How Successful Was The Reform Movement In The Early 1800s

During the early 19th century we saw a surge in reform movements in the United States. This period of reform was started by the Second Great Awakening, which was a religious revival that occurred during the early 1800s. Individuals who were inspired by the Second Great Awakening wished to improve society, and thus set up several reform movements. The movement to abolish slavery was disliked by radical abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison. As a result of differing social and economic conditions, the North and the South viewed slavery differently. While the South saw slavery as a beneficial, as it was the reason for the success of the Southern plantation economy, the North had a more critical view of slavery. Because the North developed a more industrial economy, they had …show more content…
As Americans spread westward in the early 1800s, new states came into existence. In 1820 the status of slavery became the central issue in the creation of Missouri and Maine as states, which was settled in the Missouri Compromise. This led to an increase in tensions between the North and South. Some northerners opposed slavery and the expansion of slavery because it threatened to limit the number of jobs available for free whites. In the 1850s, northerners who wanted to move west did not want to have to compete with neighbors who had slaves. Others, influenced by the Second Great Awakening, opposed it on moral grounds. Radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison advocated immediate and uncompensated abolition of slavery in his newspaper, “The Liberator”. While many northerners did not initially share in Garrison’s views, the North became more opposed to slavery following the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s