Transcript The Age of Reform:

Social Reform
The Reforming Spirit
 During the early to mid-1800s, a new
spirit of reform spread across America.
 The men and women who led the reform
movement wanted to extend the nation’s
ideals of liberty and equality to all
Americans.
 They brought changes to American
religion, politics, education, art, and
literature.
 Some reformers sought to improve
society by forming utopias,
communities based on a vision of a
perfect society.
 Founded on high hopes and impractical
ideas, few utopian communities lasted
more than a few years.
 The Shakers, the Mormons, and other
religious groups also built their own
communities, but only the Mormons
established a stable, enduring
community.
The Religious Influence
 The reform efforts of the early 1800s
found inspiration in a religious revival
known as the 2nd Great Awakening.
 Religious leaders had begun to worry
that all of the scientific advancements
had led people to stray away from
organized religion.
 Preachers travelled from town to town,
holding revival meetings, and spreading
the message that God’s love and
redemption were open to everyone.
 They rejected the old Calvinist tradition
that only a chosen few were destined for
heaven.
 Any true Christian who lived well and
worked for justice could go to heaven.
 Many were inspired to become involved
in missionary work and social reform
movements as a result.
War Against Alcohol
 Another reform movement fueled
by the 2nd Great Awakening was the
temperance movement.
 Public drunkenness was common in
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the early 1800s, and alcohol abuse
was widespread.
Many reformers blamed crime,
poverty, and mental illness on
alcohol abuse.
They called for temperance, or
moderation in drinking habits.
The American Temperance Union
attracted more than a million
members within a year of its
formation encouraging people to
“take the pledge” not to drink.
Many states and localities banned
the sale of alcohol.
Reforming Education
 In the early 1800s, only New England
provided free elementary education.
 In other areas parents had to pay fees or
send their children to schools for the
poor – a choice some parents refused out
of pride.
 Some communities had no schools at all.
 The leader of educational reform was
Horace Mann, a lawyer who became
head of the Massachusetts Board of
Education in 1837.
 During his term Mann lengthened the
school year to 6 months, made
improvements in the school curriculum,
doubled teachers’ salaries, and
developed better ways of training
teachers.
 He also helped found the nation’s 1st
state-supported normal school, a
school that trained teachers.
Education for Some
 By the 1850s most states had
accepted 3 basic principles of public
education: schools should be free
and supported by taxes, teachers
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should be trained, and children
should be required to attend school.
However, these principles did not
immediately go into effect.
Most females received a limited
education because of the belief that
a woman did not need an education
to become a wife or mother.
In the West, where settlers lived far
apart, many children still had no
school to attend.
African Americans, even those who
were free, had few opportunities to
go to school most everywhere.
Higher Education
 Dozens of new colleges and
universities were created during the
age of reform.
 Although most admitted only white
men, higher education slowly
became available to groups who
were previously denied the
opportunity.
 Oberlin College of Ohio, founded in
1833, admitted both women and
African Americans.
 In 1837 a teacher named Mary Lyon
in Massachusetts opened Mount
Holyoke, the 1st permanent women’s
college in America.
 The 1st college for African
Americans, the Ashman Institute,
opened in Pennsylvania in 1854.
People with Special Needs
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Some reformers focused on the challenge of
teaching people with disabilities.
Thomas Gallaudet developed a method to
educate the hearing impaired.
Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe developed books
with large raised letters that people with sight
impairments could read with their fingers.
Few reformers accomplished more than
Dorothea Dix who found her calling after
visiting a Boston jail where inmates were
locked in small, dark, unheated cells.
Among the inmates were mentally ill women
who had not committed any crime.
Children, debtors, and the mentally ill were all
treated like hardened criminals.
Her reform efforts brought substantial change
in the penal system and in mental health care
across the United States which aimed to
rehabilitate prisoners rather than just locking
them up.
Cultural Trends
 The American spirit of reform
influenced transcendentalists, who
stressed the relationship between
humans and nature as well as the
importance of the individual conscience.
 Writers such as Margaret Fuller, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, and Henry David
Thoreau were leading
transcendentalists.
 Each used their writing to urge people to
act.
 Thoreau even went to jail for his refusal
to pay a tax to support the Mexican War!
 Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the most
successful book of the mid-1800s, Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, which explores the injustice
of slavery – an issue that took on a new
urgency during the age of reform.