Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Nature – most influential book written– Led to the birth of the transcendentalist movement– Influenced Henry David Thoreau

• Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

• To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

• What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

The birth of industrial society posed many new challenges for Americans. The mid 1800’s witnessed the birth of several major movements for social reform. A reform movement tries to make changes in society to correct social abuses and to improve living conditions.

Women’s Rights• Elizabeth Cady Stanton

– Fought for woman’s suffrage and equal rights– Wrote Declaration of Sentiments, call to arms

for women, at the Senaca Falls Convention– Worked closely with Susan B. Anthony

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

Alcohol abuse was widespread among men, women, and children. Reformers linked alcohol abuse to crime, the breakup of families, and mental illness. In the late 1820s, the Temperance movement (a public campaign against the sale or drinking of alcohol) was started.

In the mid-1800s the spirit of reform made its way to the classroom. At this time, few children attended school because of the cost. Efforts to change this practice were led by Horace Mann, who would later receive the nickname “father of American public schools” .

Reformers saw education as a way of solving some of the problems in society, such as poverty and crime.

Abolitionists were people who were opposed to slavery. In 1807 the Congress abolished the importation of slaves. Abolitionists were now demanding a law to end slavery in the South.

William Lloyd Garrison was a vocal abolitionist and publisher of the newspaper The Liberator. He also formed the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.

Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, lectured against slavery and quickly became a leader in the abolitionist movement.

In 1847, he started his own antislavery newspaper, North Star.

The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th century Black Slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists who were sympathetic to their cause

Harriet Tubman was a runaway slave turned abolitionists, who helped hundreds of slaves escape along the underground railroad.