Transcript Pushing for Reform - Barnegat Township School District

Change in the 1800s
Section 1
NEW
MOVEMENTS
IN AMERICA
Second Great Awakening
Revivals – large religious gatherings designed
to “revive” faith
 Many took place in western New York –
Burned Over District
 Charles G. Finney – led revivals
 Time became known as Second Great
Awakening
 Could create heaven on earth through hard
work (led to people reforming society –
Reform Era)

Temperance Movement
movement –
moderation in use of alcohol
 Wrote songs, books, about
evils of alcohol
 1851 alcohol outlawed in
Maine
 Temperance
Education Reform
 Before1840,
most couldn’t afford private
school, common school education was
poor
 “friends of education” to improve schools
 Horace Mann – 1837, Sec. of Ed in Mass
 State funded, locally supervised
 Compulsory attendance
 Teacher training
Education Reform
 By
1860, 60% of white
children attended school (not
natives or slaves)
 William McGuffey – Eclectic
Readers; taught reading
Reforming Prisons
Dix – In 1834 petitioned
Mass. legislature to treat
mentally ill separate from
prisoners
 By her death, more than 100
mental institutions had been
built across U.S.
 Dorthea
Transcendentalism
 Knowledge
through observation,
reason, intuition & experience (truth
in nature)
 Ralph Waldo Emerson –essays &
poems, people should be self-reliant
 Henry David Thoreau – lived on
Walden Pond “civil disobedience” nonviolent resistance (MLK, Ghandi)
Utopianism
– perfect society
 Robert Owen – 1825 established
New Harmony in Indiana
(community failed)
 Brook Farm –failed due to debt
 Shakers – Christian sect from late
1700s, established communities
 Utopia
Section 2
Early Immigration
& Urban Reform
“The American Republic invites nobody to
come. We will keep out nobody.
Arrivals will suffer no disadvantages as
aliens. But they can expect no
advantages either. Native-born and
foreign-born face equal opportunities.
What happens to them depends entirely
on their individual ability and exertions,
and on good fortune.”
-John Quincy Adams
Irish & German Immigration
 Potato
is staple of Irish diet
 1845-1849 disease struck crop in Great
Irish Famine
 About 1 million died, 1.5 million to U.S.
 Germans fled economic depression,
overpopulation, religious persecution,
taxes; came to U.S. for business
opportunities
Pushed and Pulled
Push – factors that cause people to
leave home (hardship)
 Pull –factors that make people want to
go to a specific country (opportunity)
 Variety of factors led to
immigration of 3 million
Irish and Germans
by 1860

Hostility toward the Irish
 Number
of Irish seen as threat
 They were poor (would work for low
wages, threat to workers)
 Catholic (Americans mostly
Protestant)
 Nativism – opposition to immigration
 Know-Nothings – The American Party,
secretive, anti-immigrant, successful
for a few years
German Experience
 Most
were upper middle class
Protestants
 Could afford to move inland
Urban Reform Efforts
– poorly made, crowded
apartments, disease spread
 Local boards of health established,
poor were ignored
 Tenements
Workplace Reform
caused – low
wages, long hours, unsafe
conditions
 Labor movement tried to fix
problems (NH limited work day to 10
hours)
 Industrialization
Workplace Reform
1834 – National Traders Union
 Panic of 1837 – 1/3 of
Americans out of work
 Competition in workforce
made it hard to reform

Section 3
WOMEN AND REFORM
Women’s Lives in 1800s

Economic, legal and social factors
limited what women could do
 Couldn’t vote
 Couldn’t enter into legal contracts
 Had no property of their own
 Children went to men in divorce
 Low wages
 Money went to husband or parents
 “cult of domesticity” – woman’s place is in
the home.
Reform Societies
 Groups
organized to promote social
reforms
 Wanted “moral” reform – promoted
good behavior
 Visited jails, etc to spread religion
Women work for Reform
Catharine Beecher – first school for
women, worked to send women west to
educate frontier people
 Homes for girls and women in need
established
 Helped in labor and temperance
movements

Seneca Falls Convention
Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Lucretia Mott
organized the convention for women’s
rights.
 “All men and women are created equal”
 300 people attended
 Some disagreed with asking for voting
rights, thought it was too much.
 Women who fought for rights were
criticized.

Section 4
FIGHTING AGAINST
SLAVERY
Political Conflict:
Non-slave states felt threatened by the
growing number of slaves.
 3/5 compromise allowed them to be
counted, so South’s population was
increasing, giving them more power in
the House.
 Senate still split, but for how long? (we
talk more about this in chapter 10)

Lives of slaves
 Nearly
4 million in the South by 1860
 Viewed as property
 Field or farm hands, house slaves, skilled
artisans, cities, mines or forests
 Inadequate food and clothing
 Some beaten, whipped, starved,
threatened, separated from family
 Religion, storytelling provided comfort
Antislavery Movement
In 1860, about 215,000 free blacks in
south (some former slaves, some born
free)
Free blacks lead antislavery activities
Nat Turner’s rebellion – killed Turner’s
slaveholder & family, dozens more. 20
men executed for involvement, 100
others killed for “sympathizing”
New laws enacted to limit slaves freedoms
Escape!!
Tried to reach free states, Canada or
Mexico
 Many did not succeed
 Underground Railroad – network of
escape routes; whites & free blacks
provided food and shelter
 Harriet Tubman – most famous
“conductor”, she was an escaped slave

Abolition Movement
Campaign to abolish (end) slavery
 Started with religion (Quakers), Second
Great Awakening contributed (moral wrong
 William Lloyd Garrison – American AntiSlavery Society – The Liberator
 Grimke sisters – daughters of SC plantation
owner
 Frederick Douglass – escaped slave, The
North Star

URR simulation

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/b
history/underground_railroad/
Opposition to Abolition
Ministers justified slavery using Bible
 Cotton was 55% of nation’s exports,
Southern economy “depended on it”
 Many Northerners supported or tolerated
slavery – free slaves would compete for jobs.
 Blacks discriminated against in North
(couldn’t vote, go to school, testify, join labor
unions, etc)
 Children at risk of being kidnapped and sold

President Monroe
Monroe pushed for the establishment of
a colony in Africa so freed slaves could
return.
 In 1824, Liberia was established and
Monrovia was named the capital.

Impact of Reforms video clip
Focus Question: In the early 1800s,
many Americans had few rights and
protections under American law. How
did the work of early reformers affect the
activist movements of later years?
 Activity: Break into 3 groups, labor,
women and abolition, list goals and
accomplishments of the reform.
 Closing: How has American life been
improved by the work of reformers?
