Reforming American Society

1. Reforming American Society

2. Second Great Awakening • Renewal of religious faith in the 1790s and early 1800s. • Many preachers shared the message that “ all sin consists in selfishness” and that religious faith led people to help others. • This teaching helped awaken a spirit of reform; Americans began to believe that they could act to make things better.

3. Temperance Societies • The temperance movement was a campaign to stop the drinking of alcohol. • Heavy drinking was common in the early 180s • Some workers spent most of their wages on alcohol—leaving their family with little to no money (because of this, many women joined the temperance movement). • They would hand out pamphlets urging people to stop drinking, as well as put on dramas to show the evils of alcohol. • Business owners supported the temperance movement because alcohol impaired workers.

4. Fighting for Workers’ Rights • In the 1830s, American workers began to organize to demand better working conditions. • Young women in the Lowell mills were some of the first to form a labor union. • This is a group of workers who band together to seek better working conditions. • Some also came together to call for shorter hours or higher wages • The strikes and protests of these workers eventually led Martin Van Buren to order a 10-hour workday for government workers during his presidency.

5. Improving Education • In the 1830s Americans also began to demand better schools. • In 1837 Massachusetts was the state to set up a board of education—it’s head was Horace Mann • Mann called public education “the great equalizer” • Many other Northern states began opening schools-including private colleges (Antioch, Oberlin, Notre Dame and Northwestern) • Women could not attend most colleges. • One exception was Oberlin College in Ohio—Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn a medical degree in 1849.

6. Caring for the Needy • Dorothea Dix was a reformer from Boston who spent Sunday’s teaching at a women’s jail. • She discovered that some women who were locked in cold, filthy cells—were only there because they were mentally ill. • Dix began to travel all over the US to promote legislation to improve care for the mentally ill. • Other reformers also wanted to help those with disabilities • Thomas H. Gallaudet—opened the first school for deaf children • Samuel G. Howe—founded Perkins School for the Blind • Reformers also tried to improve prisons—that would help to rehabilitate adults in jail.

7. Abolition • Abolitionists called for an end to slavery. • It began in the late 1700s and by 1804, most Northern states had outlawed slavery. • Abolitionists then began to demand a law to end slavery in the South. • William Lloyd Garrison published a newspaper called The Liberator. It called for an end to slavery. • Sarah and Angelina Grimke were sisters who grew up in the South—they thought slavery was wrong and moved to the north where they became Quakers and joined an antislavery society. They spoke out for abolition.

8. Abolition • Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth were both former slaves who became abolitionists. • They spoke out against slavery by telling about their lives. • Douglas wrote an autobiography that described how it felt to be a slave—he also published an anti-slavery newspaper. • Sojourner Truth had fled her owners and went to live with Quakers—she spoke for abolition in the North and drew huge crowds.

9. Abolition • Some people helped slaves escape to freedom along the Underground Railroad. • Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave helped others escape to freedom along the railroad. • She made 19 dangerous journeys to free enslaved persons. • Among the people she saved were her parents.

10. Women’s Rights • Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were also abolitionists. • They were part of an American group that attended an anti-slavery convention in London in 1840—but when they arrived they were stopped by men who said that women shouldn’t speak in public. • There were others who thought women should stay out of public life. • At the end of this convention, Stanton and Mott decided to demand equal rights for women.

11. Women’s Rights • In July 1848, they held the Seneca Falls Convention in Seneca Falls, NY. It called for women’s rights. • The women wrote a document like the Declaration of Independence that listed several resolutions. • It ended with a demand for rights. • The group at the convention agreed with most of the resolution except for women’s suffrage—right to vote. • Some people made fun of the women’s rights movement.

12. Women’s Rights • In the mid-1850s, three women added their support for the women’s movement. • Sojourner Truth gave a speech for women’s rights at a convention in Ohio. • Maria Mitchell was an astronomer that helped found the Association for the Advancement of Women. • Susan B. Anthony had worked for both temperance and abolition—she helped build the women’s movement into a national organization • She worked to give married women the right to earn own their property and wages; she also fought for their right to vote.