Unit 8 Study Guide: Immigration and Social Reform Saved

Immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s

Over 4 million immigrants came to the US mostly from Ireland and Germany.

Nativism

Americans who feared immigrants would steal jobs.

Goals of the Know-Nothing Party

Anti-immigrants and Anti-Catholic.

Industrial Revolution

The revolution that led to the rapid growth of American cities.

Problems of rapidly growing cities

People who often lived in crowded, unsanitary tenements with lack of clean water.

Second Great Awakening

A revival of Christian religious feelings that spread across the country and challenged traditional Protestant ideas.

Surge in religious ideas

Led to the Reform movement.

People involved in reform movements

Middle class because they had time and money.

Temperance Movement

Urged people to use self-discipline and use less of or give up using alcohol altogether and was an example of a movement led by women.

Dorothea Dix

Visited and observed the horrible conditions of prisons in Massachusetts.

Horace Mann

Led the common-school movement.

Richard Allen

A former slave and founder of the Free African Religious Society.

Abolition

Complete end to slavery.

Disagreement among abolitionists

While abolitionists agreed slavery should end, many did not agree on the equality of slaves.

Frederick Douglass

He delivered a powerful speech called 'What to a slave is the Fourth of July' to help end slavery in America.

Underground Railroad

A loosely organized group that helped thousands of slaves escape to the North along secret trails, with Harriet Tubman as a famous conductor.

Nat Turner

Led a slave revolt in Virginia that greatly threatened the institution of slavery.

Gag rule

How Congress avoided the issue of dealing with slavery for many years.

John Quincy Adams

Became a strong anti-slavery voice in the government.

African Methodist Episcopal Church

The new black Christian denomination that broke away from the white Methodist Church.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Wrote about Puritan life in 'The Scarlet Letter.'

Declaration of Sentiment

Document expressed the complaints of supporters of women's rights.

Edgar Allan Poe

Author of 'The Raven.'

Experience of African Americans in the North

Had opportunities to attend black colleges formed in the 1840s.

Examples of social reforms of the mid-1800s

The temperance movement, efforts at prison reform, and the abolition movement.

Factors against emancipation in the South

Fear, racism, and economic dependence made it unlikely that emancipation would occur naturally.