Social Reformists

Jackie Gillis

Block One

October 24, 2010

Social Reformists

The early to mid-nineteenth century was a period of reform and revolutionary thinking. Changes in society during the Industrial Revolution completed the separation of church and state. In order to restore the role of religion in America, religious leaders inspired a Second Great Awakening. In the North, this movement resulted in an era of social reform. Converts formed voluntary societies and associations with the common goal to rid America from sin and social evils. These ideas evolved into efforts to improve the morale of society, shape character, and eventually to perfect the American way of life. This involved completely changing common practices of America that would conflict with a Utopian society; the movement had become an era of radical reformation. Reformists such as Dorothea Dix, William Henry Garrison, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were inspired by the goals of perfection and morality that evolved from the Second Great Awakening.

Dorothea Dix was crucial to the reform of insane asylums. At the time, patients were treated brutally and ineffectively. Dix claims "wilful abuse less frequent than sufferings proceeding from ignorance," (12.3) suggesting the lack of attention received by mental patients. In her Appeal of the Behalf of the Insane, Dix lists specific examples of the mistreatment of certain patients in Massachusetts, and describes her grievances with the mental institution system, attempting to make the public more aware. She says, "I come as an 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..."(12.3). Dix devoted a large portion of her life to reforming mental hospitals and improving the care given to the insane. Her ultimate goal was to improve society, which was inspired by the reformist movements of the Second Great Awakening.

Similarly, William Lloyd Garrison, motivated by the spirit of social improvement, attempted to reform slavery. He ruthlessly argued for immediate abolition, contradicting most other plans to gradually abolish the practice. Garrison was inspired by the religious and moral concern over slavery that rose during the Second Great Awakening. Garrison and other abolitionists believed that slavery should not be a part of a perfect society. He worked to excited "the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery." (12.4). To convince the people, Garrison wrote a newspaper The Liberator, in which he says "[the standard of emancipation] is now unfurled; and long may it float, unhurt by the spoliations of time or the missiles of a desperate foe-yea, till every chain be broken, and every bondman set free!"(12.4).