UNIT 3 NOTES:
THE REFORM ERA
EDUCATION REFORM
EARLY SCHOOLS
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Early Characteristics
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One room, one stove, one teacher
Up to grade 8
Stayed open only a few months a year
Blacks in the South were legally forbidden to receive instruction in reading and writing
School teachers were ill-trained, ill-tempered, ill-paid men
◦ Often put more stress on “lickin” of discipline then “larnin”
◦ Taught the 3 R’s

Readin’, ritin’, and rithmetic
◦ Reform was desperately needed

Whigs were reformers who created the most advanced, expensive, centralized
state school systems
◦ Talked more about schools teaching character development
◦ It was school’s first duty to teach youngsters to respect authority, property, hard work, and
social order
◦ Schools would downplay class divisions, democratize the wealthy, civilize the poor
TAX SUPPORTED EDUCATION

Tax supported schools were scarce in the early years of the
republic
◦ They existed chiefly to educate the children of the poor – the socalled ragged schools
◦ In mid-1800s local and state governments built tax supported public
school systems known as “common schools”
Before this time children learned reading, writing, and arithmetic
at home, in poor local schools, private schools, or church
sponsored schools
 By 1830 Whigs and democrats agreed the providing common
schools was a proper function of government

◦ Both agreed that schools could equalize opportunity for both rich
and poor
◦ Well-to-do conservatives realized that if they did not pay to educate
other “brats”, those brats would grow up armed with voting power
McGuffy Readers

In 1833, a small publishing company called Truman and Smith based in
Cincinnati, Ohio, became interested in the idea of school texts.
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They happened upon Rev. William Holmes McGuffey.
◦ This first reader of 1841 introduces children to McGuffey's ethical code.
◦ The child modeled in this book is prompt, good, kind, honest and truthful.

The second reader followed the same pattern.
◦ It contained reading and spelling with eighty-five lessons, sixteen pictures and
one-hundred sixty-six pages.
◦ It outlined history, biology, astronomy, zoology, botany; table manners, behavior
towards family, attitudes toward God and teachers, the poor

Millions of pioneer men and women were schooled with these texts
REFORM LEADERS

Horace Mann (1796 – 1859)
◦ Graduated from Brown University
◦ As Secretary of Mass. Board of Education he campaigned
for better schoolhouses, higher pay for teachers,
expanded curriculum

Noah Webster (1758 – 1843)
◦ Yale educated
◦ Known as “Schoolmaster of the Republic”
◦ His reading lessons were used by millions of children in
the 1800’s
◦ Lessons often designed to promote patriotism
◦ Devoted 20 years to his dictionary (1828) which helped
standardize the American language
The movement for women’s
rights
The Movement for Women’s Rights

Main Idea: Although women were
expected to devote their time to home
and family in the 1800s, some women
organized the women’s rights movement
in the 1840s
Limits for Women

Industrialization had a large impact on women’s
roles
◦ Women in more comfortable households were freed
from chores such as growing their own food and making
clothes
◦ The Industrial period made it so more timesaving
products were available

With this free time, most believed women should
remain in the home
◦ The ideal of the stay-at-home woman that was expected
to raise the children, entertain guests, and serve their
husbands was called the Cult of True Domesticity (or
True Womanhood)
◦ Women could not vote, could not own property, and
most had to turn wages over to a husband or father
Reform at Home

Many women were not lobbying for political
rights, they instead advised women to
reform society from within their roles in the
home
◦ Catherine Beecher tried to win respect for
women’s contributions as wives, mother’s, and
teachers
◦ She lobbied for the education of women
◦ Felt that women were the moral background of
the country
Women in Reform

As more women became educated, they
grew eager to apply their knowledge beyond
the home
◦ Women played a prominent role in every type of
reform, from temperance to abolition
◦ They marched in parades, participated in
boycotts, and even gave speeches
A Women’s Rights Movement
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Lucretia Mott
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B. 1793
Teacher
Became a Quaker minister
Was also an abolitionist
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
◦ Daughter of a Congressman
◦ Studied law
◦ Married an abolitionist lawyer

Both were angered when they were not allowed to
participate in the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in
London
Seneca Falls Convention

Took place in Seneca Falls, NY
◦ July 1848
◦ First women’s rights convention in U.S. history

Created a document titled the “Declaration
of Sentiments”
◦ In the spirit of the Declaration of Independence
◦ Passed 12 resolutions signed by 68 women and
32 men
◦ Resolutions protested lack of political rights for
women
◦ The 9th resolution called for women’s suffrage
Effects

The convention did not trigger wide spread
change
◦ Many shared Catharine Beecher’s view of
women’s influence being through the home
◦ Yet it did mark the beginning of an organized
movement for women’s rights

Impact on Education: No college admitted
women in 1820 – thousands were
graduating from colleges in 1890
People to Know
Sojourner Truth
 Catharine Beecher
 Lucrettia Mott
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Sojourner Truth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsjdLL
3MrKk

1851 Speech by abolitionist, women’s
rights activist, poet, and writer –
Sojourner Truth
The TEMPERANCE
MOVEMENT
The temperance movement

The first and most widespread reform was
the temperance movement
◦ This was an organized campaign to eliminate
alcohol consumption
◦ In the early 1800s America consumed more
alcoholic beverages per person than at any other
time in our nation’s history

Reformers opposed drinking because it
tended to make people lose control and
was viewed as a threat to family life
PROBLEMS WITH ALCOHOL


