Antebellum Culture
and Reform
1. The Romantic Impulse
a. Nationalism and Romanticism in
American Painting
i.
Hudson River School
b. Literature and the Quest for
Liberation
i.
Cooper and the American
Wilderness
ii.
Herman Melville
c. Literature in the Antebellum South
i.
Southern Romanticism
d. The Transcendentalists
i.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
ii.
Thoreau and Civil
Disobedience
e. The Defense of Nature
f. Visions of Utopia
i.
Brook Farm
ii.
New Harmony
g. Redefining Gender Roles
i.
Redefined Gender Roles at
the Oneida Community
ii.
The Shakers
h. The Mormons
i.
Joseph Smith
ii.
Establishment of Salt Lake
City
2. Remaking Society
a. Revivalism, Morality, and Order
i.
Revivalism in the BurnedOver District
ii.
Finney’s Doctrine of
Regeneration
b. The Temperance Crusade
i.
American Society for the
Promotion of Temperance
ii.
Cultural Divisions over
Alcohol
c. Health Fads and Phrenology
i.
Phrenology
d. Medical Science
i.
Discovery of Contagion
e. Reforming Education
i.
Horace Mann’s Reforms
ii. Rapid Growth of Public
Education
iii. Achievement of
Educational Reform
iv.
The Benevolent Empire
f. Rehabilitation
i.
The Asylum Movement
ii. Prison Reform
g. The Indian Reservation
h. The Rise of Feminism
i.
Reform Movements and the
Rise of Feminism
ii. Seneca Falls
iii. Limited Progress Women
3. The Crusade Against Slavery
a. Early Opposition to Slavery
i.
American Colonization
Society
ii. Failure of Colonization
b. Garrison and Abolitionism
i.
Garrison and the Liberator
ii. American Antislavery
Society
c. Black Abolitionists
i.
Free Black’s Commitment
to Abolition
ii. Fredrick Douglass
d. Anti-Abolitionism
i.
Violent Reprisals
e. Abolitionism Divided
i.
Moderates versus
Extremists
ii. The Amistad Case
iii. Harriet Beecher Stowe
iv.
Abolitionism’