Unit 4
An Era of Expansion
Chapter 15: Early 19th Century Reformers
I.
The Reforming Spirit
A. Political Origins
1. Ideals of liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence inspired people
to improve society.
2. The spread of democracy- more people were voting than ever before.
3. Some people began to feel that slavery and other injustices violated their
democratic ideals.
a) social reform- an organized attempt to improve what is unjust or
imperfect in society.
B. Religious Reform –During the colonial period, many Americans believed in
predestination, the belief that God decided in advance which people would attain
salvation after death.
1. Second Great Awakening – religious movement in the early 1800s that stressed
free will rather than predestination.
a) Religious revivals, or large outdoor meetings, encouraged people to reform
their lives.
b) Charles Grandison Finney teaches that individual salvation is the first
step to the reform of a society.
C. Hospital and Prison Reform
1. Dorothea Dix visited jails in Boston and found that people who were mentally ill
were held as prisoners even though they did not commit a crime.
a) She continued to visit jails in several states and wrote reports about the
horrible conditions.
b) Her reports led state legislatures to fund the building of mental hospitals
were the mentally ill would be treated as patients, not criminals.
2. Prison Reform – a movement to improve conditions in prisons.
a) Men, women, and children were held together in cold damp quarters often
going without food.
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b) Five out of six people in northern jails were debtors, or people who could
not pay money they owed. Since they couldn’t make money behind bars, many
remained in jail for years.
c) Dix and others called for prison reforms. As a result, new prisons were
built, cruel punishments were banned, and people accused of minor crimes
served shorter sentences.
d) Slowly, states stopped treating debtors as criminals.
D. Temperance Movement- a movement to limit, and later ban alcohol consumption.
1. Alcohol Abuse was widespread in the early 1800s. Women knew that
alcoholism could lead to wife beating, child abuse, and the break up of
families.
a) In 1851, Maine banned the sale of alcohol. Eight other states
followed, but most would later repeal the laws.
b) The Temperance Movement would gain new strength in the late
1800s.
E. Education- In 1800, few American children went to school. Teachers were poorly
trained, worked for low pay, and students of all ages would be in one room.
1. In 1814, New York State passed a law requiring local governments to set
up tax supported public schools.
2. Horace Mann pushed for changes in Massachusetts.
a) New schools were built and the school year was extended.
b) Teacher’s pay was raised and three colleges were set up for change.
c) Schools in the South improved more slowly
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II. Opposing Slavery
A. Roots of the Antislavery Movement
1. Religious beliefs led some of the Americans to oppose slavery.
a) Quakers - Everyone is equal in God’s eyes.
b) Second Great Awakening
2. Political belief that “all men are created equal.”
a) The American Colonization Society – proposed to end slavery by setting
up the independent colony of Liberia in West Africa for freed slaves. Some
African Americans favored it but most did not want to go because they and
been born in the United States.
B. The Abolitionist Movement Grows
1. A growing number or reformers, known as abolitionists, wanted to end slavery
completely in the United States.
a) Some favored the gradual end to slavery.
b) Others demanded that it end at once.
2. Freed African Americans published newspapers and gave speeches call for the
abolition of slavery.
a) Fredrick Douglass – Best known African abolitionist. He was an escaped
slave who published an abolitionist newspaper called the North Star.
3. The Most outspoken white abolitionist was William Lloyd Garrison.
a) Garrison launched The Liberator, the most influential antislavery
newspaper.
b) He founded the New England Antislavery Society.
4. Two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, moved from a South Carolina
plantation owned by their family to the North for the sole purpose of fighting
against slavery.
a) They gave lectures that drew large crowds.
C. The Underground Railroad –network of escape routes, “stations”, and “conductors”
that slaves took to freedom.
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a) Harriet Tubman – The most famous conductor, she escaped slavery
herself. Nicknamed “Black Moses”, she returned to the South 19 times
leading more than 300 slaves to freedom.
D. Opposition to Abolition
1. The North – Northern Mill owners, bankers, and merchants depended on cotton
from the South.
a) If slaves were freed it would ruin their businesses.
b) Some factory workers feared freed slaves would come North and take
their jobs away because they would work for lower pay.
c) Mobs broke up antislavery meetings.
d)William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets in Boston.
3. The South-relied on slavery for their economy
a) They accused abolitionist of preaching violence and blamed them for Nat
Turner’s rebellion.
b) Slave owners said slaves were treated better than northern factory
workers.
c) Non-slave owning southerners felt slavery was essential to the southern
economy.
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III. A Call for Women’s Rights
A. Seeking Equal Rights
1. In the mid-1800s women had little political or legal rights. In fact, when
married, her husband had complete control of her.
a) Her husband could control her property.
b) A woman’s wage must be below her husband if she worked outside the
home.
c) Husbands could hit their wives as long as he didn’t cause serious injury.
