Unit 4 - Period Review (Part C)
Part C - The Age of Reform
Responding to the transformation of American society after the War of 1812, reformers in the 1820s and 1830s began reconsidering the conventional thinking of their times. With the rise of the Market Revolution and the increase of urbanization and immigration in the 1820s, many Americans experienced uncertainty and anxiety as they confronted a rapidly changing society.
Sources of Reform
The Second Great Awakening addressed many of these feelings. Led by evangelical spokesmen such as Charles Finney, the movement preached spiritual rebirth, individual self-improvement, and perfectionism. Traveling in the “burned-over district” of western New York and throughout New England, these itinerant evangelists ignited a spirit of change with their ideas that moral rectitude could lead to salvation. This message provided part of the philosophical foundation for the reforms of the 1830s.
Along with the religious fervor of the times, the writings of the Transcendentalist writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau also fueled the spirit of reform. These authors and poets believed that truth was found beyond experience. They called on individuals to follow their conscience, to think for themselves, and to trust in their intuition.
Ironically, the Jacksonians, who rhetorically championed egalitarianism and political equity, opposed the reformers of the 1830s. Jackson and his followers were states’ rights advocates dedicated to reducing the reach of the central government. Reformers, on the other hand, wanted the central government to take an active role in confronting society’s ills, especially the plague of slavery.
Penal Reform and Utopian Societies
One aspect of the reforms of the 1830s and 1840s was improvement in the penitentiary and asylum systems. There was a growing desire to change the focus of prisons in America. States like New York and Pennsylvania moved away from incarceration as punishment and toward rehabilitation of prisoners. Dorothea Dix supported these efforts as she lobbied the states to remove mental patients from the prisons and house them in special hospitals and facilities where they could be treated rather than punished. Through her dedicated efforts, 28 of the 33 states had created public institutions for the mentally ill by 1860.
Another attempt to redeem the flawed society of the Jacksonian Era was the formation of alternative communities that featured communal living, collective ownership of property, and in some cases, unusual sexual practices. These utopian societies grew up in places such as Oneida, New York; New Harmony, Indiana; and Brook Farm, Massachusetts. Most of these radical experiments were short-lived, as the members found it difficult to share property, deal with celibacy, overcome the hostilities of local citizens, and maintain stable leadership. Only Oneida survived more than a few years.
Temperance and Women’s Rights
The abuses of alcohol generated one of the strongest reform movements of the 1820s and 1830s. Drinking was a serious social problem that destroyed families, bred crime, and fostered disease. Temperance organizations quickly developed after reformers founded the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance in 1826. By the 1830s, there were over 5,000 state and local temperance groups. In 1851, the Maine Law made Maine the first state in the Union to prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol statewide. The temperance movement was strongly anti-immigrant in its message. It connected drinking and its abuses with foreigners, especially Irish Catholic and German immigrants. Temperance provided the Protestant middle class with a means to attack out-of-favor groups such as laborers, immigrants, and Catholics.
Although in the shadow of the abolitionist crusade, the women’s movement flickered to life in this time as well. Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the first women’s rights convention met in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. This meeting inaugurated the quest for equal rights by passing the Declaration of Sentiments. Later joined by Susan B. Anthony, Stanton waged a futile campaign for women’s suffrage throughout the nineteenth century. Hampered by subordination to the abolitionist movement, adherence to the “cult of domesticity,” and divisions over black men’s voting rights, women would not achieve the right to vote until 1920.
Abolition
Of all the reforms of the 1830s and 1840s, none had more energy or intensity than the abolitionist movement. This crusade dominated the era. While there had been earlier attempts to abolish slavery with the formation of the American Colonization Society, the movement began in earnest in 1831, when William Lloyd Garrison started his newspaper, The Liberator. In 1833, Garrison and his allies founded the influential American Anti-Slavery Society.
Garrison remained at the center of the abolitionist endeavor for the next thirty years. He recruited former slaves such as Frederick Douglass as agents, opposed compensation for the slaveholders, opposed political action by a government he believed hopelessly under the incluence of the corrupt slaveholding interests, and championed an equal role for women in the movement. Garrison’s uncompromising and extreme views caused division among the reformers. By 1840, a rival group of abolitionists broke with his positions. Led by Lewis and Arthur Tappan, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was formed. It supported political action, embraced the Constitution, allied with churches, endorsed compensation for slaveholders, and opposed women’s full participation in meetings. This struggle between Garrison and his critics dominated the abolitionist movement in the 1840s and 1850s.
Often reformers were involved in more than one type of reform. Many women who crusaded for gender equality received their training in the abolitionist movement. And other abolitionists supported a variety of reforms including temperance and penal reform. The goal of all these individuals was expansion of democracy and fulfillment of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.