Impact of Reform Movements

The Abolitionist Movement

• The word abolitionist comes from the root word abolish or to stop immediately.

• Abolitionist’s is a group of people that want the immediate end to slavery.

• The religious group called the Quakers, from Pennsylvania, started the movement.

• In 1820 to 1840, the movement really spread rapidly, but they were still the minority.

Abolitionist Movement Con’t

• William Lloyd Garrison published, The Liberator newspaper, an anti-slavery newspaper. Garrison also organized the New England Anti-Slavery Society in the city of Boston.

• The city of Boston became the heart of the Abolitionist Movement.

Abolitionist Movement Con’t

• Frederick Douglass, a former slave, escaped to the North, eventually would win his freedom.

• Young Frederick learned how to read and write when he was a child, eventually becoming an accomplished orator or speaker, and writer.

• Douglass published his own anti-slavery newspaper, called The North Star.

Abolitionist Con’t

• Douglass is considered the Martin Luther King Jr. for the 1800’s. He proved that African-Americans were just as intelligent as other races in the United States.

• Harriet Tubman helped slaves escape to freedom what will be known as the Underground Railroad.

Abolitionist Con’t

• In 1853, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s writes a novel called, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is about a slave named Uncle Tom.

• Tom is beaten and tortured several times by his master. The North for the first time reads about the harsh realities of slavery and increased support for the Abolitionist Movement.

The Women’s Rights Movement

• Women wanted the same rights as men, same pay, the right to divorce, right to own property, and the right to vote, or women’s suffrage.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were the biggest supporters of the Women’s Rights Movement.

Women’s Rights Con’t

• Women from all over gathered to protest at Seneca Falls, New York, known as the Seneca Falls Convention.

• They discussed the right to vote, right to own property, equal pay as men, shorter work hours, and the abolition of slavery.

Women’s Rights Con’t

• Sojourner Truth escaped slavery to become an abolitionist and leader in the women’s rights movement.

• Truth used the courts to release and return her young son who had been sold into slavery illegally.

• During the Civil War, Truth recruited African-Americans to become soldiers for the North.

Public Education

Prison Reform

• Separate jails for women, men, and children• Mission of prisons was to rehabilitate

Temperance

Women’s Rights

• Fought for better working conditions• Passed the 10 hour work day• Suffrage

Care of Disabled

• New hospitals for mentally ill, deaf, and blind