Highlights From The Age Of Reform

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Abby Kelley

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Effective public speaker in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Her election to an all-male committe cause the final break between William Garrison and his abolitionist critics in 1840 that split the organization.

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American Anti-Slavery Society

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Organization of reformers who rembraced moral persuasion to end slavery. founded in 1833, it opposed gradual emancipation, rejected compensation to slaveholders, supported many types of reform, and welcomed women as full and active members.

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American Colonization Society

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Organization founded in 1817 that advocated sending freed to a colony in Africa. It established the colony of Liberia in 1827 and encouraged free African Americans to emigrate there as well.

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American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society

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Organization founded in 1840 and led by the Tappan brothers that opposed the radical the radical ideas of William Lloyd Garrison, especially his attacks on the churches and the Constitution. It followed a modre moderate approach and supported the political activities of the Liberty Party.

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American Society for the Promotion of Temperance

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First national temperance organization, founded in 1826, which sent agents to preach total abstinence from alcohol. The society pressed individuals to sign pledges of sobriety and states to prohibit the use of alcohol.

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Brook Farm

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Utopian society established by transcendentalist George Ripley near Boston in 1841. Members shared equally in farm work and leisure discussions of literature and art. Author Nathaniel Hawthorne and others became disenchanted with the experiment, and it collapsed after a fire in 1847.

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Burned-over district

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Are of New York State along the Erie Canal that was constantly aflame with revivalistm and reform. As wave after wave of fervor broke over the region, groups such as the Mormons, Shakers, and Millerites found support among the residents.

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Charles Finney

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A leading evangelist of the Second Great Awakening. He preached that each person had capacity for spiritual rebirth and salvation, and that through individual effort one could be saved. His concept of "utility of benevolence" proposed the reformation of society as well as of individuals.

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Charles Finney

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A leading evangelist of the Second Great Awakening. He preached that each person had capacity for spiritual rebirth and salvation, and that through individual effort one could be saved. His concept of "utility of benevolence" proposed the reformation of society as well as of individuals.

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Compensated Emancipation

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Approach to ending slavery that called for slaveholders to be paid for the loss of their "property" as slaves were freed. Such proposals were based on the belief that slaveholders would be less resistant to abolition of the economic blow were softened by compensation. A variety of such programs were proposed, some with the support of government leaders, up to and even during the Civil War. Some compensated emancipation existed on a very small scale, as some anti-slavery organizations purchased slavesand then set them free.

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Cult of domesticity

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The belief that as the fairer sex, women occupied a unique and speciifc social position and that they were to provide religious and moral instruction in the home but avoid the rough world of politics and business in the larger sphere of society.

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Declaration of Sentiments

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Series of resolutions issued at the end of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the list of grievances called for economic and social equality for women, along with the demoand for the right to vote.

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Dorothea Dix

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Schoolteacher turned reformer, she was a pioneer for human treatment of the mentally ill. She lobbied state legislatures to create separate hospitals for the insane and to remobed them from the drepravity of the penal system.

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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Pioneer in the women's movement, she organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and fought for women's suffrage throughout the 1800s.

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Frederick Douglass

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Former slave who became an effective abolitionist with and authenticity to his speeches unmatched by other antislavery voices. Initially a follower of William Lloyd Garrison, he broke away and started his own abolitionist newspaper, the North Star. From the 1840s to his death in 1895, he was the leading black spokesperson in America.

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Gradual Emancipation

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Approach to ending slavery that called for the phasing out of slavery over a period of time. Many gradual emancipation proposals were built around the granting of freedom to children of slaves who were born after a specified date, usually when they attained a specified age. In this way, as existing slaves aged and died, slavery following the American Revolution, adopted this method of ending the institution.

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Horace Mann

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Reformer who led a crusade to improve public education in America. As secretary of the Massachusets Board of Education, he established a minimum school term, formalized teacher training, and moved curriculum away from religious training toward more secular subjects.

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James Birney

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Former slaveholder who at one time was a member of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. In 1840 and 1844, he ran for president on the Liberty Party ticket.

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Lewis and Artuhur Tappan

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Founders of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. As successful businessmen, they funded many antislavery activies in the 1830 and 1840s. They also supported the Liberty Party in the 1840s.

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Liberty Party

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Political party formed in 1840 that supported a program to end the slave trade and slavery in the territories and the District of Columbia. Jams Birney ran as th party candidate in 1840 and 1844. In 1848, it merged into the Free Soil Party.

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Lucretia Mott

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Quaker activist in both the abolitionist and women's movements. With Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she was a principal organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

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Maine Law (1851)

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First statewide attempt to restrict the consumption of alcohol. The law prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol except for medical reasons.

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Sarah and Angelina Grimke

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Quaker sisters from South Carolina who came north and became active in the abolitionist movement. Angelina married Theodore Weld, a leading abolitionist, and Sarah wrote and lectured on a variety of reforms including women's rights and abolition.

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Second Great Awakening

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Period of religious revivals between 1790 and 1840 that preached the sinfulness f man yet emphasized salvation through moral action. It sent a message to turn away from sin and provided philosophical underpinnings of the reforms of the 1830s.

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Susan B. Anthony

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Friend and partner of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the struggle for women's rights. Meeting in 1851, Anthony and Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association after the Civil War. The 19th Amendment, which extended the right to vote to women in 1920, is sometimes called the "Anthony" amendment.

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Transcendentalists

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Writers whol believed in the search for reality and truth through spiritual instuition. They held that man was capable of discovering truth without reference to established authority. This belief justified the reformers' challenges to the conventional thinking of their time.

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William Lloyd Garrison

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Most prominent abolitionst leader of the antbellum period. He published the antislavery newspaper The Liberator nd founded the American Anti-Slavery Society.