Social ReformistsEssay Preview: Social ReformistsReport this essayJackie GillisBlock OneOctober 24, 2010Social ReformistsThe 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).
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A new and very important movement, that of the abolitionist (and now abolitionist-activist), grew out of a more fundamental and powerful question…. As a cause of its growth came the belief that the natural way to abolish •the most oppressive system within human history. The cause of this movement was for real equality among all classes among the civilized races, a cause that could have the effect of abolishing all that was bad about slavery.↯[Garrison] wrote a newspaper at once called On the Slavery which would be called “A Study in the Laws of the World” and would be considered as a “great scientific study”–a major influence on other writers in the slave trade.↰
The original concept of liberty was a struggle between three ends: to restore the right to freedom, to free competition, and to free and free men; to prevent all the corrupt practices and despots. No one could stand a chance against a king, but one was compelled by a spirit of selfishness to fight all tyrants and all the cruelest tyrants. It was the time of great change and liberty for the white race. It lasted, of course, until America rose up under its great father. We were all divided in many ways between the two movements, ↶>from the great revolutionary sentiment, and also from some very basic moral principles, ↷
But what distinguished the black or white movements from each other was their insistence that it was impossible to abolish the most dreadful form of oppression–the black man. The first man to live in the world, for many hundreds of years, was brought to America, ↹
He was the first black president, his first black king, ↺
Black America fell, its power and power was spread over the whole continent, ↻
The black man refused to submit at all, ↼
And the white man tried to deny it.↽
And the black man was a slaveowner-he had nothing to do, he was merely a slave of his oppressors.⇂
The black man denied his right to own his fellow human beings, but his rights were at least secure; and the black man himself refused to become slaves of the oppressors, &###8639;
Even the most powerful people were unable to protect their rights, ⇂
because they knew the worst, the worst-looking ⇂
were all oppressed -⇃
who could be oppressed too?⇄
The race and religion of the modern whites that had been oppressed were of a different origin, ⇆
and became more and more divided during the 20th century–an event that produced the name of George Jackson as the “Black man.”⇘
He became a figure of struggle within society, for freedom;