The Reform Movement
The People and Issues That Concerned America
The Reform Movement
The Reform Movement was a period of American history where certain people saw that our society had some issues concerning inequalities. They decided to do something to change those issues.
Dorothea Dix
She saw the harsh treatment of mentally ill women. She wrote a report about her research that changed the care of the mentally ill.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
She is believed to be the driving force behind the 1848 Convention, and for the next fifty years playing a leadership role in the women's rights movement.
William Lloyd Garrison
For more than three decades, from the first issue of his weekly paper in 1831, until after the end of the Civil War in 1865 when the last issue was published, Garrison spoke out eloquently and passionately against slavery and for the rights of America's black inhabitants.
Frederick Douglas
He was born into slavery. He tried to escape from slavery twice before he succeeded. He was assisted in his final attempt by Anna Murray, a free black woman in Baltimore with whom Douglass had fallen in love.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Stowe’s emotional portrayal of the impact of slavery, particularly on families and children, captured the nation's attention. Embraced in the North, the book and its author aroused hostility in the South.
Sojourner Truth
She was the first in which a black woman successfully challenged a white man in a United States court.
Harriet Tubman
She is well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors." During a ten-year span she made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom.
Horace Mann
He spearheaded the Common School Movement, ensuring that every child could receive a basic education funded by local taxes.
Lucretia Mott
was a women's rights activist, abolitionist, and religious reformer. Mott was strongly opposed to slavery and a supporter of William Lloyd Garrison.
Susan B. Anthony
Because she was a woman, she was not allowed to speak at temperance rallies. This experience, and her acquaintance with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led her to join the women's rights movement in 1852.
Northstar
The ex-slave Frederick Douglass, like many prominent abolitionists, published a newspaper. It was used to not only denounce slavery, but to fight for the emancipation of women and other oppressed groups. Its motto was "Right is of no Sex - Truth is of no Color - God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren."
Abolition/abolitionist
People campaigned to bring about the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Those who campaigned against it, faced abuse and occasionally even violence.
Underground Railroad
It was a vast network of people who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada, was not run by any single organization or person. It effectively moved hundreds of slaves northward each year -- according to one estimate, the South lost 100,000 slaves between 1810 and 1850.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
It was the best-selling novel of the 19th century. It depicted the reality of slavery while asserting that love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. It also played a role in the start of the Civil War.
Women's Rights
Many women supporters of women's rights directed their political activism into the abolitionist movement. Speaking out publicly against injustice, publishing and editing newspapers, and helping slaves escape to freedom.
Temperance Movement
Was an organized effort to encourage moderation in the consumption of intoxicating liquors or press for complete abstinence. The movement's ranks were mostly filled by women who, with their children, had endured the effects of unbridled drinking by many of their menfolk
Seneca Falls Convention
The Convention was hastily organized and hardly publicized, but over 300 men and women came to Seneca Falls, New York to protest the mistreatment of women in social, economic, political, and religious life.
Declaration of Sentiments
It is a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men. The principle author of the document was Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The document was the "grand basis for attaining the civil, social, political, and religious rights of women."