Chapter 14

1. Chapter 14 New Movements in America 1815 - 1850

2. I. Immigrants and Urban Challenges • Between 1840-1860 – 4 million European immigrants • Irish Potato Famine • 1841 – potato blight (fungus) kills Irish potatoes • Irish go to U.S. to escape starvation • Very poor, worked unskilled jobs in cities, low wages • German Revolution • 1848 – revolution against harsh rule fails • Germans go to U.S. to escape political persecution • Settled in Midwest on farms and rural areas • Some worked low paying jobs (seamstress, bricklayer, clerks, etc.)

3. Anti-Immigration Movements • Native-born Americans feared losing jobs to immigrants willing to work for less • Nativists: Americans opposed to immigration • 1849 – Know-Nothing Party: supported measures making it difficult for foreigners to hold public office

4. Rapid Growth of Cities • Cities grow because of jobs and transportation • Middle Class: social and economic level between the wealthy and the poor • Entertainment • Libraries • Theater and concerts • Playing cards • Bowling, boxing, baseball New York Knickerbockers 1862

5. Urban Problems • City residents lived near workplaces – many lived in tenements: poorly designed apartment buildings that housed large numbers of people • Dangers: • No clean water • No health regulations • Fire • Crime • Ways to remove waste

6. II. American Arts • Transcendentalism: belief that people could transcend, or rise above, material things in life (simplicity and individualism) • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller • Utopian Communities: groups of people who tried to form perfect societies

7. American Romanticism • Great interest in nature, emphasis on individual expression, and rejection of established rules • Artists: • Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter • Herman Melville – Moby Dick • Edgar Allan Poe – “The Raven” • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – “Paul Revere’s Ride” • Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass • Washington Irving – Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Emily Dickinson – well known female poet

8. III. Reforming Society • Second Great Awakening: 1790-1800s – Christian renewal movement – led to movements to fix social problems • Temperance Movement: urged people to stop drinking alcohol – thought alcohol caused violence, poverty, and crime

9. Prison Reform • Dorthea Dix: reformed prison cells and treatment of prisoners – created hospitals for mentally ill • Others built reform schools for children

10. Improvements in Education • Common School Movement: children were taught in a common place, regardless of background – created by Horace Mann • Schools and colleges for women opened • Thomas Gallaudet: founded first free school for the hearing impaired in 1817

11. African American Communities • African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church • 1835 – Oberlin College becomes first to accept African Americans • Some opportunity to attend schools in North and Midwest – very limited in South – • illegal for slaves to learn to read and write • slaveholders feared revolt

12. IV. The Movement to End Slavery • Abolition: complete end to slavery • Quakers were among the first abolitionists • Abolitionists differed though on treatment of African Americans • Colonization: establish a colony for free slaves in Africa - Liberia

13. Famous Abolitionists • William Lloyd Garrison: published The Liberator – founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 • Sarah and Angelina Grimke: white southerners – wrote Appeal to the Christian Women of the South in 1836

14. Garrison’s 1st Anti-Slavery Speech • I. That the slaves of this country, whether we consider their moral, intellectual or social conditions, are preeminently entitled to the prayers, and sympathies, and charities, of the American people; and their claims for redress are as strong as those of any Americans could be in a similar condition. • II. That, as the free States—by which I mean non-slave-holding States—are constitutionally involved in the guilt of slavery, by adhering to a national compact that sanctions it; and in the danger, by liability to be called upon for aid in case of insurrection; they have the right to remonstrate against its continuance, and it is their duty to assist in its overthrow. • III. That no justificative plea for the perpetuity of slavery can be found in the condition of its victims; and no barrier against our righteous interference, in the laws which authorize the buying, selling and possessing of slaves, nor in the hazard of a collision with slaveholders. • IV. That education and freedom will elevate our colored population to a rank with the white—making them useful, intelligent and peaceable citizens.

15. Famous Abolitionist • Frederick Douglass: escaped slave who learned to read and write – published The North Star • Sojourner Truth: former slave who gave dramatic anti-slavery speeches

16. Frederick Douglass Writings • (1851) “The opinion was ... whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion I know nothing.... My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant.... It [was] common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age."I do not recollect ever seeing my mother by the light of day. ... She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone." • (1882) “I have often been asked, how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. And my readers may share the same curiosity. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath, and the 'quick round of blood,' I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life.”

17. The Underground Railroad • Network of people who arranged transportation and hiding places for fugitive or escaped slaves • Harriet Tubman: most famous “conductor” – helped over 300 slaves to freedom

18. Opposition to Ending Slavery • Northern workers feared freed slaves would take their jobs • Southerners saw it as a threat to way of life socially and economically • Gag Rule: forbade House of Representatives to discuss anti-slavery petitions – overturned by John Quincy Adams as violation of 1st Amendment

19. V. Women’s Rights • Fighting for African American rights led many female abolitionists to fight for women’s rights • Margaret Fuller: wrote Women in the 19th Century in 1845 – stressed individualism • Critics of women’s rights pointed to traditional roles for women in the home

20. Seneca Fall Convention • First public meeting about women’s rights held in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott • Declaration of Sentiments: detailed beliefs about social injustice toward women – modeled after Declaration of Independence

21. Famous Women’s Rights Leaders • Lucy Stone: gifted women’s rights speaker • Susan B. Anthony: turned women’s rights into a political movement for equality and voting • Elizabeth Cady Stanton: founder of the National Women’s Suffrage (voting) Association