1. REFORM MOVEMENTS
1820-1860

2. SOCIAL REFORM
 ORGANIZED ATTEMPT TO IMPROVE
WHAT IS UNJUST OR IMPERFECT

3. RELIGIOUS
INFLUENCES

4. THE GREAT AWAKENING
 1730-1740
 Religious movement that swept through the
colonies
 Led by Jonathan Edwards
 Impact: 1-Growth of churches forced colonists
to be more tolerant of religious differences
 Spread of democratic feelings in the colonies

5. SECOND GREAT AWAKENING
 1800S
 Stresses free will rather than
predestination
 Revivals encourage people to reform
their lives
 Charles Finney taught that individual
salvation is the first step to the reform of
a society

6. POLITICAL
ORIGINS

7. DOROTHEA DIX
 Fights for mentally ill and prisons
 Legislature funds mental hospitals
 Persuades nation to treat mentally ill as patients, not
prisoners
 Improves prison’s conditions (low supplies, went
hungry, multiple people per cell) ; banned cruel
punishments; shorter sentences for minor crimes;

8. TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
 This was a campaign against alcohol abuse in
1820.
 Alcohol abuse and drunkenness was
widespread throughout the nation in the 1800s
among men, women, children.
 Families faced wife beatings, child abuse, and
the breakup of families.
 As a result many states outlawed sale of
alcohol.

11. EDUCATION
 Public Schools:
• Horace Mann fought for rights in Mass.
• Training for teachers
• Higher wages
• States passed laws requiring education
• Taxed-supported school districts
• Built colleges

12.  African American
• North: separate school houses
• Many Americans were very hostile towards
these schools; burning school, attacking the
teachers
• 1854, 1st African-American college in Penn.

13.  Disabilities
• 1817: 1st school for the deaf
• 1832: 1st school for the blind; the system of
Braille was constructed

14. WOMEN’S RIGHTS
 Sojourner Truth
• Free slave in 1827
• Effective women’s rights leader
• Fought against slavery
• Traveled all over the nation, giving speeches
• Pres. Lincoln chose her to be a counselor to
the freedmen in Washington

15.  Elizabeth Stanton
• Fought for women’s rights
• Women’s suffrage (the right to vote)
• Women’s equality in the home, work, education,
church, own property
• Seneca Falls Convention
• Wrote “Declaration of Sentiments”
• Similar to the Declaration of Independence
• Advocated that women were created equal, too.

16. ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT: 1830
a person who wants to end slavery nationwide
 Frederick Douglas
• Runaway slaved that spoke out against
slavery as a slave and while in hiding.
• Taught himself how to read and write.
• Wrote a book about his life as a slave.
• 1847, white friends bought his freedom.

17.  Harriet Tubman
• “Black Moses”
• Runaway slave
• Risking her freedom and life, she returned to the
South 19 times, freeing over 300 slaves
• Underground Railroad: network of abolitionists,
helping slaves escape to North or Canada (STORY)
It was a chain of homes and farms where escaped
slaves could go her help.

18.  William Lloyd Garrison
• White abolitionist
• 1831 Wrote “The Liberator” antislavery
newspaper
• Told Congress and the world that slavery must be
abolished
• Est. National Antislavery Society

19.  Harriet Beecher Stowe
• “Uncle’s Tom Cabin” 1852
• Was a slave who was whipped to death by his master
• Shows the evils of slavery and the injustice of the
Fugitive Slave Act.
• The gains wide support in the North: saw slavery as a
moral issue
• South objective to the book: did not show the true
picture of a slave’s life. Book was banned in the
South