reform movements in a changing america between 1840 and 1860, 4 million immigrants flooded into the...
TRANSCRIPT
Reform Movements in a Changing America
• Between 1840 and 1860, 4 million immigrants flooded into the U.S.—most were Irish and German escaping economic or political problems at home
• The Irish faced a terrible potato blight, causing starvation and disease—immigrants came to America with nothing, and settled in the northeastern cities willing to work for low wages
• Germans fled persecution—they tended to settle in the more rural parts of the mid-west
• Many native-born Americans (nativists) despised immigrants who by willing to work for less, may take jobs away
• Cities in the northeast held 75% of the manufacturing jobs—cities were overflowing with people looking for work
• Overcrowded cities led to problems such as: unclean water, lack of sewage and running water, disease, crime, and fire
• Americans looked to art, writing, and literature as a way to take pride in the country and as a form of self-expression
• Transcendentalism and Romanticism taught people to live simply, appreciate nature, depend on yourself, and question some of societies rules and norms
• Famous writers, poets, and artists of the time included: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Walt Whitman
• The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival that inspired Americans to reform parts of society such as: alcohol abuse, prisons, education, and slavery
• The Temperance Movement urged people to stop drinking
• Dorothea Dix worked to separate orphans and the mentally ill from hardcore criminals
• Horace Mann’s Common-School Movement called for all children to attend free public school
• Colleges and universities were created, as well as some schools for African-Americans and women
• William Lloyd Garrison, The Grimke Sisters, and Frederick Douglass fought for abolition- or the end to slavery in America
• Harriet Tubman was a conductor on the Underground Railroad- a network of safe houses on the road north to freedom
• Many northerners were not in favor of abolition—they feared the consequences of freeing 5 million slaves who would move north looking for work and homes
• Southerners viewed slavery as an economic necessity as well as a way of life
• The Women’s Rights Movement sprang from the Abolition Movement—women who were working for black freedoms and equality soon realized that they too were being discriminated against
• Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and others traveled the country preaching not only abolition, but equality for women
• The Seneca Falls Convention was the first public meeting devoted to women’s rights—the Declaration of Sentiments was drafted to detail the social injustices toward women