Reform Movements in a Changing America

• Between 1840 and 1860, 4 million immigrants flooded into the U.S.—most were Irish and German escaping economic or political problems at home

• The Irish faced a terrible potato blight, causing starvation and disease—immigrants came to America with nothing, and settled in the northeastern cities willing to work for low wages

• Germans fled persecution—they tended to settle in the more rural parts of the mid-west

• Many native-born Americans (nativists) despised immigrants who by willing to work for less, may take jobs away

• Cities in the northeast held 75% of the manufacturing jobs—cities were overflowing with people looking for work

• Overcrowded cities led to problems such as: unclean water, lack of sewage and running water, disease, crime, and fire

• Americans looked to art, writing, and literature as a way to take pride in the country and as a form of self-expression

• Transcendentalism and Romanticism taught people to live simply, appreciate nature, depend on yourself, and question some of societies rules and norms

• Famous writers, poets, and artists of the time included: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Walt Whitman

• The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival that inspired Americans to reform parts of society such as: alcohol abuse, prisons, education, and slavery

• The Temperance Movement urged people to stop drinking

• Dorothea Dix worked to separate orphans and the mentally ill from hardcore criminals

• Horace Mann’s Common-School Movement called for all children to attend free public school

• Colleges and universities were created, as well as some schools for African-Americans and women

• William Lloyd Garrison, The Grimke Sisters, and Frederick Douglass fought for abolition- or the end to slavery in America

• Harriet Tubman was a conductor on the Underground Railroad- a network of safe houses on the road north to freedom

• Many northerners were not in favor of abolition—they feared the consequences of freeing 5 million slaves who would move north looking for work and homes

• Southerners viewed slavery as an economic necessity as well as a way of life

• The Women’s Rights Movement sprang from the Abolition Movement—women who were working for black freedoms and equality soon realized that they too were being discriminated against

• Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and others traveled the country preaching not only abolition, but equality for women

• The Seneca Falls Convention was the first public meeting devoted to women’s rights—the Declaration of Sentiments was drafted to detail the social injustices toward women