New Movements in America
Main Idea
A revival in religion in the early 1800s helped lead to an era of reform.
Reading Focus
• How did religion help lead to reform?
• What role did Horace Mann play in reforming education?
• What role did Dorothea Dix play in reforming prisons?
• What are transcendentalism and utopianism?
Religion Sparks Reform
• During the 1820s and 1830s Americans attended revivals and joined churches in record
numbers.
• This religious movement was called the _______________________________________.
• Many preachers preached that through dedication and hard ________________ people
could create a kind of heaven on earth.
• Across the country, tens of thousands of Americans became determined to reform, or
reshape, American life.
• The Second Great Awakening helped launch the ________________________________.
• From 1830 until 1860, many Americans attempted to reshape American society.
• They were called ________________________.
Temperance
• One of the main goals of the ___________________________________________
movement reformers was to reduce the use of alcoholic beverages.
• Reformers wrote books, plays, and songs about the evils of _______________________,
which they linked to sickness, poverty, and the breakup of families.
• In 1851 reformers persuaded legislators in the state of Maine to outlaw alcohol.
• Over the next several years, some 12 states followed suit.
Education
• Education reformers organized themselves and began the common-school movement to
extend and improve public schools.
• The greatest school reformer of the Reform Era was ____________________________,
who advocated a new, highly organized approach to education.
• Education reform did nothing to help Native American children or African American
children.
• Mann’s school-reform efforts laid the groundwork for education in the United States to
the present day.
Reforming Prisons & Care for the Mentally Ill
• ______________________________________________ was a reformer who
campaigned for humane treatment of prisoners and the mentally ill.
• Moved by Dix’s plea, the Massachusetts legislature created state-supported institutions to
house and treat _________________________________ people separate from criminals.
• Dix and her supporters convinced other state governments to create similar institutions.
• Before Dix began her work, there were no professional treatment centers in the United
States for the mentally ill.
• By the time of her death, more than 100 such institutions were built across the country.
Trancendentalism
• ____________________________________________________ movement: members of
this movement believed in a philosophy called transcendentalism.
• Transcendentalism is the belief that knowledge is found not only by observation of the
world but also through reason, intuition, and personal spiritual experiences.
• Two leading transcendentalists were __________________________________________
and________________________________________________________________.
• Both expressed the transcendental belief that people should be self-reliant and trust their
intuition.
• Thoreau held that people should act according to their own beliefs, even if they had to
break the law.
• Another reform movement of this era was the ________________________ movement.
• Some reformers believed in creating new communities that would be free of social ills.
• These communities became known as utopian communities, after the word utopia, which
means “a perfect society.”
Early Immigration & Urban Reform
Main Idea
A wave of Irish and German immigrants entered the
United States during a period of urbanization and reform.
Reading Focus
• Why did many Irish and Germans immigrate to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s?
• What was life in the United States like for the new immigrants?
• How did urbanization and industrialization lead to reform?
Irish & German Immigrants
• Since the 1700s, the poor people of Ireland had relied on the ______________________
as their staple, or major, food crop.
• From 1845 to 1849, a disease, or __________________, struck the crop, severely
restricting the potato harvest
• Deprived of their primary food source and receiving little relief from the ruling British
government, Ireland’s poor faced starvation.
• By 1850 about 1 million had died during the ___________________________________.
• Desperate to save themselves and their families, about ______________________ of
them settled in the United States.
• Like the Irish, many Germans were fleeing conditions in their homeland.
• Some fled __________________ depression and overpopulation, which made _________
scarce.
• Others left to escape religious persecution, harsh tax laws, or military service.
• Still others fled their country after a ______________________________ in 1848 failed.
• Many Germans came to the United States in search of free land and business
opportunities.
• _______________________________ model of immigration: factors that cause people to
leave their homeland are “pushes,” and factors that cause people to move to a particular
country are called “pulls.”
The Lives of Immigrants
• Many immigrant groups to the United States have faced _________________________.
• As the number of Irish immigrants grew, so too did these feelings of
________________________________, or opposition to immigration.
• The influx of a huge number of poor, Catholic, Irish immigrants in such a short time
changed many Americans’ views.
• They began to regard immigrants as a threat to their way of life.
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Nearly as many Germans as Irish immigrated to the United States in the mid-1800s.
Fortunately for the Germans, they did not encounter the same hostility that greeted Irish
immigrants.
Most German immigrants were ______________________________ and
______________________________________.
They could afford to travel far inland, seeking free or cheap land, reunions with relatives,
or other opportunities in the heartland.
German immigrants worked as farmers, artisans, factory workers, and in other
occupations.
Reform, Urbanization, & Industrialization
• By the mid-1800s, large American cities were home to some tremendously wealthy
people.
• The vast majority of urban Americans, however, were very poor.