2. Women realized their full social and political rights by joining the abolitionist
movement.
3. Sojourner Truth
a) Was born to slavery in New York.
b) When she gained her freedom she believed that God wanted her to fight
slavery.
c) She took the name Sojourner Truth because she vowed to sojourn, travel,
across the land speaking the truth.
d) She spoke across the country speaking about the abolition of slavery and
women’s rights. She would ridicule the idea that women were inferior to
men by nature.
4. Mott and Stanton
a) Lucretia Mott was a quiet speaker of 5 children; she gained respect of
many listeners with her persuasive logic and good organization skills
b) Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an excellent student and athlete. However
her father never fully appreciated her because she wasn’t a boy.
c) Both Stanton and Mott went to an antislavery convention in London and
were forced to sit away from view and couldn’t take an active part in the
proceedings. This led them to take a move active part in women’s rights
B. Seneca Falls Convention (1848) – a meeting at which leaders of the women’s rights
movement called for equal rights for women
1. “Women are Created Equal”
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a) Stanton gave her speech on the Declaration of Sentiments, which would
be approved by the delegates (200 women/ 40 men). The speech proclaimed,
“…that all men and women are created equal.”
b) The delegates approved resolutions such as equality of women at work, at
school, and at church. However, when it came to women being allowed to
vote, many hesitated but the resolution would be narrowly approved.
2. A Long Struggle
a) The Seneca Falls Convention marked the beginning of the Women’s
Rights Movement, the organized campaign to win property, education, and
other rights for women.
b) Soon news leaders would lead the struggle, such as Susan B. Anthony,
who traveled across the country and gave speeches.
c) Women would gain some legal rights in certain states. In New Work
women could keep their own property and wages.
d) However, many men and women opposed the women’s rights movement
C. New Opportunities in Education
1. Many felt that education for women was useless because women were expected
to care for their families.
2. Schools for Women
a) Emma Willard opens the first high school for women in Troy, New York
where women could study “men’s” subjects such as math and physics.
b) Mary Lyon opened Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in Massachusetts,
which was the first female college in the United States but she didn’t call it
a college because many thought it was wrong for women to attend college.
3. New Careers
a) As women education began to improve many women entered teaching
professions especially in grade schools.
b) Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to attend medical school, who
was top of her graduating class, and first women to earn a medical degree in
the United States.
c) Others would attain careers in astronomy, writing, ministry, etc.
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IV. American Art and Literature
A. American Storytellers- 1820s
1. Washington Irving- One of the most popular American writers of the early
1800s.
a) Wrote “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
b) The first American writer to enjoy fame in Europe.
2. James Fenimore Cooper – another New Yorker, also published novels set in the
past including “The Deerslayer” and “The Last of the Mohicans.”
3. Later writers
a) Nathaniel Hawthorne- drew on the history of Puritan New England to
create his novels and short stories. He wrote “The Scarlett Letter.”
b) Herman Melville – (1851) he published “Moby Dick.” It is ranked among
the finest American novels ever written.
c) William Wells Brown – (1853) published “Clotel,” a novel about slave life.
He was the nation’s first published African American.
4. Women writers –By the mid-1800s, many of the best selling novels were written
by women.
a) Margaret Fuller wrote “Women in the Nineteenth Century.” This book had
important influence on the movement for civil rights.
b) Catherine Sedgwick and Fanny Fern earned far more than Hawthorne and
Melville.
5. Poetic Voices
a) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – wrote “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Song
of Hiawatha.”
b) Walt Whitman – published only one book of poems, Leaves of Grass. His
poetry celebrated democracy and the diverse people that made the nation
great.
c) Emily Dickenson – Wrote some of the best poems of the period. She
called her poetry “my letter to the world that never wrote to me.”
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B. The “Inner Light” – In New England, a small but influential group of writers and
thinkers emerged. They called themselves transcendentalists because they believed that
the most important truths in life transcended, or went beyond, human reason.
1. The American writer who probably had the greatest influence in the mid 1800s
was Ralph Waldo Emerson.
a) He stressed the importance of the individual.
b) Each person had an “inner light.”
2. Henry David Thoreau – Emerson’s friend and neighbor, he believed that the
growth of cities and the rise of industry were ruining the nation.
a) His best known work is Walden. In it, he tells of a year spent alone in a
cabin on Walden Pond in Massachusetts.
C. American Landscapes
1. Before the 1800’s, American painters traveled to Europe to study art.
a) Charles Wilson Peale, Gilbert Stuart , and John Singleton Copely, were
among the best American portrait painters of their time.
2. In the mid-1800s, American artists began to develop their own style.
a) The first group to do so became known as the Hudson River School,
because they painted landscapes of New York’s Hudson River.
b) Two of the best known were Thomas Cole, and Asher B. Durand.
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