US History- Unit 7: Industrialization and Reform- People

Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney

• Cotton Gin -- expansion of slavery because of the increase in profits

• Interchangeable parts -- mass production in factories

Robert Fulton

• Steamboat

• Faster, cheaper transportation of goods and people

• Reduced/decreased the cost of freight/shipping

Susan B Anthony

• Active in the Women’s Rights movement, especially suffrage (right to vote)

• Other reform movements such as labor and education

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

• Organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention (women’s rights)

• One of the authors of the Declaration of the Rights of Women

Sojourner Truth

• Traveled (‘sojourned’) speaking about abolition and women’s rights

• Described her experiences as a woman and former slave in Ain’t I a Women? speech

Fredrick Douglass

• Freed slave and public orator -- often gave speeches at abolitionist meetings

• Published abolitionist newspaper “The North Star”

• Autobiography of Fredrick Douglass

Dorothea Dix

• Treatment of the mentally ill (“insane asylums”) as well as prison reform

• Presented a paper to the Massachusetts legislature to encourage reform/changes

Horace Mann

• Encouraged free public education for all

• Considered education the “great equalizer”

Harriet Tubman

• Abolitionist

• Conductor of the Underground Railroad (led escaped slaves to freedom)

Transcendentalists

• Type of literature/author and artist

• Studied humanity, creativity, and nature

• Encouraged free-thinking spiritually rather than established religions

Romantics/romanticism

• Type of literature/author and artist

• Celebrated adventure, nature, emotion, imagination, and individualism

• Reaction to the negative effects of industrialization

Henry David Thoreau

• Wrote an essay encouraging ‘civil disobedience’ -- disobeying/breaking/ignoring a law as an act of protest

• Wrote Walden, or Life in the Woods and other reflections on nature

• Jailed for tax evasion and protested the US-Mexican War

Walt Whitman

• Poet considered the “Father of Free verse”, romanticist

• Most well-known piece was “Leaves of Grass”

• Wrote “Captain, My Captain” (after Lincoln’s assassination); had been a nurse during Civil War

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Considered the Father of Transcendentalism; also a romanticist

• Wrote poem “Concord Hymn” which included the line ‘shot heard ‘round the world’

• Most well-known work: a book of essays entitled Nature

James Fenimore Cooper

• Wrote of wilderness and adventure; romanticist

• Most well-known novel was Last of the Mohicans (Native Americans)

Herman Melville

• Sailor/New England coast; most well known novel was Moby Dick

Edgar Allen Poe

• Wrote novels and short stories of horror and suspense

• Works included short story Tell-Tale Heart and the poem The Raven

Washington Irving

• Short stories included Rip Van Wrinkle and Legend of Sleep Hollow

Nathaniel Hawthorn

• Most well-known novel -- Scarlet Letter; strict setting of Puritan New England

John James Audubon

• Naturalist and painter, especially ornithology (study of birds)