AN ERA OF REFORM

In 1787, "in Order to form a more perfect Union, " a group of political
leaders wrote the Constitution of the United States. Some 50 years
later, however, some people believed that the Union was still far from
perfect. Most of them were not political leaders. Instead, they were
everyday Americans—men and women, black and white, ministers and
teachers.

From the 1830s through the 1850s, these reformers tried to improve
American society in many ways. Some of their efforts met with great
resistance. One of the most controversial issues was the struggle to
end slavery. Many Northerners, as well as many white Southerners,
thought slavery was morally wrong. However, the South's economy
depended on slave labor. Over time, that dependence grew.

The Constitution banned the importation of slaves starting in 1808. Yet,

as white Southerners moved westward, the demand for slave labor
increased. This demand was met by the natural growth of slave
populations in older parts of the South. Slaveholders in these areas sold
slaves to buyers from other regions. The map on the opposite page
shows the cities where much of this slave trade took place. It also

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shows how slavery spread west. The map below shows the distribution
of the slave population in 1860.

In this unit, you will learn about the movement to end slavery and
about other attempts at reform. You will also learn about Northern and
Southern society, including differences in the lives of free African
Americans and slaves. Finally, you will learn about the economies of the
North and South and why they made the end of slavery so difficult to
achieve.

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In 1851, a group of people gathered in a church in Ohio to discuss the

rights of women. A tall African American woman made her way through
the crowd and sat down. Her name was Sojourner Truth. A former slave,
she had learned to pay careful attention to white people. Now she
listened as whites discussed whether women should have the same
rights as men.

Truth heard one speaker after another explain that women didn't need
more rights because they weren't smart or strong enough to do much
besides raise children. Women, they argued, needed help from men.
One man summed it up by saying, “Women are weak.”

Truth had heard enough. She rose slowly to her feet and walked to the
pulpit. The room grew quiet as everyone waited for her to speak.

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into
carriages, and lifted over ditches, and have the best place everywhere,”
she began. “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles,
or gives me any best place!”

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Her voice rose to a thunderous pitch. “And ain't I a woman? Look at me!
Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns,
and no man could head [outdo] me. And ain't I a woman? I could work
as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it— and bear the
lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and
seen them most all sold into slavery, and when I cried out with my
mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?”

When she finished, people applauded. Some cried. One witness said,
“She had taken us up in her strong arms and carried us safely.”

Sojourner Truth represented two of the great reform movements in

America in the 1800s: the movement for women's equality and the
movement to end slavery. Between about 1820 and 1850, many
Americans devoted themselves to such causes as ending slavery,
promoting women's rights, and improving education. In this chapter,
you will learn to what extent these reform movements improved life for
Americans.

It was fitting that the meeting attended by Sojourner Truth took place

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in a church. New religious movements played a key role in inspiring
thousands of Americans to try to reform society.

The Second Great Awakening A revival of religious feeling swept

across the nation from the 1800s to the 1840s. Church leaders called
this period the Second Great Awakening . Day after day, people
gathered in churches and big white tents to hear messages of hope.
Preachers like Charles G. Finney, a leader of the movement, urged
Christians to let themselves be “filled with the Spirit of God.” Their
listeners prayed, shouted, and sang hymns. Sometimes they cried for
hours or fell down in frenzies.

Like the Great Awakening during the 1730s and 1740s, this religious
revival appealed to people's emotions. But the Second Great Awakening
offered something new. In the past, most Christian ministers had said
that God had already decided who would be saved. Now many
preachers said everyone could gain forgiveness for their sins. Many of
them taught that doing good works could help them to be saved.

This optimistic message attracted enthusiastic followers throughout the

West and North. It gave men and women alike a reason to work for the
improvement of society. Charles Finney's preaching, for example,
inspired many people to oppose slavery.

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Optimistic Ideas Other optimistic ideas also inspired Americans
during this time. In New England, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a former
minister, was the central figure in a movement called
transcendentalism. Emerson believed that every human being has
unlimited potential. But to realize their godlike nature, people have to
transcend, or go beyond, purely logical thinking. They can find the
answers to life's mysteries only by learning to trust their emotions and
intuition.

Transcendentalists added to the spirit of reform by urging people to

question society's rules and institutions. Do not conform to others'
expectations, they said. If you want to find God—and your own true self
—look to nature and the “God within.”

Emerson's friend Henry David Thoreau captured this new

individualism in a famous essay. “If a man does not keep pace with
his companions,” wrote Thoreau, “perhaps it is because he hears a
different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears.”

Thoreau practiced what he preached. In 1845, he went into the woods

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near Concord, Massachusetts, to live alone and as close to nature as
possible. Thoreau spent more than two years in solitude, recording his
thoughts in a 6,000-page journal. In 1846, he was jailed overnight for
refusing to pay taxes because of his opposition to the government's
involvement in the Mexican-American War.

