Good day, Scholars!

Add a new entry in your journal – REFORMERS

What is a Reformer?

• Reformer• (noun) • a person devoted to bringing about change in

society.

• American reformers were fighting to perfect human institutions and ideas.

• Many reformers were the products of religious beliefs and frontier democracy who believed in the freedom of the individual.

• They were fighting to perfect the society in which they lived.

ImmigrantsPush factor

Reasons that forced people out of their native land and to a

new world.Pull factor

Reasons immigrants were drawn to America.

Women’s Suffrage (right to vote)

• Women’s Rights• Elizabeth Cady Stanton• Lucretia Mott• Sojourner Truth

• Seneca Falls Convention• Seneca Falls, New York• July 19 and 20, 1848• Fredrick Douglass attended• Discussed Women’s Suffrage movement

Temperence movement

• Campaign to end alcohol consumption

• Heavy drinking was common in 1800’s

• Many men spend $$$ on alcohol, causing women to join the Temperence Movement.

• Business owners also joined the cause. Workers that were drunk were unproductive.

• Some states began banning alcohol.

• By 1855, 13 states had banned the sale of alcohol.

Workers’ rights

• Lowell Mills workers form a labor union.

• In 1836, the mill owners raised the rent on the boarding houses where the women lived.

• 1500 workers went on strike.

• Strikes took place in other parts of the country over the next few years asking for shorter hours and higher wages.

• In 1840, Martin Van Buren passed a law = 10 hour workday for all government workers.

Education Reform

• 1830’s American’s demand better schools.

• Horace Mann sets up first state board of education.

• Mann called public education, “the great equalizer”

• By 1850, many Northern states opened public elementary schools.

• Women still could not attend most colleges.

• Oberlin was the first college to accept women as well as men.

Mental Illness

• 1841

• Dorthea Dix, Sunday school teacher at a women’s jail

• Discovered women held in filthy conditions because of their mental illnesses

• No treatment for mentally ill

• Appealed to the Massachusetts legislature and then traveled all over the country calling for reform.

• Her efforts led to the building of 32 new hospitals.

Abolition (End Slavery)

• William Lloyd Garrison• Published antislavery newspaper “The Liberator”

• Abolitionist speakers• Fredrick Douglass• Sojourner Truth

• Former slaves• Spoke of their own experiences

• Underground Railroad• Harriet Tubman• Estimated between 30,000 and 100,000 slaves

escaped through the Underground Railroad

Groupwork

• Each group will be assigned a type of reform in the 1800’s.

• Read the section in the History Alive book.

• Complete the flow map for your section on your reading notes.

• Choose the person that will represent your historical figure.

• Prepare your “script”.