Chapter 12-- An Age of Reform

The Reform Impulses 

• Reformers had a profound impact on both politics and society  

  • Americans’ political and social activities were organized through voluntary associations 

  • Americans established organizations that worked to reorganize society on the basis of cooperation rather than competitive individualism 

  • Worked to convert public opinion to their cause 

    • Speakers, gathered signatures on petitions, and published pamphlets  

Utopian Communities 

• Reform communities 

  • Some subjected to a single leader while others operated in a democratic fashion

  • Most arose from religious conviction but others were inspired to counteract the social & economic changes set in motion by the market revolution

• Hoped to restore social harmony & to narrow the gap between wealth

  • Insisted that abolition of private property must be paired by an end to men’s “property” in women  

• Socialism and communism entered politics 

The Shakers

• Religious communities attracted people who wanted to rid their sins from society 

• Shakers were the most successful of the religious communities 

• Shakers were founded by Ann Lee & the first Shaker community was established in upstate NY in 1787

• The Shakers believed God had two sexes & also beared the responsibility for both 

  • “Virgin purity” separated men & women from obscene activities 

• Shakers were economically successful despite rejecting private property

• Marketed vegetables, flower seeds, and herbal medicines & breed cattle for profit  

Oneida

• Founded in 1848 in upstate NY by John Humphrey Noyes 

• Noyes preached for moral perfection to an atypical extreme; sinless society

• Dictatorial environment

• Similarity to Shakers: rejected private property & abandoned traditional marriage

• Difference to Shakers: celibacy ability to form families; Noyes taught his community that they could form a single “holy family” of equals 

  • “Complex marriage” was man could propose; women could accept reject 

• “Exclusive affections” destroyed community harmony 

Worldly Communities

• Internal divisions → shorter periods for worldly communities

• Brook Farm was established in MA 1841

  • Hoped to show that manual and intellectual labor could coexist harmoniously

  • Modeled French social reformer Charles Fourier’s ideas

    • Communal living & working arrangements, while retaining private property

    • Blueprint for Phalanxes (settlements) was detailed

      • Leisures 

      • Number of residents

      • How much income generated by charging admission to sightseers 

The Owenites

• Robert Owens promoted communitarianism as a peaceful means of ensuring that workers received the full value of their labor in New Lanark, Scotland

  • Communitarianism:  social reform movement driven by the belief that by establishing small communities based on common ownership of property, a less competitive and individualistic society could be developed

• Owens established New Harmony in America

  • “New moral world” 

    • Similar to Winthrop’s holy model

  • Owen’s settlement in America influenced the labor movement, educational reformers, and women’s rights advocates

  • Owen’s vision resonated with the American belief that a community of equals could be created in the New World

• Josiah Warren   

  • Set up stores where goods were traded based on the work put into making them 

    • System avoided bankers and merchants (middlement) from taking profits from farmers, workers, and manufacturers (low class)    

  • Marriage was voluntary w/ no laws controlling personal relationships

  • Believed in total freedom for individuals; freedom was defined as each person in sovereign of themselves 

Religion & Reform

• Many reform movements drew inspiration of Second Great Awakening

• Revivals popularized perfectionism 

  • Perfectionism: both individuals and society at large as capable of improvements from their “sins”

  • Upstate NY & northern OH became known as the “burned over districts” bc of the intense revivals experienced 

  • Older reform efforts moved in a new, radical direction

• Temperance was transformed into crusade to eliminate drinking

• Criticism of war = pacifism 

• Critics of slavery demanded immediate and total abolition

The Temperance Movement

• Reform was respectable among North’s emerging middle-class

  • Established control of an individual's life

  • Showed them becoming morally accountable human beings

• American Temperance Society of 1826

  • Reduced alcohol consumption among habitual & occasional drinkers 

  • Created hostility due to an individual pleasure versus religious sins

Critics of Reform

• Saw reforms as attack on individual’s freedom

• Catholics were hostile to reform impulse 

  • They viewed sin as an inescapable burden of individuals and society, so the perfectionist idea Protestants created struck them as an affront to genuine religion 

