America’s HistorySeventh Edition

CHAPTER 11Religion and Reform,

1820-1860

Copyright © 2011 by Bedford/St. Martin’s

James A. HenrettaRebecca Edwards

Robert O. Self

Chapter 11 Learning Objectives1. How did the economic and political changes that accelerated in the 1820s and 1830s transform the way Americans thought about themselves and their society?2. How and why did transcendentalists promote social reform?3. Why did communal settlements increase during the mid-eighteenth century, and what were the objectives of their participants?4. How and why did the public and private roles of women change between 1820 and 1860? (4.3.1.C)5. How and why did abolitionism become the dominant American reform movement? (4.1.3.B)6. What was the impact of antislavery activists on American society and politics?

Keep your eye out for the following key concepts(4.1.2.C) Liberal social ideas from abroad and Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility influenced literature, art, philosophy, and architecture(4.1.3.B) Abolitionist and antislavery movements gradually achieved emancipation in the North, contributing to the growth of the free African American population, even as many state governments restricted African Americans’ rights. Antislavery efforts in the South were largely limited to unsuccessful slave rebellions.(4.1.3.C) A women’s rights movement sought to create greater equality and opportunities for women, expressing its ideals at the Seneca Falls Convention.(4.2.2.C) Gender and family roles changed in response to the market revolution, particularly with the growth of definitions of domestic ideals that emphasized the separation of public and private spheres.(4.3.2.B) Increasing Southern cotton production and the related growth of Northern manufacturing, banking, and shipping industries promoted the development of national and international commercial ties.

Hannah Roberts and Lewis TebbetsDuring the 1830s, Joseph H. Davis used bright watercolors to paint scores of family portraits–150 still survive—that capture the comfortable lives of New England’s middle classes. This double portrait commemorates the engagement of a young, well-dressed couple of Berwick, Maine. To emphasize their romantic love, Davis shows them gazing into each other’s eyes, their hands linked by a prayer book, a symbol of their education and coming sacred union. Such respectable couples—Lewis Tebbets became a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church—flocked to hear Ralph Waldo Emerson and other lecturers on the lyceum circuit.

I. Individualism: The Ethic of the Middle ClassA. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism

1. Transcendentalism (4.1.2.C)• intellectual movement rooted in Unitarianism;• admired European romanticism (Kant, Coleridge) which rejected

Enlightenment thinking for a celebration of human passions and mysteries• Unitarians believed in God as a single being (not Father, Son, Holy Spirit like

other Protestants) • Emerson wanted to explore “individuality”• moved to Concord, MA, after resigning from a ministerial position in Boston• believed people were trapped by traditions• notion of an “open sky” and union with the universe• work was destroying spiritual lives.

2. The Lyceum Movement

The Founder of TranscendentalismAs this painting of Ralph Waldo Emerson by an unknown artist indicates, the young philosopher was an attractive man, his face brimming with confidence and optimism. With his radiant personality and incisive intellect, Emerson deeply influenced dozens of influential writers, artists, and scholars, and enjoyed great success as a lecturer to the emerging middle class.

2. The Lyceum Movement• began 1826, a way to reach

people through public lectures

• fostered discussion• modeled after Aristotle’s

public lectures in ancient Greece

• attractive to the middle class in the North and the Midwest, not the South

• Massachusetts had more than 150 lyceums in 1839

• Emerson most popular speaker.

The Ecology of Health: Average Height of Native-born American and Swedish Men, by Year of Birth, 1750–1970American transcendentalists sensed that the new urban and industrial society would damage people’s health, and modern research suggests they were right. The average height of men born in the United States from the 1830s to the 1930s (as recorded in military records and other sources) was significantly lower than that of men born between 1750 and 1830. Researchers attribute this decline to the men’s childhood experience of less adequate nutrition and greater exposure to infectious diseases in urban areas. However, data from Sweden – a predominantly poor, rural society until 1900 – suggests that life in the traditional European agricultural world was equally damaging to people’s welfare.

B. Emerson’s Literary Influence1. Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman

• Henry David Thoreau built cabin at Walden Pond after his brother’s death, lived there for 2 years alone, published Walden, or Life in the Woods about his search for meaning in the natural world

• Margaret Fuller: explored freedom for women, edited The Dial (transcendentalist journal) and published Women in the Nineteenth Century

• men and women were capable of a relationship with God; women deserved independence

• literary critic for New York Tribune• Walt Whitman: printer, teacher, journalist,

newspaper editor, published Leaves of Grass as a collection of poetry celebrating the desire to break from tradition.

