Social Movements of the 19th Century

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Social Movements of the 19th Century

• By 7th Period AP US

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Utopian Communities

• Jay Dasigi, Nick Reidich, Jessica Helms

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The Shakers

• Over 100 ideal communities developed between
  1800 and 1900
• The United Society of Believers in Christs
  Second Appearing
• Believed religious fervor to be inspiration from
  the Holy Ghost
• Leader Ann Lee arrived in New York in 1774 with 8
  followers
• Had strange fits in which they saw visions and
  prophesied ( later involved into a ritual dance
  and became known as the Shakers)
• God had a duel personality
• Masculine side was exhibited in Christ
• Feminine side was exhibited in Mother Ann
• New Lebanon, New York
• Property was held in common
• Farms were leading sources of
• garden seed and medicinal herbs
• Prized manufacturing i.e. clothing,
• household items, and furniture
• Emphasized equality of labor and
• reward. Members also had the
• freedom to leave at will.
• By 1830, they had approximately 20
• groups

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Oneida Community

• Founded by John Humphrey Noyes
• Educated at Dartmouth and Yale Divinity School
• Claimed that with true conversion came perfection
  and complete release from sin.
• Announced a doctrine of complex marriage
• Every man in a community was married to every
  woman and vise versa.
• Arrested after practicing
• his free love theology
• Fled to New York in
• 1848 and established
• the Oneida
• Community.
• Eventually moved to Canada
• to avoid persecution for
• adultery.
• The Oneida Community made a
• living off of farming and logging
• until the mid-1850s, when it lived
• off of steel animal traps, silk,
• canned fruit, and silver spoons.

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New Harmony and Brook Farm

• Robert Owen founded New Harmony, a secular
• community
• Model factory town, supported labor legislation,
  wrote
• pamphlet A New View of Society
• Owen bough Harmony, Indiana and quickly turned it
  
• over to the colonist
• After 2yrs the colony fell apart and Owen was
  forced to
• dissolve it
• Brook Farm in Mass. Was one of the most well
• known utopian communities
• Had the support of Ralph Waldo Emerson and
• Nathanial Hawthorne
• The community survived because of a school that
  grew
• tuition from outside users
• When the school building burned down the hopes of
  he
• community died to
• Most utopian communities found their ends to
• be very quick
• Their ability to effect the outside world was

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Transcendentalism

• Emphasized thoughts that are beyond (transcend)
  reason broke out of traditional structure of
  reason
• Focused on individual introspection and
  reflection
• Many transcendentalists stayed in solitude and
  nature
• They were against societys conformity
• Based on Romanticism focused more on the
  individual and intuition rather than rationalism
• supported freedom, knowledge, and truth
• Opposed strict religion
• Some beliefs spawned from the Unitarian Church
• Many also became involved with other social
  reforms such as womens rights and abolition

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• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Writer and philosopher
• Leading transcendentalist
• Supported going against society and culture to
  obtain personal goals (individualism)
• Rejected the pressures of society
• Was a member of the Unitarian church but then
  rejected many of its teachings

• Henry David Thoreau
• Writer and philosopher
• Leading transcendentalist
• Two year simple living experiment on the
  outskirts of town next to Walden pond
• Fascinated by nature
• Importance of Civil Disobedience and his
  protest of the Mexican-American War

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Transcendental Club

• Center for the transcendental movement
• Members included
• Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
  Theodore Parker, George Ripley, James Freeman
  Clark, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Peabody,
  and others
• Discussed problems culture and society, Harvard
  University and the Unitarian Church

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Temperance Movement

• The temperance movement called for the limit or
  prohibition of alcohol consumption.
• It began in Ireland in the 1820s then spread
  throughout Europe and on to New York and
  Massachusetts in the early 1800s.
• The Order of Good Templars (1851)
• The Womens Christian Temperance Union (1874)
• The Anti-Saloon League (1895)
• Prominent leaders were Susan B. Anthony, Benjamin
  Rush, Frances E. Willard, Carry A. Nation,
  Abraham Lincoln, and Neal Dow

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Goals

• Limit alcohol consumption
• Pass legislation encouraging prohibition
• Limit workers drinking because it was affecting
  productivity.
• Would allow to reconnect with religious basis
  (limit immoral acts)
• America needs virtuous citizens to survive.
• Also an attack on immigrants and Catholics

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Accomplishments/ Failures

• 1838 Massachusetts limited sale to 15 gallons.
• By 1855 13 states had such laws.
• Increased smuggling.
• Maine Law (1851)

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Public Education

• Davis Luna, Emily Hughes,
• Josh Kahen, Claire Alexander

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Public Education

• Leaders

• Horace Mann
• Graduated from Brown University
• Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of
  Education
• Encouraged more schoolhouses, longer school
  terms, higher salaries for teachers, and an
  expanded curriculum
• Promoted a tax based, public school program

• Noah Webster
• Educated at Yale
• From Connecticut
• Known as the Schoolmaster of the Republic
• Created reading lessons that were widely used
  and promoted patriotism
• Spent 20 years of his life creating his famous
  dictionary, which helped standardize language

