Document A: Quote by Horace Mann
"Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery." - H. Mann (mid 1800s)
Document B: Seneca Falls Convention
Excerpt from Declaration of Sentiments
1848 - Elizabeth Stanton
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; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer. while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.
Document C: Print by Nathaniel Currier
Document D: Unsigned illustration for Picture of Slavery in the United States of America, [By George Bourne]. (Boston: Published by Isaac Knapp, 1838)
DOCUMENT N: PRISON REFORM
Dorothea Dix Speaks on behalf of the Insane (1843)
(The American Spirit, Volume I to 1877).
In 1840 there were only eight insane asylums in the twenty-six states. The overflow, regarded as perverse, were imprisoned or chained in poorhouses, jails, and houses of correction. Schoolteacher Dorothea Dix, a frail, soft-spoken spinster from New England who lived to be eighty-five despite incipient tuberculoses, almost single-handedly wrought a revolution. Filled with infinite compassion for these outcasts, she journeyed thousands of wearisome miles to investigate conditions and to appeal to state legislatures. Despite the powerful prejudice against women who were outspoken in public, she succeeded in securing modern facilities with trained attendants. Her horrifying report to the Massachusetts legislature is a classic appeal for reform.
Dorothea Dix Speaks on Behalf of Insane Persons, 1843
From Old South Leaflets, vol. 7, p. 489-519.
Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts 1843
By Dorothea L. Dix.
“...I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane, and idiotic men and women; of beings sunk to a condition from which the most unconcerned would start with real horror; of beings wretched in our prisons, and more wretched in our almshouses.
…I must confine myself to few examples, but am ready to furnish other and more complete details, if required. If my pictures are displeasing, coarse, and severe, my subjects, it must be recollected, offer no tranquil, refined, or composing features. The condition of human beings, reduced to the extremest states of degradation and misery, cannot be exhibited in softened language, or adorn a polished page.
I proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within this Commonwealth, in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.
…Prisons are not constructed in view of being converted into county hospitals, and almshouses are not founded as receptacles for the insane. And yet, in the face of justice and common sense, wardens are by law compelled to receive, and the masters of almshouses not to refuse, insane and idiotic subjects in all stages of mental disease and privation….
Northampton. In the jail, quite lately, was a young man violently mad, who had not, as I was informed at the prison, come under medical care, and not been returned from any hospital. In the almshouse the cases of insanity are now unmarked by abuse, and afford evidence of judicious care by the keepers. . . .
Dedham. The insane disadvantageously placed in the jail. In the almshouse, two females in stalls, situated in the main building; lie in wooden bunks filled with straw; always shut up. One of these subjects is supposed curable. The overseers of the poor have declined giving her a trial at the hospital, as I was informed, on account of expense. . . .
Besides the above, I have seen many who, part of the year, are chained or caged. The use of cages all but universal. Hardly a town but can refer to some not distant period of using them; chains are less common; negligences frequent; willful abuse less frequent than sufferings proceeding from ignorance, or want of consideration….
It is not few, but many, it is not a part, but the whole, who bear unqualified testimony to this evil. A voice strong and deep comes up from every almshouse and prison in Massachusetts where the insane are or have been protesting against such evils as have been illustrated in the preceding pages.
Gentlemen, I commit to you this sacred cause. Your action upon this subject will affect the present and future condition of hundreds and of thousands.
In this legislation, as in all things, may you exercise that "wisdom which is the breath of the power of God."
Respectfully submitted,
D. L. DIX.
DOCUMENT O: TEMPERANCE
O1: During the 1820s and 1830s, evangelical reformers launched a series of crusades to eradicate sin and make the nation live up to Christian values--campaigns to suppress urban prostitution, enforce the Christian Sabbath, and curb the drinking of hard liquor. In initiating these crusades, reformers devised the methods and tactics that would later be used in more radical reforms to abolish slavery and win women’s rights. , In the decades before the Civil War, the campaign against liquor was the key unifying reform, drawing support from middle-class Protestants, skilled artisans, clerks, shopkeepers, free blacks, and Mormons, as well as many conservative clergy and Southerners who were otherwise hostile to reform. Called the temperance movement, the antebellum crusade against hard liquor in fact advocated ”intemperance”--teetotal abstinence from all alcohol. , In part, the rise of temperance agitation represented a response to an upsurge in heavy drinking. By 1820, the typical adult male consumed more than 7 gallons of absolute alcohol a year (compared to about 2.8 gallons today). Consumption had risen markedly, since farmers distilled corn to make cheap whiskey, which could be transported more easily than bulk corn. , But the rise of the temperance movement was not simply a response to increased drinking. The movement reflected broader concerns that alcohol led to economic waste, polluted youth, created crime and poverty, and led men to physically abuse their wives.