2. Darker Visions3. Brook Farm

Margaret Fuller, 1848•explored freedom for women, edited The Dial (transcendentalist journal) and published Women in the Nineteenth Century•men and women were capable of a relationship with God•women deserved independence•literary critic for New York Tribune

At thirty-eight, American social reformer Margaret Fuller moved to Italy, where she reported on the Revolution of 1848 for a New York newspaper. She fell in love there with Thomas Hicks (1823–1890), a much younger American artist. Hicks rebuffed Fuller’s romantic advances but painted this flattering portrait, softening her features and giving her a pensive look. Fuller married a Roman nobleman, Giovanni Angelo, Marchese d’Ossoli, and gave birth to a son in September 1848. Two years later, the entire family died in a shipwreck while en route to the United States

B. Emerson’s Literary Influence1. Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman

• Walt Whitman: printer, teacher, journalist, newspaper editor, published Leaves of Grass as a collection of poetry celebrating the desire to break from tradition.

I. Individualism: The Ethic of the Middle ClassB. Emerson’s Literary Influence

2. Darker Visions• Nathaniel Hawthorne: pessimistic

worldview, published The Scarlet Letter (1850) criticizing excessive individualism

• Herman Melville: critic of transcendentalist focus on the individual, published Moby Dick (1851) in which a personal quest brings death.

3. Brook Farm• communal experiment outside of

Boston• Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller were all

visitors or residents at some point• vibrant intellectual life• economic failure; desired to be self-

sufficient but residents were intellectuals with little skill in farming

• fire in 1846• disbanded and sold• residents abandoned the idea of a

perfect community and sought to work within their communities on education and abolition.

B. Emerson’s Literary Influence3. Brook Farm

• communal experiment outside of Boston

• Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller were all visitors or residents at some point

• vibrant intellectual life• economic failure• desired to be self-sufficient but

residents were intellectuals with little skill in farming

• fire in 1846• disbanded and sold• residents abandoned the idea of

a perfect community and sought to work within their communities on education and abolition.

Individualism 1. What were the main beliefs of transcendentalism, and how did American writers incorporate them into their work?

Individualism 1. What were the main beliefs of transcendentalism, and how did American writers incorporate them into their work?• Transcendentalism questioned the constraints of their Puritan heritage, and rejected the ordered, rational world of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. They embraced human passion and sought deeper insight into the mysteries of existence. Individual self-realization lay at the core of transcendental belief.• American writers incorporated transcendental thought in their writing in an attempt to remake American literature. They freed themselves from the trappings of Old Europe, and sought inspiration in the experiences of ordinary Americans. In Walden, or Life in the Woods, Thoreau found inspiration in the natural world. Margaret Fuller in Woman in the Nineteenth Century explored the possibilities of freedom for women and a new era of changing relationships between men and women. Whitman celebrated urban individualism in Leaves of Grass. Other writers such as Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter and Melville in Mobey Dick explored the darker side of unbridled individualism in the mid-nineteenth century.

2. What is the relationship between transcendentalism and individualism? Between transcendentalism and social reform? Between transcendentalism and the middle class?• Transcendentalism was embraced by the middle class in the mid-nineteenth century and emphasized individual liberation from social constraints and a focus on the complexities of the American world for inspiration. Transcendentalism inspired the middle class to remake their society according to their own values. In conjunction with the influence of the Second Great Awakening, a heightened sense of individualism produced a rich moral reform movement among the middle class that included American utopian groups questioning the norms and values of antebellum America.

II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular CultureA. Mother Ann Lee and the Shakers

1. The Communal Movement• symbols of protest of industrial life in the Northeast and Midwest• Experimentation• advocated common ownership of property, unconventional marriage and family life, challenged capitalism and gender

roles• Shakers were first successful communal movement• (1770) Ann Lee Stanley (later Mother Ann) in England had vision of herself as Christ on earth• believed sexual lust had been the downfall of Adam and Eve• 1774 brought followers to America• began a church at Albany, NY• known as “Shakers” for dancing during service• Mother Ann died in 1784• followers created their own communities to celebrate her.

2. Shaker Theology

II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular CultureA. Mother Ann Lee and the Shakers

2. Shaker Theology• common ownership of property• strict oversight by church leaders• abstained from alcohol, tobacco, politics, and war• celibacy, no marriage (WUT? KINDA HARD TO GROW YOUR DENOMINATION)• God was “male and female”• men and women ruled communities• 20 communities mostly in New England, New York, Ohio• highly skilled in agriculture and furniture making• relied on conversion and adoption of orphans to grow communities• died out by 1900. (SEE CELIBACY, NO MARRIAGE)

Shakers at PrayerMost Americans viewed the Shakers with a mixture of fascination and suspicion. They feared the sect’s radical aspects – such as a commitment to celibacy and communal property – and considered the Shakers’ dancing more an invitation to debauchery than a form of prayer. Those apprehensions surfaced in this engraving, “The Shakers of New Lebanon,” New York, which expresses both the powerful intensity and the menacing character of the Shaker ritual. The work of the journalist-engraver Joseph Becker, the picture appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1873. © Bettmann.