Model Communities While Thoreau tried to find the ideal life in

solitude, other transcendentalists tried to create ideal communities. In
1841, George Ripley started a community called Brook Farm near
Boston. Residents at Brook Farm tried to live in “brotherly cooperation”
instead of competing with each other, as people in the larger society
did. They shared the labor of supporting themselves by farming,
teaching, and making clothes.

Brook Farm was only one of hundreds of model communities started by

reformers in the first half of the 1800s. Most of these experiments
lasted only a few years. But they were a powerful expression of the
belief that people of good will could create an ideal society.

One day in 1841, a Boston woman named Dorothea Dix agreed to teach

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Sunday school at a jail. What she witnessed that day changed her life
forever.

Dix was horrified to see that many prisoners were bound in chains and
locked in cages. Children accused of minor thefts were jailed with adult
criminals. Were conditions this bad everywhere?

Dix devoted herself to finding out the answer to her question. She
visited hundreds of jails and prisons throughout Massachusetts. She
also visited debtors' prisons, or jails for people who owed money. Most
of the thousands of Americans in debtors' prisons owed less than 20
dollars. While they were locked up, they could not earn money to repay
their debts. As a result, they remained imprisoned for years.

Treatment of the Mentally Ill What shocked Dix most of all was the
way mentally ill people were treated. Most were locked in dirty,
crowded prison cells. If they misbehaved, they were whipped.

Dix and other reformers believed that the mentally ill needed treatment
and care, not punishment. Massachusetts had one private asylum, or
hospital for the mentally ill. Only the wealthy could afford to send a
family member there. Even so, the asylum was filled to overflowing.

Campaigning for Better Conditions For two years, Dix gathered

information about the horrors she had seen. Then she prepared a
detailed report for the Massachusetts state legislature. “I come as the
advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane . . . men and women,” she said.
“I proceed . . . to call your attention to the present state of insane
persons, confined . . . in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained,
naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience!” Shocked by Dix's
report, the lawmakers voted to create public asylums for the mentally
ill.

Dix visited prisons in other states as well. After she prepared reports
demanding humane treatment for the mentally ill, those states also
created special mental hospitals.

Dix continued campaigning for prison reform for the rest of her life. By
the time she died in 1887, state governments no longer put debtors in
prison. Most states had created special justice systems for children in
trouble. Many had outlawed cruel punishments, such as branding
people with hot irons. Dix had shown that reformers could lead society
to make significant changes.

A second reform movement that won support in the 1800s was the
effort to make education available to more children. The man who
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would become known as “the father of American public schools,”
Horace Mann, led this movement.

The Need for Public Schools As a boy in Massachusetts in the early

1800s, Horace Mann attended school only ten weeks a year. The rest of
the time, he had to work on his family's farm.

Mann was lucky to have even this limited time in school. In

Massachusetts, Puritans had established town schools, but few other
areas had public schools, or schools paid for by taxes. Wealthy parents
sent their children to private schools or hired tutors. On the frontier, 60
children might attend a part-time, one-room school. Their teachers had
limited education and received little pay. Most children simply did not
go to school at all.

In the cities, some poor children stole, destroyed property, and set
fires. Reformers believed that education would help these children
escape poverty and become good citizens. Influenced by the need for
education in its big cities, New York set up public elementary schools in
every town as early as the 1820s.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Mann became the state's supervisor of

education. In towns and villages, he spoke out on the need for public
schools. “Our means of education,” he stated, “are the grand
machinery by which the ‘raw material' of human nature can be worked
up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific
farmers.”

Citizens in Massachusetts responded to Mann's message. They voted to

pay taxes to build better schools, to provide teachers with higher
salaries, and to establish special training schools for teachers.

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An Unfinished Reform By 1850, many states in the North and West

used Mann's ideas. Soon most white children, especially boys, attended
free public schools.

But states still did not offer public education to everyone. Most high
schools and colleges did not admit girls. States as far north as Illinois
passed laws to keep African Americans out of public schools. When
towns did allow blacks to attend school, most made them go to
separate schools that received less money. In the South, few girls and
no African Americans could attend public schools.

Education for girls and women did make some progress. In 1837,
Oberlin College in Ohio became the first college to admit women as
well as men. When states opened the first public universities in the
1860s, most accepted female students.

African Americans, however, had few options. When Prudence Crandall

admitted a black student to her girls' school in Connecticut in 1833,
white parents took their children out of the school. Crandall responded
by opening a school for African American girls. Angry white people

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threw stones at the school and had Crandall jailed. In 1834, she was
forced to close her school.

