United States

Horace MannCourtesy of Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OhioMillennialism—the belief that the world might soon end and had to be purged of sin before Christ’s Second Coming (as preached by revivalists such as Charles Grandison Finney)—found its counterpart in secular perfectionism, which held that it was possible to abolish every form of social and personal suffering through achievable changes in the way the world worked. Hence, a broad variety of crusades and crusaders flourished. Universal education was seen as the key to it all, which accounted for many college foundings and for the push toward universal free public schooling led by Horace Mann, who went from being the secretary to Massachusetts’s State Board of Education to being the president of Antioch College, where he told his students to “be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

One way to forge such victories was to improve the condition of those whom fate had smitten and society had neglected or abused. There was, for example, the movement to provide special education for the deaf, led by Samuel Gridley Howe, as well as the founding of an institute to teach the blind by Boston merchant Thomas Handasyd Perkins, who found philanthropy a good way for a Christian businessman to show his appreciation for what he saw as God’s blessings on his enterprises. There also was the work of Dorothea Lynde Dix to humanize the appalling treatment of the insane, which followed up on the precedent set by Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, a devout believer in God and science.

As the march of industrialization made thousands of workers dependent on the uncontrollable ups and downs of the business cycle and the generosity of employers—described by some at the time as “putting the living of the many in the hands of the few”—the widening imbalance between classes spurred economic reformers to action. Some accepted the permanence of capitalism but tried to enhance the bargaining power of employees through labour unions. Others rejected the private enterprise model and looked to a reorganization of society on cooperative rather than competitive lines. Such was the basis of Fourierism and utopian socialism. One labour reformer, George Henry Evans, proposed that wages be raised by reducing the supply of labourers through awarding some of them free farms, “homesteads” carved from the public domain. Even some of the fighters for immigration restriction who belonged to the Know-Nothing Party had the same aim—namely, to preserve jobs for the native-born. Other reformers focused on peripheral issues such as the healthier diet expounded by Sylvester Graham or the sensible women’s dress advocated by Amelia Jenks Bloomer, both of whom saw these small steps as leading toward more-rational and gentle human behaviour overall.

Charles Fourier.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Whatever a reform movement’s nature, whether as pragmatic as agricultural improvement or as utopian as universal peace, the techniques that spread the message over America’s broad expanses were similar. Voluntary associations were formed to spread the word and win supporters, a practice that Tocqueville, in 1841, found to be a key to American democracy. Even when church-affiliated, these groups were usually directed by professional men rather than ministers, and lawyers were conspicuously numerous. Next came publicity through organizational newspapers, which were easy to found on small amounts of capital and sweat. So when, as one observer noted, almost every American had a plan for the universal improvement of society in his pocket, every other American was likely to be aware of it.

Two of these crusades lingered in strength well beyond the Civil War era. Temperance was one, probably because it invoked lasting values—moralism, efficiency, and health. Drinking was viewed as a sin that, if overindulged, led to alcoholism, incurred social costs, hurt productivity, and harmed one’s body. The women’s rights crusade, which first came to national attention in the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, persisted because it touched upon a perennial and universal question of the just allotment of gender roles.

woman suffrage: Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca FallsSignatories to the Declaration of Sentiments, which was set forth at the Seneca Falls Convention, held at Seneca Falls, New York, July 1848.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Bernard A. Weisberger

Abolitionism