• Many city-dwellers lived in ________________________, or poorly made, crowded
apartment buildings.
• Lacked adequate light, ventilation, and sanitation
- They were very unhealthy places to live.
• ________________________ spread rapidly in the crowded conditions.
• In some cities, local boards of health were established to set sanitation rules.
• Enforcement was often uneven, and the poorer neighborhoods received less attention than
richer ones.
• Local reform societies reached only a fraction of those who needed help.
• For the most part, the poor of America’s large cities fended for themselves, helping their
families, neighbors, and friends as best they could.
• Serious efforts at reforming cities would not begin until late in the century.
• Previously, most Americans had worked on ________________________.
- Worked for themselves, kept the profits they earned, and made much of what they
needed
Birth of the Labor Movement
• American factory workers were __________________________ earners who were paid a
set amount by business owners.
• Using their limited wages, they had to buy the things they needed from merchants in the
city where they lived.
• A new social class arose: the urban _________________________________________.
- Most of them were poor and uneducated.
- Many were immigrants.
• Business owners wanted to maximize their profits.
- Resulted in low _________________, long hours, and unsafe working conditions
for workers
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In the 1820s, workers began to organize into groups to demand higher wages, shorter
hours, and safer working conditions.
___________________________________: efforts by workers to improve their situation
____________________________________ workers, such as carpenters and masons,
formed organizations to regulate their pay.
In 1834 several smaller groups united to form the National Trades Union in New York
City.
The labor movement faced fierce opposition from business owners and many government
officials.
The _______________________ Movement: a labor reform campaign to limit the
working day to 10 hours from the more common 12 hours or more
By 1840, all federal employees received a 10-hour workday.
In the mid-1840s, New Hampshire became the first state to limit the workday to 10 hours.
Other states followed New Hampshire’s example.
Despite this success, laborers remained very much at the whim of business owners. It
would be decades before they made substantial progress in improving their work
conditions.
Women & Reform
Main Idea
After leading reform movements to help others, some American women began to work on behalf
of themselves.
Reading Focus
• What limits were placed on women’s lives in the early 1800s?
• What role did women play in the movements of the
Reform Era?
• Why was the Seneca Falls Convention important?
Limits in Women’s Lives
Legal Limits
• With few exceptions, __________________ could not vote or hold public office.
• Other than marriage, they could not enter into legal ____________________________.
• When married couples with children divorced, the law awarded custody of the children to
the father.
Economic Limits
• With few exceptions, married women could not own ____________________.
• More than 60,000 industrial workers were women.
– Wages were low.
– The wages of married women were legally the property of their husbands.
– Single women were expected to turn over their earnings to their families.
Social Limits
• Women were ____________________ to men.
• Women should attend only to _______________________ and family duties—and to
their husbands.
• Matters of business, government, and politics should be handled by __________.
• “A woman’s place is in the home” became a more widespread belief during the Industrial
Revolution.
• ________________ life was threatened by taking women out of the household to work.
• ____________________________________________________________: This
movement urged women to remain in the home environment. Books and magazines
praised the virtues of women staying at home, caring for their families, and obeying their
husbands.
Women in the Reform Era
• Women formed church societies that served as extensions of their church work.
• Some of these groups evolved into _________________________________________—
groups that were organized to promote social reforms.
• The New York Female Reform Society was formed in 1834 to promote moral reform or
good behavior.
• Many similar groups were formed throughout the Northeast.
• Society members would visit ____________ neighborhoods, almshouses, jails, and other
places to provide ____________________________ instruction and encouragement.
• Some members established homes for girls and women in need.
Education
• Women led the movement to reform education.
• _________________________________________________ ran a school for women, the
Hartford Female Seminary, in Massachusetts. Later, she opened the Western Female
Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio.
• Beecher worked to create normal schools and to send teachers west to educate frontier
children.
• ___________________ College in Ohio became the first American college to welcome
women as well as men in 1833.
• In 1837 Mary Lyon established the first women’s college in the United States,
________________________________________________ College in Massachusetts.
• Many women became ____________________ during the Reform Era.
• This gave them a fundamental role in shaping American life.
Urban Reform, Labor, & Temperance
• Urban reforms during the Reform Era were implemented largely by female reform
societies.
• Women’s contributions to the _______________ movement arose from their firsthand
experiences as workers.
• Some of the earliest labor _______________ were held by women who were trying to
improve their working conditions.
• Many participants in the ____________________________ movement were women.
• Because women were economically dependent on men, they and their children were often
the victims of men’s excessive alcohol consumption.
Seneca Falls Convention
• The ______________________________________________________ was held in July
1848 in Seneca Falls, New York.
• It was the first women’s rights convention held in America.
• Many historians mark it as the beginning of the modern American __________________
movement.