Horace Mann realized that much more needed to be done to increase

educational opportunities for women and African Americans. In 1853,
he became the first president of a new college for men and women,
Antioch College in Ohio. There, he urged his students to become
involved in improving society. “Be ashamed to die,” he told them, “until
you have won some victory for humanity.”

In 1835, a poster appeared on walls throughout Washington, D.C. The

poster showed two drawings. One drawing, labeled “The Land of the
Free,” showed the founding fathers reading the Declaration of
Independence. The other, labeled “The Home of the Oppressed,”
showed slaves trudging past the U.S. Capitol building, the home of
Congress. The poster posed a challenging question: How could America,
the “land of the free,” still allow slavery? By the 1830s, growing
numbers of people were asking this question. These people were called
abolitionists.

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The Struggle Begins Some Americans had opposed slavery even
before the American Revolution began. Quakers stopped owning slaves
in 1776. By 1792, every state as far south as Virginia had antislavery
societies.

Congress passed a law that ended the Atlantic slave trade in 1808.
Once it became illegal to import slaves, Northern shipping communities
had no more interest in slavery. Northern textile mills, however, wanted
the cheap cotton that slave labor in the South provided. Although
slavery ended in the North by the early 1800s, many Northerners still
accepted slavery.

Abolitionists wanted to end slavery, but they did not always agree
about how to do it. Some abolitionists tried to inspire slaves to rise up
in revolt. Others wanted to find a peaceful way to end slavery
immediately. Still others wanted to give slaveholders time to develop
farming methods that didn't rely on slave labor.

From its earliest days, both blacks and whites worked in the abolition
movement, sometimes together, sometimes separately. Black activists
often kept their distance from their white counterparts. One African
American journalist remarked, “As long as we let them think and act for
us . . . they will outwardly treat us as men, while in their hearts they
still hold us as slaves.”

In 1831, a deeply religious white man, William Lloyd Garrison, started a

fiery abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator.

Braving the disapproval of many Northerners, Garrison demanded the

immediate freeing of all slaves. “I will be as harsh as truth,” he wrote.
“I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard!” Angry proslavery
groups destroyed Garrison's printing press and burned his house.

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Frederick Douglass Speaks Out One day, Garrison heard an escaped

slave, Frederick Douglass, speaking at a meeting of abolitionists. Over
six feet tall, Douglass spoke with a voice like thunder. When he
described the cruel treatment of enslaved children, people cried. When
he made fun of ministers who told slaves to love slavery, people
laughed. When he finished, Garrison jumped up and cried, “Shall such a
man be held a slave in a Christian land?” The crowd called out, “No!
No! No!”

Douglass quickly became a leader in the abolitionist movement. His

autobiography, published in 1845, was an instant best seller. A brilliant
and independent thinker, Douglass eventually started his own
newspaper, North Star. Its motto read, “Right is of no Sex—Truth is of
no Color—God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren
[brothers].”

Women Get Involved Many women were inspired by religious reform

movements to become involved in the fight against slavery. Like other
abolitionists, they sometimes faced violence. When a young woman
named Angelina Grimke spoke against slavery, an anti-abolition mob

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threw stones at her. When she kept speaking, they burned the building
she was speaking in.

Angelina and her sister Sarah had been raised in a South Carolina
slaveholding family. After traveling North and becoming Quakers, they
saw slavery in a new way. In the 1830s, the two sisters began speaking
out about the poverty and pain of slavery. At first, they spoke only to
other women, but soon they were addressing large groups of men and
women throughout the North. The Grimkes led the way for other
women to speak in public.

Some abolitionists, like Sojourner Truth, were former slaves. Truth had
always been strongly spiritual and had preached throughout the North
at religious meetings and on street corners. When she met Douglass
and Garrison, their enthusiasm inspired her to speak out loudly about
slavery. An outstanding speaker, Truth argued that God would end
slavery peacefully.

Abolitionists were a minority, even in the North. But their efforts, and
the violence directed at them, helped change Northerners' attitudes
toward slavery. In addition, the antislavery fight helped pave the way
for the next great reform movement: the struggle for women's rights.

Women abolitionists were in a strange position. They were trying to

convince lawmakers to make slavery illegal, yet they themselves could
not vote or hold office. They worked to raise money for the movement,
yet their fathers and husbands controlled their money and property.
They spoke out against slave beatings, yet their husbands could
discipline them however they wanted.

Even wealthy women like the Grimke sisters started to see that women
and slaves had much in common. “What then can woman do for the
slave,” asked Angelina Grimke, “when she is herself under the feet of
man and shamed into silence?”

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The Movement Begins The organized movement for women's rights

was sparked by the friendship between Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton. The two women met in 1840 at the World Anti-Slavery
Convention in London. When they arrived, they were outraged to
discover that women were not allowed to speak at the meeting. The
men who ran the convention made women sit in the balcony, behind a
curtain.