    • Viewed reformers’ efforts as a way to impose their own version of Protestant morality on others

Reformers and Freedom

• Spoke of liberating Americans from various forms of “slavery” that made it impossible to succeed– slavery to drink, to poverty, to sin

• Self-fulfilment came through self-discipline 

• American Tract Society, American Bible Society, etc. promoted religious virtue

  • This was created bc religious communities were worried about the West and immigrants lack of self-control to sins

  • Pamphlets made due to printing technologies 

Invention of the Asylum

• Reformed institutions (jails, orphanage, asylums) shared with communitarians and religious believers in perfectionism → curing them would be to place them in jail/asylums 

• Created so the individual could come out a productive, self-disciplined, and moral person/citizen

The Common School

• Tax-supported state school systems open to all children 

• Horace Mann was the era’s leading educational reformer 

  • Combined conservatism and radicalism, liberation, and social control 

  • Education and equality for all children in society 

• “Silent curriculum” helped to prepare students for work in the new industrial economy that their parents failed to instill (discipline)

  • Obedience to authority, promptness in attendance, organization

• Public education growth in the North while lack of education in the South

  • Highlighted growing sectional differences

• First major career opportunity for women as teachers

The Crusade Against Slavery

• Quakers, slaves, and free blacks were the most prominent & most willing to challenge slavery 

Colonization

• American Colonization Society promoted the gradual abolition of slavery and the settlement of black Americans in Africa (LIBERIA)

  • Ideas were formed by the proponents of White Americans calling for abolition 

• Colonization shocked many observers as impractical, while many prominent political leaders of the Jackson era supported Colonization Society

• North: saw colonization as as the only way to rid the nation of slavery

• South: thought Free blacks were a threat to a fundamental white society 

Blacks and Colonization

• Some were deported, while others left voluntarily 

  • “Legal slavery of the South & the social slavery of the North”

• African-Americans opposed the idea of colonization

  • Some removed Africans from their name so they wouldn’t be deported

• American Colonization Society gave free blacks to claim rights in America

Militant Abolitionism

• Call for immediate abolition

  • Advocated that free blacks should be free AND equal citizens to the republic rather than being deported

  • Economic, civil, and political rights should be equally enjoyed 

• Perfecting American Society = rooting out racism in all aspects

• An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World by David Walker (1829) was the first indication of the new spirit of abolition 

  • Called on black Americans to mobilize for abolition

  • Warned whites that the nation faced divine punishments if it did not mend its sinful ways

  • Used secular and religious language

The Emergence of Garrison

• William Lloyd Garrison’s journal, The Liberator, planted a permanent voice to abolition 

  • Southerners reprinted his editorials in their own newspapers to condemn him and other abolitionist 

  • Call for slavery echoed throughout antislavery circles

• Thoughts on African Colonization persuaded many foes of slavery that blacks must be recognized as part of American society’s

Spreading the Abolitionist Message

• Expanded through the North

• Anti-Slavery leaders took advantage of the print technology and literacy to spread message 

  • Similar to radical pamphlets in American Revolution because they recognized the democratic potential in the production of printer materials → millions of printed things

• American Anti-Slavery Society: northerners devoted to abolition 

• Theodore Weld trained band of speakers; these speakers brought the message of abolition into the heart of rural and small-towns North 

  • Message: slavery was a sin

    • Immediate action called for elimination of slavery 

• Charity fairs were way to raise funds

  • Women sold clothes and embroidery from luxury items 

  • Fairs were held before Christmas, granting gifts for children

    • “Buy For the Sake Of the Slave” → consumer activism

  • National Anti-Slavery Bazaar in Boston, organized by Maria Westin Chapman 

Slavery & Moral Suasion 

• Persuading both slave owners and complicit northerners that the institution was evil

• Abolitionist adopted role of radical social critics as they stood outside institutions

Abolitionists & The Idea of Freedom 

• Abolitionists helped to popularize idea that personal freedom was from ownership of one’s self and the ability to enjoy profits as a result of hard work 

