Antebellum Reformers

Lyman Beecher

Preacher for temperance

Charles Grandison Finney

Preached for abolitionism

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Transcendentalist writer encouraging individualism

Henry David Thoreau

Transcendentalist writer and wrote Civil Disobedience

Robert Owen

Utopian community New Harmony

George Ripley

Utopian community Brook Farm

Margaret Fuller

Transcendentalist and women’s rights advocate

Joseph Smith

Founded Mormonism

Charles Loring Brace

Helped poor, homeless children with Children’s Aid Society

Theodore Dwight Weld

Leading abolitionist that wrote American Slavery As It Is

Sylvester Graham

Minister and health reformer, Graham crackers!

Horace Mann

Leader of public education using taxes

Dorothea Dix

Social reformer for mental illness and prisons

William Lloyd Garrison

Leading white advocate for abolitionism, published The Liberator, an antislavery newspaper

Frederick Douglass

Former slave that learned how to read and write, gave speeches against slavery

Soujourner Truth

Former enslaved woman, advocating for women’s rights and abolitionism with “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Elijah Lovejoy

Abolitionist newspaper editor that was killed by proslavery mob, symbol of freedom of the press

James Birney

Abolitionist and politician that ran for president in 1840 and 1844 with Liberty Party

Abby Kelly

Abolitionist and women’s rights advocate with speeches

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Leader of women’s rights movement and organized Seneca Falls Convention, writing the Declaration of Sentiments

Angelina Grimke

Women’s rights activist and southern-born abolitionist, speaking in public and challenging role of women

Catherine Beecher

Educator and encouraged women to become teachers, expanding their role of women

Lucretia Mott

Abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, organized Seneca Falls Convention with Stanton

Harriet Tubman

Formerly enslaved woman and abolitionist that risked her own life to help others escape with the Underground Railroad

Emily Robinson

Abolitionist writer and woman’s rights activist, edited antislavery newspaper Anti-Slavery Bugle

William Miller

Religious leader claiming Jesus would return, but failed prediction led to Millerite Movement and creation of new church

Susan B. Anthony

Woman’s rights activist that fought for suffrage alongside Stanton

David Walker

Free Black abolitionist that wrote Appeal to demand end to slavery

Thomas Gallaudet

Educator who helped deaf people receive an education, cofounding the American School for the Deaf

Sarah Grimke

Abolitionist and woman’s rights activist, openly spoke out against slavery and challenged role of women in society