CHAPTER 12 An Age of Reform, 1820–1840
This chapter concentrates on the history of reform, including various communal endeavors, public institutions, abolitionism, and femi-
nism. The chapter begins with the story of abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Abby Kelley. The reform impulse is explored by
looking at examples of the nearly 100 utopian communities, almost all of which set out to reorganize society on a cooperative basis.
As the reform movements took on more radical issues such as temperance, abolition, and pacifism, many Americans saw the reform
impulse as an attack on their own freedom. The era also saw an increase in institution building, which was inspired by the conviction
that those who passed through their doors could eventually be released to become productive, self-disciplined citizens. The chapter
then examines the crusade against slavery from colonization to immediate abolition. The antislavery movement sought to reinvigorate
the idea of freedom as a truly universal entitlement, and at every opportunity, black abolitionists rejected the nation’s pretensions as a
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Abby Kelley
A. Kelley was one of the first women abolitionists.
B. She also was an active pacifist and pioneer for women’s rights.
C. She gave more speeches than any other female orator.
II. The Reform Impulse
1. Numerous voluntary associations participated in reforms.
A. Utopian Communities
1. About 100 reform communities were established in the decades before the Civil War.
2. Nearly all the communities set out to reorganize society on a cooperative basis, hoping both to restore social harmony to a
world of excessive individualism and to narrow the widening gap between the rich and poor.
B. The Shakers
2. Shakers believed men and women were spiritually equal.
4. They were economically successful with vegetable and herb cultivation, cattle breeding, and furniture making.
C. Oneida
1. The founder of Oneida, John Noyes, preached that he and his followers had become so perfect that they had achieved a
2. Noyes and his followers abandoned private property and traditional family life.
3. Oneida was an extremely dictatorial environment.
D. Worldly Communities
2. Although it was an exciting miniature university, Brook Farm failed in part because many intellectuals disliked farm
labor.
E. The Owenites
1. The most important secular communitarian was Robert Owen.
3. At New Harmony, Owen championed women’s rights and education.
F. Religion and Reform
1. Some reform movements drew their inspiration from the religious revivalism of the Second Great Awakening.
3. Under the impact of the revivals, older reform efforts moved in a new, radical direction.
G. The Temperance Movement
1. To members of the North’s emerging middle-class culture, reform became a badge of respectability.
3. The temperance crusade and other reforms aroused hostility.
H. Critics of Reform
1. Many Americans saw the reform impulse as an attack on their own freedom.
a. Catholics rallied against the temperance movement.
I. Reformers and Freedom
1. The vision of freedom expressed by the reform movements was liberating and controlling at the same time.
2. Many religious groups in the East formed reform groups promoting religious virtue.
J. The Invention of the Asylum
1. Americans embarked on a program of institution building.
a. Jails
2. These institutions were inspired by the conviction that those who passed through their doors could eventually be released
to become productive, self-disciplined citizens.
K. The Common School
1. A tax-supported state public school system was widely adopted in the North.
3. Mann believed that education would “equalize the conditions of men.”
4. Common schools provided career opportunities for women, and most of the teachers came to be women.
5. The lack of public education in the South widened the divide between the North and South.
III. The Crusade against Slavery
A. Colonization
1. The American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816, promoted the gradual abolition of slavery and the settlement
2. Many prominent political leaders supported the ACS.
3. Like Indian removal, colonization rested on the premise that America was fundamentally a white society.
B. Blacks and Colonization
1. Several thousand blacks emigrated to Liberia with the help of the American Colonization Society.
2. Most African-Americans adamantly opposed the idea of colonization.
C. Militant Abolitionism
1. A new generation of reformers demanded immediate abolition.
2. David Walker’s An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World was a passionate indictment of slavery and racial
prejudice.
a. He used both secular and religious language.
D. The Emergence of Garrison
2. Some of Garrison’s ideas appeared too radical, but his call for immediate abolition was echoed by many.
a. Garrison rejected colonization, and The Liberator remained the preeminent abolitionist journal.
E. Spreading the Abolitionist Message
1. Abolitionists recognized the democratic potential in the production of printed material.
3. Identifying slavery as a sin was essential to replacing the traditional strategies of gradual emancipation and colonization
with immediate abolition.
F. Slavery and Moral Suasion
1. Nearly all abolitionists, despite their militant language, rejected violence as a means of ending slavery.
3. Outside established institutions, abolitionists adopted the role of radical social critics.
G. Abolitionists and the Idea of Freedom
2. Slavery was so deeply embedded in American society that its destruction would require fundamental changes in both the
North and South.
H. Birthright Citizenship
1. The crusade against slavery gave birth to a new understanding of citizenship and rights.
3. After the Civil War, former abolitionist politicians amended the Constitution, granting citizenship to blacks.
5. Free blacks sued streetcar companies for exclusion and challenged discriminatory laws in court.
I. A New Vision of America
2. They insisted that blacks were fellow countrymen, not foreigners or a permanently inferior caste.
a. Being born in America should determine citizenship, not race.
