Reform Era: Temperance, Education, Women

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Reform Era Temperance, Education, Womens
Rights, Prison, Care for the Mentally Ill,
Abolitionism, 2nd Great Awakening
Question What is reform?
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Demon Rum The Old Deluder

• The temperance movement organized because
  consumption of alcohol significantly increased
  caused social problems
• Goal To encourage moderation in the consumption
  of intoxicating liquors or press for complete
  abstinence
• Heavy drinking led to many social problems
  including
• Decreased efficiency of work
• On the job accidents
• Breakdown of the family
• Poor health
• Poverty
• Movement was led by churches and religious groups
• Propaganda focused on the sufferings of innocent
  mothers and their children

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Important People Achievements in the Temperance
Movement

• The effects of their efforts included
• Government regulation
• Instruction on alcoholism in schools
• Energized study of alcoholism
• 18th Amendment (1919-1933) which led to
  Prohibition (ban on manufacture, consumption,
  distribution sale of alcohol)

• Some of the most notable figures associated with
  the U.S. temperance movement were Susan B.
  Anthony, Frances E. Willard and Carry A. Nation

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Temperance Unions

• Groups such as these pushed for total prohibition
• Considered liquor consumption to be morally wrong
  and believed it should be prohibited by law
• Their demands led to experiments with more strict
  laws
• After a few years, these laws disappeared from
  everywhere but New England
• Still, the movement drastically reduced alcohol
  consumption from 1830-1860
• The Civil War stalled efforts by reformers but it
  was later revisited during the Progressive Era
  (1890-1920)

Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1874)
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Temperance Movement

• Goals To ban alcoholic drinks
• Characteristics thoughts were that consumption
  of alcohol caused social problems focused on the
  sufferings of innocent mothers and their children
• Leaders churches, religious groups, women
  childrens activists

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Education Reform

• Early Schools
• Short-term schools from the colonial era
• 10-12 weeks per year
• Provided basic instruction
• Charged a fee along with community funding
• Preferred teaching white boys.
• Schooling, costly and religious, was designed for
  the privileged few.
• Parents were considered the primary educators
• Families relied on each other and churches for
  additional learning
• it takes a village to raise a child

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Horace Mann and Common Schools

• Reformers argued that INFORMED CITIZENS were
  needed for our republican GOVERNMENT TO THRIVE
• Workers wanted their children to have a chance to
  pursue the American dream
• Horace Mann promoted PUBLIC SCHOOLS as the only
  way to EQUALIZE SOCIETY
• He argued that it was impossible that educated
  people could remain permanently poor

• Mann worked for many reforms in public education
• Paid for and run by the public
• Inclusive of children from different backgrounds
• Taught by well-trained professional teachers

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Early Public Schools

• Despite reformers efforts, public school
  conditions were poor
• Lacked funding, books, and equipment
• Teachers were poorly paid and often poorly
  prepared
• Kids that went beyond the elementary grades went
  to private academies
• Public schools did not become well established
  until after the Civil War

1800s Georgia school house
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Education Reform

• Goals Reformers argued that INFORMED CITIZENS
  were needed for our republican GOVERNMENT TO
  THRIVE
• Characteristics PUBLIC SCHOOLS were promoted as
  the only way to EQUALIZE SOCIETY
• Leaders Horace Mann

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Prison Reform

• During the late 1700s to early 1800s the
  general belief about human nature was that people
  were generally good and capable of improvement
• This new belief was a big shift from the earlier
  Puritan belief of humans as naturally sinful
• This idea brought many changes for prisoners and
  the disabled

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From Prison to Penitentiary

• Colonial prisons were used as holding places
  before punishments or as places for debtors
• Reformers argued that society would benefit more
  from rehabilitating prisoners than punishing them
• Would also help our economy because prisons could
  double as workshops for profit
• By 1850, most states had adopted the penitentiary
  system
• Penitentiary prisons used for housing prisoners
  as punishment and rehabilitation

