In the Age of Reform, many Americans believed that the traditional values were not being fulfilled because of the emerging industrial economy. The reformers supported humanitarian and social reforms in an effort to create a moral reform in the United States. Some of these reformers believed in transcendentalism. This religious and philosophical movement promoted the divinity of the individual and sought to perfect human society.
Other reformers were driven more by religion, such as the Protestant revivalism known as the Second Great Awakening. Charles Grandison Finney, one of the preachers, declared alcohol and slavery to be not beneficial for society.The Second Great Awakening reformed many aspects in society. The Shaker, Amana, and Mormons were some that blended religion and non religious institutions to further human perfectibility. Many middle-class women participated in various reform movements including Dorothea Dix. In this era women played leading roles in many of the crusades to reform American society. Dorothea Dix’s crusade for change transformed the incarceration system to be as it is today. She abandoned a successful teaching career in 1841 to begin a life-long crusade to improve conditions for the mentally impaired. In Massachusetts she went to the Cambridge school of corrections every Sunday to teach Sunday school the the inmates. Dix noticed in the insane ward of the school of corrections the people were starving, had no heat, were chained to walls and abused. This was greatly disturbing to her and she believed there was a solution. Horace Mann, Charles Sumner and Dorothea Dix gathered evidence for 18 months and then publish Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts. After touring asylums and poor houses in Massachusetts, she reported to the legislature that the insane were treated as violent criminals: "Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience." The address to the legislature of Massachusetts featured an eyewitness account of the conditions the insane lived in and a call to action. This radical and passionate speech helped to pass the bill in Massachusetts which was the first of many similar bills across the United States. The bill passed to build a state hospital in Worcester, MA. Dix considered it her purpose to change the conditions of these institutions and devoted her life to it. This was the start of the crusade around the country to change prisons and asylums. Crisscrossing the United States, Dix single handedly created most of the 19th century