4.11 An Age of Reform

Reformers believed in perfectionism, the idea that individuals and society could be made better. This came partly from the Second Great Awakening, partly from Enlightenment faith in reason and progress, and partly from Romantic belief in human potential. The market revolution added both problems (crowded cities, heavy drinking, poverty) and a middle class with the time, money and education to organize.

Most reform was strongest in the North, especially in New England and the burned-over district of New York. The South, defensive about slavery, largely rejected reform movements that might challenge it.

• Temperance: Americans drank far more alcohol in the early 1800s than today. Reformers blamed drinking for poverty, crime and family violence. The American Temperance Society (1826) urged people to pledge to stop drinking, and consumption fell sharply by the 1840s. In 1851 Maine passed the first statewide ban on the sale of alcohol.
• Public education: Horace Mann, who became head of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, pushed for tax-supported common schools open to all children, longer school years and trained teachers. Reformers believed schools would create good citizens and help immigrants assimilate.
• Asylums and prisons: Dorothea Dix investigated conditions for the mentally ill, who were often held in jails, and in 1843 presented a report to the Massachusetts legislature that led to state hospitals. Reformers also built penitentiaries meant to rehabilitate prisoners.

Early antislavery efforts often favored gradual emancipation or colonization, sending free Black Americans to Africa (4.12). In the 1830s a more radical movement demanded immediate abolition. William Lloyd Garrison began publishing The Liberator in 1831 and helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery, became the movement's most famous speaker and founded his own newspaper, The North Star, in 1847. Sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimké, from a South Carolina slaveholding family, spoke out against slavery and for women's rights.

Abolitionists were a small and often unpopular minority, even in the North; mobs attacked their meetings. The House of Representatives adopted a 'gag rule' (1836–1844) that automatically tabled antislavery petitions. Abolitionists also split, over whether women should take leading roles and whether to work through politics. Those favoring political action formed the Liberty Party in 1840.

Women gained organizing experience in reform movements but often faced limits there too. When women delegates were barred from the floor of the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott resolved to hold a women's rights meeting.

The Seneca Falls Convention (New York, July 1848) issued the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence: 'all men and women are created equal'. It listed grievances such as women's lack of property rights, educational and job opportunities, and the vote. The resolution demanding suffrage was the most controversial and passed narrowly, with Frederick Douglass speaking in favor. One hundred people signed the declaration. The movement's leaders were mostly white and middle class, and over time arguments arose over whether its goals should focus on white women; Black women such as Sojourner Truth pressed for a movement that included them.

Some reformers tried to build perfect societies from scratch. Brook Farm (1841) was a transcendentalist experiment in Massachusetts, New Harmony (1825) in Indiana was based on the socialist ideas of Robert Owen, and the Oneida Community (1848) in New York practiced shared property and unusual marriage arrangements. Most were small and short-lived.