CH_12_an age of reform

An Age of Reform
Chapter 12

Utopian Communities (about 1840)

Reform Communities – Overview
Roughly 100 reform and/or Utopian communities were established before the Civil War
Goals of these communities:
Reorganize society on a cooperative basis
Restore social harmony
Believed that the world exhibited too much individualism
Narrow the gap between the rich and poor
A backlash to growing industrialization
Socialism and Communism become ideas that work their way into these communities’ beliefs
Groups
Temperance Movement
Shakers
Transcendentalists
Oneida
Owenites

Temperance Movement Propaganda

The Temperance Movement
American Temperance Society – founded in 1826
Efforts to redeem habitual drunkards
By 1830, it claimed to have redeemed hundreds of thousands of American drunkards
“Washingtonians” – group of men who quit drinking alcohol and convinced others to follow suit
The Temperance Movement eventually gains hundreds of thousands of followers and leads to the Prohibition Movement in the 1900s
Became a badge of respectability to the Northern middle class
Opponents saw this as an attack on freedom (Catholics)

Shakers

The Shakers
Most successful of the religious reform communities
Had close to 5,000 members in the 1840s
Settlements from Maine to Kentucky
Had a significant impact on those outside their community
Very successful economically
Believed that men and women were spiritually equal
God had a “dual personality”
Abandoned private property and traditional family life
Also took an oath of celibacy
Men and women lived in separate dormitories
Ate in communal dining halls
Got the name “Shakers” by their frenzied dancing, always separated by sexes

Immanuel Kant and Transcendentalism
American transcendentalism is rooted in Kant’s philosophy and German idealism
Seen as an alternative to Locke and the Unitarian church of the Revolutionary era
Kant, “all knowledge transcendental which is concerned not with objects but with our mode of knowing objects”
Key Principle:
Defining experience based on the inner, spiritual, or mental essence of the human
Sort of a backlash to rational thinking, the rise of urbanization, and growth of industry

Transcendentalism in the United States
Americans unfamiliar with strict German philosophy, relied primarily on English and French commentators
Thomas Carlyle
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Victor Cousin
Very familiar with English Romanticism (partially why we later see the outgrowth of Romanticism in the United States)
Transcendental Club
Founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 8 September 1936
Published The Dial
“Transcendentalists” was originally a pejorative term, suggesting their position was beyond sanity and reason
Became a group of new ideas in religion, literature, culture, and philosophy until the late 1850s
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
American transcendentalist principle:
“ideal spiritual state that ‘transcends’ the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individual’s intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions”

Oneida Community
Founder, John Noyes
Preached that he and his followers had become so perfect that they had achieved “sinlessness”
Abandoned private property, traditional marriage, and lived in a dictatorial community in New York

Owenites
Robert Owen, most important secular communitarian
Owen promoted communitarianism as a peaceful means for ensuring workers received the wages they deserved
Women’s rights and education were very important to this community

Abolitionism in the United States
Black Abolitionists
Played a leading role in the anti-slavery movement
Frederick Douglass
Wrote a bestselling autobiography about his life as a slave
Met with President Lincoln during the Civil
Advocate for emancipation, women’s suffrage, and civil rights
Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Gave the abolitionist movement a very human appeal; based on the life of a fugitive slave named Josiah Henson
Abolitionism and Race
The movement was integrated, but whites attempted to place blacks in secondary positions
Launched legal and political battles against slavery in the South
Blacks developed a unique understand of freedom beyond their white allies
Often attacked the intellectual foundation of slavery

Reactions to Abolitionism
Northerners
Some attacked abolitionists because they felt it threatened the solidarity of the Union
Interfering with profits in manufacturing that relied on slave labor for raw materials
Afraid of overturning white supremacy
Southerners
Afraid of overturning an economic system
Afraid of overturning a way of life
Afraid of overturning white supremacy
Mob attacks against abolitionists convinced many northerners that abolition was incompatible with the democracy ideals of the U.S. (specifically white males)
The point of contention for abolitionists became a battle over the right to debate slavery openly without fear of violence
Became known as the “gospel of freedom”

Forms of Abolitionism
Colonization
American Colonization Society
Gradual abolition of slavery and settlement of black Americans in Africa
Similar to Indian removal; America is based on a white society
Black Americans adamantly opposed this
Insisted they were Americans too
President Lincoln proposes this during the Civil War
Militant Abolitionism
Demanded immediate abolition
Believed that slavery was sinful and a violation of the Declaration of Independence
However, most were pacifists and rejected violence
Most were just trying to convince slave owners to give up their slaves

The Origins of Feminism

Origins of Feminism
Women in the Public Sphere
Became instrumental to the abolition movement
Feminism became an international movement in the 1840s
The public sphere was open in ways government and party politics were not
Women lectured in public about abolition
Grimke sisters
Frances Wright
Maria Stewart
Grimke sisters argued that women should be involved in:
Assemblies
Lectures
Demonstrations
Women’s Rights
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucreita Mott organize the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848
Raised the issue of women’s suffrage for the first time
Rejected the idea of women’s sphere being in the home
Declaration of Sentiments
Condemned the structure of inequality for women in America
This movement posed a fundamental challenge to society’s central beliefs

Origins of Feminism
Feminism’s connection with Abolitionism
The Slavery of Sex
This concept empowered women to challenge male authority and their own subordination
Marriage and slavery became a powerful tool for feminists
Social Freedom
Women should enjoy the rights to:
Regulate their sexual activity
Protection from violence from their husbands
Individual rights
Broaden their rights outside the home
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Women’s Emancipation

CH_12_an age of reform

by Rick Fair on Jul 14, 2010

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