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The Reform Movements Book


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FC: The Shaping of America: Reform Movements By: Paige Janeri

1: Table of Contents Abolitionist: William Loyd Garrison Fredrick Douglass Grimke Sisters Women's Rights: Elizabeth Cady Stanton Susan B. Anthony Lucretia Mott Religion: Charles Finney Brigham Young Peter Cartwright | Industry/Labor: Samuel FB Morse Howe and Singer Robert Fulton Art/Literature: Henry David Thoreau Nathaniel Hawthorne Frederic Edwin Church Conclusion

2: Abolitionist Movement: William Loyd Garrison

3: I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD." On January 1, 1831, Garrison published the first issue of his own anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator. Garrison joined the Abolition movement at the age of 25. He became associated with the American Colonization Society, an organization that believed free blacks should emigrate to a territory on the west coast of Africa. At the society seemed to promote the manumission of blacks. However, the small percentage of the members advocating manumission belonged to a minority . Most members had no wish to free slaves; their goal was actually to reduce the numbers of free blacks in the country and help continue the institution of slavery. Garrison eventually rejected the programs of the American Colonization Society and worked as co-editor of an antislavery paper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation. In 1832 he helped organize the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and, the following year, the American Anti-Slavery Society. These were the first organizations dedicated to promoting immediate emancipation. He believed that the the Anti-Slavery Society should not involve itself with any political party and that women should be allowed to participate in the Anti-Slavery Society. In speaking engagements and through the Liberator and other publications, he advocated the immediate emancipation of all slaves. He believed that all blacks could assimilate, would be equal in every way to the country's white citizens, and were Americans and entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." His approach to emancipation stressed nonviolence and passive resistance and he was known as one of the most famous abolitionists.

4: Abolitionist Movement: Fredrick Douglass

5: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After he was escaped form slavery, he stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to assimilate into an independent American citizen. Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave. His first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, was published in 1845 and was his best-known work. It strove to gain support for abolition. He wrote another autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1881; which covered events through and after the Civil War. After the Civil War, Douglass remained active in the United States' struggle to reach its potential with equal rights. Douglass actively supported women's suffrage., worked on behalf of equal rights for freedmen, and held multiple public offices.

6: Abolitionist Movement: Grimke Sisters

7: “after being for many months in Pennsylvania when I went back it seemed as if the sight of [the slaves’] condition was insupportable... can compare my feeling only with a canker incessantly gnawing. I was as one in bonds looking on their sufferings I could not soothe or lessen.” Angelina Grimke and her sister Sarah Grimke were legends in the abolitionist movement. Together the South Carolinian Quakers dared to speak before "promiscuous" or mixed crowds of men and women, publish some of the most powerful antislavery tracts, and to stretch the boundaries of women's public role as the first women to testify before a state legislature on the question of African American rights. Their crusade was not only to free slaves but also to end racial discrimination throughout the United States. This made them more radical than many of the reformers because most advocated an end to slavery, but did not envision true social and political equality for the freedmen and women. An outcry over women abolitionists prompted Sarah to write Letters on the Equality of the Sexes. By the late 1830s the Grimke sisters were known not only as abolitionists but also as proponents of women’s rights.

8: Women's Rights Movement: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

9: "Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. " In 1848, Stanton and Mott called for a women's rights convention to be held in Seneca Falls, New York. The Seneca Falls Convention, and the Declaration of Sentiments written by Stanton which was approved there, is credited with initiating the long struggle towards women's rights and woman suffrage. She also worked in close partnership with Susan B. Anthony. Stanton often served as the writer and Anthony as the strategy maker in this effective working relationship. After the Civil War, Elizabeth when only voting rights of freed males were addressed in Reconstruction, she and Susan B. Anthony were focused on female suffrage as the next step. They founded the National Woman Suffrage Association and Stanton served as president. In her later years she wrote her autobiography Eighty Years and More, and a controversial critique of women's treatment by religion, The Woman's Bible. She was also active and effective in winning property rights for married women, equal guardianship of children, and liberalized divorce laws. Women could now leave marriages that were abusive in any aspect.

10: Women's Rights Movement: Susan B. Anthony

11: "I have encountered riotous mobs and have been hung in effigy, but my motto is: Men's rights are nothing more. Women's rights are nothing less." She helped to found the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, and in 1868 became publisher of Revolution. Stanton and Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association; which was larger than its rival, the American Woman Suffrage Association, and they merged in 1890. While working with Stanton on many occasions, she was more often the organizer and the one who traveled, spoke widely, and bore the teasing of the public opinion. She sometimes got carried away and would come of sexist and racist because she didn't understand why they were allowed to vote but women could not.. Anthony opposed abortion which at the time was an unsafe medical procedure for women, endangering their health and life. She blamed men, laws and the "double standard" for persuading women to abortion because they had no other options. Anthony used her anti-abortion writings as yet another argument for women's rights.

12: Women's Rights Movement: Lucretia Mott

13: "If our principles are right, why should we be cowards?" Lucretia Mott considered slavery an evil to be opposed. She began to travel, usually accompanied by her husband who supported her activism and make speeches. They refused to use cotton cloth, cane sugar, and other slavery-produced goods and often sheltered runaway slaves in their home. In 1840, she was selected as a delegate to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, but she wasn't even allowed to speak at the convention because women were not allowed to be members. Elizabeth Cady Stanton later credited conversations with Lucretia Mott with the idea of the holding a mass meeting to address women's rights. This later became the Seneca Falls Convention.