The men's decision may have backfired, because it was in the balcony
that Mott and Stanton met. At first glance, the two women seemed
quite different. Mott was 47 years old, the mother of four children, and
an active reformer. Inspired by the Grimke sisters and her Quaker faith,
Mott had preached against slavery in both white and black churches.
She had also helped Prudence Crandall try to find students for her
school for black girls.

Stanton was 25 years old and newly married. She had never spoken in
public. As a young girl, she had overheard women beg her father, a
judge, to protect them from husbands who had beaten them. He had to
tell them that there was no law against it. Later, she attended Troy
Female Seminary, the nation's first high school for girls. She knew from
her history studies that the United States did not treat women fairly.
When she met Mott in London, she readily agreed that something had
to be done about the injustices suffered by women.

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Unequal Treatment of Women Even a fine education like Stanton's
did not mean women would receive equal treatment. When Lucy Stone
graduated from Oberlin College in 1847, the faculty invited her to write
a speech. But a man would have to give the speech, since the school
did not allow women to speak in public. Stone refused. After
graduation, she spoke out for women's rights. Because women could
not vote, she refused to pay property taxes. “Women suffer taxation,”
she said, “and yet have no representation.”

Stone's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Blackwell, wanted to be a doctor. She

had studied mathematics, science, and history. Yet she was rejected by
29 medical schools before one finally accepted her. In 1849, she
graduated at the top of her class, becoming the country's first female
doctor. Still, no hospitals or doctors would agree to work with her.

To overcome such barriers, women would have to work together. By

the time Stanton and Mott left London, they had decided “to hold a
convention . . . and form a society to advocate the rights of women.”

The Seneca Falls Convention Eight years passed before Stanton and

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Mott met again. Over afternoon tea at the home of Mott's sister, they
decided to send a notice to the local newspaper announcing a women's
convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The organized movement for
women's rights was about to begin.

On July 19, 1848, nearly 300 people, including 40 men, arrived for the
Seneca Falls Convention. Many were abolitionists, Quakers, or other
reformers. Some were local housewives, farmers, and factory workers.

The convention organizers modeled their proposal for women's rights,

the Declaration of Sentiments , on the Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the document began, “that
all men and women are created equal.”

Just as the Declaration of Independence listed King George's acts of

tyranny over the colonists, the new declaration listed acts of tyranny by
men over women. Man did not let woman vote. He did not give her the
right to own property. He did not allow her to practice professions like
medicine and law.

Stanton's presentation of the declaration at the convention was her first

speech. A few other women also spoke. One of them, Charlotte
Woodward, was a 19-year-old factory worker. “Every fibre of my being,”
she said, “rebelled [against] all the hours that I sat and sewed gloves
for a miserable pittance [small amount of money] which, as it was
earned, could never be mine.”

Debate About the Right to Vote The convention passed resolutions

in favor of correcting the injustices listed in the Declaration of
Sentiments. Then Stanton proposed that women demand the right to
vote. For many, this step was too much. Even Mott cried, “Thou will
make us ridiculous! We must go slowly.”

At this point, Stanton received powerful support from another

participant at the convention: Frederick Douglass. Everyone who
believed that black men should have the right to vote, Douglass
argued, must also favor giving black women the right to vote. And that
meant all women should have this important right. Inspired by
Douglass's speech, the convention voted narrowly to approve this last
resolution.

The Legacy of Seneca Falls The Seneca Falls Convention helped to

create an organized campaign for women's rights. Sojourner Truth, who
would later mesmerize an audience with her “Ain't I a woman?” speech,
became an active campaigner in the movement.

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Stanton didn't like speaking at conventions, but she could write
powerful speeches. She befriended Susan B. Anthony, a reformer with a
flair for public speaking. While Stanton stayed in Seneca Falls to raise
her children, Anthony traveled from town to town, speaking for
women's rights. Of their lifelong teamwork, Stanton said, “I forged the
thunderbolts, she fired them.”

Slowly, reformers for women's rights made progress. New York gave
women control over their property and wages. Massachusetts and
Indiana passed more liberal divorce laws. Elizabeth Blackwell started
her own hospital, which included a medical school to train other female
doctors.

Other reforms, including the right to vote in all states, would take
decades to become reality. Of all the women who signed the
declaration at Seneca Falls, just one would live to vote for president
legally: Charlotte Woodward.

In this chapter, you read about the reform movements in the

United States from about 1820 to 1850.

The Spirit of Reform Many Americans were inspired by the Second

Great Awakening, which emphasized the role of good works in the lives
of Christians. Transcendentalist writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Henry David Thoreau, who urged people to question society's rules and
institutions, also inspired Americans. Some transcendentalists formed
communities that attempted to create an ideal society of cooperation.

