Antebellum Reform MovementsAmerican History

Lyman Beecher

• Protestant minister• Leads the Second Great

Awakening– Religious revival– Women heavily involved

and seen as moral saviors of men

Transcendentalism• TRANSCENDENTALISM = a philosophy that asserts the primacy

of the SPIRITUAL over the MATERIAL and EMPIRICAL

• The ultimate truth transcends the physical world

Transcendentalists and Nature

• Nature was the source of deep Human inspiration

• Helps individuals see truth within their souls

• Genuine Spirituality come through communion with nature

Ralph Waldo Emerson• Leader, Unitarian Minister, devoted to

Transcendentalism• Wrote Essays, Lectures, Very Popular

Advocated the commitment of the individual

to full exploration of

the inner capacities.

RW Emerson: essay 1841 “Self Reliance”

• Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind”

• Self Reliance:– was a quest for unity of the Universe– The wholeness of god– The great spiritual force/essence of spiritual soul

• Each person has innate capacity to find divinity personally

Henry David Thoreau• Transcendentalist• Individuals should:– Work for self-realization– Resist conformity– Should respond to own

instincts• Walden- in the Concord

(Mass) Woods• Most famous book• Lived alone for 2 years

Thoreau• “I went to the woods because I wished to live

deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what It had to teach.

• And not when I came to die I discover that I had not lived”

Thoreau• Went to jail briefly• Refused to pay a Poll Tax• Protested Slavery• 1849: Essay “Resistance to Civil Government”• An individual’s personal morality has first claim on his

actions• Government that violated personal morality had no

legitimate authority • An individual response should be – Civil Disobedience or Passive Resistance

Temperance

• Religious based movement against Alcohol• “The church must take… on subject of

Temperance, the moral reform, all the subjects of practical morality.”

• Crime, disorder, poverty caused by alcoholism• Drinking was especially a problem for Women-

husband abuse them, and kids, and drink their money.

Temperance• Will later evolve into national movement through the

19th century• Eventually will lead to prohibition of alcohol 18th

Amendment to the Constitution [1920-1933]

Education• Public Education not widely

established• Some progress in Massachusetts• New interest in Pub Ed– To create a stable social

values=conformity• Horace Mann is the leader

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Education• Mann• “An educated electorate is

essential to the working of a free Political system.”

• Education “only way to counter…the tendency to domination of capital and servility of labor.”

• Advocated protestant values- thrift, order, discipline, punctuality, respect for authority

• No wide spread change comes from this movement.

Asylum and Prison Reforms

• Rehabilitation is the key• Asylum=mental health• Prison= criminals• Rise of the Penitentiary• “A place to cultivate penitence”• Through discipline

Problem- Mentally ill and criminals kept in terrible conditions

Reform is key

• Dorothea Dix• Some progress

Women’s Rights Movement

• Lucretia Mott• Elizabeth Cady Stanton• Susan B. Anthony• Strong connection

between Women’s Rights and Abolition movement

Seneca Falls Convention 1848

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton• Susan B. Anthony• Lucretia Mott• Frederick Douglass

• Declaration of Sentiments– Emulated Declaration of

Independence

Abolitionism

• 1830s – Opposition to slavery begins to change– Before, abolitionists would promote gradualism or

colonization• Abolition wants an immediate end to slavery

with no compensation to slaveholders

• Garrison establishes the Liberator newspaper.

David Walker

• Publishes Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in 1829.– Speaks of the conditions of African Americans in

the United States.

– [Read about it for homework]

Garrison in the Liberator• “I am aware that many object to the severity of my language;

but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

Other Abolitionist Leaders

• Other protestant ministers• Wealthy financers• Followers of the women’s movement [Lucretia

Mott]• Grimke sisters• Free African Americans– Frederick Douglass

Response to Abolition

• Seen as a threat to labor and social system• Economic problems for the North• South is becoming increasingly reliant on slave

labor– Not industrializing

• Slave rebellion