American Reforms

Education:

1800  Horace Mann

o push for tax supported schools
Abolition:
o belief we needed an educated population
 Free blacks: o push for better training for teachers
o no rights
Women’s Rights’:
o mostly in north
o leader: Fredrick Douglass creator of North Star  1816: Francis Cabot Lowell uses women for labor
Newspaper o Short-lived labor source (10 yrs)
 William Lloyd Garrison o Goal for women: raise money for dowry
o Owns newspaper: The Liberator  No suffrage
o Belief in immediate, uncompensated emancipation  Little education
 Encompasses men and women  No right to own land/sue
 Harriet Beecher Stoe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin  Small wages
o Made slavery look 10 times worse  Colleges started admitting: Oberlin and Vasser
o People In the south became infuriated  Catherine Beecher
 Southerners believe slavery is a “positive-good” o Improve family life by stop drinking
o Justification: slavery is in the bible  Elizabeth Stanton, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and Lucretia Mott
o Slavery in the south is better than a factory in the north o Complete equality: suffrage
o Kept their “property” in best shape they could o Hold 1st women’s rights conference in Seneca Falls NY in
1848
Temperance: o Pass declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions
 Emma Willard:
 Under state legislation
o Women’s schools at the secondary level gained
 Desire to prohibit sale/manufacture etc. of alcohol
respectability in the 1820’s thanks to her
 Leaders: Neal Dow and Lyman Beecher
o She established the Troy (New York) Female seminary
o Maine Law: 1st prohibition law
 People believed it was an ill on society that causes beatings, bad
workers, and dangers
Treatment of: Literature

Handicapped  Ralph Waldo Emerson: Lyceum lecturer, Critic of slavery

 Henry David Thoreau: Close associate of Emerson,
 Dorthea Dix
Transcendentalist and nonconformist, condemned a
o Change in asylum system
government that supported slavery, Walden: Or Life in the
o Open up hospitals Woods-record of his 2 years spent in a hut near Walden
Pond
Criminals
 Herman Melville: Wrote Moby Dick unappreciated allegory
 New prison organization of good and evil
 Rehabilitation  James Fennimore Cooper: Wrote: The Spy (American
 Debt was not a reason to be jailed Revolution), Leatherstocking Tales, and The Last of the
Mohicans, Contrasted the values of “natural men,” children
Key Art and Lit: of the wooded wilderness, with the artificiality of modern
 Transcendentalism civilization
o opposes the ideas of John Locke saying that all  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Used themes from European
literature
knowledge comes to the mind through the senses
o Brooke Farm  Alexis de Tocqueville-Democracy in America: Noted that
American women were treated better than those in Europe
o Henry David Theroux: Civil Disobedience
 Edgar Allen Poe: Gifted lyric poet, reflected morbid
o Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo
sensibility, difference set him apart
Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Nathaniel Hawthorne
 Louisa May Alcott: Wrote Little Women to support her
o Perfectibility of humans, intuition more important
sisters and mother
than reason
 Walt Whitman: Wrote the collection of poems: Leaves of
Painters: Grass which was banned in Boston, highly romantic,
emotional, and unconventional
 Hudson River School
o Excelled in romantic mirroring of local landscapes
  Civil war halted the temperance temporarily
 Many Americans, including Ohioans, believed the social ills
of the cities, including homelessness, high crime rates, and
1860 joblessness, all resulted from alcohol usage

African-American Civil Rights: Education:

