Foner Ch 12
An Age of Reform 1820-1840
Introduction: Abby Kelley
An abolitionist banner
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The Reform Impulse
• Utopian Communities
– About 100 reform communities were established in
the decades before the Civil War.
– Nearly all the communities set out to reorganize
society on a cooperative basis, hoping both to
restore social harmony to a world of excessive
individualism and to narrow widening gap between
rich and poor.
• Socialism and communism entered the language.
Rare photograph of an abolitionist meeting in New York State around 1850
Utopian Communities, Mid 19th Century
The Reform Impulse
• The Shakers
– The Shakers were the most successful of the
religious communities and had a significant impact
on the outside world.
– Shakers believed men and women were spiritually
equal.
– They abandoned private property and traditional
family life.
An engraving of a Shaker dance
The Mormons’ Trek
– The Mormons were founded in the 1820s by
Joseph Smith.
– The absolute authority Smith exercised over his
followers, the refusal of the Mormons to separate
church and state, and their practice of polygamy
alarmed many neighbors.
– Mormons faced persecution in New York, Ohio,
Missouri, and Illinois; Smith was murdered.
The Reform Impulse
• The Mormons’ Trek
– Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, led his
followers to the Great Salt Lake.
• Oneida
– The founder of Oneida, John Noyes, and his
followers practiced “complex marriage.”
– Oneida was a dictatorial environment.
The Reform Impulse
• Worldly Communities and The Owenites
– The most important secular communitarian was
Robert Owen.
– Owen established New Harmony, where he hoped
to create a “new moral world”
– At New Harmony Owen championed women’s
rights and education.
The Crisis,
a publication
by the communitarian
Robert Owen
The Reform Impulse
• Religion and Reform
– Some reform movements drew their inspiration
from the religious revivalism of the Second Great
Awakening.
– Revivals popularized the outlook known as
perfectionism, which saw both individuals and
society at large as capable of indefinite
improvement.
The Reform Impulse
• Religion and Reform
– Under the impact of the revivals, older reform
efforts moved in a new, radical direction.
• Prohibition, pacifism, and abolition
– To members of the North’s emerging middle-class
culture, reform became a badge of respectability.
– The American Temperance Society directed its
efforts at both drunkards and occasional drinkers.
The Reform Impulse
• Critics of Reform
– Many Americans saw the reform impulse as an
attack on their own freedom.
– Catholics rallied against the temperance
movement.
Temperance banner
from around 1850
The Reform Impulse
• Reformers and Freedom
– The vision of freedom expressed by the reform
movements was liberating and controlling at the
same time.
– Many religious groups in the East formed reform
groups promoting religious virtue.
The Reform Impulse
• The Invention of the Asylum
– Americans embarked on a program of institution
building.
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Jails
Poorhouses
Asylums
Orphanages
The Reform Impulse
• Invention of the Asylum
– These institutions were inspired by the conviction
that those who passed through their doors could
eventually be released to become productive, selfdisciplined citizens.
• The Common School
– A tax-supported state public school system was
widely adopted.
The Reform Impulse
• The Common School
– Horace Mann was the era’s leading educational
reformer.
– Mann hoped that universal public education could
restore equality to a fractured society.
• Avenue for social advancement
– Common schools provided career opportunities
for women but widened the divide between North
and South.
This daguerreotype from around 1850
The Crusade against Slavery
• Colonization
– The American Colonization Society (ACS), founded
in 1816, promoted the gradual abolition of slavery
and the settlement of black Americans in Africa.
• The ACS founded Liberia as its colony in West Africa.
– Many prominent political leaders supported the
ACS.
Blacks and Colonization
– Like Indian removal, colonization rested on the
premise that America is fundamentally a white
society.
– Most African-Americans adamantly opposed the
idea of colonization.
• In 1817, free blacks assembled in Philadelphia for the
first national black convention and condemned
colonization.
• They insisted that blacks were Americans entitled to
the same rights enjoyed by whites.
Militant Abolitionism
– A new generation of reformers demanded
immediate abolition.
– David Walker’s An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens
of the World was a passionate indictment of
slavery and racial prejudice.
– 1831, The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s
weekly journal published in Boston, gave the new
breed of abolitionism a permanent voice.
William Lloyd Garrison
The Crusade against Slavery
• The Emergence of Garrison
– Some of Garrison’s ideas appeared too radical, but
his call for immediate abolition was echoed by
many.
• Garrison rejected colonization.
• Spreading the Abolitionist Message
– Abolitionists recognized the democratic potential
in the production of printed material.
Spreading the Abolitionist Message
– Theodore Weld helped to create the abolitionists’
mass constituency by using the methods of
religious revivals.
