Ari Gilder, 3-201L

Social Studies HW#3

1. a) During the 1820s and 1830s, many people had already begun to demand public schools instead of the simple education children received from the church. Many leaders had risen to support this cause and establish public schools. By 1850, there were 55 public high schools in the country, and over 6,000 private high schools.

b) In 1833, the first “temperance” convention was held in Philadelphia protesting the use of alcohol, claiming that it was physically and spiritually harmful to people. By 1836, many groups advocating temperance had formed the American Temperance Union, which many political candidates took up as their own cause in order to attract votes. Temperance groups had succeeded in getting Congress to forbid selling alcohol to Indians and many other victories during the time.

c) Many northerners and even good amount of southerners had believed that slavery was wrong and should be abolished. In 1830, a series of conventions were organized by black anti-slavery leaders, and many people wrote out against slavery.

d) By the 1850s, many reformers had started taking up a cause following in suit after Dorothea Dix to better the treatment of mentally ill and criminals. Because of this, the death penalty was abolished for certain crimes and prisons were separated for men and women and the mentally ill.

2. Thoreau had believed that industrialization and the emphasis it places on material goods and not the individual was a danger to human liberties, as well as the national state with disregard to the individual. Contrary to this, Emerson had faith in America and the American people; despite this, he also disagreed with materialism. Whitman on the other end embraced science and industrialism. These three people represented the spectrum of ideas present among the American people during their time.
3. The militant abolitionists believed that the laws that were meant to protect slavery were immoral and had to be broken; thus people like William Lloyd Garrison and Henry Highland Garnet had taken up to more drastic ways of combatting slavery. However, the moderates, such as James G. Birney, worked more subtley – they nominated their own candidates for President in attempt of political reforms.
4. Most of the literature of this time had to do with sin, struggle and strife, such as Moby Dick or The Scarlet Letter as well as many other poems. The American ideals represented in this literature included the strive for good, the rights of women and the frailty of humans.
5. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was the first women’s rights convention ever. It lead to the Declaration of Sentiments which declared men and women as equal and demanded a list of political, social and economic equalities for women.