Major Communal Experiments before 1860Some experimental communities settled along the frontier, but the vast majority chose rural areas in well-settled regions of the North and Midwest. Because of their opposition to slavery, communalists usually avoided the South. Most secular experiments failed within a few decades, as the founders lost their reformist enthusiasm or died off; religious communities – such as those of the Shakers and the Mormons – were longer-lived.

II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular CultureB. Arthur Brisbane and Fourierism (set of economic, political, and social beliefs in which

there is the inevitability of communal associations of people who worked and lived together as part of the human future1. Charles Fourier (1777-1837)

• French reformer with an eight-stage theory of social evolution• predicted decline of individualism and capitalism• Brisbane leading proponent of Fourier’s teachings in America.

2. The Phalanxes• cooperative groups of men and women who worked for the community• humane “socialistic” systems• Brisbane described Fourier’s ideas in lectures, in The Social Destiny of Man (1840) and

a column in the New York Tribune• communities collapsed over internal disputes, lack of clear vision.

II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular CultureC. John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community

1. Teachings• Noyes (1811-1886) modeled after the Shakers• “perfectionism”: Evangelical movement of the 1830s in New York and Ohio (migrant New Englanders), participants

believed that the Second Coming of Christ had occurred and people could aspire to sinless perfection in life• Noyes rejected traditional marriage in favor of “complex marriage” in which all members of community were married

to each other• rejected monogamy• discouraged multiple pregnancies to give women more freedom• encouraged men and women to redefine cultural notions of male/female gender roles (child care, hairstyles,

clothing).

2. The CommunityD. Joseph Smith and the Mormon Experience

1. Joseph Smith2. Brigham Young and Utah

II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular CultureC. John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community

2. The Community• 1839 established community near Putney, VT• locals disliked complex marriage practices• relocated to Oneida, NY• mid-1850s had more than 200 residents• when the inventor of an animal trap joined the community it became financially

self-sustaining• residents began producing silverware (remained a viable company till mid-20th

century)• Noyes charged with adultery and fled to Canada• residents returned to traditional marriage practices but remained cooperative

and productive even without their founder.

D. Joseph Smith and the Mormon Experience1. Joseph Smith2. Brigham Young and Utah

“Bloomerism – An American Custom”The hippies of the 1960s weren’t the first to draw attention to themselves with their dress (sloppy) and smoking (marijuana). Independent women of the 1850s took to wearing bloomers and puffing on cigars, behaviors that elicited everything from matrons’ disapproving stares to verbal and physical assaults from street urchins. Beyond dress and smoking habits, the women’s movement questioned existing cultural norms and sought to expand the boundaries of personal freedom. This cartoon appeared in 1851 in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, a major periodical of the time.

D. Joseph Smith and the Mormon Experience(Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day-Saints or “Mormons”: utopians with a socially conservative agenda)

1. Joseph Smith (1805-1844)•raised in New York•believed that he had been chosen to receive a revelation•published The Book of Mormon (1830) telling the story of an ancient civilization that migrated to the West and was visited by Jesus Christ after the Resurrection•encouraged patriarchal authority, frugality, hard work, a church-directed society, moral perfection•struggled to find a home for his church where it would not face harassment•eventually settled in Illinois•argued that a revelation to him had justified polygamy•charged with treason in 1844 when it was believed he was conspiring to build a community in Mexico•murdered in jail along with his brother.

2. Brigham Young and Utah

2. Brigham Young and Utah• led Smith’s disciples• 6,500 left U.S. for Mexico after his

death• eventually settled in the Great Salt

Lake Valley• created a planned agricultural

community• Young named governor when Utah

became part of the U.S. in 1850• short Mormon War over the issue of

polygamy and possible nullification• those who accepted federal

authority would not be prosecuted for polygamy (banned finally in 1896).

1. Describe this family and their living conditions.

1. Answer: husband with six wives plus children; spinning wheel, log cabin with chimney, glass window; small but seemingly well-maintained home; appear to live in comfortable, if not cramped, conditions.

2. How might those outside of the Mormon religion view this family's living situation?.

2. Answer: Christians and Jews would be troubled by the polygamy being practiced in this family; fears might be expressed for the moral teachings being passed to these children and for the circumstances under which these women were living, sharing one husband; it is likely that non-Mormons would ostracize this family for their non-traditional choices.

3. Beyond the teachings of their church, how might a Mormon family such as this one justify their non-conformist living situation to those outside the church?.

