Chapter 14
New Movements in America
1815 - 1850
I. Immigrants and Urban Challenges
• Between 1840-1860 – 4 million European
immigrants
• Irish Potato Famine
– 1841 – potato blight (fungus) kills Irish potatoes
– Irish go to U.S. to escape starvation
– Very poor, worked unskilled jobs in cities, low wages
• German Revolution
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1848 – revolution against harsh rule fails
Germans go to U.S. to escape political persecution
Settled in Midwest on farms and rural areas
Some worked low paying jobs (seamstress, bricklayer, clerks, etc.)
Anti-Immigration Movements
• Native-born Americans feared losing jobs to
immigrants willing to work for less
• Nativists: Americans opposed to immigration
• 1849 – Know-Nothing Party: supported
measures making it difficult for foreigners to
hold public office
Rapid Growth of Cities
• Cities grow because of jobs and transportation
• Middle Class: social and economic level between
the wealthy and the poor
• Entertainment
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Libraries
Theater and concerts
Playing cards
Bowling, boxing, baseball
New York Knickerbockers
1862
Urban Problems
• City residents lived near workplaces – many lived
in tenements: poorly designed apartment
buildings that housed large numbers of people
• Dangers:
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No clean water
No health regulations
Fire
Crime
Ways to remove waste
II. American Arts
• Transcendentalism: belief that people could
transcend, or rise above, material things in life
(simplicity and individualism)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
Margaret Fuller
• Utopian Communities: groups of people who
tried to form perfect societies
American Romanticism
• Great interest in nature, emphasis on individual
expression, and rejection of established rules
• Artists:
– Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
– Herman Melville – Moby Dick
– Edgar Allan Poe – “The Raven”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – “The Song of Hiawatha”
– Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass
– Emily Dickinson – well known female poet
III. Reforming Society
• Second Great Awakening: 1790-1800s –
Christian renewal movement – led to
movements to fix social problems
• Temperance Movement: urged people to stop
drinking alcohol – thought alcohol caused
violence, poverty, and crime
Prison Reform
• Dorthea Dix: reformed
prison cells and
treatment of prisoners
– created hospitals for
mentally ill
• Others built reform
schools for children
Improvements in Education
• Common School Movement: children were
taught in a common place, regardless of
background – created by Horace Mann
• Schools and colleges for women opened
• Thomas Gallaudet: founded first free school
for the hearing impaired in 1817
African American Communities
• African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church
• 1835 – Oberlin College becomes first to accept
African Americans
• Some opportunity to attend schools in North
and Midwest – very limited in South –
– illegal for slaves to learn to read and write
– slaveholders feared revolt
IV. The Movement to End Slavery
• Abolition: complete
end to slavery
• Quakers were among
the first abolitionists
• Abolitionists differed
though on treatment of
African Americans
• Colonization: establish
a colony for free slaves
in Africa - Liberia
Famous Abolitionists
• William Lloyd Garrison:
published The Liberator
– founded the American
Anti-Slavery Society in
1833
• Sarah and Angelina
Grimke: white
southerners – wrote
Appeal to the Christian
Women of the South in
1836
Famous Abolitionist
• Frederick Douglass:
escaped slave who
learned to read and
write – published The
North Star
• Sojourner Truth: former
slave who gave
dramatic anti-slavery
speeches
The Underground Railroad
• Network of people who
arranged transportation
and hiding places for
fugitive or escaped
slaves
• Harriet Tubman: most
famous “conductor” –
helped over 300 slaves
to freedom
Opposition to Ending Slavery
• Northern workers feared
freed slaves would take
their jobs
• Southerners saw it as a
threat to way of life socially
and economically
• Gag Rule: forbade House of
Representatives to discuss
anti-slavery petitions –
overturned by John Quincy
Adams as violation of 1st
Amendment
V. Women’s Rights
• Fighting for African American rights led many
female abolitionists to fight for women’s rights
• Margaret Fuller: wrote Women in the 19th
Century in 1845 – stressed individualism
• Critics of women’s rights pointed to traditional
roles for women in the home
Seneca Fall Convention
• First public meeting about
women’s rights held in
Seneca Falls, NY in 1848
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Lucretia Mott
• Declaration of Sentiments:
detailed beliefs about social
injustice toward women –
modeled after Declaration
of Independence
Famous Women’s Rights Leaders
• Lucy Stone: gifted
women’s rights speaker
• Susan B. Anthony:
turned women’s rights
into a political
movement for equality
and voting
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
founder of the National
Women’s Suffrage
(voting) Association