#4.7 Immigration and Reform Movements

The Growth of European Immigration: causes

EU modernization of of agriculture and industrial rev disrupt centuries-old patterns of life (peasants are pushed off land/jobs are eliminated), introduction of oceangoing steamship/railroad

The Growth of European Immigration: where they came from

Ireland, Germany, Scandanavia

The Growth of European Immigration: where they went (Irish)

4/5 Irish remain in NE (Boston, NYC, some smaller cities) where they congregated in overcrowded urban ghettos notorious fro poverty, crime, and disease

The Growth of European Immigration: where they went (Germans)

Some Germans settled in close-knit eastern neighborhoods while other were able to move W; German Triangle

The Growth of European Immigration: where they went (Scandinavians)

Old Northwest

The Growth of European Immigration: jobs (Irish)

low-wage unskilled jobs native-born American sought to avoid: building railroads, digging canals, working as common laborers (servants, longshoremen, factory operatives), domestic servants, Lowell Mills

The Growth of European Immigration: jobs (Scandinavians)

farmers

The Growth of European Immigration: jobs (Germans)

craftsmen, shopkeepers, farmers

"The German Triangle,"

the cities of Cincinnati, Saint Louis, in Milwaukee which attracted large German populations where they formed a vibrant German-language culture with its own schools, newspapers, associations, and churches

Immigration: Push Factors

war, political unrest, to escape poverty, religious persecution, natural disasters, and lack of economic opportunities

Immigration: Pull Factors

political freedom, economic opportunities, religious freedom

Nativism

the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants.

opposition to immigration

Many Americans were fearful foreigners would outnumber native-born Americans.

Immigrants faced anger and prejudice.; Nativism

Archbishop John Hughes' response

Archbishop John Hughes of New York City in the 1840s and 1850s condemned the use of the Protestant King James Bible in public schools, pressed catholic parents to send their children to parochial schools, and sought government funding to pay for them - he aggressively sought to win converts from Protestantism

What did the Irish influx do?

It enhanced visibility and power of the Catholic Church

anti-Catholic

Tradition of anti-popery ran deep and large Protestant societies. Many Protestants saw the new assertive activities of the Catholic Church as threatening to American institutions in American freedom.

Lyman Beecher's "A plea for the West"

In 1834, prominent Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher delivered a sermon (Later published as "a plea for the West") where he said that Catholics were seeking to dominate the American West. His sermon inspired a mob to burn a catholic convent in the city.

anti-immigrant xenophobia

Nativists blamed immigrants for urban crime, political corruption, and a fondness for intoxicating liquor, and accused them of undercutting native born skilled laborers by working for starvation wages. They contended that the Irish, supposedly unfamiliar with American conceptions of liberty and subservience to the Catholic Church, posed a threat to democratic institutions, social reform, and public education.

anti-immigrant stereotypes

Stereotypes similar to those regarding blacks flourish regarding the Irish as well in the 1840s and 1850s:

- Childlike

- Lazy

- Slaves of their passions

they were unsuited for republican freedom

The Second Great Awakening

Religious revival moment of the early decades of the 19th century, in reaction to the growth of secularism and rationalist religion; began the predominance of the Baptist and Methodist Church

Second Great Awakening: Impact

It spread to all regions of the country and democratized American Christianity, making it a truly mass enterprise. The number of Christian ministers increases dramatically as evangelical denominations like the Methodists and Baptists explode in membership. Deism wanes and Christianity becomes even more central to American culture. Ministers raise funds, embark on lengthy preaching tours by canal/steamboat/railroad, and they flood the country with mass-produced, inexspensive religious tracts.

Second Great Awakening: ideas/valued promoted

Stressed the right of private judgement in spiritual matters and the possibility of universal salvation through faith and good works. Evangelical preachers regularly railed against greed and indifference to the welfare of others as sins and promoted what might be called a controlled individualism as the essence of freedom. They stressed the importance of industry, sobriety, and self-discipline (the qualities also necessary for success in a market culture though they hardly supported it).

Charles Grandison Finney

Son of Connecticut farmers, he had been inspired to preach after attending religious revival in 1821. He soon began to hold months-long revival meetings in upstate New York and in New York City. Like the evangelists of the first great awakening of the mid 18th century, he warned of hell on a vivid language while offering the promise of salvation to convert to abandon their sinful ways. Became a national celebrity after success in Oneida county in upstate New York.

The reform impulse

It was part of the proliferation of voluntary groups that worked to convert public opinion to their cause

voluntary organizations

political/social activities are organized through churches, fraternal orders, political clubs, etc (they were most often joined in the absence of a powerful nat gov)

goals and values of voluntary groups

Americans established organizations that worked to prevent the manufacture and sale of liquor, end public entertainments and the delivery of the mail on Sunday, improve conditions in prisons, expand public education, uplift the condition of wage laborers, and reorganize society on the basis of cooperation rather than competitive individualism.

moral suasion

A method of reformers attempting to convert people to their cause by highlighting the moral implications of the opposing viewpoint.

utopian communities: definition

ideal communities that offered innovative social and economic relationships to those who were interested in achieving salvation

utopian communities: goals/values

Most were inspired by the secular desire to counteract the social and economic change set in motion by the market revolution. They set out to reorganize society on a cooperative basis, they hoped to restore social harmony to a world of excessive individualism and to narrow the gap btw rich/poor. Put socialism/communism into the language of politics

utopian communities: characteristics

Tried to find substituted for conventional gender relations/marriage patterns, so some prohibited sexual relations btw men and women all together; others allowed them to change partners at will. Men had to end their "property" in women which would accompany the abolition of private property.

elements of communism and socialism

a social organization in which productive property is owned by the community rather than private individuals

the Shakers

Religious sect founded by Mother Ann Lee in England. The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing settled in Watervliet, New York, in 1774, and subsequently established eighteen additional communes in the Northeast, Indiana, and Kentucky.

