Rebels with a Cause!

Era of Reform: How does overcoming obstacles lead to change?

Spirit of Reform

• A revival of religious feeling swept across the nation from the 1800s and 1840s. Church leaders called this the Second Great Awakening a religious revival that appealed to people’s emotions.

• This was the idea that everyone could gain forgiveness

for their sins, or be saved by doing good works. • Men and women alike were now given a reason to

work for the improvement of society. • Optimistic ideas inspired Americans during this time!!!

Transcendentalism

• The idea that people could transcend, or rise above, the material things in life. A philosophy which taught that people should “transcend” go beyond logical thinking you reach true understanding with the help of emotion and intuition.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• 1811-1882

• Inspired Thoreau, Dickinson, Hawthorne & Walt Whitman—Central figure in the transcendentalist movement

• BELIEVED EVERY HUMAN HAD UNLIMITED POTENTIAL—COULD TRANSCEND IF THEY TRUSTED THEIR EMOTIONS AND INTUITION

• Entered Harvard University at 14—Great Minister—married only 2 years—tuberculosis. Sent him searching for vital truth

• Wrote civil War hymns, poems, 5,000 letters remain

Henry David Thoreau

• “…government in best which governs not at all”

• I dea of individualism question society, institutions, and rules – DO NOT CONFORM TO OTHERS EXPECTATIONS

• Rebel: spent 2 years in solitude and wrote a 6,000 page journal.

• Once jailed for refusing to pay taxes which supported the Mexican-American War

Utopian Community:

• Model communities created by transcendentalists

• People in these communities A group of were working to establish a perfect society on Earth

Utopian Communities

The Shakers

• Community Started by Ann Lee

• 6,000 members

• Banned private ownership of property

• Built beautiful furniture

• No copulation because it was seen as competitive in nature.

Brook Farm

• Started by George Ripley near Boston

• People were encouraged to live “brotherly cooperation” instead of competing with one another

• Shared labor of supporting themselves by farming, teaching, and making clothes

Romantics:

• An idea that each individual brings unique perspective to the world that is best expressed by emotion rather than reason.

• Thomas Cole: Created romantic, soft paintings

• Nathaniel Hawthorne: Wrote the Scarlett Letter

• Emily Dickinson: “If I can stop one heart from breaking…”

• Poems were never published until after her death, cared for her ailing father

Romantics

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Paul Revere’s ride

• Edgar Allen Poe: The Raven “Once upon a midnight dreary, where I pondered, weak and weary”

Prison Reform • 1841-A woman named Dorothea Dix agreed to teach Sunday

school at jail • She was horrified to see many prisoners were bound in

chains and locked in ages children accused of minor thefts were jailed with adult criminals

• Were conditions this bad everywhere???? • Dix found that this was the case throughout Mass. • Mentally Ill: locked in dirty cages, whipped, etc. Dix believed

they needed care and treatment NOT punishment • Campaigned for prison reform until she died by 1887 state

govt’s no longer put debtors in prison, outlawed cruel punishments

• She showed that reformers could lead society to make significant changes

What would life be like if there weren’t public schools?

• What advantages do you have being able to attend public school?

History of Education in America

• Beginnings: town school paid for by the communities

A. Stress on the Bible

B. Middle/Southern Colonies: Parents, private tutors

C. 12 colonies: few went beyond elementary school

1. trade/apprentice work was popular

2. Printing, blacksmith, farming

Ivy League Colleges

A. 1636-Harvard was the 1st

B. Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, University of Penn, Yale, Brown, Columbia

C. Main focus was religions

D. NO GIRLS ALLOWED!!

Immigration

Cause: Immigration increased

Effect: Better Education could make more productive workers & responsible citizens

A. Teachers: Usually young men

B. Textbooks: McGuffy’s reader, compiled by William Holmes McGuffy—an educator and Presbyterian minister—taught morals and social values

Horace Mann

• 1st Secretary of Education in 1837 in Massachusetts

A. Doubled school budget in Mass spoke out on the need for public schools

B. Increased teacher’s salaries

C. Extended the school year

D. Established the 1st school for teacher training

Why were these things important to him?

Women in Education

A. Emma Willard: Women’s Troy Female Seminary—1st college level institution for women

B. Oberlin: 1837—1st co-ed college in America

African American Schools

A. Irregular Education

1. Allowed not just girls, but all African American Students

2. HBCU-Historically Black College and University

a. Howard, Tuskegee, Clark, Morehouse

The Movement to end Slavery

• How can a land of the free still allow slavery?

• By the 1830s many people were asking this question Abolitionist: a person who supports the ending of slavery

• Struggle begins: – Some opposition since the Revolutionary war,

Quakers stopped owing in 1776, 1796 every state as south as VA had anti-slavery societies. Congress passed a law ending slave trade in 1808 still accepted in the North

How to End?

• Abolitionists wanted to end slavery, but disagreed how to end it!!! – Revolt – Peaceful – Give slaveholders time to develop farming methods

• Blacks & Whites were a part of the movement • William Lloyd Garrison (white man)-started an

abolitionist newspaper called The Liberator – Demanded the immediate freeing of all slaves – Angry proslavery groups destroyed his press and

burned his house

Frederick Douglass

• An escaped slave • Became the leader in the

abolition movement • His autobiography was

published in 1845 and was an instant best seller

• Brilliant-started his own newspaper – North Star

• Through his writings and speeches, he waged a fierce campaign against slavery

Women get Involved • Many women were inspired by religious movements to

become involved in abolition – Faced Violence

• Grimke sisters: raised in the south by a slaveholding family – Went north and became Quakers – Spoke about the poverty and pain of slavery – Spoke to large crowds of men and women and paved the way

for other women to speak in public

• Sojourner Truth: Former slave – Strongly spiritual – An outstanding speaker who was inspired by Douglass and

Garrison – Felt God would end slavery peacefully

• Minority, but efforts and violence helped change Northerners attitudes about slavery paved the way for Women’s rights

Equal Rights for Women

• Why were women abolitionists is a strange position?

• Movement begins: Friendship b/w Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

• 1840-Anti-Slavery Convention in London – Women weren’t allowed to speak sat in the back behind

a curtain

– Came from 2 different backgrounds: • Mott: 47 y/o mother of 4, active reformer

• Stanton: 25, newly married, never spoken in public, saw there were no laws protecting women from their husbands, attended 1st all women’s high school

• The women agreed something needed to be done about the injustices suffered by women

Unequal Treatment

• Could not speak in public

• Suffer taxation w/o representation

• Rejected by medical schools and not given job opportunities

• To overcome obstacles women had to work together Seneca Falls Convention – 8 years after Mott and Stanton met

– July 19, 1848 300 people including 40 men arrived at the convention (abolitionists, Quakers, other reformers, local housewives farmers, and factory workers)

• Modeled a proposal for women’s rights

Declaration of Sentiments

• Modeled after the D. O. I “we hold these truths to be self evident that all men and women are created equal”

• Listed acts of tyranny of men over women • Stanton’s presentation of the Declaration was her

1st speech • Debate over voting rights convention corrected

injustices and Stanton proposed that women DEMAND THE RIGHT TO VOTE! – Received support form Frederick Douglass – Convention voted to approve the resolution

Legacy of Convention

• Created an organized campaign for women’s rights

• Sojourner Truth became a prominent figure in the movement

• Susan B Anthony became an advocate and gave memorable speeches (written by Stanton)

• NY gave women the right to control property and wages, MA passed liberal divorce laws

• One woman from the convention lived to vote for a president legally: Charlotte Woodward – 19th Amendment in 1920