antebellum social reforms

Social Reforms and Reformers

By: Ashley & Ryan

Agenda:

• Reforms• Reformers• Works Cited

2nd Great Awakening

• Religious Revival• Targeted women & frontiersmen • Methodists & Baptists most successful• Shattered many churches and denominations• Created many new denominations (e.g.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints)• Lead to reforms for prisons, women,

temperance, and slavery.

Transcendentalists

• Emphasized individualism• A want to go back to nature• Strongly against materialism

Utopian Societies

• Spurred by the Transcendental beliefs• Some believed in celibacy• Believed they could create a “perfect society”• Many included strange practices and ceremonies• Utopian Societies– Oneida– New Harmony– Mormons (Deseret) – The Brook Farm

Educational Reforms

• Schools began teaching more than just the 3 R’s (reading, righting, rithmatic)

• Longer school terms• Higher pay for teachers• More schools• Free schooling• Newer colleges with better curriculums• Some woman schooling

Temperance Movement

• Drinking was frowned upon• Seen as vile and disgraceful• The Women’s Christian Temperance

Movement was founded• Drinking was strongly discouraged

Cult of Domesticity

• Men made the money• Women made the home• Women were more equipped to run a home• Knowledge was bad for women’s brains• The Home is a woman’s place

Prisons/Asylums

• Criminal codes were softened to mimic European codes

• Number of capital offenses were reduced• Brutal punishments were being eliminated• Dorothea Dix pushed for better treatment of

the mentally ill

Women’s Reforms

• Women pushed for suffrage• Rape was harshly punished• Fight to eliminate “special spheres”• Many conventions were held (e.g. Seneca Falls

Woman’s Rights Convention)

Reformers • Susan B. Anthony

– Ardent women’s rights advocate• Elizabeth Cady Stanton

– Feminist and women’s rights advocate– Organized Seneca Falls

• Charles Finney– Religious reformer – Had many converts– Known as having a “bell like voice”

• Ralph Waldo Emerson– Famous Transcendental poet– Raised to be a Unitarian minister– Influential as a practical philosopher

• Dorothea Dix– Pushed for fair treatment of the mentally ill

Reformers Cont.• Horace Mann

– Education advocate• William Lloyd Garrison

– Strong abolitionist• Fredrick Douglass

– Free slave– Pushed for an end to slavery

• Joseph Smith Jr.– Started the Mormon church

• Brigham Young– Known as the “Moses” of the Mormon faith

• Henry David Thoreau– Famous Transcendentalist

Works Cited

• Kennedy, David M., Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas Bailey. The American Pageant. Published in Boston, Massachusetts. Copyright date 2006.