Alan Brinkley,
AMERICAN HISTORY 13/e
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

Introduction
 Romanticism
 Order and Control
2
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

The Romantic Impulse
 National Cultural Aspirations
– Nationalism and Romanticism in American
Painting
 Hudson River School
– Literature and the Quest for Liberation
 Cooper and the American Wilderness
 Herman Melville
3
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform
Title Page for Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass
4
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

The Romantic Impulse
– Literature in the
Antebellum South
 Southern Romanticism
– The Transcendentalists
 Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Thoreau and
Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
(Library of Congress)
5
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

The Romantic Impulse
– The Defense of Nature
– Visions of Utopia
 Brook Farm
 New Harmony
Plan for the New
Harmony Colony
(Library of Congress)
6
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

The Romantic Impulse
– Redefining Gender Roles
 Redefined Gender Roles at the Oneida Community
 The Shakers
– The Mormons
 Joseph Smith
 Establishment of
Salt Lake City
7
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

Remaking Society
 New Reform Movements
– Revivalism, Morality, and Order
 Revivalism in the Burned-Over District
 Finney’s Doctrine of Personal Regeneration
– The Temperance Crusade
 American Society for the Promotion of Temperance
 Cultural Divisions over Alcohol
8
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform
The Drunkard’s
Progress
(Library of Congress)
9
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

Remaking Society
– Health Fads and Phrenology
 Phrenology
– Medical Science
 Discovery of Contagion
Phrenology
(Library of Congress)
10
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

Remaking Society
– Reforming Education
 Horace Mann’s Reforms
 Rapid Growth of
Public Education
 Achievements of
Educational Reform
 The Benevolent Empire
Horace Mann
(Portrait Gallery)
11
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

Remaking Society
– Rehabilitation
 The Asylum Movement
 Prison Reform
12
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

Remaking Society
– The Indian Reservation
The nation has a “moral duty…to protect and if
possible to preserve and perpetuate the scattered
remnants of the Indian race.”
Andrew Jackson
13
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

Remaking Society
– The Rise of Feminism
 Reform Movements and the Rise of Feminism
 Seneca Falls
 Limited Progress
for Women
The Declaration of Sentiments
(National Park Service, U.S.
Department of the Interior)
14
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

The Crusade Against Slavery
– Early Opposition to Slavery
 American Colonization Society
 Failure of Colonization
– Garrison and Abolitionism
 Garrison and the Liberator
 American Antislavery Society
15
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

The Crusade Against Slavery
– Black Abolitionists
 Free Blacks’ Commitment
to Abolition
 Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
(Portrait Gallery)
16
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

The Crusade Against Slavery
– Anti-Abolitionism
 Violent Reprisals
Anti-Abolitionist
Violence
(Library of Congress)
17
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform

The Crusade Against Slavery
– Abolitionism Divided
 Moderates versus Extremists
 The Amistad Case
 Harriet Beecher Stowe
 Abolitionism’s Enduring
Influence
Harriet Beecher Stowe
(Portrait Gallery)
18
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform
America in the World:
The Abolition of Slavery
19
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chapter Twelve:
Antebellum Culture and Reform
Patterns of Popular Culture:
Sentimental Novels
20
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.