Antebellum Reform Movements

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Antebellum Reform Movements

• A New Wave of Reform Before the Civil War

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Reasons for Reform

• Similar to reasons for Cult of True Womanhood
• Fear of rapid change (urbanization,
  industrialization, immigration)
• Desire to return to a less materialistic (money
  and thing centered) lifestyle
• Religious fervor

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Second Great Awakening

• Renewed interest in religion
• Traveling (itinerant) preachers
• Religious revivals
• Focus on emotion
• Idea that anyone could be saved, anyone could
  preach
• Participation of many social groups
  (African-Americans, women, slaves, etc.)

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Religious Utopian Societies

• Utopia- a community designed to create a perfect
  society
• Often wanted to bring the kingdom of heaven into
  reality on earth
• Shakers- stressed simple, communal lifestyle
  (shared everything), equality, celibacy (What
  could be 1 problem with this?)
• Mormons- founded by Joseph Smith, practiced
  plural marriage, mob in Carthage, IL. killed
  Smith in 1844.
• Moved west under Brigham Young to Great Salt Lake
  Valley

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Oneida in New York

• Founded by John Humphrey Noyes
• Believed in equality of men and women
• Practices
• Complex marriage and communal child-rearing
• Birth control through male continence ascending
  fellowship (older people with younger)
• Stirpiculture- selective breeding to produce
  better offspring
• How might this have been liberating for women?
  How might it have been oppressive? Downfall?

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Transcendentalists

• Romantic movement, early 1800s
• Emphasized importance of individual, natural
  simplicity, spiritual renewal
• Belief that people could transcend (rise above)
  material things in life
• Emerson- Self Reliance
• Henry David Thoreau- Walden (about his time
  living in the woods, getting away from
  technology, big cities), Civil Disobedience
• Some to Brook Farm (utopia- shovel manure or read
  poetry- problem?)

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Poem of Emily Dickinson

• Some keep the Sabbath going to church
• I keep it staying at home,
• With a bobolink for a chorister,
• And an orchard for a dome.
• How does this reflect the themes of
  transcendentalists?

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Other Reform Movements

• Temperance (persuade people to temper or limit
  alcohol consumption)
• Education- Horace Mann, common schools, uniform
  curriculum teacher training, bigger impact in
  the North.
• Mentally ill- Dorothea Dix advocated better
  treatment, separation of criminals, mentally ill
• Prisons- try to rehabilitate, penitentiary new
  institution

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The Bar of Destruction Thomas Nast Original
Date March 21, 1874
Source http//www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseBy
DateCartoon.asp?MonthMarchDate21
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• Womens crusade cartoon
• Woman as Joan of Arc
• Battling demon rum
• March 7, 1874

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• Caption "Get Thee Behind Me, (Mrs.) Satan!
• Wife (with heavy burden). "I'd rather travel the
  hardest path of matrimony than follow your
  footsteps."
• Satan Victoria Woodhull, an advocate of womens
  rights and free love, who ran for President in
  1872.

Date February 17, 1872
Source http//www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseB
yDateCartoon.asp?MonthFebruaryDate17