Answer: given the condition of the home, the ability of this family to have a chimney and glass window, it appears that they were economically stable; the number of adults able to contribute to the household's stability is something that this husband could argue was a benefit to being a polygamist.

II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular CultureE. Urban Popular Culture

1. Sex in the City• population growing in urban areas; young men and women left

rural areas for the cities and found life there very difficult• low wages in factories for men, women worked as domestics

where sexual exploitation was common• sex for sale was increasingly common as married men had

mistresses and working men went to “bawdy houses”• prostitutes or “public” women advertised in the open• sexual identity was experimented with in the cities without

parents having control over young peoples’ daily lives.

2. Minstrelsy3. Immigrant Masses and Nativist Reaction

Night Life in PhiladelphiaThis watercolor by Russian painter Pavel Svinin(1787–1839) captures the diversity and allure of urban America. A respectable gentleman relishes the delicacies sold by a black oysterman. Meanwhile, a young woman – probably a prostitute – engages the attention of two well-dressed young “swells” outside the Chestnut Street Theatre.

E. Urban Popular Culture2. Minstrelsy

• rat and terrier fights at local halls and performances of traditional theater were popular

• most popular were minstrel shows in which white actors performed in blackface

• historians have labeled these shows both racist caricature and social criticism

• began approx. 1830

• minstrels also stereotyped Irish immigrants’ drinking of alcohol, made fun of women’s rights activists and elite white men.

3. Immigrant Masses and Nativist Reaction

E. Urban Popular Culture2. Minstrelsy

• John Dartmouth Rice’s character “Jim Crow” was famous in New York City

• minstrels also stereotyped Irish immigrants’ drinking of alcohol, made fun of women’s rights activists and elite white men.

3. Immigrant Masses and Nativist Reaction

Rampant RacismMinstrel shows and music were just one facet of the racist culture of mid-nineteenth-century America. Exploiting the market for almanacs among farmers and city-folk alike, the publishing firm of Fisher and Brother produced the “Black Joke Al-Ma-Nig” for 1852. Like other almanacs, it provided information about holidays, astrological charts, and weather predictions but sought to boost sales by including “new and original nigga’ stories, black jokes, puns, parodies” that would “magnetize bofe white an’ black.” Such racist caricatures influenced white views of African Americans and their culture well into the twentieth century.

E. Urban Popular Culture2. Minstrelsy

• minstrels also stereotyped Irish immigrants’ drinking of alcohol, made fun of women’s rights activists and elite white men.

3. Immigrant Masses and Nativist Reaction

• immigrants wanted to be viewed as “white”

• Irish joined American Catholic Churches and became part of the Democratic Party

• nativists wanted to stop immigration

• gangs formed in New York City and violence erupted between immigrant groups and native-born white Americans.

The Surge in Immigration, 1845–1855In 1845, the failure of the potato crop in Ireland prompted the wholesale migration to the United States of peasants from the overcrowded farms of its western counties. Population growth and limited economic prospects likewise spurred the migration of tens of thousands of German peasants, while the failure of the liberal republican political revolution of 1848 prompted hundreds of prominent German politicians and intellectuals to follow them. An American economic recession cut the flow of immigrants, but the booming northern economy during the Civil War again persuaded Europeans to set sail for the United States.

1. Describe the action taking place in this painting, The Intelligence Office (1849).

1. Answer: seated woman is considering which of the two standing women to hire, man standing at center is awaiting her answer, behind him a sign reads “Agent for Domestics. Warranted Honest,” in the background sit many more women awaiting employment.

2. What does this image tell us about 19th-century relations between women of different social classes?

2. What does this image tell us about 19th-century relations between women of different social classes? Answer: in general, women had very little power in the 19th century; this image provides an example of one place in which women of wealth did have control – the hiring of domestic help; her husband’s economic standing elevates this woman to a position above the other women in the room; even the man, the only person in this image with any political power in American society, awaits her decision.)

Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture 1. In what respects were the new cultures of the mid-nineteenth century—those of utopian communalists and of urban residents—different from the mainstream culture described in Chapters 8 and 9? How were they alike?

Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture 1. In what respects were the new cultures of the mid-nineteenth century—those of utopian communalists and of urban residents—different from the mainstream culture described in Chapters 8 and 9? How were they alike? •Different: The new cultures rejected traditional notions of Christianity and moral uplift in favor of more radical experiments in social living. They altered traditional notions of gender relations, clothing apparel, and sexual behavior.• Similar: Both new and mainstream cultures were shaped by the economic and social forces of the era, such as the Industrial Revolution, Market Revolution, Panic of 1837, and the Second Great Awakening. Both were dominated by Anglo American youth who advocated individualism.

