Reform

• What is reform? • Changes made to improve something

•Why did America need reform? – Slavery– Industrialization – Changing society

Public Education Reform

• The expansion of voting rights during this time period and the changes brought about by industrialization led people to see a need for public education

• Horace Mann advocated tax supported schools, mandatory attendance for children, longer school years, and better training for teachers

Temperance Movement • Movement to end the consumption of alcohol

• Alcoholism was very common during this time, and many believed that it was the source of high rates of domestic violence, crime, unemployment, etc.

• By the 1840s, more than a million people were members of temperance societies

• Women played a very active role in this movement

The Abolitionist Movement

• In the early 1800s, the abolitionist movement grew in the U.S.

• Abolitionism is the movement to end slavery

• Women were also active in this movement, and women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott got their start as reformers in the abolitionist movement

Women’s Suffrage • Suffrage = the right

to vote • Women were

involved in many other reform movements, and were treated unfairly there, as well

• This encouraged many female reformers to push for women’s rights

“He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the

elective franchise”

1. What is the “elective franchise”?

2. What do you think this statement refers to?

3. Does it sound familiar? Where have you heard the term “inalienable right” before?

The Seneca Falls Convention

Significance:

• First women’s rights convention

Statue of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony at the Capitol

Objective: • To discuss social, civil and religious

condition and rights of women

Leaders

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Legacy

• The “Declaration of Sentiments” – a document asserting that men and women are equal and listing charges against men who had deprived women of their rights

• “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”

Analogy

• The “Declaration of Sentiments” was to the members of the Seneca Falls Convention what the Declaration of Independence was to the members of the Second Continental Congress