The Promise of America

The Spirit of Perfection

New Views on Religion

Two new views on religion were all people, not just the elect, could be saved if they improved themselves and the world. Good works, as well as faith, were necessary for salvation.
Charles Finney taught that with God's help, it was possible for people to live better lives.
New Religious Groups
New religious groups that were started during the middle 1800s include The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and the Millerites.
Joseph Smith: founded The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).
Brigham Young: took over the LDS church in 1844 after Smith was killed. Led Mormons to Mexico (Utah) to escape persecution.
William Miller: Millerites.

A New Philosophy

Ralph Waldo Emerson developed transcendentalism.
New Communities
Utopias: ideal communities.
Robert Owen: founded New Harmony, Indiana.
Brook Farm was a utopian community where well-known transcendentalists lived.
Shakers
Amana Community

The Reform of American Society

The goal of the reform movements of the early 1800s was perfection.

The Struggle Against Slavery

Abolition: the ending of slavery.
To end slavery, abolitionists of the early 1800s wanted laws banning all slavery, to buy slaves and send them to colonies in Africa, and slave owners to give up their slaves.
Colonization: This idea turned into a colony for former slaves in Liberia, Africa.
Radical Abolitionists, like William Lloyd Garrison, wanted an immediate end of slavery and freeing of all slaves.
Political Abolitionists include Theodore Weld and the Liberty Party.
Black Abolitionists include Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.
Reaction to Abolition: Are you kidding? Free the blacks?

The Campaign for Women's Rights

In the early 1800s, women had few rights.
Lucretia Mott: wanted to abolish slavery, but couldn't attend antislavery meetings because she was a woman!
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: organized a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York.
What came out of the women's rights convention of 1848 was a statement calling for women's rights, modeled after the Declaration of Independence.

Education

Struggle for Public Education: by the 1830s there was free education for white children, through tax-supported public schools.
Horace Mann: called for full-time teachers, trained and salaried.
Education for Women (women's colleges): Mary Lyon opened Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, and another college that accepted women was Oberlin.
Schoolbooks: there were none! Noah Webster and William McGuffey published readers and schoolbooks.
The Lyceum Movement: The purpose of the Lyceum movement was to provide lectures, classes, concerts, and other education programs for all ages; also, established public libraries. Josiah Holbrook established Millbury Lyceum.

Helping People with Handicaps

Reverend Thomas Gallaudet founded a school for people with hearing and speech difficulties.
Dr. Samuel Howe established the Perkins Institute a school for the blind.
Dorothea Dix discovered the mentally ill were treated like criminals. Dorothea Dix worked to change things for the mentally ill in Massachusetts as she reported to the Massachusetts legislature of the conditions under which the mentally ill were forced to live. She also petitioned Congress for money to help care for the mentally ill.

Prison Reform

Auburn Prison was the first to offer separate cells, meals, and exercise.
Dorothea Dix: if mental institutions are bad, I'd hate to see a prison! She saw them! They were worse!

Temperance

The temperance movement was concerned mostly with prohibiting liquor.
Two ways social reformers hoped to promote temperance were through education and prohibition.
American Society for the Promotion of Temperance
Neil Dow, mayor of Portland, Maine, passed the first prohibition law.

American Literature in the Reform Years

Transcendentalists

Ralph Waldo Emerson thought Americans should look for their ideas to the United States rather than to Europe.
Henry David Thoreau- Walden.
Margaret Fuller- Dial (magazine), Women in the Nineteenth Century.

Poets and Novelists

Some of the major literary works of the reform years include: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Courtship of Miles Standish, Song of Hiawatha, Voices of Freedom, Moby Dick, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Leaves of Grass.
Nathanial Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The Courtship of Miles Standish and Song of Hiawatha.
John Greenleaf Whittier: "Snow-Bound" and "The Barefoot Boy," Voices of Freedom.
Herman Melville: Moby Dick. Symbolism: the white whale stands for evil.
Edgar Allen Poe: creator of detective stories. Horror tales: The Pit and the Pendulum and The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Poem: "The Raven" (Baltimore Ravens, NFL).
Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass. After his death, he became known as the "Poet of Democracy."

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