Term | Definition |
Social Reform | organized attempts to improve conditions of life. |
Predestination | the idea that god decided the fate of a person's soul even before birth. |
Charles Finney | held the first of many religious revivals in 1826. |
Revival | a huge outdoor religious meeting. |
Temperance Movement | an organized effort to end alcohol abuse and the problems created by it. |
Prohibition | a total ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol. |
Dorothea Dix | Massachusetts school teacher who took up the cause of prison reform. |
Public Schools | free schools supported by taxes. |
Horace Mann | (Massachusetts) took the lead in education reform |
Abolitionists | reformers who wanted to abolish, or end slavery. |
William Lloyd Garrison | a quaker who strongly opposed the use of violence to end slavery. |
Frederick Douglas | The most powerful speaker for abolitionism. |
Harriet Tubman | escaped from slavery and escorted more than 300 people to freedom via the Underground Railroad. |
Sojourner Truth | Born a slave, wasn't able to read, but her words inspired the crowds that heard her for abolitionism. |
Lucretia Mott | A quaker who spent years working in the antislavery movement. |
Elizabeth Cady Staton | abolitionist, who believed women should have equal rights as men. |
Women's Suffrage | the right of women to vote. |
Women's rights movement | an organized effort to improve the political, legal, and economic status of women in America. |
Susan B. Anthony | founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, w/ Elizabeth Cady Staton. |
Transcendentalism | a movement that sought to explore the relationship between humans and nature through emotions rather than reason. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson | the leading transcendentalist who questioned the value of material goods. |
Individualism | the unique importance of each individual. |
Henry David Thoreau | urged people to live simply, took up emerson's challenge. |
Civil Disobedience | the idea that people should peacefully disobey unjust laws if their consciences demand it. |
Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne | men who changed the tone of American Literature. |
Louisa May Alcott | presented a gentler view of New England life. |