How successful were the prison reform and asylum reform movements during the antebellum period and what accounts for that success (or lack of success)?

1 HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer Topic 12 Reform and Revival in Antebellum America With this topic I want to focus on the many dive rse, but related, reform movements of the antebellum period. In addition to the social reform movements outlined in Ch. 13 (pp. 276 85), the antebellum reform movements also included transcendentalism (Out of Many , Ch. 12) and the Secon d Great Awakening , which was a religious revival (Out of Ma ny , Ch. 12). In Out of Many John Mack Faragher also talks around, but does not explicitly discu ss, new attitudes towards women ’s role that arose during the antebellum per iod, the Cult of D omesticity . According to the Cult of Domesticity, men and women had different spheres of influence: for men it was the public world , for women it was the private world (that is, the home ). Man ’s public sphere was political, financial, and economic . Woman ’s private sphere was moral and educational. Each gender reig ned supreme in its sphere. As limiting for women as the Cult of Dom esticity might seem to us today, many women during the antebellum period found it liberating! According to the Cult of Domesticity, the job of a woman as a wife and mother was to educate her children and instill in them good morals. Women were, in effect, the moral guardians of the family . Many Americans, especially Protestant middle -class Americans, viewed the cumulative effects of increased immigration, commercialization, industrialization, and westward expa nsion as threatening ; they felt that the America the y had grown up in was rapidly transforming beyond recognition (the first 3) or was literally being torn apart as family -members moved west. According to the Cult of Domes ticity, the home was therefore a bulwark, protecting families in the midst of a rapidly changing society. For example, subscribers to the Cult of Domesticity believed that man, out in the public world, was tem pted by greed, sin, and lust; returning home recharged man ’s moral batteries so that he could venture forth int o the public world again and ma ke good, moral choices. (Moral perfectibility and the r esponsibility of individu als to choose to follow a morally correct path are ideas that the antebellum social reform movements inherited from the Second Great Awakening.) Some women used their sta tus of moral guardians of the family according to the Cult of Domesticity to push beyond the private sphere and into the public sphere. Women argued that as their role as moral guardians of the family extended to protecting the family outside the home – wome n were, in effect, the moral guardians of the country . W ho better , therefore, to vote on social legislation than women? Hence some women used the Cult of Domesticity to agitate for the right to vote. In this way some antebellum reform movements that seem quite conse rvative to us now were, during the antebellum period, quite radical. Moreover, many seemingly “positive” reform movements had dark sides. A major theme of Ch. 13 of Out of Many is the impact of increased immigration on American society during the antebellum period. Many Americans responded to increased immigration with nativism , which means anti -immigrant sentiment. Moreover , reformers, many of whom were white middle -class Protestants, attempted to use social control to make immigrants conform to white, middle -class Protestant values . Hence many of the social reform movements of the antebellum period involved social control . Social control is when one group tries to force its values on another group in the belief that doing so will make the second group “better ”. 2 HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer Remember :  Make sure that you are on track to do at least 4 student -responses by the end of the summer session. (Including Topic 12, there are only 4 topics left!)  If you are not the first person to answer a particular question, make sure that your answer covers new ground .  Graded posts need to be at least 30 0 words long.  When discussing a source, go into l ots of detail! Show me that you have carefully read, understood, and thought about the source.  If every question gets answered at least once, everyone who submitted a graded post by the deadline gets a point of extra credit. Key terms (Use and discuss re levant key terms in your answer .) Transcendentalism Second Great A wakening Cult of Domesticity nativism social control General Trades Union (GTU) temperance Dorothea Dix utopian ism and communitarian movements the Shakers Mormonism / Joseph Smith abolition ism American Colonization Society William Lloyd Garrison Frederick Douglas Sarah and Angelina Grimké Thomas Story Kirkbride Worcester State Hospital ( M assachusetts ) Elizabeth Cady Stanton World’s Anti -Slavery Convention (London, 1840) Seneca Falls Convention (1848) / the “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” Focus Questions Tying the readings together (T ie together information from both the textbook and at lea st o ne of the sources.) 1. What was the relationship between abolitionism and the women’s rights movement? Why might supporters of these movements be natural all ies? Why might they be competitors? 2. What does Elizabeth Cady Stanton have to say about the Irish immigrants who lived near her? How do her views of and interactions with these immigrants reflect or contradict American attitudes towards immigrants that yo u have read about in Ch. 13 of Out of Many ? 3. What do the prison reform movement and asylum movement have in common with other reform movements of the antebellum period? Out of Many , Ch. 13 (Draw on multiple sections of the chapter in your answer. ) 4. What ethnic groups immigrated to the United States during the antebellum period? Why did they choose to immigrate and what challenges did they face after they reached the United States? 5. Apart from the women’s rights movement, what role did women play in the reform movements of the antebellum period? Why d id women played such a prominent role in these reform movements? 3 HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer 6. How do the utopian movements of the antebellum period relate to other reform movements of the period? What goa ls or beliefs did they share? 7. How and why did the abolition mo vement change from the 1830s? Excerpt from Eighty Years and More and The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and resolutions 8. Why was Cady Stanton’s attendance at the World’s Antislavery Convention in 1840 important to her development as a women’s rights advocate? And how did Stanton’s life between the World’s Antislavery Convention in 1840 and the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 deepen her commitment to women’s equal rights? 9. How did women’s rights advocates use and alter the wording of the Declaration of Independence? Discuss specif ic examples. (Hint : the answer is not simply that they added the word woman.) Excerpt on Prisons and Asylums from Moralists and Modernizers by Steven Mintz 10. How successful were the prison reform and asylum reform movements during the antebellum period and what accounts for that success (or lack of success)?