Mother Ann Lee

daughter of an English blacksmith and became a religious exhorter who claimed that Christ had directed her to emigrate with her followers to America

Shakers: Impact

at their peak during the 1840s, cooperative Shaker settlements, which stretched from Maine to Kentucky, included more than 5k members

Shakers: beliefs/values

God had a "dual" personality, both male and female, therefore the sexes were spiritually equal and their work was equally important. "Virgin purity" formed one of their pillars and they completely abandoned traditional family life: men and women lived separately and ate in communal spaces.

Shakers: Impacts

They rejected the accumulation of private property but did prove to be economically successful. They were among the first to makers vegetables/flower seeds and herbal medicine commercially and to breed cattle for profit. They also crafted beautiful furniture

Oneida

The new location of a group of socio-religious perfectionists who lived in New York after their leader, John Humphrey Noyes, was indicted for adultery by local officials. The group survived there until 1881. The community there was very dictatorial.

How did the Shakers increase their numbers

by attracting converts and adopting children from orphanages

Oneida beliefs

They did not believe in private property and were taught by Noyes that they formed a single "holy family" of equals and were all part of a "complex marriage."--exclusive affections destroyed social harmony. The raising of children was also communal. Practiced an early form of eugenics.

John Humphrey Noyes

Vermont-born son of a U.S. congressman, he took the revivalists' message that man could achieve moral perfection to an atypical exteme: He perched that he and his followers had become so perfect that they were sinless.

Brook Farm

A transcendentalist commune in West Roxbury MA. Populated from 1841 to 1847 principally by writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne (he offered a skeptical review of his time there in Blithedale Romance) and other intellectuals. Community was modeled in part on the ideas of French social reformer Charles Fourier.

Brook Farm: Characteristics

It was like an exciting miniature university with leisure time devoted to music, dancing, dramatic greetings, intellectual discussion period it attracted mostly writers, teachers, and ministers, some of whom disliked farm labor.3

Brook Farm: goal

The hope was to demonstrate that manual and intellectual labor could coexist harmoniously.

Charles Fourier

French social reformer whose ideas partly served the basis for the establishment of Brook Farm. He envisioned communal living and working arrangement, while retaining private property. His blueprint for "phalanxes," as he called his settlements, planned everything to the last detail, from the number of residents ( 2000 ) to how much income would be generated by charging admission to sightseers.

perfectionism

the outlook that saw both individuals and society at large as capable of indefinite improvement

the temperance movement

A widespread reform movement, led by militant Christians, focused on reducing the use of alcoholic beverages. It aroused considerable hostility.

critics of reform

Many saw the reform impulse as an attack on their own freedom, especially American Catholics (the prefectionist idea truck them as an affront to genuine religion).

Uncle Tom's Cabin

written by harriet beecher stowe in 1852 that highly influenced england's view on the American Deep South and slavery. a novel promoting abolition. intensified sectional conflict.

Dorothea Dix

A MA schoolteacher who was the leading advocate of more humane treatment of the insane, who at the time were generally placed in jails alongside debtors and hardened criminals. Thanks to her efforts, 28 states constructed mental hospitals before the Civil War.

connections between women and abolitionism

It was the participation in abolitionism that inspired the early movement for women's rights. In working for the rights of the salve. not a few women developed a new understanding of their own subordinate status.

Angelina and Sarah Grimké

Daughters of a South Carolina slaveholder, they first converted to Quakerism and then to abolitionism while visiting Philly and during the 1830s, they began to deliver popular lectures that offered a scathing condemnation of slavery from the perspective of those who had witness its evils first hand. They used the controversy of the their speeches as a springboard against the idea that taking part in assemblies. demonstrations, and lectures was unfeminine

Women's rights

A movement that argued women should have the same rights as men, it gained even more traction at the Seneca Falls Convention where equal rights became the rallying cry of the early movement, which meant claiming access to all the prevailing definitions of freedom.

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

A gathering on behalf of women's rights held in upstate NY. It principally organized by Elizabeth Cody Stanton and Lucretia Mott after they had been barred from participating in the World Anti-Slavery Convention. There they drafted the Declaration of Sentiments and marked the beginning of the 70-year struggle from woman suffrage.

Declaration of Sentiments (1848)

As the principal author, Stanton modeled it on the Declaration of Independence but added women to Jefferson's axion of "all men are created equal," and in place of the list of injustice to George III, she listed the injustices of women. The document condemned the entire structure of inequality that denied women access to education, employment, as well as rights in their personal lives.

Women and Work

Women demanded the right to participate in the market revolution and the work force at large in general

Sojourner Truth

United States abolitionist and feminist who was freed from slavery and became a leading advocate of the abolition of slavery and for the rights of women (1797-1883). At an 1851 women's rights convention, she insisted that that movement devote attention to the plight of poor and working-class women and repudiate the ida that women were too delicate to engage in work outside the home.