Prison Reform Dorothea Dix pioneered the reform of prisons and the
treatment of people with mental illness. Her efforts led to
improvements in state prison systems and the creation of public
institutions and hospitals for the mentally ill.

Education Reform Horace Mann led the movement to make education

freely available to all. His ideas led many Northern states to establish
public schools. Education reform did not improve opportunities for most
girls, women, and African Americans, however.

The Movement to End Slavery Inspired in part by religious

revivalism, abolitionists worked to end the practice of slavery. Key
leaders in the movement included William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick
Douglass, Angelina and Sarah Grimke, and Sojourner Truth.

Equal Rights for Women The women's rights movement began with
the Seneca Falls Convention and its Declaration of Sentiments.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the convention.
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Susan B. Anthony was another key leader in the movement.

In the early 1800s, social reformers were seeking ways to

improve American life. Some were inspired by dreams of a
perfect society. They formed model, or utopian, communities
based on principles they believed would lead to a better world.
One of the best known of these social experiments was Brook
Farm in Massachusetts.

In April 1841, the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne became a resident at

Brook Farm. He had not yet achieved the fame that would come with
the publication of his novel The Scarlet Letter. But he was well known in
Boston literary circles and had friends in the transcendentalist
movement. Seeking a place to live and write, he decided to join the
Brook Farm community.

Soon after his arrival, Hawthorne got his first taste of farm life.“I have
done wonders,” he wrote about his first day of farm labor.

Before breakfast, I went out to the barn, and began to chop

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hay
for the cattle . . . Then I brought wood and replenished the
fires;
and finally sat down to breakfast and ate up a huge mound
of
buckwheat cakes. After breakfast, Mr. Ripley put a four-
pronged
instrument into my hands, which he gave me to understand
was
called a pitch-fork; and he and Mr. Farley being armed with
similar weapons, we all three commenced a gallant attack
upon a heap of manure.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, from a letter to Sophia Peabody,

1841

Hawthorne was not used to this kind of work, but he took to it with
relish. He even referred to the manure pile as the “gold mine,” in a
joking effort to glorify farmwork. It was “a delectable way of life,” he
wrote. “We get up at half-past six, dine at half-past twelve, and go to
bed at nine.”

Brook Farm was one of more than a hundred utopian communities that
sprang up across the country in the first half of the 1800s. The word
utopian comes from the 16th-century book Utopia, which describes a
perfect society on an imaginary island. These communities were all
based on ideals and practices aimed at building a new society, free of
social ills like poverty, crime, and injustice. Most of the communities
had religious foundations. But even those that did not, like Brook Farm,
were meant to create a kind of heaven on Earth.

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The Origins of Brook Farm

George Ripley, a former minister, founded Brook Farm with his wife,
Sophia, and several partners in March 1841. Ripley was concerned
about the social problems he saw in urban, industrial America. He
wanted to form a rural community where people could live a healthier
life, in harmony with nature. He also wanted to bring different social
classes together and help the working poor.

In a letter, Ripley expressed his goals for Brook Farm. It would be a

place, he said, to “combine the thinker and the worker . . . in the same
individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all
with labor, adapted to their tastes and talents.” He said that he hoped
to “prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated persons,
whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and
wholesome life.”

In Ripley's vision, residents at Brook Farm would enjoy the benefits of

physical labor. But they would also have time to take walks, create art
and music, and converse. It would be the perfect blend of work and
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play. The community would support itself by selling goods produced on
the farm. Everyone would share the profits equally.

These ideas reflected the era's reform spirit. But they also arose from
the special features of the transcendentalist movement.
Transcendentalists believed that people carried the light of God within
them. They could experience that light by opening up to the beauties of
nature and a simpler life.

Many young people at the time were also filled with the spirit of change,
or what they called the “Newness.” Freedom was in the air. Young men
grew beards and let their hair grow long. They wore floppy hats and
loose-fitting clothes. They embraced new ideas, such as vegetarian
diets, and new ways of speaking. This sense of freedom was reflected
at Brook Farm.

The farm itself was set in beautiful, rolling country just eight miles west
of Boston. Its 170 acres were dotted with woods, pastures, and
meadows. Running through the property was a little brook that gave the
farm its name. A two-story farmhouse became the principal residence.
Residents called it the “Hive” because it was the hub of activity. There
was also a large barn with stalls for cattle and horses. Brook Farm was
an ideal setting for a rural retreat.

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Life on the Farm

Everyone at Brook Farm was expected to work. But they were free to
choose the kind of work they did. Women could plow the fields, if they
wanted, and men could do housework. All labor was “sacred, when
done for a common interest,” wrote one resident. Everyone was paid
the same, and no one worked more than ten hours a day or six days a
week. At the time, that was considered a short workweek.