Central to the party formation in the north
were the evangelical Whigs who demanded that
government regulate public social behavior
Central to this fight was the issue of alcohol
 drinking had been a part of American life since colonial
times
 withering authority and the market revolution had led to
increased public drunkenness and a perceived increase in
alcohol led violence and social problems
 Heavy drinking decreased efficiency of labor
 It also fouled the sanctity of family and threatened spiritual
welfare
GOALS

Two plans of attack:
◦ Stiffen individual will to resist alcohol
◦ Eliminate alcohol by law

By encouraging total abstinence, reformers
hoped to halt the creation of a wave of new
drunkards
◦ While abstinence relies on self discipline the hope
was to fade alcohol out through social pressure and
expectations
◦ Many churches made temperance a condition of
religious conversion or jobs as a condition of
employment
REORMERS

Lyman Beecher
◦ Temperance core beliefs were based on writings from Lyman Beecher’s Six
Sermons on the Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils, and Remedy of Intemperance
(1826)
◦ Beecher declared alcohol an addictive drug

T.S. Arthur
◦ Novel: Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There (1854)
◦ Described a once happy village ruined by Sam Slade’s tavern

American Temperance Society
◦ The temperance crusade began in 1826 when northeastern evangelicals
founded the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, or
American Temperance Society
◦ They implored drinkers to sign temperance pledges, handed out brochures
and pamphlets, and lectures
◦ Between 1815 and 1840 thousands of temperance societies formed
◦ Members urged people to take pledges not to drink alcohol
Efforts against alcohol

In the mid 1830s Whigs made temperance a political issue
◦ They realized voluntary abstinence would not put an end to drunkenness
◦ They first attacked licenses granting establishments rights to sell it
◦ The goal was to outlaw all public drinking places

Neal Dow of Main “Father of Prohibition”
◦ sponsored the Main Law of 1851 which banned the sale of alcohol
◦ This attempt proved feeble as taverns would operate anyways or would find
ways around laws
◦ 1838 Massachusetts Fifteen Gallon Law
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Democrats agreed that Americans drank too much, they warned that
government intrusion into areas of private choice violated republican
liberties
◦ Eventually prohibition laws were abolished
◦ The temperance movement did have a significant effect:
◦ Between 1830 and 1860 alcohol consumption in the U.S. dropped
dramatically
The anti-slavery movement
The abolitionist movement
Another social movement began to gain momentum:
abolition
 The abolitionist movement was an effort to end slavery
 Even during colonial times there were people outspoken
against slavery but it in the early 1800s it became widespread
 At first, most anti-slavery approaches were moderate
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Quaker Ben Lundy proposed gradual emancipation in 1821
Emancipation is the freeing of slaves
He favored stopping slavery from being used in new states
Wanted to end slave trade in the U.S. as a gradual step
By the end of the 1820s, free African-Americans had created
over 50 anti-slavery groups
American colonization society
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Some abolitionists favored colonization
◦ Many were convinced that African Americans would
never receive equal treatment in American society
◦ Colonization favored a plan to send emancipated
slaves and free African Americans to form new
societies in Africa

The American Colonization Society formed in
1817
◦ They established the west African country of Liberia
for this purpose
◦ This plan offended many African Americans as they
considered themselves Americans and did not want
to be sent to a far away country
William lloyd garrison
Famous, radical abolitionist
 White Bostonian
 In 1831 he began publishing an antislavery newspaper, The Liberator

Frederick Douglass
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One of the most popular and influential speaker in the anti-slavery
movement was Frederick Douglass
◦ He was an accomplished writer, publisher, and speaker
◦ He was the son of a white father and slave mother
◦ He was raised by his grandmother and at age 8 was sent to Baltimore to be a house
slave
◦ His owners ignored common law at the time and educated him

At age 17 he was considered unruly and was sent to a “slave breaker” to
become cooperative
◦ He later defended himself against the breaker and later said it was the story of “how a
man became a slave and a slave became a man”

In 1838, at age 21 he disguised himself as a sailor and escaped to
Massachusetts
◦ After rousing speeches he soon became leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society
He started an abolitionists newspaper called the North Star
 Throughout his life he became a important influence in the abolitionist
movement

Frederick Douglass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j0jvj4
e4XU&feature=relmfu
Divisions among abolitionists
While abolitionists shared a common goal, they
had different tactics to achieve those goals
 These different ideas cause divisions in the
movement
 Women’s Participation

◦ Many Americans did not approve of women’s
involvement in politics

Race
◦ Many African Americans felt that white abolitionists
treated them as inferior

Tactics
◦ Some insisted on only legal methods
◦ Many believed legal methods were too long-term
The underground railroad
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With tremendous human suffering, many would
not wait for long-term strategies to work
Risking arrest and their lives, abolitionists created
the Underground Railroad
This was a network of escape routes that
provided protection for slaves escaping to the
north
Historians disagree on the number, but
somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 slaves
escaped on these routes
They traveled along rivers routes, through eastern
swamps, along mountain passes
Resistance to abolition

These abolition movements provoked intense opposition in the North and
South
◦ Most white Americans viewed abolition as a radical idea
◦ Northern merchants worried that the anti-slavery movement would hurt business
from southern customers
◦ White workers feared that freed slaves would take their jobs by working for lower
wages
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Even though many thought slavery was wrong, most northerners felt African
Americans were socially inferior and did not want them living in their
communities

These movements made southerners even more determined to defend slavery
◦ In 1830s it became dangerous for a southerner to speak out against slavery
◦ Southern postmasters refused to deliver literature about abolition

Southern Congressmen succeeded in passing what many called a Gag Rule
◦ It prohibited anti-slavery petitions from being read or acted upon in the House for 8
years
FEMALE ABOLITIONISTS
Harriet Tubman
 Sojourner Truth

Harriet Tubman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdno2
YLm4Ms