14: Religion: Charles Finney

15: "Unless the will is free, man has no freedom; and if he has no freedom he is not a moral agent, that is, he is incapable of moral action and also of moral character." Finney was a leader in the Second Great Awakening. He has been called The Father of Modern Revivalism. He was best known as an innovative revivalist, the competition of older Presbyterian theology, a believer in Christian perfectionism, a pioneer in social reforms in favor of women and blacks, a religious writer, and president at Oberlin College. He was had women pray in public meetings of mixed gender, which was controversial at the time. He also developed the "anxious seat", which was a place to find out if people were guilty or not. He developed a place where those considering converting to Christianity could come to receive prayer. As president of Oberlin College, Oberlin became active in ending slavery early on and was among the first American colleges to co-educate blacks and women with white men.

16: Religion: Brigham Young

17: "Don't try to tear down other people's religion about their ears, Build up your own perfect structure of truth, and invite your listeners to enter in and enjoy it's glories." Brigham Young was a colonizer, territorial governor, and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He moved the Mormons under persecution to the Salt Lakes in Utah after Joseph Smith, the prophet of the Mormon faith, and his brother were murdered for their religion and suspicion of practicing polygamy. Young lived peacefully near the Native Americans that resided around them. The two groups agreed to not take land from each other and not allow others to take their land from them to live there.

18: Religion: Peter Cartwright

19: "Nothing but the principles of the Bible can save our happy nation or the world... " Cartwright was an American Methodist revivalist and politician in Illinois. Born in Virginia, Cartwright was a missionary who helped start the Second Great Awakening. He personally baptized twelve thousand Methodist converts. As a Methodist circuit rider, Cartwright rode circuits in Tennessee and Kentucky. His Autobiography made him nationally distinguished. Cartwright jumped into politics as a Democrat. After moving to Illinois and becoming a legislature, he ran for the United States Congress in 1846, but was defeated by Whig, Abraham Lincoln.

20: Industry/Labor: Samuel FB Morse

21: "What God Hath Wrought." Morse was the American inventor of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs, the co-inventor of the Morse code, and an accomplished painter. .In 1825, the city of New York commissioned Morse for $1,000 to paint a portrait of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, in Washington. In the middle of Morse's work he received a letter by a man on horse back that read, "Your dear wife is convalescent". Morse immediately left Washington for his home, but by the time he arrived she had already been buried. He was so upset that he was unaware of his wife's failing health and her lonely death for days, he moved on from art to pursue an invention for long distance communication, the telegraph. In time the Morse code, language through different lengths of beeps, would become the primary language of telegraphy in the world, and is still the standard for rhythmic transmission of data.

22: Industry/Labor: Howe and Singer

23: "For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store." -Singer | the first American patent was issued to Elias Howe for "a process that used thread from two different sources." However, Elias Howe later encountered problems defending his patent and marketing his invention. Sewing machines did not go into mass production until the 1850's, when Isaac Singer built the first successful machine. Singer built the first sewing machine where the needle moved up and down rather than the side-to-side and the needle was powered by a foot treadle. The other machines were all hand-cranked powered. Isaac Singer's machine used the same lockstitch that Howe had patented so Elias Howe sued Isaac Singer for patent infringement and won in 1854.

24: Industry/Labor: Robert Fulton

25: "The American dream of rags to riches is a dream for a reason - it is hard to achieve; were everyone to do it, it wouldn't be a dream but would rather be reality." Fulton was an American engineer and inventor who is credited with developing the first commercially effective steamboat. In 1800 he was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to design the Nautilus, which was the first practical submarine in history. Fulton became interested in steamboats after learning more about James Watt's steam engine.

26: Art/Literature: Henry David Thoreau

27: "Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something." Thoreau was an American author, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, which is all about simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual protest to government when there is moral disagreement with the law. Walden was written after he separated himself from society to live on Walden pond for over two years. He recorded his intellectual findings while in isolation. Civil Disobedience was written after he was thrown in jail for not paying taxes. He refused to pay the taxes because the was disagreed with the war in Mexico and did not want to give his money to the government to fund the war.

28: Art/Literature: Nathaniel Hawthorne

29: "A pure hand needs no glove to cover it." Nathaniel Hawthorne was a writer who based his novels, plays, and short stories off the common theme of dishonesty and "secret sin". He was an anti-transcendentalist and a critic of Thoreau and Emerson's work. His ancestor was a judge for the Salem witch trials and because of this he changed his last name from Hathorne to Hawthorne. This is one of the reasons his works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His most famous novel is The Scarlet Letter.

30: Art/Literature: Frederic Edwin Church

31: "If unremitting attention and activity can accomplish anything, it shall not be my fault if I am not a worthy pupil of so distinguished an artist" He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters. The Hudson River School included many different artists who painted American landscapes. While committed to the natural sciences, he said he was "always concerned with including a spiritual dimension in his works". The painting on the left is called Twilight in the Wilderness and it was created in 1860. Church based this painting off several different sketches of landscapes in Maine and New York. It is the combination of beauty he witnessed in nature rather than a specific location.

32: Conclusion

33: In doing the reformer's project, I have gathered a new insight on how Americans live today. Thanks to the many movements and the people that "got the ball rolling", we are all granted equal rights, we are encouraged to express ourselves in a creative manner, and we are allowed and able to make changes. The movements should not be taken for granted because they happened a long time ago, they should be acknowledged and praised. By researching deeper into this subject, students now realize that struggle and hard work comes before success.

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