Antebellum Reform Movements

Change in the 19th Century

Nationalism & Romanticism• Expression of inner spirit• Connection to nature• New ideas about American identity

Hudson River School – Thomas Cole

Hudson River School – Thomas Cole

Winslow Homer

Charles Bulfinch

American Literature & American Identity

• James Fenimore Cooper “Leatherstocking Tales” Last of the Mohicans

• Walt Whitman – poet of America• Washington Irving• Herman Melville – Moby Dick• Edgar Allen Poe – “The Raven”• Henry Longfellow

Transcendentalism

• Philosophical & social movement influenced by romanticism and focusing on nature, reason, and understanding.

• Concord, MA• Ralph Waldo Emerson – “Nature, “ “Self-Reliance”• Henry David Thoreau - Walden• Margaret Fuller – finding self through reform• Theodore Parker

Utopian Communities• Brook Farm – transcendentalism

• George Ripley founder

• New Harmony• Robert Owen – founded – “Village of Cooperation”

• Oneida Community• John Humphrey Noyes – Perfectionists; children raised

communally, no marriage, liberation of women from male lust

• Shakers• “Mother” Ann Lee – founder – unique religious ritual,

commitment to complete celibacy, more women than men, controlled contact b/t men and woman, equality, social discipline.

Oneida Community

“Mother” Ann Lee

Mormons• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints• John Smith• Book of Mormon• Followers persecuted across the Northwest for radical

religious doctrines including polygamy and secrecy• Nouvoo, Illinois – large Mormon community with

private army• 1844 Smith was killed by an angry mob in Illinois• Brigham Young led the group (12,000) to Utah

Revivalism

•Part of the Second Great Awakening• Every individual was capable of salvation•Reform through the Protestant church• “Burned-over district” in New York

Temperance Crusade

• Excessive use of alcohol targeted–Burden on wives–Abuse of wives and children

• Movement was dominated by women• Promote moral self-improvement and discipline• Protestants v. Catholics• Nativism

Reforming Education

–Reforming Education•Horace Mann – protect democracy• Expansion of public education•Perkins School for the Blind• Education for social order – McGuffey’s

Readers•Noah Webster

Prison & Hospital Reform

• Early 19th Century Jails – criminals, debtors, mentally ill, senile paupers• Asylums and Penitentiary (from the word

penitence)– reform and rehabilitate the inhabitants and • Dorothea Dix – national movement for new

methods of treating the mentally ill• Orphanage reform• Almshouses and workhouses

Feminism

• Sarah & Angelina Grimké• Catharine Beecher• Harriet Beecher Stowe• Lucretia Mott• Elizabeth Cady Stanton• Dorothea Dix• Elizabeth Blackwell• Amelia Bloomer

Abolitionism

– American Colonization Society• Gradual manumission with compensation of masters• Settlement of Liberia

William Lloyd Garrison

• Liberator newspaper• Focus on damage to blacks• Immediate, unconditional, universal

abolition•African Americans – all rights of

American citizenship•American Antislavery Society

Black Abolitionists

•David Walker•Sojourner Truth•Frederick Douglass

Moderates v. Extremists

Amistad Case

Liberty Party

– Free Soiler party– Antislavery did not always = abolitionism