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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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