Most residents seemed to enjoy work on the farm. One young woman,
Marianne Dwight, took special pleasure in what she called “fancy
work”: sewing caps and other clothing for sale in Boston. She believed
that the money and skills gained through this work would help aid the
cause of women's rights. “We may start other branches of business,”
she wrote in a letter, “so that all our proceeds may be applied to the
elevation of women forever . . . How the whole aspect of society will be
changed!”

Residents at the farm did more than work. They also held dances,
attended concerts and lectures, and performed in plays. During the
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winter, they enjoyed snow sports like skating and sledding.

Children attended a school on the farm. The quality of education was

excellent, and the school soon attracted students from the surrounding
area. The school became the farm's most profitable activity.

By the summer of 1842, 70 people were living at Brook Farm. Most

were not permanent residents, however. Students and other temporary
lodgers lived there as well. Many visitors also came to the farm,
including such noted figures as the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Henry David Thoreau.

Other visitors were less notable, and some were downright odd. There
were “dreamers and schemers of all sorts,” one resident wrote. For
example, one visitor claimed he could survive without sleep, until he
was caught snoring in the library. Another claimed to live on a diet of
raw wheat. But he was found behind the barn one day, eating table
scraps set out for the chickens.

Although visitors paid for their stay on the farm, they did not contribute
labor. The farm had to add new buildings to house them. This placed a
burden on the farm's finances.

The End of the Dream

In fact, Brook Farm's finances had never been solid. In the beginning,
Ripley had asked members to invest in the farm, but few had done so.
He had also hoped to sell farm products, but few residents had any
farming experience. Furthermore, the farm's soils were not very good
for growing crops. As a result, the farm was always short of money.

Residents began to drift away from the farm. Some complained of

financial difficulties. Others tired of farmwork. Even Nathaniel
Hawthorne lost his enthusiasm for farm life. He left after six months,
saying he feared his soul might “perish under a dung-heap.”

Concerned about the future, in 1844 Ripley and other residents decided
to reorganize the farm. They established a new set of principles to
promote small industry and put the farm on a firmer footing. They
invited new members to join, including a number of craft workers and
laborers. They also began construction of a new, much larger building
and bought a steam engine to power new machinery. To pay for these
improvements, the farm took out new loans.

Before long, however, tensions developed in the community. Some

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members insisted on holding religious services, which others opposed.
Also, some of the new members complained of poor treatment by the
original members. Creditors began to demand repayment of loans.

Difficulties were mounting when disaster struck. On March 3, 1846, a

fire broke out in the new building and burned it to the ground. After
that, more people chose to leave the community. The Ripleys and a
handful of others stayed on until the fall of 1847. Then they, too,
abandoned the farm.

Despite its short history, Brook Farm was not a total failure. It changed
the lives of many of its members and influenced various reform
movements, including the abolition and women's rights movements. It
also inspired many people with its ideals of workplace equality and a
simpler, more sustainable life. Those ideals live on today.

Early American leaders agreed that the survival of democracy

depended on an educated population. John Adams reminded his
teenage son John Quincy that “the end of study is to make you a good
man and a useful citizen.” Thomas Jefferson believed that general
education would “enable every man to judge for himself what will
secure or endanger his freedom.”

What would schools teach? The nation's founders made that clear in the
Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which set the conditions for frontier lands
to become new states. “Religion, morality and knowledge, being
necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools
and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

Where Children Learned

Education changed little from the Revolutionary War to the 1840s.

Wealthy children were taught at home by tutors. Poor children often
received no schooling at all. But most children, especially in New
England, went to village schools. Residents paid taxes to build a one-
room schoolhouse and hire a teacher. Parents contributed additional
money for firewood, textbooks, and other necessities.

Children sat on benches along the sides of the room, with the teacher's
desk at the front and a stove in the middle. Pictures, maps, and
blackboards were extremely rare. Sometimes there were dozens of
students at different levels of learning. (There was no system of first
grade, second grade, and so on.) The teacher had to keep all the
children busy. If students misbehaved, the teacher could hit them with
a rod, ruler, or lash.

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Most students were boys. Some girls attended village schools, but girls
often learned to read and write at home, if at all. The youngest girls
might attend “dame schools,” which were run by older women.

Few schools were in session as long as they are now. Usually the school
year started around Thanksgiving and ended the following spring, when
planting began.

What They Learned

In Protestant New England, religion and morality were part of almost

every reading, writing, and arithmetic lesson. Students learned to read
from the Bible and from textbooks loaded with moral messages. Noah
Webster's Elementary Spelling-book was one widely used textbook.
Here is one reading lesson:

As for those boys and girls that mind not their books, and love not the
church and school, but play with such as tell lies, curse, swear and
steal, they will come to some bad end, and must be whipt till they
mend their ways.

