Obj- SWBAT- Describe how the reform

movements of the 1800s affected life in the

United States

DO NOW- When and how did women receive the

right to vote?

The Second Great Awakening

“Spiritual Reform From Within” [Religious Revivalism]

Social Reforms & Redefining the Ideal of Equality

Temperance

Asylum & Penal Reform

Education

Women’s Rights

Abolitionism

Revivalism

Charles G.

Finney

PROBLEMS TO

SOLVE

Lack of Faith &

Personal

Responsibility

• Challenged the

belief that God had

predestined your

salvation

(Heaven/Hell)

• Stressed personal

responsibility—your

actions matter

METHODS USED

•Held large, public

revival meetings

(religious

gatherings)

•Influential

speakers used

moving sermons

to motivate

followers

Second Great Awakening Revival Meeting

The ranges of tents, the fires, reflecting light…; the candles and lamps illuminating the encampment; hundreds moving to and fro…;the preaching, praying, singing, and shouting,… like the sound of many waters, was enough to swallow up all the powers of contemplation.

Charles G. Finney (1792 – 1895)

“soul-shaking” conversion

R1-2

The leaders of the Second Great Awakening preached that their

followers had a sacred responsibility to improve life on Earth through

reform, especially for the disadvantaged

Transcendentalism

Ralph Waldo

Emerson

PROBLEMS TO

SOLVE

Personal

Responsibility for

actions

•Believed that

faith could be

found without

large, loud, public

revival meetings.

METHODS USED

•Stressed individual

strength & a simple

life

•Truth found in

nature

•Used literature to

call for human rights

(wanted to end

slavery, reform

institutions &

prisons)

Transcendentalist Thinking Man must acknowledge a body of moral

truths that were intuitive and must TRANSCEND more sensational proof:

1. The infinite benevolence of God.

2. The infinite benevolence of nature.

3. The divinity of man.

They instinctively rejected all secular authority and the authority of organized churches and the Scriptures, of law, or of conventions

Transcendentalism (European Romanticism)

Therefore, if man was divine, it would be wicked that he should be held in slavery, or his soul corrupted by superstition, or his mind clouded by ignorance!!

Thus, the role of the reformer was to restore man to that divinity which God had endowed them.

Transcendentalist Intellectuals/Writers Concord, MA

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

Nature (1832) Walden

(1854)

Resistance to Civil Disobedience

(1849)

Self-Reliance (1841)

“The American Scholar” (1837)

R3-1/3/4/5

The Transcendentalist Agenda Give freedom to the slave.

Give well-being to the poor and the miserable.

Give learning to the ignorant.

Give health to the sick.

Give peace and justice to society.

School & Prison Reform Horace Mann

Dorothea Dix

PROBLEMS TO

SOLVE

Lack of Education

•Few received a formal

education beyond 10

yrs

Inhumane treatment of

Mentally ill and

Prisoners

•Mentally ill were jailed

with prisoners, both

treated harshly

METHODS USED

•Fought for public

schools for all

•Published fact

finding reports,

spoke out

publicly, stressed

rehabilitation for

prisoners

Educational Reform

Religious Training Secular Education

MA always on the forefront of public educational reform * 1st state to establish tax support for local public schools.

By 1860 every state offered free public education to whites. * US had one of the highest literacy rates.

“Father of American Education”

Horace Mann (1796-1859)

children were clay in the hands of teachers and school officials

children should be “molded” into a state of perfection

discouraged corporal punishment

established state teacher- training programs

R3-6

The McGuffey Eclectic Readers

Used religious parables to teach “American

values.” Teach middle class morality and respect for order.

Teach “3 Rs” + “Protestant ethic” (frugality, hard work, sobriety)

R3-8

Slavery & Abolition Frederick

Douglass

William Lloyd

Garrison

PROBLEMS TO

SOLVE

1.Slavery in the

South

2.Apathy toward

slavery in the

North

METHODS USED

•Douglass toured

the north to speak

out against

slavery

•Both Douglass &

Garrison

published anti-

slavery

newspapers

Women & Reform

Susan B.

Anthony

Elizabeth Cady

Stanton

PROBLEMS TO

SOLVE

1.Women’s Rights

2.Temperance

(alcohol abuse)

3.Abolition of

Slavery

METHODS USED

•Held large public

protests

•Held Women’s

Rights

convention 1848

(Seneca Falls)

•Spoke out

through rallies &

various writings

Women’s rights advocates seek to break the Cult of Domesticity

The belief that women should only work in the home to perform domestic duties (children, house, family)

Women call for property rights, custody rights for their children The right to vote, and sit on juries Campaign for equal political rights

Women’s Rights

Early 19c Women 1. Unable to vote. 2. Legal status of a minor. 3. Single could own her own

property. 4. Married no control over her

property or her children. 5. Could not initiate divorce. 6. Couldn’t make wills, sign a

contract, or bring suit in court without her husband’s permission.

Public Drunkenness remained a serious problem

Women believed that alcohol use by men was hurting families and society

Women became the leaders of the temperance movement.

Temperance Movement