Home > Reform movement

United States Reform Movements of the 1840s

1. Art -- The Hudson River School of Art defined a distinctive American style of art, depicting romantic landscapes via the Transcendentalist perspective on nature
2. Science -- John James Audubon founded the science of ornithology (the study of birds)
3. Utopian Experiments
   1. New Harmony (founder: Robert Owen), practiced economic communism, although it proved economically unviable
   2. Oneida Commune (founder: John Noyes), practiced eugenics, complex marriage, and communal living . The commune was supported through the manufacture of silverware, and the corporation still exists today, producing spoons and forks for households of the world. The commune sold its assets when Noyes was jailed on numerous charges.
   3. Shakers -- (founder: Mother Ann Lee) Stressed living and worship through dance, supported themselves through manufacture of furniture. The furniture is still popular today.
4. Public education reform -- (founder: Horace Mann), goals were a more relevant curriculum and more accessible education. Noah WebsterNoah Webster ( October 16, 1758 April 15, 1843) was an American lexicographer, textbook author, Bible translator, and spelling reformer, writer, and editor. Webster's Dictionary Webster published his first dictionary of the English language in 1806, and i's dictionary standardized English spelling and language; William McGuffey's hugely successful children's books taught reading in incremental stages.
5. Literature -- founding of the Transcendentalism , stresed high thinking and a spiritial connection to all things (see pantheismPantheism simply stated, means " God is All" and "All is God". It is the view that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent God. More detailed definitions tend to emphasize the idea that natural law, existence and/or the universe (the sum total of al).
6. Women's rights movement ( 18481848 is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). Events Sri Lanka The Revolution of 1848 (qv. a series of widespread but failed struggles for more liberal governments, from Brazil to Hungary. January 24 California gold rush: Jame) (founders: Lucretia MottLucretia Mott ( January 3, 1793 November 11, 1880), was the first major American women's activist in the early 1800s and is credited as the first " feminist", but more accurately, the launcher of women's political advocacy. She was a Quaker, a women's rig, Elizabeth Cady StantonElizabeth Cady Stanton and her daughter Harriot In the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source. at the Seneca Falls Convention, July 19-20, 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( November 12, 1815 October 26, 1902) was a leadin, Susan B. AnthonySusan Brownell Anthony ( February 15, 1820 March 13, 1906) was an American civil rights leader who, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led the effort to grant women the right to vote in the United States. She was born in Adams, Massachusetts, the daughter), began at the Seneca Falls Convention; published a Declaration of Sentiments calling for the legal equality of women.
7. Prohibition Movement -- Anti- alcohol movement supported by Frances Willard's Women's Christian Temperance Union, which stressed education; the Anti-Saloon League, which Carrie Nation promoted a confrontational approach towards bars and saloons; and the Know-Nothing Party, an anti- catholic, anti- immigration, anti-drinking political party.
8. Abolition movement, 1820-60