(For more examples of 19th-century schoolbooks, see The Progressive

Era Enrichment Essay-Primary Sources on American Education in the
19th Century.)

After reading, students sharpened their quill pens, made ink from black
powder and water, and worked on their penmanship. There was no
lined paper in those days, so the first lesson, when students had paper,
was to draw straight lines across the page. Then the teacher had
students write sayings like “Contentment is a virtue.”

Spelling followed reading. The teacher spelled out words, and the
students recited them back.

Then it was on to arithmetic. Math problems were often presented with

references to the Bible. One typical problem asked, “Adam was 930
years old when he died, and 130 when Seth was born. How old was
Seth when Adam died?”

The Decline of Village Schools

In the 1820s and 1830s, the Second Great Awakening swept the
country. During this time of religious enthusiasm, many new Protestant
sects were born, and they had different views of the Bible. To them, the
morality taught in village schools was bland and ineffective.

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An even bigger challenge to village schools came from immigration.
Roman Catholics arrived in America mainly from Ireland and Germany.
They soon discovered that American schools used the King James
translation of the Bible, which was Protestant. Catholic parents had
three unhappy choices. They could try to change America's traditional
method of education. They could send their children to a school that
taught Protestant beliefs. Or they could not send their children to school
at all.

Horace Mann and other reformers solved these problems by creating

free public schools. The public schools stuck to basic moral lessons like
the Ten Commandments while avoiding religious ideas that caused
conflict. Although some strong believers disliked Mann's compromise,
they found it hard to refuse free public education.

Improving Education for Women

Both boys and girls attended public schools, but girls and women had
fewer educational opportunities than their male counterparts. Most
teachers believed that a woman's role was to be a wife and mother.
Girls were generally not encouraged to go to high school or college
unless they planned to be schoolteachers. Nor were they encouraged to
study such subjects as history, mathematics, or the sciences.

Women reformers worked to change this situation. As early as 1814,

teacher Emma Willard opened a boarding school in Vermont where girls
learned mathematics, philosophy, history, and other subjects. In 1821,
the city of Troy, New York, gave Willard money to start the Troy Female
Seminary. Now called the Emma Willard School, it boasts of being the
first school in the country to give girls the same educational
opportunities as boys.

Another reformer, Mary Lyon, believed passionately that women

needed and deserved higher education as much as men did. In 1834,
she retired from teaching to start a college that would offer women the
same kind of education that was available in men's colleges. Lyon
worked hard to gather support and raise money. Three years later, she
opened the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Located in
Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke became a model for other women's
colleges. Today, Mount Holyoke College educates women for positions
of leadership in society.

The work of reformers like Willard and Lyon created new educational
opportunities for girls and women. Still, men continued to dominate
many occupations and fields of study. In the second half of the 20th
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century, a new women's movement championed true equality for
women in both educational and occupational opportunity.

How did Americans of the 19th century view education? One good way
to find out is to look at primary-source documents.

In this essay, you will find two kinds of documents. Document Sets 1
and 2 contain writings about the importance of education. Document
Sets 3 and 4 illustrate the kinds of materials that were used in
classrooms. Together, these documents reveal some of the teaching
philosophies and methods of early American education.

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Document Set 1: Joseph Lancaster Promotes Education

Among the Poor

Early education in the United States was often based on a teaching

method that featured one teacher working with a few students. This
method was expensive, and it was unavailable to many children.

Englishman Joseph Lancaster experimented with teaching large

numbers of poor children. In 1818, he brought his techniques to the
United States.

Lancaster's plan was to gather a large number of students—as many as

1,000—in a single room. The students were lined up in rows. Quiet and
discipline were strictly enforced.

In Lancaster's schools, older students served as unpaid monitors. The

monitors went from row to row with a highly organized manual of
instruction to coach the large mass of students.

Lancaster's model meshed well with American beliefs in equality of

opportunity and the importance of education. His schools convinced
some people that education could be affordably offered to a mass
audience. In this way, Lancaster helped lay the foundation for offering
free, public education to all American children.

Here are some passages from a book Lancaster wrote in 1803. The
passages describe some of his methods. Imagine being a student, a
mentor, or a teacher in a Lancastrian school. As you read, think about
what your daily life would have been like.

Lancaster on Books to Be Used in His Schools

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The books made use of in this school, as reading lessons,
are the Bible, Testament, Turner's Introduction to the Arts
and Sciences, Trimmer's Introduction to the Knowledge of
Nature and Reading the Scriptures, Martinet's Catechism of
Nature, and Watts's Hymns for Children.

