Mr. Weber
Room 217
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Take out your persuasive essays.
What were the most important factors putting
pressure on the institution of slavery before the
Civil War?
Volunteers to share?
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Activator, agenda, and objective (10 minutes)
An Age of Reform lecture (30-45 minutes)
Voices of Freedom Primary Source Analysis (30
minutes)
John Brown and Abraham Lincoln (30 minutes)
Thanks-taking reading
Exit ticket and homework (10 minutes)
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AP Topic #10. The Crisis of the Union: Pro- and
antislavery arguments and conflicts.
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1. What were the major expressions of the
antebellum reform impulse?
2. What were the sources and significance of
abolitionism?
3. How did abolitionism challenge barriers to
racial equality and free speech?
4. What were the sources and significance of
the antebellum women’s rights movement?
A. Overall patterns
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B.
Voluntary associations
Wide-ranging targets and objectives
Activities and tactics
Breadth of appeal
Utopian communities
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Overall patterns
 Varieties of structures and purposes
 Common visions
 Cooperative organization of society
 Social harmony
 Narrowing of gap between rich and poor
 Gender equality
B.
Utopian communities
2.
Spiritual communities
 Shakers
 Outlooks on gender and property
 Outcome
 Oneida
 John Humphrey Noyes
 Outlooks on gender and property
 Outcome
B.
Utopian communities
3.
Worldly communities
 Brook Farm
 Transcendentalist origins
 Influence of Charles Fourier
 Outlooks on labor and leisure
 Outcome
 New Harmony
 Communitarianism of Robert Owen
 Forerunner at New Lanark, Scotland
 Outlooks on labor, education, gender, and community
 Outcome
C.
Mainstream reform movements
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Visions of liberation
 From external “servitudes” (e.g. slavery, war)
 From internal “servitudes” (e.g. drink, illiteracy,
crime)
Influence of Second Great Awakening
 “Perfectionism”
 Appeal in “burnt-over districts”
 Radicalization of reform causes
 Badge of middle-class respectability
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D.
Opposition to reform
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Leading sources
 Workers
 Catholics
 Immigrants
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Points of controversy
 Temperance crusade
 Perfectionism
 Imposition of middle-class Protestant morality
E.
Ambiguities of reform
Impulse for liberation, individual freedom
 Impulse for moral order, social control
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F.
Program of institution building
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Jails
Poorhouses
Asylums
Orphanages
Common schools
 Thomas Mann
 As embodiment of reform agenda
 Reception and outcome
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American Colonization Society
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Founding
Principles
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Establishment of Liberia
Skepticism over
Following
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Black response
 Gradual abolition
 Removal of freed blacks to Africa
 In North
 In South
 Emigration to Liberia
 Opposition
 First black national convention
 Insistence on equal rights, as Americans
B.
Take-off of militant abolitionism
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Distinctive spirit and themes
 Demand for immediate abolition
 Explosive denunciations of slavery
 As a sin
 As incompatible with American freedom
 Rejection of colonization
 Insistence on racial equality, rights for blacks
 Active role of blacks in movement
 Mobilization of public opinion
 Moral suasion
B.
Take-off of militant abolitionism
2.
Initiatives and methods
 Founding of American Anti-Slavery Society (AAAS)
 Printed propaganda
 Oratory; public meetings
 Petitions
B.
Take-off of militant abolitionism
3.
Pioneering figures and publications
 David Walker; An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of
the World
 William Lloyd Garrison
 The Liberator
 Thoughts on African Colonization
 Theodore Weld; Slavery As It Is
 Lydia Maria Child; An Appeal In Favor of That Class
of Americans Called Africans
4.
5.
Spread and growth
Strongholds of support
B.
Take-off of militant abolitionism
6.
Visions of American freedom
 Self-ownership as basis of freedom
 Priority of personal liberty over rights to property or
local self-government
 Freedom as universal entitlement, regardless of race
 Right to bodily integrity
7.
Identification with revolutionary heritage
C.
Black and white abolitionism
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Prominence of blacks in movement
 As opponents of colonization
 As readers and supporters of The Liberator
 As members and officers of AAAS
 As organizers and speakers
 As writers
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Racial strains within movement
 Persistence of prejudice among white abolitionists
 White dominance of leadership positions
 Growing black quest for independent role
C.
Black and white abolitionism
3.
Remarkable degree of egalitarianism among white
abolitionists
 Anti-discrimination efforts in North
 Spirit of interracial solidarity
4.
Black abolitionists’ distinctive stands on freedom and
Americanness
 Exceptional hostility to racism
 Exceptional impatience with celebrations of American
liberty; “Freedom celebrations”
 Exceptional commitment to color-blind citizenship
 Exceptional insistence on economic dimension to freedom
5.
Frederick Douglass’s historic Fourth of July oration
D. Slavery and civil liberties
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Assault on abolitionism
 Mob violence
 Attack on Garrison in Boston
 Attack on James G. Birney in Cincinnati
 Fatal attack on Elijah P. Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois
 Suppression
 Removal of literature from mails
 “Gag rule” on petitions to House of Representatives
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Resulting spread of antislavery sentiment in North
E.
Split within AAAS
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Points of conflict
 Role of women in movement
 Garrisonian radicalism
 Relationship of abolitionism to American politics
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Outcome
 Formation of rival American and Foreign Anti-
Slavery Society
 Founding of Liberty party
 Weak performance of Liberty party in 1840 election
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Rise of the public woman
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Importance of women at grassroots of abolitionism
Forms of involvement in public sphere
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Petition drives
Meetings
Parades
Oratory
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Range of reform movements involving women
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New awareness of women’s subordination
Path-breaking efforts of Angelina and Sarah Grimké
Abolitionism as seedbed for feminist movement
 Impassioned antislavery addresses
 Controversy over women lecturers
 Sarah Grimké’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes
C.
Launching of women’s rights movement;
Seneca Falls Convention
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Roots in abolitionism
 Influence of Grimké sisters
 Leadership of antislavery veterans Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Lucretia Mott
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Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments
 Echoes of Declaration of Independence
 Demand for suffrage
 Denunciation of wide-ranging inequalities
D.
Characteristics of feminism
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E.
International scope
Middle-class orientation
Themes of feminism
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Self-realization
 Transcendentalist sensibility
 Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century
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Right to participate in market revolution
 Denial that home is women’s “sphere”
 Amelia Bloomer’s new style of dress
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Analogy between marriage and slavery; “slavery of sex”
 Laws governing wives’ economic status
 Law of domestic relations
F.
Tensions within feminist thought
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Belief in equality of the sexes
Belief in natural differences
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Why did Americans have an impulse to improve
American society in the first half of the 19th
century?
In what ways was the abolitionist movement
significant to the idea of American freedom?
What were the pros and cons of the colonization
movement and why were many black people
opposed to it?
Why is this a period of institution building?
How did the abolitionist movement and the
women’s movement influence each other?
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What consequences foes Grimke believe follow
from the idea of rights being founded in the
individual’s “moral being?”
How does Douglass turn the ideals proclaimed
by white Americans into weapons against
slavery?
What do these documents suggest about the
language and arguments employed by
abolitionists?
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Exit ticket:
What is the most interesting aspect of the
reform movements we have studied?
What are you finding most difficult in terms of
your academic success in this class?
Homework:
Finish reading Ch. 12 for tomorrow’s test.