Reform in American Culture 1820 1860 To change

Reform in American Culture 1820 - 1860 To change or not to change, that is the question Essay 4, 9 2, 3, 4, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 32, 34, 58, 62, 67, 69

Education • William H. Mc. Guffey – Mc. Guffey Readers-Grade school books morality, patriotism and idealism • Noah Webster – American Dictionary of the English Language standardized American English • Emma Willard – the first American woman publicly to support higher education for women

Education Cont’ • Horace Mann – The father of American public school education – to increase the availability and quality of free, nondenominational public schools – morality and discipline – tax supported public schools

Immigration • British Isles (Ireland) – failure of the potato crop • Northern Europe (Germany) • Ship technology improvements • The South attracted the least number

Immigration Cont’ • Poorer immigrants lived in the cities while those with some money farmed in the West • Nativism (Anti Immigration) – The formation of the Know Nothing party – Anti-Catholicism

Second Great Awakening 1820’s • Characteristics – Reaction against the growing liberalism of religion – Revival meetings and traveling circuit riders. Charles Grandison Finney & Peter Cartwright – Led to greater church membership Presbyterian & Methodist – Led to reform movements: Abolition, Temperance

Second Great Awakening Cont’ • Burned over district 1830’s –Site of numerous upstate New York revival meetings

Women • Cult of Domesticity – Moral leader and educator of the family – Traditional role of woman-Republican Motherhood – Industrialization emphasized differences between men and women

Women • Cult of True Womanhood – Break away from homemaker role and seek greater rights for women • Voting • Participation in reform movements: temperance and abolition – Led by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Women Cont’ • Seneca Falls Convention -1848 – “women’s rights convention – Declaration of Sentiments: “All men and women are created equal” – This movement was overshadowed by political events, but was the beginning of the women’s movement

Utopian Societies • Wanted to perfect society – New Harmony: Robert Owen 1825 – Brook Farm 1841: Transcendentalist society – Shakers: 1770’s- Religious community led by Mother Ann Lee

Utopian Societies • The Oneida Community 1811 – believed it liberated women from • the demands of male "lust" • traditional bonds of family • eugenics – eventually became a dominant manufacturer of silver

• • Temperance (no booze) German and Irish immigrants often opposed Advocated the legal prohibition of alcohol Protestant clergymen leaders Most popular Jacksonian era reform movements

Penal Institutions • Dorthea Dix –Discovery of the confinement of the mentally ill in local jails –Prisons and asylums reform

Abolitionist Movement • Slavery to the forefront of the reform movement – overshadow the others after 1830

Abolitionist Movement Cont’ • William Lloyd Garrison and the American Antislavery Society – Immediate emancipation of slaves with compensation to owners – The Liberator • Harriet Beecher Stowe –Uncle Tom’s Cabin