37 - Reform Movements (abridged)

Second Great Awakening

widespread early 19th century Christian religious movement in the United States that inspired reform movements to improve American society

utopian communities

small experimental reform communities designed to be perfect societies

public school movement

movement to create adequate public institutions for widespread education

penitentiary movement

movement aimed at structuring prisons so that rather than only suffer punishment prisoners would feel penitent, or remorseful, for their crimes

temperance movement

organized campaign against the consumption of alcoholic beverages

abolition movement

movement to outlaw slavery; British MP William Wilberforce led campaign to end transatlantic slave trade in 1807; Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 ended slavery in British colonies; Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment to the US Constitution ended slavery in the United States

Slave Trade Act of 1807

abolished the slave trade in the British empire but slavery itself remained legal until 1833; Royal Navy seized 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans off the coast of Africa between 1808 and 1860

Slavery Abolition Act of 1833

abolished slavery in the British Empire

William Lloyd Garrison

radical American abolitionist leader; published The Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper

Frederick Douglass

escaped American slave who became a noted abolitionist leader; authored an autobiography and published The North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper

Harriet Beecher Stowe

American abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a sensational 1852 anti-slavery novel that mobilized northern public opinion against slavery

Underground Railroad

network of American abolitionists who secretly helped slaves escape to freedom

Harriet Tubman

American abolitionist and conductor on the Underground Railroad who led 70 enslaved people to freedom over 13 trips; "The Black Moses"

John Brown

radical American abolitionist who murdered five pro-slavery settlers in Kansas in 1856 and tried unsuccessfully to start an armed mass slave uprising in Virginia in 1859

Abraham Lincoln

Sixteenth President of the United States (1861-1865), Republican Party; Union leader during the American Civil War who emancipated slaves

American Civil War

fought from 1861 to 1865; first industrialized war; resulted in abolition of slavery in the United States and reunification of the American North and South

Emancipation Edict

1861 law issued by Tsar Alexander II that abolished serfdom in Russia; serfs gained full rights but were required to compensate former landlords which continued widespread impoverishment as free peasants

Emancipation Proclamation

1862 order issued by Abraham Lincoln declaring slaves in all rebelling American states were free

Reconstruction Amendments to the US Constitution

13th amendment to the United States Constitution that abolished slavery (1865); 14th amendment that extended citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" and guarantees equal protection of the laws and due process (1868); and 15th amendment that prohibits states from denying citizens the right to vote because of race (1870)

Jim Crow laws

state laws in the American South that created a racially segregated society

Plessy v. Ferguson

1896 United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation so long as separate facilities for blacks and whites were equal

Booker T. Washington

progressive African American leader who supported segregation; urged blacks to acquire useful labor skills and prove their economic value to society in order to achieve racial equality

W.E.B. DuBois

first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard; opposed Booker T. Washington calling for social and political integration and higher education for African Americans; a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

first wave feminism

sought various legal and economic gains for women, including equal access to professions and higher education; came to concentrate on right to vote; won support particularly from middle class women; active in western Europe and United States

Mary Wollstonecraft

British 18th century feminist writer who argued for women's equality with men and called for female suffrage in her Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

suffragettes

women who fought for the right to vote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

National American Woman Suffrage Association

American organization founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to advocate for women's suffrage in the United States; played a pivotal role in the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920 guaranteeing women's right to vote; less militant than British WSPU

Women's Social and Political Union

British militant all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to "deeds, not words"; known for heckling politicians, assaulting police officers, smashing windows, burning unoccupied buildings, and going on hunger strikes in prison