DOCUMENT P: EDUCATION
Education Reform in Antebellum America
by Barbara Winslow
“By the 1820s Americans were experiencing exhilarating as well as unsettling social and economic changes…The emergence of manufacturing and the growth of cities and towns led to new social problems: the deterioration of working and living conditions; the rise of poverty and indebtedness; and the increasing disparity between rich and poor. Meanwhile, periodic economic slumps created greater hardships and uncertainty. The Protestant ruling elite expressed alarm at these developing social conditions, concerned that poverty would lead to prostitution, gangs, drunkenness, crime, and other manifestations of social decline and disorder. Increased immigration after 1830, especially of the impoverished, unskilled, Catholic, and non-English-speaking Irish, further threatened the Protestant middle class.
A desire to reform and expand education accompanied and informed many of the political, social, and economic impulses toward reform. Three particularly important core components of education reform developed in the antebellum period: education for the common man and woman, greater access to higher education for women, and schooling for free blacks.
At the heart of the common school movement was the belief that free common schooling dedicated to good citizenship and moral education would (alleviate) problems facing the new republic. The “common school movement” was…a type of formal education…that would become available to all citizens, developed and managed through increased governmental activity at the state level and supported by local property taxes. Common schooling was free and “universal”; that is, it was to be available to all children regardless of class (although African Americans or Irish Catholics were marginalized or excluded). The main purpose of the common school was to provide a more centralized and efficient school system, one that would assimilate, train, and discipline the emerging working classes and prepare them for a successful life in an industrial society.
The person most identified with the common school movement was Horace Mann (1796–1859), a Massachusetts state legislator, and then secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education…He believed that education was a child’s “natural right,” and that moral education should be the heart of the curriculum. In order to accomplish education reform, Mann advocated state-controlled boards of education, a more uniform curriculum, and greater state involvement in teacher training. Mann was firmly convinced that public education had the power to become a stabilizing as well as an equalizing force in American society.
Mann and the common school movement had critics then, as well as now. The common school movement failed to address the issue of racial exclusion and segregation. Only when African American parents and their political allies challenged the whites-only schools and school districts would there be partial, but not lasting reforms. Catholics in MA and NY opposed Mann’s Protestant Republicanism in the common schools. Fearing religious and anti-immigrant discrimination, Catholics set up their own system of parochial schools. Historians such as Michael Katz have challenged the widely held assumption that the common school movement was an enlightened liberal reform movement designed to ameliorate (restructure) the social divisions in American society. Rather, Katz and others argue that the common school movement was a deliberate attempt by the Protestant elite to control the lower classes, force assimilation of immigrants and non-Protestants, and prepare the working classes to acquire the “virtues” necessary to factory life—in particular, respect for discipline and authority. All of the criticisms of Mann and the common school system—racial segregation, religious bias, centralized school boards, and a curriculum designed for conformity were left unresolved, and are recurrent themes in the history of education…
The struggle for greater educational opportunities for women was clearly linked to the antebellum reform movement, and in particular the campaign for women’s rights….While young women were admitted into the public or common schools, the majority of women in the United States were denied educational opportunities at every level. In 1830, women’s literacy was but half of men’s….The struggle for women’s education was epitomized by the founding of Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the first institution of higher education for women. It was established in 1837 by Mary Lyon.... Her vision for higher education included bringing in women from all socio-economic levels to study a demanding curriculum with a clear moral vision….Oberlin College in Ohio was the first to admit women; Antioch College (founded by Horace Mann) was the first college to allow women to publicly accept their graduation diplomas as well as the first college to hire woman professors and pay them equally…
…Reform struggles did not sweep through the American South as they did in the North. The institution of slavery militated against the emergence of manufacturing and urbanization, two critical factors that led to educational reform in the North. White southerners relied primarily on voluntary, parental, and church schooling. Wealthy planters sent their sons (and sometimes their daughters) to private academies in the North and South and to England. Education for poor white southerners was provided by charity schools and some religious institutions…. Education for black slaves was forbidden, especially after Nat Turner’s slave insurrection in 1831. There were a tiny handful of schools for free African Americans in the South….Sunday Schools, which were founded in part to provide literary, religious, and moral instruction to working class and poor rural children, also educated some slaves. Whatever limited educational progress existed in the slave south, it was not connected to the larger movements for social reform.”