Lancaster on How to Educate Many Students at the

Same Time

Now these twenty boys, if they were at a common school,

would each have a book, and, one at a time, would read or
spell to their teacher, while the other nineteen were looking
at their books, or about them, as they pleased: or, if their
eyes are rivetted on their books, by terror and coercion,
can we be sure that the attention of their minds is engaged
as appearance seems to speak it is. On the contrary, when
they have slates, the twentieth boy may read to the
teacher, while the other nineteen are spelling words on the
slate, instead of sitting idle. The class, by this means, will
spell, write, and read at the same instant of time. In
addition to this, the same trouble which teaches twenty will
suffice to teach sixty or a hundred, by employing some of
the senior boys to inspect the slates of the others, they not
omitting to spell the word themselves…. This experiment
has been repeatedly practised by 112 and 128 boys at
once.

Lancaster on a System of Rewards for Students

Commendation [praise], joined to a consciousness of merit,

has a powerful effect; of this I was aware, I therefore
engaged the bookbinder to make some leather tickets, gilt
and lettered differently, expressive of the various degrees
of merit they were intended to distinguish; these were
suspended, by a small piece of ribbon, from the button of
the wearer's coat, as a badge of peculiar approbation
[approval]….. We have near two hundred of these tickets.
As to the method of distributing them, I inspect the writing,
arithmetic, &c. and distribute paper tickets, No. 1, 2, 3, &c.
according to merit.

This number, one, two, three, &c. is a small, square piece

of paper, numbered, corresponding with a similar number
of the gilt commendatory ticket the bearer is to receive: he

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carries this to the monitor appointed for that purpose, who
gives him the ticket he is entitled to, and registers it in a
book. When a scholar has, by merit, obtained a fixed quota
of those numbers and commendatory tickets, he is entitled
to a prize of an appropriate value…. The prizes consist of
bats, balls, and kites, &c. &c. in great variety; —thus they
are kept on the tip-toe of expectation.

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Document Set 2: Horace Mann Speaks Out

Horace Mann was an important advocate for free public schools. Here
are three passages from a report he wrote in 1848. As you read, think
about this question: How did Mann believe that education could
improve the nation's social and political life?

If one class possesses all the wealth and the education,

while the residue [rest] of society is ignorant and poor, it
matters not by what name the relation between them may
be called: the latter, in fact and in truth, will be the servile
dependents [servants] and subjects of the former. But, if
education be equally diffused [spread], it will draw property
after it by the strongest of all attractions; for such a thing
never did happen, and never can happen, as that an
intelligent and practical body of men should be
permanently poor….

Education... is a great equalizer of the conditions of men—

the balance wheel of the social machinery. [It] gives each
man the independence and the means by which he can
resist the selfishness of other men. It does better than to
disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich: it
prevents being poor.... The spread of education, by
enlarging the cultivated class or caste, will open a wider
area over which the social feelings will expand; and, if this
education should be universal and complete, it would do
more than all things else to obliterate [erase] factitious
[artificial] distinctions in society.

[The] establishment of a republican government, without

well-appointed and efficient means for the universal
education of the people, is the most rash and foolhardy
experiment ever tried by man. Such a Republic may grow in
numbers and in wealth.... Its armies may be invincible, and
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its fleets may strike terror into nations on the opposite
sides of the globe, at the same hour.... But if such a
Republic be devoid of [without] intelligence, such a
Republic, with all its noble capacities for beneficence
[ability to do good], will rush with the speed of a whirlwind
to an ignominious [shameful] end; and all good men of
after-times would be fain [eager] to weep over its downfall,
did not their scorn and contempt at its folly and its
wickedness, repress all sorrow for its fate.

__________________________________________________

Document Set 3: McGuffey Readers Enter America's

Schools

William McGuffey was a teacher and a preacher who created readers (a

kind of textbook) for use in grade schools. The readers taught young
people the value of patriotism and morality along with reading and
vocabulary.

First published in the 1830s, McGuffey's readers were used by millions

of students during the 19th century. Here are some pages from one of
McGuffey's readers. How are they similar to materials you have learned
from? How are they different?

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Document Set 4: Elocution Exercises

Public speaking was considered an important citizenship skill in the

19th century. In public schools, students were expected to study and
memorize speeches as a part of their training. They polished their skills
through elocution (clear speaking) exercises.

Here is an example of a beginning elocution exercise. After mastering

basic sounds, students went on to more advanced lessons in
pronunciation and clear speaking.

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Another publication that aimed to develop public speaking skills was

the Columbian Orator . (An orator is a public speaker.) The Orator first
appeared in the late 1700s. It provided examples of actual speeches for
students to study. New editions of the Columbian Orator are still
published today.

Here is a page showing part of a speech that 19th-century students

studied as a model:

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