Reform Movements of the Early 19 th Century

Reform Movements of the Early 19th Century

Educational reform • Public schools began to open to create an educated population of voters • Teacher’s began to be specially trained and their salaries increased • More schools opened • School attendance became mandatory through elementary school • High schools began to become more common

Horace Mann • 1796 – 1859 • President of the Massachusetts Senate • Stepped down to head the new Massachusetts School Board for 12 years • Established the standard other states would follow for creating public school systems and teacher-training programs

Calvin Wiley • 1819 – 1887 • North Carolina’s first school superintendent • Championed creating state standards for what should be taught in schools • More difficult to get children in school in the South because they were needed for farm work

Female Education • Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary in NY (1821) • Mary Lyon’s Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in MA (1837) • Elizabeth Blackwell: 1st woman to earn a medical degree, built hospital for women and children staffed entirely by women

Prison reform • Inmates were not separated by offense and prisons included the violent & mentally ill • Idea of rehabilitation rather than punishment began to take hold • States began to build modern prisons (penitentiaries) to house long-term prisoners

Mental health reform • Mentally ill received no treatment, kept in prisons with common criminals where they received not even the most basic of medical care and were often tortured • The field of “mental health” didn’t exist yet

Dorothea Dix • 1802 – 1887 • Former teacher who took up the plight of the mentally ill • Traveled and wrote articles to expose the abuses suffered by the mentally ill • Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh was named after her in 1856

Labor Reform • First labor unions began to form – pushed for higher wages, shorter workdays • Early unions had little success – ignored by employers, not supported by the government who saw them as a threat to American industry

Abolitionist Movement • Movement to end slavery in the United States • Took on several different forms • Championed primarily by Northerners and women • Opposed slavery on moral grounds

Gradualism • Earliest form of abolitionism called for the gradual freeing of the slaves – stop importing new slaves, then phase out slavery over time • Slave owners would be compensated for their lost property • South would have time to adjust its economy

American Colonization Society • 1816 • Called for freeing the slaves but then sending them back to Africa • Helped establish country of Liberia in East Africa as a home for repatriated slaves • Too many slaves to be effective, too expensive to transport millions • Most slaves at this point had never seen Africa and didn’t want to go

David Walker • 1785 – 1830 • Free African-American from Wilmington, NC who settled in Boston • Published pamphlet “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,” calling for a violent rebellion by slaves; pamphlet was banned throughout the South • Died under mysterious circumstances – murdered?

William Lloyd Garrison • 1805 – 1879 • Editor of the Liberator – an abolitionist newspaper in Boston • Demanded immediate emancipation of the slaves rather than any kind of gradual end to slavery • Founded American Antislavery Society in 1833 – by 1838 the AAS had over 250,000 members

Harriet Beecher Stowe • 1811 – 1896 • Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel which exposed conditions under which slaves lived in the South • Made real to many Northerners how brutal the slave system could really be

Sarah & Angelina Grimké • Sarah: 1792 – 1873 • Angelina: 1805 – 79 • Grew up on plantation in South Carolina but became avid abolitionists • Wrote and gave speeches on the realities of slavery

Frederick Douglass • 1818 – 1895 • Born a slave, but escaped at age 20 • Became a speaker and writer – his autobiography was a bestseller • Convinced many whites that Africans were intelligent and capable of learning (many in the South had made claims that Africans were not) • Second wife was white, which cost him support of fellow African-Americans in his later years

Sojourner Truth • 1797 – 1883 • Born a slave in NY, gained her freedom when NY emancipated all slaves in 1827 • Became a famous abolitionist speaker, especially after her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech in 1851

Reaction to Abolition Movement • Obviously, most people in the South opposed the abolition movement • Many in North feared the divisiveness that the movement would cause between North and South; they would rather maintain the status quo and avoid conflict • Some in North feared that freed slaves would all move North, flooding the job market and driving down wages • Others feared that if the South’s economy collapsed, it would send the entire nation into a massive economic depression

Temperance Movement • Men who drank often neglected their families • Many bars and saloons, high rate of alcoholism, especially along the frontier and in large Eastern cities • 1833: American Temperance Union created • 1851: Maine banned sale of alcohol; by 1855 12 other states had done so as well

Women’s Rights Movement • Women’s traditional roles in the North began to change as fewer families worked on farms • As women began to take on more social roles and become active in reform movements, they began to demand more political rights

Lucretia Mott • 1793 – 1880 • First American “feminist” to push for women to gain access to a voice in politics • Like many women, began her social activism with the abolitionist movement

Elizabeth Cady Stanton • 1815 – 1902 • Argued for women’s suffrage, right to divorce, own property, and access to birth control • Also strongly supported the abolitionist and temperance movements

Susan B. Anthony • 1820 – 1906 • Traveled Europe and the US giving 75 – 100 speeches each year for over 40 years • Also a force in the abolitionist and temperance movements • Arrested in 1872 for illegally voting the presidential election

Seneca Falls Conference • 1848, Seneca Falls. NY • Organized by Mott and Stanton • Issued the “Declarations of Sentiments and Resolutions” which added “and women” to the Declaration of Independence’s “all men are created equal” • Began the call for suffrage for women

Reform Movements of the Early 19 th Century