  • Refused to be associated with “wage slavery” 

  • Working for wages was an embodiment of freedom: laborer could change jobs if desired, accumulate property, and enjoy stable family life 

    • Slavery diminished that central right of self-ownership 

• Needed changes in North as well as South because slavery was embedded in American life 

  • Inherent, natural, and absolute right to personal liberty, took precedence over other forms of freedom

    • accumulate/hold property or self-govt 

A New Vision of America 

• An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans

  • Lydia Maria Child’s insisted that blacks were fellow countrymen

  • Idea of birthplace should determine citizenry (14th Amendment)

  • Human rights took precedence over national sovereignty 

    • Urged US to join courts that brought together judged to punish those who violated the ban on the Atlantic Slave Trade

• Abolitionist invented the concept of equality to define the core universal rights to all Americans 

• Literature expanded the definition of cruelty 

• Identified movement w/ the revolutionary heritage of freedom

  • Liberty Bell

  • Old State House Bell

• Mobs that disrupted abolitionist meetings involve the “spirit of ‘76”

Black & White Abolitionism

Black Abolitionists 

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (1852)

  • Popularized the abolitionist position

  • Modeled on the autobiography of fugitive slave Josh Henson 

  • Portrayed slaves as sympathetic men and women & as christians at the mercy of slaveholders. who split up families and set bloodhounds on innocent mothers and children 

    • Gave the abolitionist message a powerful human appeals 

Abolitionism & Race

• First racially integrated social movement 

• First to give equal rights for blacks a central place in its political agenda

• White abolitionists monopolized key decision-making posted, charged black spokesman Martin R. Delaney, relegating blacks to a secondary, underlying position 

  • Black abolitionists wanted their own independent role within movement → regularly held their own conventions 

• Henry Highland Garnet’s slave rebellion was declined due to moral suasion

• White abolitionist’ rose above prejudice reflected upon most of their society 

  • Launched legal & political battles against discrimination in the North

  • EX: end of school segregation in MA in 1855

• Black abolitionists were the most determined in arguing that the fight against slavery needed to change how people understood both freedom and what it meant to be American

  • Many called on free blacks to seek out skilled & dignified employment to demonstrate the race’s capability for advancement 

Slavery & American Freedom

• Black abolitionists rejected the nation’s character as a land of liberty

  • Alternative calendar of “freedom celebrations” 

    • Jan 1, 1808: Slave trade became illegal

    • August 1: anniversary of West Indian emancipation

• Poverty of free blacks as a consequence of slavery 

  • Samuel Cornish insisted freedom possessed an economic dimension, and that individuals must help the oppressed 

• Speaking in Rochester in 1852 by Frederick Douglas

  • Fourth of July, Independence Day

  • He says the day was full of hypocrisy since this nation was found on freedom but they oppress blacks in retaining that same liberty 

Gentlemen of Property and Standing

• Merchants w/ close commercial ties to the South would mob abolitionist meetings in northern cities 

• 1837, antislavery editor Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed in a mob in Alton, IL 

• Abolitionist began to flood Washington w/ petitions calling for emancipation in the nation’s capital 

  • Gag Rule: H.O.R prohibited consideration of abolitionist petitions 

    • Repealed in 1844 from John Quincy Adams 

Slavery & Civil Liberties

• Mob violence convinced Northerners that slavery threatened democratic freedoms

• Elijah Lovejoy’s murder inspired Wendell Phillips to join abolitionists

• Abolitionists fought for free speech, press, and conscience rights

• Gag rule angered Northerners, even non-abolitionists

• New York Evening Post warned government control over opinions could end freedom

• Tocqueville noted limited free discussion in America despite valuing free speech

• Abolitionists linked free speech to the fight against slavery

The Origins of Feminism

The Rise of Public Women 

• Northern women were the abolitionist movement’s rooted strength 

  • Lucy Coleman: abolitionist lecturer, teacher at a school for blacks in upstate NY, an advocate of women’s rights, and an opponent of capital punishment 

