United States United States HistoryHistory

Chapter 15Chapter 15The Spirit of ReformThe Spirit of Reform

1820-18601820-1860

American Literature and Art

• Early America used the art and literature that they brought with them from other countries.

• Soon, though America began developing her own themes and voice in literature and art.

• Famous American Writers:– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James

Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Edger Allen PoeFenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Edger Allen Poe

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1832)

In “Self-Reliance,” Emerson defined American transcendentalism by saying the individual should be completely reliant on God, and that every person has been put into their certain life and position by God … He said that God has put the power to handle things, think, and act into each individual and that the individual needs to trust what God has put inside them to do things with their lives.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, pacifist, philosopher who is most famous for his written account, Walden, a reflection upon simple living amongst nature, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civic government as moral opposition to an unjust law. This essay has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican-American War

Brook Farm, MassachusettsBrook Farm, Massachusetts

The transcendentalists sought harmony, the merging of values, ideas, and spiritual matters with physical events, the union of mind and body, spirit and flesh. At Brook Farm, and in other communities, physical labor is perceived as a condition of mental well-being and health. They believed that manual labor was uplifting, and thus, every member, even the writers and poets, spent at least a few hours a day in physical effort. Another expression of the connection of flesh and spirit is manifested through the abundance of physical tasks performed at Brook Farm. The members of Brook Farm believed that they could create a micro utopia of society that would eventually serve as a model of social macrocosm.

James Fenimore James Fenimore CooperCooper

- The Last of the - The Last of the Mohicans -Mohicans -

• The story is set in the British province of New York during the French and Indian War, and concerns a massacre of a colonial garrison and a fictional kidnapping of two sisters, who were the daughters of the commander. Hawkeye and his Mohican companions escort sisters, Cora and Alice, through the woods of New York to Fort William Henry. They engage in deadly fights along the way against Hurons.

Herman Melville’s Moby Herman Melville’s Moby DickDick Moby-Dick describes the ill-

fated voyage of the whaling ship Pequod to find and destroy the white whale, driven by the obsessive Captain Ahab. The language is highly symbolic and many themes run throughout the work. The narrator's reflections, along with complex descriptions of the grueling work of whaling and personalities of his shipmates, are woven into a profound meditation on providence, nature, society, and the human struggle.

Nathanial Nathanial HawthorneHawthorneThe The ScarletScarlet

LetterLetter (1850) (1850)

Hester Prynne’s husband was presumed to have been lost at sea. She begins a secret adulterous relationship with the town preacher and becomes pregnant. She is forced to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her clothing to identify her as an adulteress, but her loyalty refuses to reveal the identity of her lover. She accepts the punishment with grace and refuses to be defeated by the shame inflicted upon her by her society. Her virtue becomes increasingly evident to the reader, while the community vilify her, and are shown in varying states of moral decay.

Washington Washington IrvingIrving

Rip Van Rip Van WinkleWinkle

The story is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. Rip Van Winkle escapes his nagging wife by wandering up the Catskill Mountains near his home town in New York. He settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes up 20 years later and returns to his village. He finds out that his wife is dead and his close friends have died. He immediately gets into trouble when he hails himself a loyal subject of George III, not knowing that in the meantime the American Revolution has taken place.

Edger Allen Edger Allen PoePoe

Fall of the Fall of the House of House of

Usher (1838)Usher (1838)

The tale opens with the narrator having arrived at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher. Usher complained of an illness and asked for his comfort. Usher informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she is entombed in the house. After two weeks Usher admits that strange sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was put in the vault. Madeline escapes, appears, falling on her brother and they both die. The narrator quickly escapes from the house, and as he hurries away, he sees the house sink into the bog.

James Whistler (Painter)

“Whistler’s Mother”

Winslow Homer

(painter)

Homer’s Paintings

Winslow Homer’s “Breezing Up”

Notable American Scientists

• Science advanced during this time period

• Using the Scientific Method, men and women began to study creation and discover more deeply how things worked.

• Medicine, astronomy, physics, physical sciences and geology all took leaps forward.

• Maria Mitchell– Taught

herself astronomy and found a comet in 1847

• Joseph Henry– Invented an

electromagnetic motor that helped predict weather

Matthew MauryDeveloped a way to predict winds and ocean tides

• Dr. Crawford Long & Dr. William Morton– Developed a way to

use ether as an anesthetic (numbing solution)

Early Education in the U.S.

• In the 1830’s reformers began demanding better schools

• Common School Movement – Led by Horace Mann, wanted to raise the standards of schools across the country and pay for them through taxes.

• Most people didn’t pay any taxes in the 1830’s and they didn’t support paying a school tax

Horace Mann

McGuffey ReadersMcGuffey Readers

Minorities Education • Women only received a basic

education if any (they were taught morals & manners)

• African Americans were generally not allowed any education (some exceptions existed on the lower levels)

• Hearing & Visually Impaired were also not educated prior to the early 1800’s– 1817 the first school for the hearing

impaired opened, and in 1831 the first school for the blind opened.

Teaching sign language

Prison Reform

• In the early 1800’s many wanted to reform prisons.

• Focus turned from punishing to reforming prisoners.

• Most reform came through work and bible study.

Mentally Ill

• Dorothea Dix studied the New England prison systems for two years.

• She investigated hundreds of facilities.• Her greatest achievement was

convincing many states to open hospitals for the mentally ill, and stop treating them as criminals.

