Antebellum Reformers

Units 4 - 5, Lessons 9 - 10

Amelia Bloomer

Advocated for temperance and women’s dress reform; popularized “bloomers.”

Angelina and Sarah Grimké

Southern Quaker sisters who championed abolition and women’s rights.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Led early women’s suffrage; co-organized the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.

Lucretia Mott

Quaker abolitionist and co-organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention.

Lucy Stone

Suffragist who kept her maiden name; symbol of women’s independence.

Sojourner Truth

Former slave and women’s rights speaker; known for “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Susan B. Anthony

Suffragist arrested for voting; co-sponsored the 19th Amendment.

William Lloyd Garrison

Radical abolitionist; published The Liberator and founded Anti-Slavery Society.

David Walker

Wrote 1829 Appeal urging Black resistance to slavery and injustice.

Elijah Lovejoy

Abolitionist editor killed defending his press from a pro-slavery mob.

Frederick Douglass

Escaped slave, orator, and publisher of The North Star.

Theodore Dwight Weld

Co-wrote American Slavery As It Is; married Angelina Grimké.

John Brown

Militant abolitionist; led Harpers Ferry raid and was executed.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, galvanizing anti-slavery sentiment.

Harriet Tubman

Escaped slave; led dozens to freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Elizabeth Blackwell

First U.S. woman to earn a medical degree; promoted women in medicine.

Dorothea Dix

Advocated for humane treatment of the mentally ill; led asylum reform.

Henry David Thoreau

Wrote Walden and Civil Disobedience; resisted unjust government.

Margaret Fuller

Feminist transcendentalist; inspired Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Led Transcendentalism; championed individualism and nature.

Horace Mann

“Father of the Common School”; pushed for universal public education.

Mary Lyon

Founded Mount Holyoke; promoted rigorous education for women.

Catharine Beecher

Advocated for women’s education and physical fitness; promoted separate spheres.

William Holmes McGuffey

Created McGuffey Readers, foundational American textbooks.

Emma Willard

Founded Troy Female Seminary; pioneer in women’s higher education.

Noah Webster

Created spelling books and dictionaries; shaped American English.

Walt Whitman

Father of free verse; wrote Leaves of Grass and “O Captain! My Captain!”

Emily Dickinson

Reclusive poet known for slant rhyme and themes of death/immortality.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dark Romantic; wrote The Scarlet Letter and critiqued Transcendentalism.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Wrote “Paul Revere’s Ride” and The Song of Hiawatha.

James Fenimore Cooper

Wrote frontier novels; best known for The Last of the Mohicans.

Louisa May Alcott

Wrote Little Women; raised among Transcendentalists.

Herman Melville

Wrote Moby-Dick; explored obsession and the human condition.

Washington Irving

Wrote “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

Edgar Allan Poe

Master of Gothic fiction; known for The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart.

Thomas Cole

Founded Hudson River School; painted romantic American landscapes.

Frederic Church

Hudson River School painter; known for grand natural scenes like Olana.

Charles Grandison Finney

Revivalist preacher of the Second Great Awakening; led revivals in NY.

Joseph Smith

Founded Mormonism; published Book of Mormon; killed by mob.

Brigham Young

Led Mormon migration to Utah; long-time LDS Church president.

Mother Ann Lee

Founded the Shakers; promoted celibacy and gender equality.

Robert Owen

Tried utopian socialism at New Harmony; emphasized cooperative living.

John Humphrey Noyes

Founded Oneida Community; promoted “Perfectionism” and free love.