Assignment:
Reflection
Charles Grandison Finney - an evangelistic Presbyterian minister who became the most influential revival leader of the 1820s and 1830s.
Frederick Douglass - the greatest African American of all - and one of the most electrifying orators of his time, black or white - was Frederick Douglass. Born a slave in Maryland, Douglass escaped to Massachusetts in 1838, became an outspoken leader of anti-slavery sentiment. On his return to the United States in 1847, Douglass purchased his freedom from his Maryland owner and founded an antislavery newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York. Douglass demanded for African Americans not only freedom but full social and economic social equality as well.
Henry David Thoreau - leading Concord transcendentalist. Thoreau went even further in repudiating the repressive forces of society. He produced the ideas that individuals should work for self-realization by resisting pressures to conform to society's expectations and responding instead to their instincts. Thoreau's own efforts to free himself - immortalized in is most famous book, Walden - led him to build a small cabin in the Concord woods on the edge of Walden Pond, where he lived alone for two years as simply as he could.
Horace Mann - the greatest of educational reformers was Horace Mann, the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, which was established in 1837. To Mann, education was the only way to "counterwork this tendency to the domination of capital and the servility of labor." He reorganized the Massachusetts school system, lengthened the academic year (to six months, doubled teachers' salaries, enriched the curriculum, and introduced new methods of professional training for teachers.
Joseph Smith - Mormonism began in upstate New York as a result of the efforts of Joseph Smith, a young, energetic, but economically unsuccessful man, who had spent most oh his twenty-four years moving restlessly through New England and the Northeast. In 1830, he published the Book of Mormon that told a story of an ancient and successful civilization in America, peopled by one of the lost tribes of Israel who had found their way to the New World centuries before Columbus.
Shakers - made a redefinition of traditional sexuality and gender roles central to their society and even embraced the idea of a God who was not clearly male or female.
Transcendentalism - idealistic philosophical and social movement that taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity.
Walt Whitman - the self-proclaimed poet of American democracy, was the son of a Lon Island carpenter and lived for many years roaming from place to place, doing odd jobs, while writing poetry. In his large body of poems, Whitman not only helped liberate verse from traditional, restrictive conventions but also helped express the soaring spirit of individualisms that characterized his age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - a Unitarian minister in his youth, Emerson left the church in 1832 to devote himself entirely to writing and teaching the elements of transcendentalism. He was the most important intellectual of his age. He produced a significant body of poetry, but he was most renowned for his essays and lectures.
Lucretia Mott - devoted her life to the abolition of slavery, women's rights, school and prison reforms, temperance, peace, and religious tolerance.
QUESTIONS:
What is "romanticism" and how was it expressed in American literature and art?
• it is an international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and about their world. Romantic writers valued imagination and feeling over intellect and reason. Some celebrated individualism and freedom; they believed in the basic goodness and equality of human beings and in their right to view human life. Others took a more pessimistic view of human life.
• The most important and popular American paintings of the first half of the nineteenth century set out to evoke the wonder of the nation's landscape. They sought to capture the undiluted power of nature by portraying some of the nation's wildest and most spectacular areas - to evoke what many nineteenth century people called the "sublime," the feeling of awe and wonderment and even fear of the grandeur of nature. The first great school of American painters emerged in New York. Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty, and Asher Durand - who were, along with others, known as the Hudson River School - painted the spectacular vistas of the rugged and still largely unsettled Hudson Valley.
• In literature, Romanticism developed from the works of authors such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther" featured a moody, sensitive artist as its protagonist. Romantic works in English include the poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge, who explored the themes of nature and emotion in a poetic language. Other famous English Romantic writers include Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats. Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein" features both a passionate outcast as a protagonist and descriptions of a wild and untamed nature, which mirrors the character's internal torment.
How did religion affect reform movements, and what was the effect of these movements on religion?
The philosophy of reform arose of several distinct sources. One was the optimistic vision of those who, like transcendentalists, rejected Calvinist doctrines and preached the divinity of the individual. Second, and in many respects more important, was Protestant revivalism - the movement that had begun with the Second Great Awakening and had evolved into a powerful force for social reform. Preachers such as Charles Finney used religious reform as a means of social control.
Revivalism became not only a means of personal salvation but also a mandate for the reform (and control) of their society.
What were the aims of the women's movement of the nineteenth century? How successful were women in achieving these goals?
• Angered by the traditional restrictions imposed on women, an organized convention in Seneca Falls was called to discuss the question of women's rights. Out of the meeting emerged a "Declarations of Sentiments," which stated that "all men and women are created equal," that women no less than men have certain inalienable rights. Their most prominent demand was for the right to vote.
• Progress toward feminist goals was limited in the antebellum years, but individual women did manage to break the social barriers to advancement. Feminists benefited greatly from their association with other reform movements, most notably abolitionism; but they also suffered from them.
What arguments and strategies did the abolitionists use in their struggle to end slavery? Who opposed them, and why?
• Important African American leader, David Walker, a free black from Boston, published a harsh pamphlet: Walker's Appeal... to the Colored Citizens. In it he declared: "America is more our country than it is the whites' - we have enriched it with our blood and tears." He warned:
"The whites want slaves, and want us for their slaves, but some of them will curse the day they ever saw us." Slaves should, he declared, cut their masters' throats, should "kill, or be killed!"
• Sojourner Truth, a freed black woman, spent several years involved in a strange religious cult in upstate New York. She emerged as a powerful and eloquent spokeswoman for the abolition of slavery. He founded an antislavery newspaper, the North Star. He achieved wide renown as well for his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in which he presented a picture of slavery. Douglass demanded for African Americans not only freedom but full social and economic equality as well.
• The greatest African American abolitionist of all - and one of the most electrifying orators of his time, was Frederick Douglass. Born a slave in Maryland, Douglass escaped to Massachusetts in 1383, became an outspoken leader of anti-slavery sentiment, and spent two years lecturing in England
• Almost all white southerners, or course, looked on the movement with fear and contempt. But so did many northern whites. The ones, who opposed, thought the abolitionist crusade was a dangerous and frightening threat to the existing social system. Some whites correctly warned that it would produce terrible war between the sections. Others feared, also correctly, that it might lead to a great influx of free blacks into the North. The outspoken abolition movement seemed to many northern whites a sign of the disorienting social changes their society was experiencing - yet another threat to stability and order. To other northerners, mostly men of business, abolition was a threat to lucrative trade with the South.
Attachment:- A new type of recruit.rar