca Falls Statement (1848) – Statement of women’s mistreatment by men

•  Improvements made possible by: – Democratic spirit of Jackson era, which in turn

caused people to call for women’s suffrage –  Industrial Revolution demonstrated to women

that they could enter occupations – Reform movements, where they could

crusade equally with men

Abolition •  American Colonization Society formed

(1816) – Pushed to gradually emancipate Af. Am and

settle them in Africa

•  Abolitionism rose in the 1830s with an emphasis on racial equality. Intent on freeing, then educating Af. Am. – William Lloyd Garrison – The Liberator

demanded immediate emancipation

-Theodore Weld worked for gradual emancipation through religious conversion. Used Oberlin College as training ground for abolitionist.

•  Organized abolitionists smuggled 2,000 slaves a year out of the South to Canada (Underground Railroad)

Humane Treatment of Individuals •  Dorothea Dix investigated and reported

treatment of insane and led to creation of humane institutions.

•  Legal Code Reforms – Reduction in crimes punishable by death – Abolishing of public hangings in many states – Abandoning flogging and other cruel

punishments

•  Prison Reform – rehabilitation of criminals – To counter the tendency of prisons to create

more hardened criminals – Work see as a way to reform criminals