3. Abolitionists disagreed over the usefulness of the Constitution.
4. Abolitionists consciously identified their movement with the revolutionary heritage.
IV. Black and White Abolitionism
A. Black Abolitionists
2. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin gave the abolitionist message a powerful human appeal, as it was modeled
on the autobiography of fugitive slave Josiah Henson.
B. Abolitionism and Race
1. Although the movement was racially integrated, whites relegated blacks to secondary positions.
2. Black abolitionists developed an understanding of freedom that went well beyond that of most of their white
contemporaries.
C. Slavery and American Freedom
2. Black abolitionists articulated the ideal of color-blind citizenship.
D. Gentlemen of Property and Standing
1. Abolitionism aroused violent hostility from northerners, who feared that the movement threatened to disrupt the Union,
interfere with profits wrested from slave labor, and overturn white supremacy.
3. Southerners removed abolitionist literature from the mail and burned it.
E. Slavery and Civil Liberties
2. The fight for the right to debate slavery openly and without reprisal led abolitionists to elevate free opinion to a central
V. The Origins of Feminism
A. The Rise of the Public Woman
1. Women were instrumental in the abolition movement.
2. The public sphere was open to women in ways that government and party politics were not.
B. Women and Free Speech
2. Women lectured in public about abolition.
3. The Grimké sisters argued against the idea that taking part in assemblies, demonstrations, and lectures was unfeminine.
a. Letters on the Equality of the Sexes (1838)
b. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) includes a portion of an antislavery article (1837) by Angelina
Grimké in The Liberator.
C. Women’s Rights
1. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.
D. Feminism and Freedom
1. Lacking broad backing at home, early feminists found allies abroad.
3. Margaret Fuller sought to apply to women the transcendentalist idea that freedom meant a quest for personal
development.
E. Women and Work
1. Sojourner Truth insisted that the movement devote attention to poor and working-class women.
3. The movement posed a fundamental challenge to some of society’s central beliefs.
F. The Slavery of Sex
2. Marriage and slavery became powerful rhetorical tools for feminists.
G. “Social Freedom”
1. The demand that women should enjoy the rights to regulate their own sexual activity and procreation and to be protected
2. The issue of women’s private freedom revealed underlying differences within the movement for women’s rights.
H. The Abolitionist Schism
1. When organized abolitionism split into two wings in 1840, the immediate cause was a dispute over the proper role of
women in antislavery work.
2. The Liberty Party was established in hopes of making abolitionism a political movement.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• To what were the newly established communal and utopian communities reacting? What was it about society that made these
group members attempt to create alternative lifestyles?
• Discuss how the vision of freedom expressed by the reform movements was liberating and controlling at the same time.
• Explain how public school was supposed to “equalize the conditions of men.”
• How does the life of Abby Kelley reflect the many reform impulses of antebellum America?
• Discuss what role blacks played in the abolition movement. How did their view of freedom differ from that of the white abolition-
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
David Walker
Seneca Falls
The Burned-over District
The Shakers
Frederick Douglass
William Lloyd Garrison
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Blight, David. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018.
Boydston, Jeanne, Mary Kelley, and Anne Margolis, eds. The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women’s Rights and Woman’s Sphere. Chap-
el Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
Cain, William E., ed. William Lloyd Garrison and the Fight against Slavery: Selections from The Liberator. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1995.
Delano, Sterling F. Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004.
DeLombard, Jeannine Marie. Slavery on Trial: Law, Abolitionism, and Print Culture. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Ginzberg, Lori. Women in Antebellum Reform. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2000.
Hamm, Thomas. God’s Government Begun: The Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, 1842–1846. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1996.
Horton, James Oliver, and Lois Horton. In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
Jeffrey, Julie Roy. The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Car-
olina Press, 1998.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Form the class into the Seneca Falls Convention of white and black middle–class men and women who met to improve women’s rights. Discuss
the early feminist movement and the highlights of the Seneca Falls Convention. Be sure to present the activities and views of Angelina and Sa-
rah Grimké, Catharine Beecher, Margaret Fuller, Abby Kelley, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lydia Maria Child. Ask the class a series of ques-
tions such as why the feminist movement began, how did it change over time, and what does each of these prominent women have to say
about the role of women in American society? Then ask the class to draft their own Declaration of Sentiments on the need for more rights for
women in modern American society.
2. Divide the students into groups and assign each group a historical utopian community to discuss. Then have the students draft a plan for their own
utopian community. Ask them to share with the class what their community will look like—its name, structure, rules, gender roles, and so forth. Al-
so ask the students a range of questions from the textbook information regarding the history of utopian communities. These include:
• Why did utopian communities form?
