CHAPTER 8.4

SIGNIFICANT SUBJECTS

• Utopias
• The Second Great Awakening
• Temperance Movement
• Reforming Education
• Cultural Trends

SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE

• Henry David Thoreau
• Horace Mann
• Dorothea Dix
• Walt Whitman

UTOPIAS

• Brought changes to American religion, politics, education, art, and literature
• People who led the reform movement wanted to extend the nation's ideals of liberty and equality
• Some reformers sought to improve society by forming utopias
• The first utopia was New Harmony
• The communities lasted for only a few years

THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

• The second great awakening stirred the nation and it started with revivals
• Religious and philosiphical ideas inspired various reform movements
• When people heard preachers they were eager to reform their lives and the world
• This increased the church membership
• Also it inspired many to do missionary work

TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

• Religious leaders led a war against alcohol
• Reformers blamed alcohol for poverty, the breakup of families, and crime
• Reformers used lectures, pamphlet, and revival-style rallies to warn people of liquor
• In 1851 the temperance movement gained a victory
• Maine passed a law banning alcohol

REFORMING EDUCATION

• Reformers wanted to make education accessible to all citizens
• Massachusetts founded the nation's first supported normal school in 1839
• By the 1850s most states had accepted three basic principles
• Should be free, supported by taxes, and children should be required to attend school
• Then after dozens of new colleges were created during the age of reform

CULTURAL TRENDS

• A new wave of literature that was distinctly American swept the United States
• The changes in american society influenced art and literature
• Transcendentalists stressed over the relationship between humans and nature
• Poets created impressive works about American subjects during this time
• Women writers weren't taken seriously, yet they were authors of the most popular fiction

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

• Went to jail
• Henry Thoreau represented a new spirit of reform
• Leading transcendentalists
• Put his beliefs into practice through civil disobedience

HORACE MANN

• Horace Mann was a lawyer
• Became the head of the Massachusetts board of Education in 1837
• Lengthened the school year to six months and made improvements in the school curriculum
• He also doubeled teachers' salaries and developed better ways of training teachers

DOROTHEA DIX

• Visited prisons and thought they were inhuman conditions
• Some of the inmates were not guilty of no crime
• They were mentally ill persons
• Dix made it her life's work to help the menatlly ill and prisoners

WALT WHITMAN

• The most important poet of the era
• Published the Leaves of Grass in 1855
• Whitman loved nature, the common people, and american democracy
• Also his famous work reflected on his passions