2. What accounts for the proliferation of rural utopian communities in nineteenth-century America?

2. What accounts for the proliferation of rural utopian communities in nineteenth-century America? • Farmers and artisans sought refuge and security during the seven-year economic downturn known as the Panic of 1837. Americans who were displaced as a result of the Industrial Revolution also wanted to create communes as symbols of social protest and experimentation during a time of fluid social change in the United States.• Some utopias became successful based on the charisma of a particular leader, the ability of the commune to generate adequate funding, and the tolerance of the local community of the utopia’s existence.• Gender relationships were quite prominent since many of the communes viewed Christianity as central to their function. The social decay of America was connected to the lack of Christian values in society and the need to repudiate marriage and sexual pleasure in favor of celibacy and moral purity.

III. AbolitionismA. Black Social Thought: Uplift, Race Equality, and Rebellion

1. David Walker’s Appeal (4.3.2.B)• northern free blacks tried to focus on social uplift• white mobs attacked blacks in northern cities• Walker’s writing was in response to attacks• free blacks from North Carolina, moved to Boston• self-educated• ridiculed religious arguments of slaveholders, justified slave rebellion,

warned of a slave revolt if blacks were denied justice much longer• 1830 national convention of free black leaders in Philadelphia• group demanded freedom but refused to endorse Walker’s Appeal.

2. Nat Turner’s Revolt

1. Describe the image that accompanies this 1848 reprint of David Walker's Appeal (1829).

1. Describe the image that accompanies this 1848 reprint of David Walker's Appeal (1829).

Answer: an African-American man, draped in a robe or sheet, appears to be climbing a mountain, his arms stretched to the sky and the Latin words for "Liberty" and "Justice" before him

2. In your opinion, why would the editors choose this image to accompany Walker's writing?Answer: Walker's call for slave rebellion was critical of the religious sentiments expressed by southern slaveholders, calling upon them to "repent" for the sin of slavery; this image evokes Christian sentiment with the man appearing to reach to the heavens, wearing clothing and sandals consistent with ancient, perhaps biblical, times.)

2. In your opinion, why would the editors choose this image to accompany Walker's writing?Answer: Walker's call for slave rebellion was critical of the religious sentiments expressed by southern slaveholders, calling upon them to "repent" for the sin of slavery; this image evokes Christian sentiment with the man appearing to reach to the heavens, wearing clothing and sandals consistent with ancient, perhaps biblical, times.)

III. AbolitionismA. Black Social Thought: Uplift, Race Equality, and

Rebellion2. Nat Turner’s Revolt (4.1.3.B)

• Turner a slave in Virginia who taught himself to read

• was separated from wife by a new master and had a religious vision

• August 1831 led a revolt with relatives and friends• killed 55 whites• he was eventually caught and hanged• Virginia assembly increased slave codes,

prohibited anyone from teaching slaves to read, limited movement of black people in the state.

The following is the print which you can’t read at the bootom…“The Scenes which the above Plate is designed to represent, are-Fig 1. A Mother intreating for the lives of her children.-2. Mr Travis, cruelly murdered by his own slaves.-3. Mr. Barrow, who bravely defended himself until his wife escaped.-4. A comp. of mounted Dragoon s in pursuit of the Blacks.”

III. AbolitionismA. Black Social Thought: Uplift, Race Equality, and Rebellion

2. Nat Turner’s Revolt• August 1831 led a revolt with relatives and friends• killed 55 whites• he was eventually caught and hanged

• Virginia assembly increased slave codes, prohibited anyone from teaching slaves to read, limited movement of black people in the state.

B. Evangelical Abolitionism1. William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, and Angelina and Sarah Grimké

Garrison, a printer in Massachusetts, founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society, published The Liberator (4.3.2.B)• later established American Anti-Slavery Society with Weld and other abolitionists• appealed to religious people

Weld published The Bible Against Slavery (1837)Grimké sisters raised in South Carolina, converted to Quakerism and moved to Pennsylvania• with Weld published American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839), which sold more than 100,000 copies that

year.

2. The American Anti-Slavery Society

B. Evangelical Abolitionism1. Theodore Weld, and Angelina

and Sarah GrimkéWeld published The Bible Against

Slavery (1837)Grimké sisters raised in South

Carolina, converted to Quakerism and moved to Pennsylvania

• with Weld published American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839), which sold more than 100,000 copies that year.

2. The American Anti-Slavery Society

The Anti-Slavery AlphabetGirding themselves for a long fight, abolitionists took care to convey their beliefs to the next generation. This primer, written by Quakers Hannah and Mary Townsend and published in Philadelphia in 1846, taught young children the alphabet by spreading the antislavery message. “A” was for “Abolitionist,” and “B” was for a “Brother,” an enslaved black that, though of a “darker hue,” was considered by God “as dear as you.”

