history

10 Jun history

HIST 1301 2019SP REFORM IN THE MIDDLE PERIOD

The period 1825-1850 was marked by an increasing sense of self awareness among many Americans. Changes in society gave rise to questions about the nature of American society: What did it mean to be an American? Was American society actually living up to its ideals? Many reform movements arose that tried to identify and solve social problems arose in this period.

Select a reform movement from the period 1820-1860. Using information from class and the textbook, answer the following questions about one of the movements below. What problems did this movement try to address? To what degree did these reformers seek to expand democratic ideals?

SOURCE 1: Fourth Annual Report, Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents in the City of New York, 1829.

We might feel a pride in the reflection, that our young country . . . was the first to adopt the penitentiary system of prison discipline, and the first to attempt to prevent the commission of crimes, by seeking out the youthful and unprotected, who were in the way of temptation, and by religious and moral instruction, by imparting to them useful knowledge, and by giving them industrious and orderly habits, rescuing them from vice and rendering them valuable members of society.

To confine these youthful criminals . . . where no, or scarcely any, distinction can be made between the young and old, or between the more and less vicious, where little can be learned but the ways of the wicked, and from whence they must be sent to encounter new wants, new temptations, and to commit new crimes, is to pursue a course, as little reconcilable with justice as humanity; yet, till the House of Refuge was established there was no alternative.

SOURCE 2: Charles G. Finney, 1834

When the churches are . . . awakened and reformed, the reformation and salvation of sinners will follow, going through the same stages of conviction, repentance, and reformation. Their hearts will be broken down and changed. Very often the most abandoned profligates are among the subjects. Harlots, and drunkards, and infidels, and all sorts of abandoned characters, are awakened and converted.

SOURCE 3: Samuel F.B. Morse, Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States, 1835

In our national infancy we needed the strength of numbers. . . . Now emigration is changed; naturalization has become the door of entrance not alone to the ever welcome lovers of liberty, but also for the priest-ridden troops of the Holy Alliance. . . . Now emigrants are selected . . . not for their affinity to liberty, but for their mental servitude, and their docility in obeying the orders of their priests. . . . It may be, Americans, that you still doubt the existence of a conspiracy. . . . Do you wish to test its existence and its power? . . . Test it by attempting a change in the Naturalization Law. Take the ground that such a change must be made, that no foreigner who comes into the country after the law is passed shall ever be allowed the right of suffrage.

SOURCE 4: William H. McGuffey, Reader, 1836.

The good boy, whose parents are poor, rises very early in the morning, and all day long does as much as he can to help his father and mother. When he goes to school he walks quickly, and does not lose time on the road. “My parents,” he says, “are very good to save some of their money in order that I may learn to read and write; but they can not give much, nor can they spare me long; therefore I must learn as fast as I can;

if anybody has any time to lose, I am sure I have not.” . . .

When he has finished his lessons, he does not stay to play, but runs home; he wants to see his father and mother and to help them. . . . Sometimes he goes with his father to work; then he is very glad and though he is but a little fellow, he works very hard, almost like a man. . . .

When he comes home to dinner, he says, “How hungry I am! And how good this bread is, and this bacon! Indeed, I think every thing we have is very good. I am glad I can work; I hope that I shall soon be able to earn all my clothes, and my food too.”

When he sees little boys and girls riding on pretty horses, or in coaches, or walking with ladies and gentlemen, and having on very fine clothes, he does not envy them, nor wish to be like them. He says, “I have often been told, and I have read, that it is God who makes some poor, and others rich; that the rich have many troubles which we know nothing of; and that the poor, if they are but good, may be very happy, indeed, I think that when I am good, nobody can be happier than I am.”

SOURCE 5: The Constitution of the Brook Farm Association, 1841.

In order to more effectually promote the great purposes of human culture; . . . to apply the principles of justice and love to our social organization in accordance with the laws of Divine Providence; to substitute a system of brotherly cooperation for one of selfish competition; to secure to our children . . . the benefits of the highest physical, intellectual and moral education . . .; to institute an attractive, efficient, and productive system of industry; . . . to diminish the desire of excessive accumulation, by making the acquisition of individual property subservient to upright and disinterested uses; to guarantee to each other forever the means of physical support, and of spiritual progress;—we the undersigned do unite in a voluntary Association. . .

SOURCE 6: Orestes A. Brownson, An address before the Society of the Mystical Seven at Wesleyan College, August 7, 1844.

I propose . . . to bestow . . . my remarks, my attention on several species of the genus QUACK REFORMERS. . . . The effort to cut loose from the past, and to create an entirely new social and industrial order . . . is the species of quackery practiced by our professed social reformers

. . . . These systems of reform disown the past, condemn what has been, and propose the creation of an entirely new social order. . . . It is to no man’s credit that he disowns what has gone before him. . . . But what is this past which we in our folly condemn? It is that which has made us what we are. It is our mother. . . . Alas! He is a bad son who curses his own mother, and no good can come of him.

SOURCE 7: “The Drunkards Progress. From The First Glass to the Grave,” 1846. Nathaniel Currier

This 1840 temperance illustration charts the path of destruction for those who drink. The step-by-step progression reads:

Step 1. A glass with a friend.

Step 2. A glass to keep the cold out.

Step 3. A glass too much.

Step 4. Drunk and riotous.

Step 5. The summit attained. Jolly companions. A confirmed drunkard.

Step 6. Poverty and disease.

Step 7. Forsaken by Friends.

Step 8. Desperation and crime.

Step 9. Death by suicide.

SOURCE 8: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Seneca Falls Declaration, August 2, 1848.

. . . But we are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the

consent of the governed—to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife. . . . And, strange as it may seem to many, we now demand our right to vote according to the declaration of the government under which we live.

SOURCE 9: Thaddeus Stevens, Speech to the Pennsylvania Legislature, 1835

If, then, education be of admitted importance to the people, under all forms of government, and of unquestioned necessity when they govern themselves, it follows, of course, that its cultivation and diffusion is a matter of public concern and a duty which every government owes its people….

Many complain of this tax, not so much on account of its amount as because it is for the benefit of others and not themselves. This is a mistake; it is for their own benefit, inasmuch as it perpetuates the government.

He who would oppose it either through inability to comprehend the advantages of general education, or through an unwillingness to bestow them on all his fellow citizens, even to the lowest and the poorest, or from dread of popular vengeance, seems to me to want either the head of the philosopher, or the heart of the philanthropist, or the nerve of the hero.

4