History
19th Century Ideas and Reform Movements
Often viewed as a reaction to the growing industrial impulse within the Western world, the 19th century saw a slew of new ideological and social movements spring up.
America’s brand of this phenomenon centered overwhelmingly on individual virtue and social reform informed by religious thought.
19th Century Ideas and Reform Movements
Some reformers of the era sought to cleanse society of vices by implementing temperance, celibacy, and abolition.
Others looked to tend to the marginalized poor and ill by lobbying for compulsory education and asylums.
More still aimed to purify themselves and their followers through the creation of new, uniquely American philosophies and utopian communities.
19th Century Ideas and Reform Movements
British factory worker Anne Lee, believing she was the female embodiment of Jesus Christ, preached a need for the return to the practices of the early Church, sharing property, withdrawal into small communities, and celibacy.
This organization, known as the Shakers, emigrated to the United States in 1774 and formed communities of 30 to 100 people known as “families.”
Their ministry believed in equality of the sexes and was led by panels of 8 people, 4 men and 4 women. They were well known for their ritual dances and well crafted furniture.
19th Century Ideas and Reform Movements
In western New York state, Joseph Smith published the 1830 translation of the Book of Mormon.
Smith preached that God sent an angel name Moroni to Smith to reveal to him golden tablets.
These tablets contained information that Native Americans were actually one of the tribes of Israel.
19th Century Ideas and Reform Movements
In these tablets, God also revealed to Smith his intentions for the “latter days” of creation, now approaching.
He attracted rural followers, most of whom had been displaced by changes in the North.
Joseph Smith was the founder of the Mormon Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.)
Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion
Escaping religious persecution Joseph Smith and the Mormons arrive in Illinois and founded the city of Nauvoo. After Joseph Smith was murdered by an angry Illinois mob in 1844, Brigham Young took up the leadership of the Church of Latter Day Saints. He led the Mormons to Utah, which at the time was part of Mexico.
To this day, Utah is the cultural center of the Mormon faith
Transcendentalism
A literary and artistic movement that shared many similarities with the Romantic movement, the Transcendentalist movement is generally regarded to have begun in New England in 1825.
Transcendentalist believed that humans were divine creatures due to their connection with nature, which in itself was divine.
Transcendentalism
This led to the belief that individuals were inherently good but institutions (religious, political, or otherwise) were corrupting forces that harmed human purity.
Intellectual capacities did not define their capabilities for they could “transcend” reason by having faith in themselves.
Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a major leader in the Transcendentalist movement.
His works championed concepts of individualism, freedom, relationships with nature, and humanity’s inexhaustible potential.
In 1836 he wrote the essay Nature , which outlined the philosophy of Transcendentalism. In a speech entitled “The American Scholar,”
Transcendentalism
He urged Americans to put aside their devotion to things European and seek inspiration in their immediate surroundings, because he believed it was America’s destiny to fulfill “expectations of the world.”
The new industrial society of New England troubled him. Emerson’s view on organizational corruption led to his still utilized adage “the less government the better.”
Transcendentalism
Another major Transcendentalist thinker and student of Emerson was Henry David Thoreau.
In 1845, he built a cabin at Walden Pond, Massachusetts and set out to prove that if necessary an individual could get along without the products of civilization.
He did not try to be entirely self-sufficient. He used manufactured plaster in building his Walden cabin, but he also gathered clamshells and made a small quantity of lime himself, to prove that it could be done.
Transcendentalism
His time in seclusion was the inspiration for his 1854 book Walden, which took on the topic of man’s relation to nature.
Using this relation as a mechanism for comparison, Walden is actually a scathing criticism of the average American, whom Thoreau attacks for their unthinking conformity and subordination of individual judgment to the herd.
Transcendentalism
Arguably Thoreau’s most famous and important piece of writing was the essay Resistance to Civil Government (more commonly known as Civil Disobedience.)
Published in 1849, Civil Disobedience attacked the Mexican American War, the Massachusetts poll tax, and slavery.
Transcendentalism
Thoreau refused to pay the poll tax in protest of the government’s continued support of expansion through warfare and southern slavery.
For this he was thrown in jail, prompting him to write his theory on what the relationship between the individual and the state should be.
Utopias
Several utopian societies emerged between the 1820’s and 1850’s, some espousing the creation of religious communities while other favored socialist experimentation.
In 1825, Robert Owen founded a socialist community in New Harmony, Indiana.
A Scottish industrialist and philanthropist who aimed to create a new world order, Owen argued that environmental factors involved with industrial city life led to social ills and could be cured through democratic, egalitarian communities.
Eventually, this closed community collapsed.
Utopias
Like Owen, John Humphrey Noyes attempted to establish a communal utopia in Oneida, New York.
The community espoused the ideas of free love, in which residents would have multiple marriage partners and the community would care for their young together. Noyes fled to Canada in 1879 after he was charged with adultery.
The Oneida Community reorganized in 1881 as a joint-stock company and went back to conventional sexual mores.
19th Century Ideas and Reform Movements
Other movements of the era formed on the basis of lobbying the government to improve the status of marginalized groups in the nation.
The education movement won a major victory in 1837 when Horace Mann was elected the head of the new Board of Education in 1837. Though before this point he had not shown any particular interest in public education, upon receiving the post, he became an avid and outspoken proponent of public schooling.
Mann believed that children should be molded by teachers and school officials into a state of perfection. For those who argued that school that school taxes violated property rights, Mann responded that private property was actually held in trust for the good of the community. By teaching middle-class morality and order, the schools could turn potential rowdies into law-abiding citizens.
19th Century Ideas and Reform Movements
A widespread movement for the creation and reform of mental asylums resulted from the 1841 publication of Dorothea Dix’s Memorial.
Hospitals for mentally ill patients were meant to cure, not just confine them. But these were staffed with people who were not trained to work with such patients. Dix, who was a schoolteacher that became a social worker, spent 30 years trying to improve conditions for the mentally ill.
She wrote that the mentally ill were being kept in cages and closets, “chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.” Her memorial was meant to shock state legislators into action.
19th Century Ideas and Reform Movements
In July 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized a convention at Seneca Falls. About 300 people showed up including abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Following a debate and vote, they passed the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments modeled after the Declaration of Independence, it demanded specific social and legal changes including a role in lawmaking, improved property right, equity in divorce and access to education and professions.
Though they would eventually form the core of the American Suffrage movement, in the period immediately following the meeting they opted to focus on abolition.