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Many women wanted to obtain political power in order to advance their reforms.
Other women thought that political power should be available to women because it was
______________ and reasonable.
The time was right for women—who had long worked to improve the lives of others—to
fight to improve their own lives.
________________________________ and _____________________________
organized the Seneca Falls Convention.
Mott was a prominent abolitionist.
Stanton, like Mott, was also a dedicated and experienced abolitionist.
Mott and Stanton were motivated by their experiences of discrimination at the World’s
______________________________________ Convention in London in 1840.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott called a convention on behalf of women’s
rights.
Held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York
Attended by about 300 people
Produced the _____________________________________________
Written by Stanton and signed by 100 participants—68 women and 32 men
It publicly stated their belief that “all men and ___________________ are created equal.”
Fighting Against Slavery
Main Idea
The movement to end slavery dominated the Reform Era.
Reading Focus
• What was life like for enslaved African Americans in the South?
• How did people in the South fight against slavery?
• What were the major developments in the abolition movement?
The Lives of Enslaved African Americans
• Including the colonial period, slavery had been an American institution for __________
centuries.
• Enslaved African Americans were held in every colony, northern and southern.
• In the North, slavery continued to exist in some form until the ______________.
• By 1860 nearly ___________________ African Americans lived in slavery in the South.
• Enslaved men, women, and children worked every day of their lives, from the time they
were old enough to perform chores until they were too old to be of any more use to the
slaveholder.
• Most enslaved people lived on farms or plantations in the ____________, where cotton
was a leading crop.
• They worked planting, tending, picking, processing, and loading cotton.
• Other jobs included the many other tasks needed to maintain a farm or plantation, such as
constructing and repairing buildings.
• Other plantation slaves worked as servants in the slaveholder’s house.
• Some enslaved people were skilled ______________________, and many worked as
blacksmiths, bricklayers, or carpenters.
• Some slaves lived in cities where they worked in factories and mills, in offices, and in
homes.
• Others worked in mines or in the forest as lumberjacks.
A Life of Want
• Enslaved African Americans were provided with _________________________ food,
clothing, and shelter.
• They seldom received medical care; sickness rarely stopped their work.
• They had no rights under the law because it viewed them as __________________.
• Many slaveholders treated their slaves relatively well. But they generally did so in order
to secure loyal service, not out of any great sense of humanity.
• Some slaveholders used a wide variety of _________________________, such as
beating, whipping, starving, and threatening a person’s family members, to ensure
obedience.
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Children were routinely _____________________________ from their parents, brothers
from their sisters, and husbands from their wives.
African Americans developed ways to _______________________ and bring some light
into their lives through religion, storytelling, and music.
The Antislavery Movement in the South
• In 1860, about 215,000 African Americans in the South were ________ blacks.
– Former slaves who had been _____________________________, or freed, by
slaveholders
– More typically, some were free because their ancestors had been freed.
• They still faced harsh legal and social discrimination.
• Free blacks aided people escaping slavery and spoke out for freedom.
Slave revolts
• An uprising led by __________________________________ in 1830 became the
deadliest slave revolt in American history.
• New laws were enacted to strictly limit the movements and meetings of slaves.
Escape
• Some enslaved people chose a _______________________ way to end their
enslavement—they escaped.
• They tried to reach the free states of the North or Canada or Mexico, where slavery was
illegal.
• No one knows exactly how many slaves escaped.
• Thousands attempted escape, and although most were soon ______________________,
many did make it to freedom.
• _____________________________________________: an informal, constantly
changing network of escape routes
• Sympathetic white people and free blacks provided escapees with food, hiding places,
and directions to their next destination, closer to ______________ territory.
• ____________________________________________: famous Underground Railroad
worker who had escaped slavery and helped hundreds of slaves to freedom
The Abolition Movement
• The _____________________________________ movement was a campaign to abolish,
or end, slavery.
• No other movement attracted as many followers, garnered as much attention, elicited
such strong feelings, or had such an impact on the history of the United States.
• The abolition movement had deep roots in ___________________________.
• Many religious people in the North saw slavery as a clear ______________ wrong that
went directly against their beliefs.
• By 1836 more than 500 antislavery societies existed.
Abolition leaders
• _________________________________________________________: published an
abolitionist newspaper for 35 years, until slavery was abolished
• Sarah and Angelina _______________: sisters who were outspoken campaigners for
abolition and women’s rights
• _____________________________________________________: a former slave,
supported women’s rights, but is best remembered as an abolitionist leader
Opposing abolition
• Southern slaveholders: an attack on their livelihood, their way of life, and even on their
religion
• Slaveholders and politicians: slavery was essential to the _________________________;
by 1860 cotton accounted for about __________ percent of the country’s exports
• Northern _________________: freedom for slaves might mean more competition for jobs