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Public Education
Goals

• Create a state-sponsored school system that would
  offer education equally throughout America
  (though primarily found in the Northeast and Old
  Northwest, most southern states dont get public
  schools until Reconstruction!)
• Give children of different backgrounds equal
  opportunities to learn
• This would indirectly lead to less crime and
  poverty
• While in school, the children would also learn
  better manners
• Thomas Jefferson- to diffuse knowledge
  throughout the mass of the people

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Public Education
Accomplishments

• By the end of the 19th century, free public
  school education was available for all students
  at an elementary level
• Gradually, states began enacting laws and forming
  departments of education to support public
  schooling

• The literacy rate in America was improved greatly
• -By 1840 around 78 of the
• population could read and write
• More universities were established for the
  purpose of education rather than religion
• It became more common for women to be educated

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Prison Reform

• Dorothea Dix
• -emphasized idea of rehab treatment to restore
  sick imprisoned back to society
• -1845-1852 , Dix persuaded southern states to
  have mental hospitals.
• -Reported to the MA legislature that the states
  imprisoned insane people lived in horrible
  conditions with hordes of people, women, men,
  old, and young alike, crowded into cages,
  closets, stalls, and pens chained, wearing rags
  or nothing, and beaten and poorly fed.
• -Recommended construction of special asylums
  where the insane could be humanly and properly
  controlled by trained attendants.

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• Prison reformers believed that a proper
  penitentiary could bring a hardened criminal back
  to virtue.
• Reformers believed isolated time with the Bible
  would help a criminal reflect on his wrongdoings
  and decide to be good citizens.
• New kind of institutions were formed-
  penitentiaries.
• --criminals have individual cells and a Bible.
  They will be provided with moral nurture so they
  can learn to be good, useful citizens.
• --Americans were among the first in the world to
  have penitentiaries.
• Dix lobbied ceaselessly for the construction of
  cleaner, healthier, and more hopeful kinds of
  institutions for those who could not care for
  themselves.

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Why so special?

• Prison reform shows the growing ideology that
  people are capable of becoming better people.
• People believe that rather than focusing on
  punishment, the focus should be on prevention of
  crime.
• Dorothea Dix, the leader of the reform, was a
  Women. Womens right movements going on around
  now.

Yuv Malhotra, Zenas Han, Melissa Ogden
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Abolition Organization/Leaders

• William Lloyd Garrison
• Editor of anti-slavery paper- established
  Liberator
• Most radical abolitionist of time
• Increased support for abolitionist movement
• Founded New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832
  and National American Anti-slavery society the
  next year

• David Walker
• Appealed to the Color Citizens of the World-
  1829advised African Americans to fight for
  freedom
• Urged slave to take freedom by force

• Frederick Douglass
• Born into slavery in1817
• Garrison sponsored Douglass as a lecturer to
  American Anti-slavery society
• Broke ties with Garrison to achieve abolitionism
  without violence

• Others
• Sojourner Truth (Anti-Slavery/Womens Rights
  Movement)
• Harriet Tubman (Black Moses)
• American Anti-Slavery Society
• Liberia (West Africa)

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GOALS

• End Slavery
• Convince people slavery was a horrendous crime
• Blacks should have equal rights

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REACTION

• Slave owners unhappy--gt use bible to defend
  slavery
• Veseys Plan (1822)
• Nat Turners Rebellion (1831)
• Gag Rule--gt limited talk on slavery
• Gradual Abolitionism
• Virginia Debate--gt Governor John Floyd- debate
  over future of slavery

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People of the Womens Rights Movement

• Susan B. Anthony
• Gave around 100 speeches on womens rights a year
  for 45 years
• Originally a part of the abolitionist and
  temperance movements
• Published The Revolution
• Arrested in 1872 for illegally voting in an
  election
• Lucretia Mott
• Quaker teacher who was inspired to campaign for
  womens rights
• Co- founded the Pennsylvania Anti- Slavery
  Society and the Seneca Falls Convention
• Important female figures at the World
  Anti-Slavery Convention
• Opposed charges in divorce laws (more
  conservative)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Co-organized the Seneca Falls convention
• Wrote The Declaration of Sentiments
• Abolitionist and supporter of temperance movement
• Sought end to feme corvere where a husband took
  control of his wife's property upon marriage.

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The Seneca Falls Convention

• July 19-20, 1848
• Viewed nationally as the beginning of the
  struggles to make women equal with men
• Inspired other women to fight for womens rights,
  such as Stantons Declaration of Sentiment
• Was the first time both men and women congregate
  together to fight for womens rights
• Inspired by the new male economic opportunities
  that came about from the Industrial Revolution

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Accomplishments and Connections

• The womens reform movement split from the
  antislavery movement over whether women were
  allowed to participate
• Most males agreed that women should not be
  allowed to take part in the antislavery movement
• The womens reform movement had leaders that were
  also involved in the antislavery movement and
  education reform, i.e. Catharine Beecher
• The campaign for equal voting, legal, and
  property rights for women, continued until the
  1850s.
• Womens rights leaders carried on programs of
  lecturing, organizing, and petitioning
• Its success came from the women that refused to
  let their odds control their life
• The womens reform movement allowed for some
  political and social rights for women, but most
  of their rights will come later in the 20 th
  century
• In the 1850s this movement was overlooked by the
  more important issue of slavery.