During the period of 1820-1860, various reform movements sought to improve unjust or imperfect aspects of American society. Religious influences like the Second Great Awakening encouraged people to reform their own lives and society. Dorothea Dix fought to improve conditions for the mentally ill and prisons. The temperance movement aimed to reduce alcohol abuse. Educational reforms pushed for public schools and colleges as well as schools for African Americans, women, and those with disabilities. Women's rights advocates like Elizabeth Stanton and Sojourner Truth fought for women's suffrage and equality. Meanwhile, abolitionists including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe worked to end slavery through

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