Reform Movements in 19th Century America
Religious Sources of Reform • Second Great Awakening – religious
revivals among Protestants. – Arminian, rather than Calvinist. Salvation was
a matter of choice
• Focus on Second Coming of Christ. Need for reform of society
• Biggest impact among women. Evangelical mission gave women more status, purpose.
• Frontier revivals featured emotional appeals and provided social meetings for settlers.
New religious groups formed as instruments of reform
• Utopian societies created in reaction to urban growth and industrialization. Emphasis on community and withdrawal from society.
• Shakers-Socially radical. Abolished families, practiced celibacy, full of sexual equality.
• Mormons – Organized by Joseph Smith in 1830 – Cooperative Theocracy with himself as the
Prophet
– Smith and his followers moved from New York to Ohio to Missouri, to Illinois.
– Smith was murdered by angry mob – Brigham Young took over, led Mormons to
Utah
Non Religious Utopian Societies • New Harmony, Illinois 1825
– Socialist center founded by Robert Owen to be self-sufficient
– Failed after several years
• Brook Farm Experiment – Transcendentalist in orientation – Rejected society’s standards and
Enlightenment thought – Emphasized individualism and the mysteries
of nature – Famous members: Emerson, Thoreau,
Hawthorne, Melville
Other areas of Early Social Reform
• Temperance – Mov’t changed from Moderation to Abstinence
to Prohibition – Led by women but supported by factory
owners who had massive absenteeism
• Education – Compulsory education in every state by 1860 – Horace Mann, secularized the curriculum and
made it more practical
• Women’s Rights – Women were considered so inferior to men
that they were not allowed to obtain higher ed., vote or control their own property
– Grimke sisters (1838) began with abolition, then turned to attacking the subordinate position of women
• Seneca Falls Statement (1848) – Statement of women’s mistreatment by men
• Improvements made possible by: – Democratic spirit of Jackson era, which in turn
caused people to call for women’s suffrage – Industrial Revolution demonstrated to women
that they could enter occupations – Reform movements, where they could
crusade equally with men
Abolition • American Colonization Society formed
(1816) – Pushed to gradually emancipate Af. Am and
settle them in Africa
• Abolitionism rose in the 1830s with an emphasis on racial equality. Intent on freeing, then educating Af. Am. – William Lloyd Garrison – The Liberator
demanded immediate emancipation
-Theodore Weld worked for gradual emancipation through religious conversion. Used Oberlin College as training ground for abolitionist.
• Organized abolitionists smuggled 2,000 slaves a year out of the South to Canada (Underground Railroad)
Humane Treatment of Individuals • Dorothea Dix investigated and reported
treatment of insane and led to creation of humane institutions.
• Legal Code Reforms – Reduction in crimes punishable by death – Abolishing of public hangings in many states – Abandoning flogging and other cruel
punishments
• Prison Reform – rehabilitation of criminals – To counter the tendency of prisons to create
more hardened criminals – Work see as a way to reform criminals