B. Evangelical Abolitionism2. The American Anti-Slavery Society

• printed thousands of pamphlets using steam-powered presses

• “great postal campaign” (1835) sent more than a million pamphlets

• utilized fugitive slaves to tell their stories

• established Underground Railroad to help fugitives

• petitioned Congress (1835) to demand abolition in the District of Columbia, end interstate slave trade and prohibit new slave states. Illustration showing a Charleston, SC mob pulling abolitionist mail out of

the post office to feed their bonfire. A tattered notice for Arthur Tappan, a leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, is posted on the wall of the building.

The Underground Railroad in the 1850sBefore 1840, most African Americans who fled slavery did so on their own or with the help of family and friends. Thereafter, they could count on support from members of the Underground Railroad. Provided with food, directions, and free black guides in the South, fugitive slaves crossed into free states. There, they received protection and shelter from sympathetic men and women who arranged for their transportation to Canada or to “safe” American cities and towns.

1. In your opinion, does this image condemn or condone the enslavement of black people?

Answer: condone; depicts the black man as savage.

2. What specific evidence supports your viewpoint?

Answer: this man is living in an environment consistent with Americans' perspective of Africa in the 19th century: barely dressed, a weapon in hand, a skull at his feet; a heathen.)

3. What audience would this illustrator be hoping to reach with this depiction of a "Negro"?

Answer: slaveholders and those who justified slavery with the argument that the black man/woman required the paternal care of a master for guidance and discipline, would accept this image as evidence of what the institution of slavery had saved black people from in Africa

“The Negro in His Own Country” versus “The Negro in America”Beginning in the 1830s, slave owners and their intellectual and religious allies responded to abolitionists’ attacks by defending the system of slavery as a “positive good.” These two images, which appeared in Josiah Priest’s Bible Defence of Slavery (1852), support the argument that racial slavery saved Africans from a savage, war-ridden life and offered them access to the civilized luxury of American society. Such publications achieved wide circulation among the planter classes.

C. Opposition and Internal Conflict1. Attacks on Abolitionism

• movement was a minority (about 10% of northerners supported)

• political, social, and economic reasons that slaveholders opposed/attacked the movement

• white men and women almost universally opposed “amalgamation” or racial mixing/intermarriage

• whites in the North attacked churches, temperance halls, homes, conventions of abolitionists

• race solidarity stronger in the South but existed in the North as well

• 1836 Congress passed a “gag rule” to keep abolitionists from petitioning

• in place until 1844.

2. Internal Divisions• within the movement activists disagreed• some critical of women addressing mix-

gendered audiences and of Garrison’s support for women’s rights

• formation of a group with opposing views of women’s rights – “American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.”

The Complexities of RaceThis cartoon takes aim at Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, the distraught man being comforted by prominent abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. A congressman and senator. Johnson was the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate in 1836. Although the party stood for the South and slavery – and condemned mixed-race unions – Johnson lived openly with an enslaved woman, Julia Chinn, whose portrait is held by his mixed-race daughters. Future Supreme Court justice John Catron noted with disgust that Johnson often tried “to force his daughters into society,” and that they and their mother “rode in carriages, and claimed equality.” Racial prejudice cost Johnson some votes, but he won a plurality in the electoral college and, on a party-line vote, Democrats in the Senate elected him Martin Van Buren’s vice president.

IV. The Women’s Rights MovementA. Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement

1. Moral Reform• religious women wanted to help other women• “Female Moral Reform Society” in New York City to end

prostitution• visited brothels, prayed, sang.

2. Improving Prisons, Creating Asylums, Expanding Education

• Dorothea Dix (1801-1887) emotionally abused by an alcoholic father in Massachusetts

• wanted to save children from vice• published author• 1841 began a campaign to improve care for the

mentally ill• asylum-building movement to separate the mentally ill

from criminals (previously held together in prisons)• women supported school movement of Horace Mann

in Massachusetts• recruited to be teachers.

IV. The Women’s Rights MovementA. Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement

2. Improving Prisons, Creating Asylums, Expanding Education

• Dorothea Dix (1801-1887) emotionally abused by an alcoholic father in Massachusetts

• wanted to save children from vice• published author• 1841 began a campaign to improve care for

the mentally ill• asylum-building movement to separate the

mentally ill from criminals (previously held together in prisons)

• women supported school movement of Horace Mann in Massachusetts

• recruited to be teachers.

1. What details in “The Good Husband,” provide clues to the social class of the family portrayed in this lithograph?

Answer: fancy clothing, fine furnishings, a rug, painting on the wall, man’s top hat and walking stick on chair, indicative of a family of the upper-middle class.