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Prison Reform

• Goals Campaign for better prison conditions
• Characteristics society would benefit more from
  rehabilitating prisoners than punishing them
• Leaders John Howard Dorothea Dix

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Prisons and the Mentally Ill

• Before the 1800s, the mentally ill were kept at
  home or imprisoned
• By 1815, asylums appeared that separated the
  mentally ill from prisoners
• Dorothea Dix led the reform movement for the
  mentally ill
• Boston school teacher who was asked to teach
  Sunday school at the East Cambridge House of
  Correction in 1841
• Found a room full of mentally ill women neglected
  and left without heat during the New England
  winter

Tranquilizing Chair
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Dorothea Dix and Reform
the present state of insane persons confined
within the Commonwealth, in cages, closets,
cellars, stalls, pens! Chained naked beaten with
rods, and lashed into obedience!

• After her experience, Dix spent two years
  investigating jails and asylums in Massachusetts
• Keepers of the institutions called her charges
  slanderous lies but she won the support of
  leading reformers
• 20 states adopted laws to improve conditions
• 32 new hospitals were built due to her efforts

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Improved Treatment for Mental Illness

• Goals better treatment of mentally ill
• Characteristics Mentally ill were often housed
  with criminals or abused. Treated VERY poorly
  (often locked in unheated rooms, chained to their
  beds beaten into obedience. Many were sent to
  jail)
• Leaders Dorothea Dix

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Womens Rights

• Cult of Domesticity popular 1800s view of the
  womans sphere
• Women were to be perfect in all senses
• Piety believed to be more religious and
  spiritual than men
• Purity pure in heart, mind, and body
• Submission held in "perpetual childhood" where
  men dictated all actions and decisions
• Domesticity a division between work and home,
  encouraged by the Industrial Revolution
• men went out in the world to earn a living, home
  became the woman's domain
• a wife created a "haven in a heartless world" for
  her husband and children

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Changes in Economy and Life

• The Industrial Revolution changed the economy
• More separated from home
• Home became a refuge
• Different roles for men and women
• Status of women remained similar to what it had
  been during the colonial era
• Could not go to college, vote or hold most
  professional jobs
• Had no control over their children or property
• Needed husbands permission to make a will, sign
  a contract, or file a lawsuit
• BUT they were able to work out of the home

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Organizing the Movement

• Many northern women were involved in the
  abolitionist movement
• Their involvement in suffrage reform increased
  after the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840
• Women were excluded from speaking at the
  convention and were forced to listen from behind
  a curtain
• Two female reformers, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth
  Cady Stanton, decided it was time to stand up for
  womens rights
• They planned to hold their own convention when
  they returned home

Admission ticket to the Convention
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The Seneca Falls Womens Rights Convention, 1848
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Convention and Declaration

• The women wrote a document modeled after the
  Declaration of Independence
• It went over a list of complaints and ended with
  a demand for rights...
• The movement was ridiculed and the demand for
  suffrage remained until 1920 but women did gain
  more rights when it came to property and rights
  and wages

. . . The history of mankind is a history of
repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of
man toward woman, having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. .
. . He has never permitted her to exercise her
inalienable right to the elective franchise. He
has compelled her to submit to laws, in the
formation of which she has no voice. .
. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Declaration of
Sentiments
The first signatures on the Declaration of
Sentiments.
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Legacy of the Movement

• Seneca Falls helped create an organized campaign
  for womens rights
• Reformers made slow progress
• New York gave women control over property and
  wages
• Massachusetts and Indiana passed more liberal
  divorce laws
• Some women began their own businesses
• However, womens suffrage took decades
• 19th Amendment passed in 1920
• Only one woman present at the convention lived to
  vote

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OR
?
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Womens Rights

• Goals Women to have equal rights, suffrage,
  education, job opportunities
• Characteristics Seneca Falls Convention
  Declaration of Sentiments
• Leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott,
  Susan B. Anthony

