Sojourner Truth Are Representative of the Women Who Defied Convention and Worked Publicly for Abolition and Women’S Rights in This Period

CK_4_TH_HG_P087_242.QXD 10/6/05 9:03 AM Page 230 IV. Reformers At a Glance The most important ideas for you are: ◗ The period from the early 1800s to mid-century was characterized by a number of reform movements to improve society. ◗ Abolitionists worked to end slavery. ◗ Dorothea Dix was at the forefront of the movement to treat those with mental illness humanely. ◗ Horace Mann was instrumental in promoting and standardizing public education. ◗ The first women’s rights convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, to bring attention to the need to recognize that women had “certain inalienable” rights. ◗ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Amelia Bloomer, and Sojourner Truth are representative of the women who defied convention and worked publicly for abolition and women’s rights in this period. What Teachers Need to Know Background The early 1800s were a time of social ferment and change in the United States. Many people during this era devoted their attention to reform movements that they believed would make the young nation better, fairer, and more just. This interest in improving the nation grew out of the Second Great Awakening, which began in the 1790s. (The first era of religious revival, known as the Great Awakening, had occurred in the 1730s and 1740s.) Rejecting the concept of predestination—in which God preordained who was to be saved and who was to be damned—as preached by the Pilgrims and Puritans and their descendants in the Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches, Americans turned to the Methodist and Baptist churches, which claimed that people could choose to be saved. People focused on living in a way that would be pleasing to God—living a just, temperate, religious life. The same energy that led to the Second Great Awakening helped drive the great age of reform. In order to understand the reform movements of this period, it is important to remember that many of the reformers were inspired and guided by their religious values. Furthermore, religion saw a democratization as churches embraced the Bible as the highest authority, instead of giving that power to a single person. Grass-roots recruiting led many people to join churches and develop a personal connection to God and to the other members of their faith. The reform era saw advocates championing the abolition of slavery, adequate care for the mentally ill, the adoption of public education, and the 230 Grade 4 Handbook CK_4_TH_HG_P087_242.QXD 10/6/05 9:03 AM Page 231 expansion of women’s rights. Other areas that attracted reformers were the temperance movement, prison reform, and the crusade to provide adequate care and educational opportunities for those with physical disabilities such as blindness. Abolitionists Teaching Idea While political events involving slavery were unfolding in Washington, D.C., Have students do research on the and in the territories during the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s, the antislavery movement abolitionist movement and on promi- was becoming more active and more vocal. There had been calls for the abolition of nent abolitionists. Then have students slavery as soon as there had been a United States. The first formal abolitionist organ- work in pairs to create posters ization was formed in 1787 when a group of free African Americans met in announcing an abolitionist meeting. Philadelphia and founded the Free African Society to work to end slavery. They should list the day, time, date, name of the speaker, and give the Although the U.S. Constitution had ended the foreign slave trade in 1808, the speaker’s talk a title. The title should inter- and intrastate slave trade continued and by the 1830s, slavery had become reflect the person’s viewpoint and entrenched in the southern states. As slavery grew, ordinary people, both white experience. For example, a speech by and black (including many former slaves), actively opposed it, giving voice to Sojourner Truth might be titled “Doing what became known as the abolitionist movement. The goal of the movement was God’s Work by Speaking Out Against to abolish, or get rid of, slavery. Slavery,” and one by Frederick Among the most notable abolitionists was Frederick Douglass, an escaped Douglass might be “Freedom Now!” slave, who wrote an autobiography describing his life as a slave in Maryland and Students should also write a sen- later published the abolitionist newspaper North Star. A powerful speaker, tence or two describing what the Douglass was joined on the abolitionists’ lecture circuit by others, including speaker will talk about. Sojourner Truth, a former slave, and Harriet Tubman, a former slave and conduc- tor on the Underground Railroad. Influential white abolitionists included William Lloyd Garrison, who published The Liberator, another abolitionist newspaper, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which sold over 300,000 copies in its first year. The novel describes the life of the gentle slave Tom who eventually dies at the hands of his brutal overseer. Being an abolitionist, especially an outspoken activist, was dangerous. Those who supported slavery sometimes used violence to try to silence critics. They burned the homes and offices of abolitionists, ran abolitionists out of town, and even murdered some. Opposition to abolitionism came not only from white south- erners, but also from some working-class northerners, who feared freed African Americans would work for lower wages and put white workers out of a job. Dorothea Dix and the Treatment of the Mentally Ill At the time that Dorothea Dix began her crusade to help people with mental illness, they were usually housed in jails, prisons, and poorhouses. In 1821, Dix, a teacher, founded her own school in Boston. In the next decade, she published a number of books dealing with education and religious themes. In 1841, she was asked to teach Sunday school in a jail in Cambridge. There she saw firsthand the way those with mental illness were treated. The revelation motivated Dix to visit jails and prisons around Massachusetts, and she found them no better than the one in Cambridge. Those with mental illness were confined in cells with prison- ers, without proper food, clothing, and sanitary facilities. They were sometimes chained and beaten. Dix reported to the Massachusetts legislature on her History and Geography: American 231 CK_4_TH_HG_P087_242.QXD 10/6/05 9:03 AM Page 232 IV. Reformers two-year investigation and won support to have the state-run mental hospital expanded. Dix then took her crusade to other states and found similar conditions. For 40 years, Dix worked to help the mentally ill. She persuaded legislators in 15 U.S. states and in Canada to build or upgrade state-operated hospitals for the mentally ill. 46 Teaching Idea Horace Mann and Public Schools While studying Horace Mann you may wish to try to give students a sense of Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first colony to establish public-supported how schools in the 19th century dif- education. In 1642, the General Court of Massachusetts passed an education law fered from schools today. Share pic- to ensure that everyone was able to read the Bible. According to the law, parents tures, and possibly also selections from had to teach their children to read. Five years later, the General Court passed a old school books, such as McGuffey’s law ordering every town of 50 families or more to support a school. Eclectic Readers (see More Resources). Horace Mann built on this foundation when he served as the first secretary of the Massachusetts state board of education from 1837 to 1848. During that time, he did much to promote public education by establishing state-supported colleges to train teachers and by setting up school districts under a statewide sys- Teaching Idea tem of public education. Mann also lobbied for better pay for teachers. He want- As a writing exercise, tell students to ed to standardize the age for compulsory school attendance, place students in respond in 5-paragraph essay form to graded classrooms, and use the same grade-level textbooks across the state. the following prompt: To which move- But most importantly, Mann and his supporters advocated public education ment would you have volunteered your as the “great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance wheel of the social time to help? Why? machinery.” They saw public education as a means to create a harmonious and homogeneous society of hardworking citizens, who would support the values, beliefs, and loyalties of America. Mann’s philosophy appealed to the middle class Cross-curricular in the north, and interest in public education soon spread from Massachusetts to other northern states. The midwest, which had been settled under the Northwest Teaching Idea Ordinance requiring the establishment of schools, already supported education. You may wish to teach the science Public education in the south did not take hold until the 1850s because of the biography of Elizabeth Blackwell in scarcity of towns. conjunction with this discussion of women’s rights. See “Science Women’s Rights, Seneca Falls, Stanton, and Mott Biographies” (pp. 519–520). In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Many advocates of the women’s rights movement were inspired by their efforts in the antislavery movement. At that time, women had very limited public roles. They usually could attend meetings but were not allowed to speak in public. In fact, a major catalyst for the women’s rights movement occurred in 1840, when Lucretia Mott and other female delegates were refused as delegates at the World’s Antislavery Convention in London due to their gender.

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