APUSH: The Age of Reform, 1820-1840

1. APUSH: The Age of Reform, 1820-1840 Mr. Weber Room 217

2. Activator 11/24 • Take out your persuasive essays. • What were the most important factors putting pressure on the institution of slavery before the Civil War? • Volunteers to share?

3. Agenda • Activator, agenda, and objective (10 minutes) • An Age of Reform lecture (30-45 minutes) • Voices of Freedom Primary Source Analysis (30 minutes) • John Brown and Abraham Lincoln (30 minutes) • Thanks-taking reading • Exit ticket and homework (10 minutes)

4. Objective • AP Topic #10. The Crisis of the Union: Pro- and antislavery arguments and conflicts.

5. Focus Questions • 1. What were the major expressions of the antebellum reform impulse? • 2. What were the sources and significance of abolitionism? • 3. How did abolitionism challenge barriers to racial equality and free speech? • 4. What were the sources and significance of the antebellum women’s rights movement?

6. The reform impulse A. Overall patterns • Voluntary associations • Wide-ranging targets and objectives • Activities and tactics • Breadth of appeal • Utopian communities • Overall patterns • Varieties of structures and purposes • Common visions • Cooperative organization of society • Social harmony • Narrowing of gap between rich and poor • Gender equality

7. Ch. 12, Image 2

8. The reform impulse (cont’d) • Utopian communities • Spiritual communities • Shakers • Outlooks on gender and property • Outcome • Oneida • John Humphrey Noyes • Outlooks on gender and property • Outcome

9. Ch. 12, Image 3

10. The reform impulse (cont’d) • Utopian communities • Worldly 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

11. Ch. 12, Image 4

12. The reform impulse (cont’d) • 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

13. The reform impulse (cont’d) • Opposition to reform • Leading sources • Workers • Catholics • Immigrants • Points of controversy • Temperance crusade • Perfectionism • Imposition of middle-class Protestant morality

14. The reform impulse (cont’d) • Ambiguities of reform • Impulse for liberation, individual freedom • Impulse for moral order, social control • Program of institution building • Jails • Poorhouses • Asylums • Orphanages • Common schools • Thomas Mann • As embodiment of reform agenda • Reception and outcome

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16. 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

17. Crusade against slavery (cont’d) • 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

18. Crusade against slavery (cont’d) • Take-off of militant abolitionism • Initiatives and methods • Founding of American Anti-Slavery Society (AAAS) • Printed propaganda • Oratory; public meetings • Petitions

19. Crusade against slavery (cont’d) • Take-off of militant abolitionism • 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

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22. Crusade against slavery (cont’d) • Take-off of militant abolitionism • 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

23. Crusade against slavery (cont’d) • 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

24. Crusade against slavery (cont’d) • Black and white abolitionism • Remarkable 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; “Freedom celebrations” • Exceptional commitment to color-blind citizenship • Exceptional insistence on economic dimension to freedom • Frederick Douglass’s historic Fourth of July oration

25. Ch. 12, Image 17

26. Crusade against slavery (cont’d) D. Slavery and civil liberties • Assault 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

27. Ch. 12, Image 18

28. Crusade against slavery (cont’d) • 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

29. Ch. 12, Image 19

30. 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 feminist 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

31. Ch. 12, Image 22

32. Origins of feminism (cont’d) • 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

33. Origins of feminism (cont’d) • Characteristics of feminism • International scope • Middle-class orientation • 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

34. Ch. 12, Image 23

35. Origins in feminism (cont’d) • Tensions within feminist thought • Belief in equality of the sexes • Belief in natural differences

36. Review Questions • Why did Americans have an impulse to improve American society in the first half of the 19th century? • In what ways was the abolitionist movement significant to the idea of American freedom? • What were the pros and cons of the colonization movement and why were many black people opposed to it? • Why is this a period of institution building? • How did the abolitionist movement and the women’s movement influence each other?

37. Voices of Freedom • What consequences foes Grimke believe follow from the idea of rights being founded in the individual’s “moral being?” • How does Douglass turn the ideals proclaimed by white Americans into weapons against slavery? • What do these documents suggest about the language and arguments employed by abolitionists?

38. Exit Ticket and Homework • Exit ticket: • What is the most interesting aspect of the reform movements we have studied? • What are you finding most difficult in terms of your academic success in this class? • Homework: • Finish reading Ch. 12 for tomorrow’s test.