2. In your opinion, why was this image titled “The Good Husband”?

Answer: 19th-century Americans would have expected that a family’s stability and economic comfort would be the result of the hard work of the husband; this family’s seeming happiness is attributed to his, the husband’s, efforts in the public sphere.

3. To whom would the publishers of this image, Currier and Ives, have marketed this lithograph?

Answer: middle and upper-middle class families who were seeking to achieve this same level of social status and reputation, those who had achieved a similar level of success and believed this image mirrored their own family life.)

Abolitionism 1. How did black social thought change over the first half of the nineteenth century? What role did black activists play in the abolitionist movement?

Abolitionism 1. How did black social thought change over the first half of the nineteenth century? What role did black activists play in the abolitionist movement?• Over time and in response to white violence, blacks increasingly called for violence to free African Americans from slavery.• Black activists like Frederick Douglass and David Walker were crucial in reminding white abolitionists of the horrors of slavery, and the necessity for black equality and the use of violence to end slavery. Black activists also argued for a strategy of social and moral uplift for poor free and enslaved blacks, which maintained the focus on black rights and not just an end to slavery. Black activists stimulated white violence, which kept abolitionism alive over time as a social movement.

2. How did the abolitionists’ proposals and methods differ from those of earlier antislavery movements (see Chapter 8)? Why did those proposals and methods arouse such hostility in the South and in the North?

2. How did the abolitionists’ proposals and methods differ from those of earlier antislavery movements (see Chapter 8)? Why did those proposals and methods arouse such hostility in the South and in the North?• Earlier antislavery movements were based more on republican values of liberty and equality. The abolitionist movement drew energy from the Second Great Awakening and the moral sin of slavery according to Christianity. As a moral sin, slavery needed immediate eradication, and not a slow phasing out over time.• Calls for immediate abolition conjured up images in the white mind of full black equality with whites in marriage and the law. High unemployment and racism in this slave-based nation combined to produce a violent backlash against those who called for immediate black equality. White northerners feared a loss of status and income; white southerners feared a slave insurrection.

IV. The Women’s Rights MovementB. Abolitionist Women

1. Maria Stewart and Harriet Jacobs• Stewart: African American lecturer who

spoke about slavery to mixed audiences first in Boston

• Jacobs• wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

describing forced sexual relations with her master.

2. Domestic Slavery• the abolitionist movement taught

participating women about society’s view of them as inferior

• women’s rights supporting abolitionists called traditional gender roles “domestic slavery”

• movement gave them a public voice.

IV. The Women’s Rights MovementB. Abolitionist Women

2. Domestic Slavery (4.2.2.C)• the abolitionist movement

taught participating women about society’s view of them as inferior

• women’s rights supporting abolitionists called traditional gender roles “domestic slavery”

• movement gave them a public voice.

Sojourner TruthFew women had as interesting a life as Sojourner Truth. Born “Isabella” in Dutch-speaking rural New York about 1797, she labored as a slave until emancipated in 1827. Following a religious vision, Isabella moved to New York City, perfected her English, and worked for deeply religious – and ultimately fanatical – Christian merchants. In 1843, seeking further spiritual enlightenment, she took the name “Sojourner Truth” and left New York. After briefly joining the Millerites (who believed the world would end in 1844), Truth won fame as a forceful speaker for abolitionism and woman’s rights. This illustration, showing Truth addressing a black audience, suggests her powerful personal presence.

C. The Program of Seneca Falls and Beyond1. Property (4.2.2.C)

• in 1840s women focused on increasing legal rights, not challenging family structure or roles

• many fathers and husbands supported these campaigns• desired to have full control over legal property even if

they brought it into marriage.2. Separate Spheres (4.1.3.C)

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized Seneca Falls convention

• 70 women and 30 men• “Declaration of Sentiments”• made a claim for women in public life and criticized the

idea of “separate spheres” (women should remain in the private/home as mothers and wives).

3. Legislative Campaign

IV. The Women’s Rights MovementC. The Program of Seneca

Falls and Beyond (4.1.3.C)3. Legislative Campaign

• 1851 began an effort to gain voting rights

• Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), a Quaker who argued against women’s dependence on men

• led the campaign for voting rights at mid-century.

Crusading Women Reformers (4.1.3.C)Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) were a dynamic duo of social reformers. Stanton, the well-educated daughter of a prominent New York judge, was an early abolitionist, and the mother of seven children. Anthony was raised as a Quaker and worked as a teacher and a temperance activist. After meeting in 1851, Stanton and Anthony became friends and co-organizers. From 1854 to 1860, they led a successful struggle to expand New York’s Married Women’s Property Law of 1848. During the Civil War, they set up the Women’s Loyal National League, which helped win passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery. In 1866, they joined the American Equal Rights Association, which demanded the vote for women and African Americans.

