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Antebellum Reforms Trying to Improve America From: Photo from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanneorla/86865222

Transcript of Antebellum Reforms Trying to Improve America From: Photo from Flickr: .

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Antebellum Reforms

Trying to Improve America

From: Photo from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanneorla/86865222

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Antebellum Reform Movements

In the period before the Civil War, called the Antebellum (or “before war”) period, several groups tried to improve society. The pressures of slavery, the argument between the powers of the national and state governments, and the rise of new industries led people to question society. These efforts at improvement were called reform movements. Some were successful and some were not. The reform movements fell into six major areas.

Photo from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ogdenny/94613331/

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Six Areas of Reform1. The Temperance Movement tried to limit the amount

of alcohol that most Americans were drinking. People drank strong whiskey, not only in the taverns and bars, but also at home.

2. The second movement tried to organize public schools so that most students would attend school for at least enough time to master elementary reading and math.

3. The prison reform movement tried to help those in prisons and mental institutions.

4. The Utopian Movement tried to solve the problems of US society.

5. The Women’s Rights Movement tried to encourage women’s rights.

6. Finally, the most successful and eventually most well-known movement was the Abolition Movement, which tried to move to free all slaves.

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Temperance

The Temperance movement was first organized by members of the Quaker and Methodist churches. People joined Temperance societies to encourage people to stop drinking alcohol.

Only the state of Maine adopted a law to make drinking illegal (1846) but several states passed laws to regulate alcohol.

The movement continued until 1919 with an amendment to the Constitution that made alcohol illegal. The amendment was later repealed.

The above illustration is called “The fruits of temperance” Currier & Ives, 1848. From Library of Congress website.

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Public School Reform

The movement to improve public schools was led by Horace Mann of Massachusetts. Mann felt that all students were entitled to an education regardless of their financial standing. Mann was the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education and reorganized the entire state school system. Other states used Massachusetts as a model. Mann helped introduce new ideas about education, including schools to train teachers and a six-month-minimum school year.

Photo of Horace Mann from Library of Congress website.

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Prison Reform

The prison reform movement was led by Dorothea Dix from Boston, Massachusetts. Dix had volunteered to teach a Sunday school class for women prison inmates. The conditions she witnessed horrified her-women in unheated, filthy, boxes where no one checked on them for days. Dorothea went to the newspapers and to legislatures to get the conditions improved.

She also learned that the mentally ill were being kept with criminals, and she pushed for the separate treatment of the mentally ill.

Dix toured NC and in 1850 a hospital for the insane was built in Raleigh due to her efforts. The hospital was called “Dix Hill” and later Dix Hospital until it was reorganized in late 2007.

Photo of Dorothea Dix from Library of Congress website.

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Utopian Movement

The Utopian Movement attempted to fix the corruptions of society. Groups of people lived by themselves with unusual rules. Many were religious groups, and most believed in communal living, where all goods belonged to the group, not the individual.

Photo above copied from Flickr website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/timjarrett/Buildings in a Shaker Village. The buildings were color coded for the convenience of people doing business with the Shakers. Brick buildings were important and had names; yellow buildings were light industry; red buildings were heavy industry; white buildings were for ministry. 

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The Shakers

The Shakers, a religious group led by Mother Ann Lee, believed in communal living (where no one had individual possessions but everything belonged to the group), productive labor, celibacy, pacifism, the equality of the sexes, and a ritual noted for its dancing and shaking

Picture above of the 1827 Shaker Meetinghouse in Enfield Shakers Historic District, Enfield, Connecticut.

Photograph by B. Clouette, courtesy of Connecticut Historical Commission, National Register collection

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Brook Farm

Brook Farm was a Utopian Community where writers and thinkers came together to discuss ideas. Many of those at Brook Farm were transcendentalists, people who believed that a spirit exists in all people as well as all the world around us. George Ripley organized Brook Farm and for six years it was successful. Members received housing, food, wages, and schooling for children from Brook Farm. Then a large fire and some scandals in the organization led to Brook Farm dissolving. Picture above is of the Margaret Fuller Cottage at Brook Farm, in Suffolk County, Massachusetts.

Photograph by Polly M. Rettig, Landmark Review Project

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The Oneida Community

The Oneida Community in New York was founded by John Humphreys Noyes. The group believed in polygamy (being married to more than one person at the same time) and communal property (all goods belonged to the entire group). Their beliefs about marriage and other elements led to Noyes fleeing to Canada and the Community being reorganized.

Picture above of the Oneida Community Mansion House, Madison County, New YorkPhotograph courtesy of Oneida Ltd.

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Women’s RightsDuring this time the movement began for women’s rights.

At this time women were not allowed to own property independent from their husbands and they could not vote. Husbands could treat them any way they wished.

In 1848 the first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Fall, New York. It was held because two of its leaders, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, could not attend an anti-slavery convention because they were women. Although the convention wrote a Declaration of Sentiments outlining the concerns of women, the movement did not accomplish that much. It would soon be overshadowed by the abolition movement.

Photo above from Library of Congress website.

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By far the most successful reform movement of this time was the Abolition Movement, the movement to stop slavery. This movement would become the largest and most well-known of the reform movements.

Abolition Movement

Photo from Library of Congress website.

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Leaders of the Abolition

Movement

The slavery question continued to be a major issue in the US. Several individuals became well-known leaders in the abolition movement.

Above are portraits of Charles Sumner, Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Horace Greeley, and Henry Wilson, all abolitionists.

Photo from Library of Congress website.

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William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison of Boston was a white newspaper owner who felt that all slaves should be freed immediately. He also felt that Southern slaveowners did not need to be paid for the freed slaves because slavery was immoral. He published The Liberator, one of the most well-known abolitionist newspapers. Garrison was hated and feared in the South. He also helped to start the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.

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Frederick Douglass

Douglass was an escaped slave who made his way to the North and spoke against slavery. He was a gifted speaker and some even thought that because he was so well-spoken that he never could have been a slave. He lectured in both the US and England against slavery and was active in the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses to help slaves escape to freedom.

Photo of Frederick Douglass from Library of Congress website.

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Harriet Tubman

Harriet was born in Maryland. After she married a free black man she was afraid she would be sold South, so she escaped. She returned to Maryland to help other members of her family escape, and in all she helped almost 300 slaves get North to freedom. Called the “Moses of her people” she was an abolitionist and later served as a spy during the Civil War.

Photo of Harriet Tubman from Library of Congress website.