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Abolitionist Movement

• By the 1830s people began asking how can
  America, the land of the free, still allow
  slavery
• Some people opposed it even before the American
  Revolution
• Quakers
• The Atlantic Slave trade was outlawed in 1808 BUT
  the Industrial Revolution and the invention of
  the cotton gin made both the North and the South
  dependent on slavery
• Abolitionists were people who wanted to end
  slavery regardless of this economic dependence
• Both whites and African Americans were
  abolitionists

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Famous Abolitionists

• Although the North profited from plantation
  systems and slavery, some white Northerners
  joined the Abolitionist Movement
• William Lloyd Garrison began to publish an
  abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator
• Even more rare were Southern abolitionists
• Grimke Sisters (Sarah and Angelina) Grew up on a
  plantation but believed slavery was morally wrong
• Moved north and joined the movement
• Spoke out against slavery publically even at a
  time when women were not supposed to speak in
  public

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Famous Abolitionists

• Some escaped slaves also joined the movement and
  spoke from their past experiences
• Frederick Douglass became a lecturer for the
  Mass. Anti-Slavery Society
• People who heard him considered him to be too
  educated and well-spoken to have ever been a
  slave
• We wrote an autobiography that was an instant
  best-seller
• Started his own newspaper North Star
• Waged a strong campaign against slavery
• Sojourner Truth fled her owners and lived with
  Quakers who set her free
• Drew huge crowds throughout the North as she
  spoke for abolition
• Both were able to change the way Northerners
  viewed slavery
• Slavery continued for another 30 years

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Famous Abolitionists

• Some abolitionists wanted to do more than just
  campaign for laws
• Some brave abolitionists helped slaves escape to
  freedom
• Harriet Tubman- one of the most famous conductors
  on the Underground Railroad
• an above ground series of escape routes from the
  South to the North
• Travel by foot, wagon, boats, and trains
• Traveled by night and hid all day in stations
• Tubman was also an escaped slave
• Made 19 dangerous journeys to free enslaved
  people
• Slave owners offered 40,000 for her capture, but
  she was never captured, nor did she lose a
  passenger

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Abolitionist Movement

• Goals to end slavery regardless of the economic
  dependence
• Characteristics people risked their lives so
  that others could be free. Both black white
  abolitionists from north south. Germans were
  typically anti-slavery
• Leaders Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth,
  Harriet Tubman, the Grimke Sisters (Sarah and
  Angelina), William Lloyd Garrison

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2nd Great Awakening

• Goals to revive strong religious feelings to
  get people back to a relationship w/ God
• Characteristics emphasized ability of each
  person to achieve salvation, centered on reform
  repairing moral injustices. Mormon religion
  founded
• Leaders Peter Cartwright, Joseph Smith, Charles
  Finney

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HOMEWORK

• COMPLETE THE MIND MAP ON THE BACK OF YOUR REFORM
  MOVEMENT GRAPHIC ORGANIZER
• DUE FIRST OF PERIOD THURSDAY 3/28/13

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Propaganda Then and Now

• Your goal is to examine pieces of propaganda from
  both eras to determine the message being sent.
  For each piece you need to answer the following
  questions
• Is this piece an example of temperance propaganda
  or current day propaganda? How do you know?
• What is the main idea of the piece?
• How does the artist use the people and objects to
  create the main idea?
• How does the artist use emotion to accomplish
  their goal? What emotions does this piece make
  you feel?

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• Piece 1
• 1. Is this piece an example of temperance
  propaganda or current day propaganda? How do you
  know?
• 2. What is the main idea of the piece?
• 3. How does the artist use the people and objects
  to create the main idea?
• 4. How does the artist use emotion to accomplish
  their goal? What emotions does this piece make
  you feel?

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Temperance Banner Lithograph by Kellogg
Comstock, c. 1848-1850

• Among the many evils of alcohol, reformers
  fulminated especially against its corrupting
  effects on family life.
• Here a young man is torn between a drink-bearing
  temptress a maiden who exemplifies the virtues
  of womanly purity.