– Weld and a group of trained speakers spread the
message of slavery as a sin.
• Slavery and Moral Suasion
– Nearly all abolitionists, despite their militant
language, rejected violence as a means of ending
slavery.
Pages from an abolitionist book for children
The Crusade against Slavery
• Slavery and Moral Suasion
– Many abolitionists were pacifists, and they
attempted to convince the slaveholder through
“moral suasion” of his sinful ways.
• Abolitionists and the Idea of Freedom
– The antislavery movement sought to reinvigorate
the idea of freedom as a truly universal
entitlement.
Slave Market of America
The Crusade against Slavery
• A New Vision of America
– Abolitionists insisted that blacks were fellow
countrymen, not foreigners or a permanently
inferior caste.
– Abolitionists disagreed over the usefulness of the
Constitution.
– Abolitionists consciously identified their
movement with the revolutionary heritage.
• The Liberty Bell
Black and White Abolitionism
• Black Abolitionists
– From its inception, blacks played a leading role in
the antislavery movement.
• Frederick Douglass
– Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin gave the abolitionist
message a powerful human appeal.
• It was modeled on the autobiography of fugitive slave
Josiah Henson.
One of many popular lithographs illustrating scenes
Black Abolitionism
– By the 1840s, black abolitionists sought an
independent role within the movement, regularly
holding their own conventions.
Black and White Abolitionism
• Slavery and American Freedom
– At every opportunity, black abolitionists rejected
the nation’s pretensions as a land of liberty.
– Black abolitionists articulated the ideal of
colorblind citizenship.
– Frederick Douglass famously questioned the
meaning of the Fourth of July.
Black and White Abolitionism
• Gentlemen of Property and Standing
– Abolitionism aroused violent hostility from
northerners who feared that the movement
threatened to disrupt the Union, interfere with
profits wrested from slave labor, and overturn
white supremacy.
– Editor Elijah Lovejoy was killed by a mob while
defending his press.
Am I Not a Man and a Brother?
Black and White Abolitionism
• Slavery and Civil Liberties
– Mob attacks and attempts to limit abolitionists’
freedom of speech convinced many northerners
that slavery was incompatible with the democratic
liberties of white Americans.
Destruction by Fire of Pennsylvania
The Origins of Feminism
• The Rise of the Public Woman
– Women were instrumental in the abolition
movement.
– The public sphere was open to women in ways
government and party politics were not.
• Women and Free Speech
– Women lectured in public about abolition.
• Grimké sisters
The Origins of Feminism
• Women and Free Speech
– The Grimké sisters argued against the idea that
taking part in assemblies, demonstrations, and
lectures was unfeminine.
– Letters on the Equality of the Sexes (1838)
• Equal pay for equal work
The Origins of Feminism
• Women’s Rights
– Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott
organized the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.
• Raised the issue of woman suffrage
– The Declaration of Sentiments condemned the
entire structure of inequality.
The Origins of Feminism
• Feminism and Freedom
– Lacking broad backing at home, early feminists
found allies abroad.
– Women deserved the range of individual choices
and the possibility of self-realization that
constituted the essence of freedom.
– Margaret Fuller sought to apply to women the
transcendentalist idea that freedom meant a
quest for personal development.
Portrait of feminist Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)
The Origins of Feminism
• Women and Work
– The participants at Seneca Falls rejected the
identification of the home as the women’s
“sphere.”
• bloomers
MockingbWoman’s Emancipation
The Origins of Feminism
• The Slavery of Sex
– The concept of the “slavery of sex” empowered
the women’s movement to develop an allencompassing critique of male authority and their
own subordination.
– Marriage and slavery became powerful rhetorical
tools for feminists.
The Origins of Feminism
• “Social Freedom”
– Demand that women should enjoy the rights to
regulate their own sexual activity and procreation
and to be protected by the state against violence
at the hands of their husbands challenged the
notion that claims for justice, freedom, and
individual rights should stop at household’s door.
The Origins of Feminism
• “Social Freedom”
– The issue of women’s private freedom revealed
underlying differences within the movement for
women’s rights.
The Origins of Feminism
• The Abolitionist Schism
– When organized abolitionism split into two wings
in 1840 the immediate cause was a dispute over
the proper role of women in antislavery work.
• American Anti-Slavery Society (favored women in
leadership positions)
• American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (opposed
women in leadership positions)
This image appeared on the cover of the sheet music for “Get Off the Track!”.
The Origins of Feminism
• The Abolitionist Schism
– The Liberty Party was established in hopes of
making abolitionism a political movement.
This concludes the lecture presentation for
Chapter 12: An Age of Reform, 1820-1840
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