 Emancipation Proclamation (1862):  Plessy v. Fersuson (1896) - "separate but equal" law
o Slaves in the territories of rebellion  First Morrill Act: July 2, 1862 - an act Donating Public Lands
were freed  to
Freedman's Bureau promoted voting and education
States and Territories to provide Colleges for the Benefit
o Strengthens feelings of border states of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
 More women became teachers, low salary
o Actually freed none  Second Morrill Act: August 30, 1890 - an act to apply a
 th
13 Amendment (1865): slavery forbidden  portion of the
"Jim Crow" proceeds
laws legally of the publicschools
segregated lands to- Southern
the more
 14th Amendment (1868): ex-slaves made complete endowment and support
schools were already segregated. of the colleges.
citizens
 15th Amendment (1870): suffrage for black male citizens Women’s’ Rights:
 Freedman’s Bureau (1865):
 In 1869, the Wyoming territory passed the first women's
o Headed by General Oliver Howard
suffrage law
o Staffed with army of federal branch
 Territories and Northern states offered more for women
o Guardians of free slaves than Southern states
o Regulate labor relations
o Blacks can select their own boss and are Treatment of:
represented in labor disputes
o Provide blacks with food, medicine, and schooling Native Americans
(most effective)  Most NA are in Oklahoma
o After many attempts, President Johnson finally  Initial policy: move NA to two reservations
vetoed it in 1872 because it took too much power o Oklahoma and Black Hills (South Dakota)
from the states (he was a democrat)
1865-1870’s
Temperance:
  Sand Creek Massacre:
o Colorado (near Denver)
o JM Chivington comes across NA tribe, feels they are a
threat and kill 450 elderly, women, and children
o Other tribes feel it is their duty to get even
 Bureau of Indian Affairs located in Department of War (1860-
1880)
 Gold was discovered in the Black Hills reservation (1876)
o Decide to kill all the buffalo which in turn would
exterminate the Indians
1880-1900
 Decide to either assimilate or make a new reservation
 1884: Congress outlaws Indian Cultural Practices
o Outlaw sun dance and ghost dance
 1887: Dawes Act
o Divided all tribal land into 160 acre parcels
o Said each family that left the tribe could get a parcel and
if they held onto it for 25 years they could become a
citizen
o Extremely ineffective
Immigrants
 New companies needed large numbers of employees
 Governments allowed anyone to immigrate besides ill,
prostitutes or Chinese
o Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): CA population of Chinese
got out of control, so the federal government took
control and stopped their influx
1830-1860
 Educated, slightly wealthy, and skilled people from Ireland,
Germany, and England
 US has no problem accepting people who look like us
1865-1890
 People from western and northern Europe that had some
education, skills and money
 Hard to accept Catholics and small group of Jews
1890-1920
 People from southern and eastern Europe brought nothing
 Catholics and large group of Jews
 Forced to come through Ellis Island
 Lived in ghettos or tenements (dumbbell houses)
Key Art and Lit:
Literature
 Helen Hunt Jackson: Century of Dishonor, lays out history of
American treatment towards NA, desire for North to assimilate
 Josiah Strong: White Man’s Burden, says only WASPs are people
of god
 Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863)
 Louisa May Alcott: Pretty Women (1868)
 Ralph Waldo Emerson: too many to list, wrote on education,
process, morality, Christianity, power, unity, and moods
1900
African-American Civil Rights:
  Jim Crow Laws are created by southerners (segregation  70% of colleges admit women
laws)  Class variety expanded
o Restricted voting  Reduction in required classes
 Enforced a literacy test  Expansion in electives
 Poll tax  Social sciences expand to greater topics
o Grandfather clause  Literacy Rate increases to 90% due to education
 If the grandfather was a free man one could enforcement
vote
Women’s’ Rights:
o White only primaries
 No African-American’s could advance in the  State ruled divorce legal
political ladder 1. Cruelty
2. Desertion
 Birth rate declines
Temperance:
o Cities didn’t demand children for working
 Urban East Coast o Expensive to have and raise
o WCTU created by Francis Willard  NAWSA created by Elizabeth Stanton & S.B. Anthony
 Rural areas (west of Mississippi)  NWP created by Alice Paul
o Anti-Saloon League created by Carrie Nation
Treatment of:
Education:
Immigrants
 Compulsory laws passed, everyone must attend school
 Settlement houses
 Chatauque Movement
 Chicago Hull House, founded by Jane Adams
o Education for adults
o Taught English, skills, and financial care, provided
 Influx of immigrants and freedmen’s were
daycare, medical help, and helped develop art,
uneducated
literature, and music
 Taxes supported secondary school (9-12)
o Foundation for social work
o Created better opportunity for higher education
 Social Gospel (Churches involved in society)
 Land Grant Colleges
o Expansion of universities
 o Goals: help urban poor, apply Christian Principle to Music
social problems
 North- Orchestra/ band
 Walter Rauschenbusch created:
 South- Jazz (due to African-Americans culture,
o Salvation Army
originated in New Orleans)
 Take care of poor, offer jobs
o YMCA
 Large settlement house
 Mary Baker Eddy Popular Culture
o Women Christian Science Church
 Uniformed living styles (mainly free time)
 Women college
1. Leisure time
Native Americans 2. Improved Transportation
3. Decline in Puritan work ethic
Key Art and Lit:  Creation of:
1. Vaude Ville- Talent shows
Literature
2. Broadway, comedies, musicals
 Brett Harte: Life Out West 3. Circus
 Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn 4. Wild west shows
 Steven Crane: Red Badge of Courage 5. Spectator sports
 Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie 6. Amusement parks
 Rise in publication of little kid books
 Mass circulation of newspapers
o NY Journal, NY World
 Mass circulation of magazines

Art

 Ashkane- dull city painting

 James Whistler: Whistler’s Mother
 Winslow homer: started watercolors