The Era of Reform

Reform Issues:

• Dietary concerns -- e.g., Temperance (alcohol)

• Domestic relations -- domestic ideology -- the "cult of domesticity"

• Slavery

• Institutions of church and state -- e.g., insane asylums, prisons, schools

• Treatment of Native Americans

• Exploited laborers

"Most [reformers] were devout Protestants, who viewed social reform as a religious calling or duty. Most believed in the perfectibility -- or at least the possibility of the radical improvement -- of the individual and society" (608).

Transcendentalism (pp. 610-611)

The Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education (p. 611) -- a utopian community; an experiment in communal living -- see also Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance

Woman's Rights (p. 612)

The Anti-Slavery Movement (pp. 613-616)

• The Quakers
• David Walker -- slavery must end, if necessary, with revolt and violence -- see pp. 619-621
• William Lloyd Garrison -- a pacifist -- see pp. 621-623
• Lydia Maria Child -- see pp. 645-653
• Frederick Douglass
• Harriet Beecher Stowe -- see pp. 747-763
• Harriet Jacobs (a.k.a. "Linda Brent")