1. Section One: Improving Society
An Age of Reform
Section One:
Improving Society

2. The Reforming Spirit
Encouraged by expanding democracy in the Age of Jackson
Belief that all men and women have legal rights
Others supported abolishing Slavery

3. The Second Great Awakening
People’s own actions determined their salvation.
Held outdoor revivals
Emotional sermons
People believed that if they could improve themselves, they could improve society.

4. The Temperance Movement
End alcohol abuse.
Whiskey cheaper than milk or beer.
Safer than water
Many called for prohibition

5. Prison Reform and Reform for the Mentally Ill.
Horrified with prison conditions
Horrified that prisons were also used to house the mentally ill.
New asylums provide treatment, not punishment.
Debtors are no longer sent to prison.
Dorothea Dix worked to convince state legislatures to build new, sanitary prisons and separate institutions to treat mental illnesses.

6. Horace Mann – Education Reform
“If we do not prepare children to become good citizens; if we do not develop their capacities, if we do not enrich their minds with knowledge….then our republic must go down to destruction as others have gone down before it.”
Horace Mann

7. Education Reform First schools were for a religious purpose
Mass. set up the first public schools
Poorer children rarely received education outside of the home.
Reformers believed that education would help immigrant assimilate.
Horace Mann created colleges to train teachers, raise salaries of teachers, and lengthen the school year.
Southern and Western states lagged in public ed.

8. Education for Afican Americans
In most areas, African Americans had little chance to attend schools.
Much opposition to educating A.A. Prudence Crandall – Connecticut
Some free A.A. did attend colleges
Harvard, Dartmouth,
First A.A. college – Lincoln University in Pennsylvania