John M. Murrin, et al. Liberty, Equality, Power A History of the American People

Chapter 12 Whigs, Democrats and the Shaping

of Society

John M. Murrin, et al.

Liberty, Equality, PowerA History of the American People

Reform Movements

• Education• Horace Mann• Texts – Noah Webster & William McGuffey

• McGuffey Readers

• State Universities• UNC-CH

• Higher Education for women•Oberlin College, OH •Teacher colleges – ECTC (ECU)

• Lyceum Lecture Associations

Reform Movements - Education

Reform Movements

• Prison Reform – reform and punish criminals

• Mental Reform – Dorothea Dix

•Temperance Movement

Dix

Reform Movements Women’s Rights

• Challenged “cult of domesticity”• Leaders

• Lucretia Mott• Elizabeth Cady Stanton• Susan B. Anthony

• Women’s Rights Conference• Seneca Falls, NY• “Declaration of Sentiments”

• Transcendentalism• Literary and philosophical movement

• Truth comes from an “inner light”• Emphasis on individualism• Belief in the inherent dignity of the individual

• Unitarians prominent in the movement

In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his 1842 lecture "The Transcendentalist":

The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own . . . .

• Ralph Waldo Emerson• Self Reliance

•Henry David Thoreau• “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”

• People have the moral obligation to disobey unjust laws

• Walden• Walt Whitman

• “Poet Laureate of Democracy”

Whitman

Thoreau

• Utopian Societies

• Cooperative and communal

• Opposed class distinctions created by capitalism

• Robert Owen – New Harmony, IN

In Scotland, Owens reconstructed a mill community into a model

industrial town with good housing and sanitation, nonprofit stores, schools, and excellent working

conditions. Mill profits increased. The New Lanark experiment became

famous in England and abroad, and Owen's ideas spread. He also

proposed the formation of self-sufficient cooperative agricultural-industrial communities. One such

community, called New Harmony, was established (1825) in Indiana but

failed after numerous disagreements among its members.

New Harmony, IN as envisioned by Owens

•Transcendentalists - Brookfarm, MA

Brook Farm, a celebrated nineteenth-century New England utopian community, was founded by Unitarian minister George Ripley and other progressive, Transcendentalist Unitarians, to be, in Ripley's words, a new Jerusalem, the "city of God, anew." From its founding in 1841 until it went bankrupt in 1847, Brook Farm influenced many of the social reform movements of its day: abolitionism, associationalism, the workingmen's movement, and the women's rights movement. It represented both a test of Transcendentalist dreams and a challenge to Transcendentalist individualism.

• Oneida, NY• Christian based

• 2nd Coming = Already occurred• New Eden on Earth = no selfishness or sin

• Plural marriages• Eugenics• Silver artisans

• Perfectionists – fruits of labor are God’s gift

Noyes

• Shakers – New Lebanon, NY• Mother Ann Lee• Shaking Quakers• Celibate• Imminent 2nd Coming• Possible to attain purity• Perfectionists – wood working

Shaker Dining Hall

• Literary Accomplishments• James Fennimore Cooper Last of the Mohicans• Louisa May Alcott Little Women• Herman Melville Moby Dick• Edgar Allen Poe Raven, Fall of the House of Usher, etc.

Poe

• Science• John Audubon – Birds of North America

• Art – Hudson River School