Dorothea Dix

New York Asylum 1850’s

Temperance Movement• In the early 1800’s many saw alcoholism

as a primary reason for higher crime rates, poverty, and abuse.

• The temperance movement was a campaign against drinking alcohol.

• The movement called for the prohibition, or banning, of alcohol all together.

• Southerners really pushed for prohibition• 1851 Maine banned the manufacture and

sale of alcohol, several other states followed.

“The Evils of the bottle”

Drunkard’s progress

The Early Temperance The Early Temperance MovementMovement

Second Great Awakening• This was a time period were people

wanted to renew religious faith and cure the evils of society.

• Religious groups and revival meetings increased, and thousands of new churches were created.

• Charles Finney was influential as a “circuit preacher” (or traveling preacher).

• This era saw the birth of “Dispensational Theology”.

The Second Great

Awakening

Charles Charles Finney the Finney the

Circuit Circuit PreacherPreacher

Second Great Awakening (con.)

• Many different denominations and sects began during this time as a split emerged from Christian orthodoxy.

• Examples of groups: Mormons, Shakers, Campbellites, Seventh-day Adventist, The Oneida Community.

• Communal groups or communal living became a popular idea from some groups in attempt to create a “utopia” here on Earth.

Joseph Smith (1830)Joseph Smith (1830)

Mother Ann Lee’s ShakersMother Ann Lee’s Shakers

Oneida Communal LivingOneida Communal Living

Robert Owens's New Harmony Indiana Wilderness Utopia

Antislavery Movement• By 1840 nearly 2.5 million slaves were in the

south. • South depended on slave labor.• Northern states abolished slavery by 1804 and

slaves tried to escape to the north.• Antislavery movement began with the Quakers

in 1775• By 1792 antislavery groups were popping up all

over the U.S.• American Colonization Society was established

in 1817.– Created a colony for free blacks in West Africa called

Liberia– Most free blacks didn’t want to leave the U.S. and felt

like this was an attempt to remove free blacks and their resistance to slavery from the U.S.

Monrovia, Liberia.

Abolitionists• Abolitionists were people who wanted to

end slavery• They demanded the immediate

emancipation, or freeing, of slaves.• Abolitionists created the American Anti-

Slavery Society in 1835.• There were many famous abolitionists:

– William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina & Sarah Gimke, Elijah Lovejoy, Horace Greeley, Wendell Phillips, & Sojourner Truth

– Most famous was Frederick Douglas• A former slave that escaped in 1838 and began

writing and preaching about the brutality of slavery.

The masthead of William Lloyd Garrison's anti-slavery newspaper was as uncompromising as the editor

himself. "I come to break the bonds of the oppressor," it proclaimed, with Jesus as the figurehead. 

Abolitionists liked to portray the free north as heaven and the slave owning south as hell, but the comparison

made tempers flare on both sides.

Frederick Douglas

Mob attacking an abolitionist

Underground Railroad• This was not a real railroad, but a series

of “safe houses” called stations, that were used to transport runaway slaves from the south to the north.

• Conductors were those that helped guide runaway slaves from station to station.

• The most famous conductor was Harriet Tubman– Former slave that returned to the south 19

times and led over 300 slaves out of the south.

– Slave owners offered a $40,000 reward for her dead or alive.

Henry “box” Brown

Harriet Tubman

Response to Anti-Slavery• North

– Many northerners disliked the movement– They did business with the south and feared that this

would hurt business– Northern factory workers feared that freed slaves

would come north and take their jobs– Abolitionist speakers were outcast, ridiculed,

attacked, and some killed

• South– Southerners defended slavery– Southern way of life was threatened– Southerners wanted abolitionist materials

suppressed by the government

• The Anti-Slavery Movement helped widen the gap between the North & the South

Women’s Rights Movement

• Women were a large part of the Anti-Slavery Movement.

• As they fought for abolition, many women began to question their own social status

• Women could not vote, hold public office, speak in public, & their husbands owned all property.

Movement Begins

• 1840 nine women from the U.S. attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London.– They were not allowed to enter the convention. – Two of those women decided to form a

convention back in America and make a stand for women’s rights

• Lucretia Coffin Mott & Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the Seneca Falls Convention eight years later.

Lucretia Coffin MottElizabeth Cady Stanton

Seneca Falls Convention

• July 19, 1848 the first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York

• They created the Seneca Falls Declaration which said “all men and women are created equal”– They attached many resolutions, one of which was

the right to vote (suffrage).• This was a bold move that narrowly passed at the

convention

• Women didn’t win all things that they wanted, but some states began to slowly give women more rights, such as property ownership

We hold these We hold these truths to be self-truths to be self-

evident: that all men evident: that all men and women are and women are created equal...created equal...””

——Elizabeth Cady Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Stanton, Declaration of

SentimentsSentiments Seneca Falls Seneca Falls Convention, Convention,

NY - 1848NY - 1848

Seneca Falls Convention

Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony

• Lucy Stone was a large part of the Women’s Rights movement.– She paid her own way through college

(some help from her father)– Stone became a public speaker for the

women’s rights movement in 1847.• Susan B. Anthony brought experience

and organization skills to the movement• She had participated in the Temperance

and Anti-Slavery movements• Became president of the American

Woman Suffrage Association

Lucy Stone

Susan B. Anthony