Chapter 12 Objectives

1. Romanticism was used to show that America had intellectuals just like Britain, it
attempted to start “American Literature/Art”. One of the largest schools for
American art was the Hudson River School; it gave a name to Thomas Cole,
Thomas Doughty and Asher Durand. They considered nature the best source of
wisdom.

2. Cooper, Whitman, and Poe all gave America its own style of writing, different
than that of Britain. They gave praise to the way of American society and their
new way of life.

3. The Transcendentalists were a group of New England writers and philosophers.

They tried to transcend reality and used words in their writing that were
unfamiliar and strange to many people. They tried to show the distinction between
reason and understanding.

4. Many religious reforms intended to create a Utopian society. Some of these

societies were The Shakers, The Mormons and Brook Farm. They originated in an
area in upstate New York known as the Burned Over District; it was called that
because it was so open to religious reform.

5.

6. Many states experienced growth and expansion in education, the built new
schools, created teacher’s colleges and offered vast new groups of children access
to educations. Many states passed laws giving state funds to education. Many
people even tried to educate Indians in order to make them “civilized”.

7. Women in the 1830s and 1840s suffered from the new “Separate Spheres’ doctrine
that was passed. Many of the women that participated in the reform movements
began to defy the doctrine and argued that men and women were created equal.

8. In the beginning, the Anti-Slavery movement was centered on a few people

expressing moral disapproval and not doing much to stop it. In 1817, a group of
whites organized the ACS which worked carefully to challenge slavery without
challenging property rights or southern sensibilities. The ACS proposed a gradual
freeing of slaves in order to smooth the transition.

9. William Garrison created The Liberator as a reformer magazine. He told

abolitionists to look at slavery through the eyes of a slave and not the slave owner.
He told Americans to reject gradualism and stated that slavery should be ended
immediately.

10. Wilberforce’s movement in England became and important source of the

abolitionist movement as it gained strength in the 1820s and 1830s. No other
nation had as bad of consequences ending slavery as the United States. But its
abolition was a big step in the worldwide movement against human bondage.