Women and Antislavery, 1837–1838Beginning in the 1830s, abolitionists and antislavery advocates dispatched dozens of petitions to Congress demanding an end to slavery. Women accounted for two-thirds of the 67,000 signatures on the petitions submitted in 1837–1838, a fact that suggests not only the influence of women in the antislavery movement but also the extent of female organizations and social networks. Lawmakers, eager to avoid sectional conflict, devised an informal agreement (the “gag rule”) to table the petitions without discussion.

The Women’s Rights Movement 1. Why did religious women such as Mary Walker Ostram and the Grimké sisters become social reformers?

The Women’s Rights Movement 1. Why did religious women such as Mary Walker Ostram and the Grimké sisters become social reformers?• Desiring a stronger public role to improve society (as called on by the Second Great Awakening) and motivated by the women’s rights movement, religious women viewed their gender as perfectly suited to helping the downtrodden in American society lead a more moral life attuned to the teachings of Christianity.

2. How do you explain the appearance of the women’s rights movement? What were the movement’s goals, and why did they arouse intense opposition?

2. How do you explain the appearance of the women’s rights movement? What were the movement’s goals, and why did they arouse intense opposition?• The women’s rights movement grew from women becoming more involved in public life by entering temperance organizations, the abolitionist movement, and religious revivals. The movement strived to improve women’s equality with men in sexual behavior, marriage rights, and public life. Women wanted a more active political and economic role in society.• Opposition occurred particularly from men, based on their traditional Christian notions of the separate duties or “spheres” for men and women. Patriarchy or male rule prevented women from realizing true equality. Some women resented women’s rights advocates who appeared to claim superiority to other women.

3. What was the relationship between the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? Why did women’s issues suddenly become so prominent in American culture?

3. What was the relationship between the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? Why did women’s issues suddenly become so prominent in American culture?• The movements reinforced one another. The Second Great Awakening politicized women as moral reformers of family and society. Women quickly entered into abolitionist circles, enabling them to further calls for women’s rights and full equality in American society. Becoming an abolitionist enabled women to speak in public and to criticize the institutions of American society that denied them, as well as African Americans, full equality.• The Second Great Awakening and the increasing prosperity of the white middle class, a result of the managerial and industrial revolutions, served to politicize women as the moral reformers of family and society. These events gave women more time at home to focus on family and its relationship to the larger social world. Women quickly entered into abolitionist circles, enabling them to further calls for women’s rights and full equality with men in American society. As the moral reformers of the era, white middle-class women sought to fix social ills, including heavy drinking by men, Sabbath breaking, and prostitution. In particular, the impact of these issues on women helped to popularize a feminist call for improving social problems.

Chapter Review Questions1. Did the era of reform increase or decrease the belief in and practice of, liberty in American society?

Chapter Review Questions1. Did the era of reform increase or decrease the belief in and practice of, liberty in American society?• The moral reform movement increased liberty in American society by increasing the level of religious and social diversity through rural communes and other social experiments, providing Americans with more choice. Reform movements, such as women’s rights and the rise of abolitionism, combined with the rise of urban popular culture represented an increase in freedom for women, blacks, and the urban poor in American society.

2. Explain the relationship between individualism and communalism as presented in the chapter. How were these two movements related to the social and economic changes in America in the decades after 1820?

2. Explain the relationship between individualism and communalism as presented in the chapter. How were these two movements related to the social and economic changes in America in the decades after 1820?• Individualism produced communalism as a movement in American society. Both were products of the industrial and market revolutions and the Second Great Awakening. The economic revolutions displaced American workers, created new forms of employment, and altered traditional and preindustrial notions of work and the family. These changes fostered radical experiments in communal living as alternatives in a new industrial and capitalist order.

3. Explain the relationship between religion and reform in the decades from 1820 to 1860. Why did many religious people feel compelled to remake society? What was their motivation? How successful were they? Do you see any parallels with social movements today?

3. Explain the relationship between religion and reform in the decades from 1820 to 1860. Why did many religious people feel compelled to remake society? What was their motivation? How successful were they? Do you see any parallels with social movements today?• The Second Great Awakening infused a greater Protestant religiosity into American society and culture. It was the now the religious responsibility of individuals to improve the morality of American society to achieve God’s mission.• Americans were successful at imposing reforms on society in the form of abolitionism, women’s rights, and the reform of certain forms of moral vice, such as prostitution and alcoholism. No reforms were entirely successful, however.• Some parallels exist today, such as the moral reform movement to halt violence and sexual behavior in the media, and anti-abortion advocates who argue for an increase in human morality to meet the expectations of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition.