Foner chapter 12

The reform impulse

A. Overall patterns– Voluntary associations– Wide-ranging targets and objectives– Activities and tactics– Breadth of appeal

B.Utopian communities– Varieties of structures and purposes– Common visions

– Cooperative organization of society– Social harmony– Narrowing of gap between rich and poor– Gender equality

Utopian communitiesSpiritual communities

• Shakers– Outlooks on gender and property– Outcome

• Oneida– John Humphrey Noyes– Outlooks on gender and property– Outcome

Utopian communitiesWorldly communities

• Brook Farm– Transcendentalist origins– Influence of Charles Fourier– Outlooks on labor and leisure– Outcome

• New Harmony– Communitarianism of Robert Owen– Forerunner at New Lanark, Scotland– Outlooks on labor, education, gender, and community– Outcome

Utopia and Modern Times– Anarchism of Josiah Warren– Outlooks on labor, exchange, and gender– Outcome

Limits of mainstream appeal

Mainstream reform movements– Visions of liberation

• From external “servitudes” (e.g. slavery, war)• From internal “servitudes” (e.g. drink,

illiteracy, crime)

– Influence of Second Great Awakening– “Perfectionism”– Appeal in “burnt-over districts”– Radicalization of reform causes– Badge of middle-class respectability

Opposition to reform– Leading sources

• Workers• Catholics• Immigrants

– Points of controversy• Temperance crusade• Perfectionism• Imposition of middle-class Protestant morality

Program of institution building

– Jails– Poorhouses– Asylums– Orphanages– Common schools

• Thomas Mann• As embodiment of reform agenda• Reception and outcome

Crusade against slavery• American Colonization Society

– Founding– Principles

• Gradual abolition• Removal of freed blacks to Africa

– Establishment of Liberia– Skepticism over– Following

• In North• In South

– Black response• Emigration to Liberia• Opposition

– First black national convention– Insistence on equal rights, as Americans

Take-off of militant abolitionism

– Distinctive spirit and themes• Demand for immediate abolition• Explosive denunciations of slavery

– As a sin– As incompatible with American freedom

• Rejection of colonization• Insistence on racial equality, rights for blacks• Active role of blacks in movement• Mobilization of public opinion• Moral suasion

Take-off of militant abolitionism

Initiatives and methods• Founding of American Anti-Slavery Society

(AAAS)• Printed propaganda• Oratory; public meetings• Petitions

Crusade against slavery

Pioneering figures and publications• David Walker; An Appeal to the Coloured

Citizens of the World

• William Lloyd Garrison– The Liberator

– Thoughts on African Colonization

• Theodore Weld; Slavery As It Is

• Lydia Maria Child; An Appeal In Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans

Spread and growth

Strongholds of support

Crusade against slavery

Visions of American freedom• Self-ownership as basis of freedom• Priority of personal liberty over rights to

property or local self-government• Freedom as universal entitlement, regardless

of race• Right to bodily integrity

Identification with revolutionary heritage

Black and white abolitionism– Prominence of blacks in movement

• As opponents of colonization• As readers and supporters of The Liberator• As members and officers of AAAS• As organizers and speakers• As writers

– Racial strains within movement• Persistence of prejudice among white abolitionists• White dominance of leadership positions• Growing black quest for independent role

Black and white abolitionismRemarkable degree of egalitarianism among white abolitionists

• Anti-discrimination efforts in North• Spirit of interracial solidarity

Black abolitionists’ distinctive stands on freedom and “Americanness”

• Exceptional hostility to racism• Exceptional impatience with celebrations of American liberty• Exceptional commitment to color-blind citizenship• Exceptional insistence on economic dimension to freedom

Frederick Douglass’s historic Fourth of July oration

Slavery and civil libertiesAssault on abolitionism

• Mob violence– Attack on Garrison in Boston– Attack on James G. Birney in Cincinnati– Fatal attack on Elijah P. Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois

• Suppression– Removal of literature from mails– “Gag rule” on petitions to House of Representatives

Resulting spread of antislavery sentiment in North

Split within AAAS– Points of conflict

• Role of women in movement• Garrisonian radicalism• Relationship of abolitionism to American

politics

– Outcome• Formation of rival American and Foreign Anti-

Slavery Society• Founding of Liberty party• Weak performance of Liberty party in 1840

election

Origins of feminism• Rise of the public woman

– Importance of women at grassroots of abolitionism– Forms of involvement in public sphere

• Petition drives, Meetings, Parades, Oratory

– Range of reform movements involving women

• Abolitionism as seedbed for movement– New awareness of women’s subordination– Path-breaking efforts of Angelina and Sarah Grimké

• Impassioned antislavery addresses• Controversy over women lecturers• Sarah Grimké’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes

Launching of women’s rights movement

Seneca Falls Convention– Roots in abolitionism

• Influence of Grimké sisters• Leadership of antislavery veterans Elizabeth

Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

– Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments• Echoes of Declaration of Independence• Demand for suffrage• Denunciation of wide-ranging inequalities

Characteristics of feminism– International scope– Middle-class orientation

D.Themes of feminism– Self-realization

• Transcendentalist sensibility• Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century

– Right to participate in market revolution• Denial that home is women’s “sphere”• Amelia Bloomer’s new style of dress

– Analogy between marriage and slavery; “slavery of sex”• Laws governing wives’ economic status• Law of domestic relations

III. Origins in feminism (cont’d)

F.Tensions within feminist thought– Belief in equality of the sexes– Belief in natural differences