• Public sphere was open to women in ways govt & party politics were not

  • Women organized a petition against Indian removal and failed BUT produced a generation of women who then turned their attention to abolitionism, temperance, and other reforms

• Dorothea Dix

  • MA school teacher, who was a leading advocate of more humane treatment of the insane 

  • Efforts led to 28 states constructing mental hospitals 

• Female Moral Reform Society (1834)

  • Sought to redeem prostitutes from lives of sin and to protect the morality of single women

  • Attacked era’s sexual double standard by publishing lists of men who frequented prostitutes or abused women 

  • By 1840, the society was replaced by hundreds of American communities 

The Rise of Public Women 

• Abolitionism inspired movement for women’s rights

• Grimke sisters (Angelina & Sarah) delivered a lecture, offering a scathing condemnation of slavery from the perspective of those who had witnessed it firsthand 

  • Used the controversy over their speeches to emit arguments against the idea that taking part in assemblies, demonstrations, and lectures was unfeminine 

• Letters on the Equality of the Sexes (1838) 

  • “equal pay for equal work”

  • Sarah Grimke 

Women’s Rights

• Grimke sisters’ writings helped to spark the movement of women’s rights

• Arose in 1840s

• Seneca Falls Convention of 1848

  • Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Lucretia Mott

  • Gathering on behalf of women’s rights raised issue of woman’s suffrage for the first time

• Declaration of Sentiments condemned inequality that denied a woman to her freedom

Feminism & Freedom

• Feminists found allies abroad, especially through literature

• Margaret Fuller

  • The Free Woman by vouched for equality of freedom for women regarding education 

  • First women to achieve a position in American journalism (literary editor of the NY Tribune)

  • Woman in the Nineteenth Century sought to apply to women the transcendentalist idea that freedom meant a quest for personal development

Women & Work

• Women demanded the right to participate in the market revolution

  • 1851, black abolitionist Sojourner Truth insisted the movement devote attention to the poor and working-class women & repudiate the idea that women were too delicate to engage in work outside of home 

• Devised by Amelia Bloomer, some feminists tried to popularized a new style of dress consisting of a loose-fitting tunic and trousers 

  • Made a point that women's restrictive clothing made it hard to work or join public life

• For women, their movement was an expansion of freedom; not a redefinition of it like abolitionist

• Movement posed a challenge to society’s central belief (independence was seen as male, life split into roles, and freedom didn’t apply in families)

The Slavery of Sex

• Empowered the women’s movement to develop a critique on male authority and a woman’s subordination

• A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft 

  • Analogy between marriage and slavery

• Laws

  • Limitations in most states that property gained after marriage and wages earned by wives still belonged to their husbands

• Early property laws (1839) were influenced by economic crises, such as the depression of 1837, rather than a feminist agenda

“Social Freedom”

• Slave women’s sexual abuse related to wives feeling controlled and abused by their husbands

• Some feminists wanted full equality, while others recognized gender differences but still supported equal rights

• Early feminists questioned the idea that women's place was only in the home, though some accepted traditional roles like nurturing instincts being beneficial in public life

• Feminists were hesitant to discuss issues like sexual freedom openly, with private discussions (Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone).

• Anthony argued that true freedom for women required freedom in both public and private life, including intimate relationships

• Women like Anthony and Stone were dissatisfied with traditional family life, reflecting broader feminist dissatisfaction

• Dramatic fall of birthrates suggested women were quietly exercising personal freedom” 

The Abolitionist Schism

• Women’s public roles dealt w/ controversy 

  • Samuel Gridley Howe opposed his wife’s involvement in women’s suffrage

• In 1840, some abolitionists disagree about women’s roles in the movement

  • Abby Kelley’s election led to a rival group forming

• Some abolitionists feared that supporting women’s rights hurt the movement → a new party, the Liberty Party, formed but got few votes

  • the Liberty Party: Abolitionist political party that nominated James G. Bimey for presidency 

• The women’s rights movement made gender equality a key topic

• By 1840, abolitionism spread across the North

• Broke the silence on slavery, making it a national issue