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American Public Education

Horace Mann, often called the Father of the Common School, began his career as a lawyer and
legislator. When he was elected to act as Secretary of the newly-created Massachusetts Board of
Education in 1837, he used his position to enact major educational reform. He spearheaded the Common
School Movement, ensuring that every child could receive a basic education funded by local taxes. His
influence soon spread beyond Massachusetts as more states took up the idea of universal schooling.
Mann's commitment to the Common School sprang from his belief that political stability and social
harmony depended on education. Mann believed that public schooling was central to good citizenship,
democratic participation, and societal well-being. He observed, A republican form of government, without
intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or
keepers, would be on a small one. Mann was influential in:

The development of teacher training schools.

The earliest attempts to professionalize teaching.
The actual establishment of the first Normal Schools in Massachusetts.
The improvement of the quality of education offered in rural schools.
The recruitment of women into the ranks of teachers.

Abolition
The Abolitionist Movement had as its goal the ending of slavery. Some people objected to
slavery on moral grounds, believing that it was wrong for one human to own another. Others believed that
slavery made America look bad on the world stage and was bad for American business.
There were many leaders in the Abolitionist Movement and most were non-violent abolitionists
who gave speeches, demonstrated, made posters, published newspapers and books against slavery.
William Lloyd Garrison started publishing an anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, in 1831. Frederick
Douglass, an escaped slave, was a lecturer and publisher of another newspaper, The North Star.
Sojourner Truth traveled through the North speaking against slavery and for womens rights. Harriet
Tubman, often called the Black Moses, gained fame as someone who conducted slaves to freedom on
the Underground Railroad. She helped over 300 slaves and this system of safe houses and people
helped several hundred others to escape the slave system. But this was a very limited solution given the
approximately 3,000,000 slaves in the South by 1860.
There were other who believed that there were other solutions to the issue of slavery including
the Back to Africa movement that actually sent many slaves back to Africa to establish the nation of
Liberia [taken from the word liberty] on the west coast of Africa. Others became more violent abolitionists
and led slave revolts and encouraged slaves to fight back against the systems. These violent abolitionists
believed that the only way to end slavery was to attack slave owners
There were many slave revolts including Nat Turners rebellion and later the impact of the violent
abolitionist, John Brown who led a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia to steal guns from a Federal Arsenal (a
place where the military keeps their guns) so that slaves could revolt. He was captured, tried, and
hanged. He became a hero to some Northern abolitionists and a symbol of a real threat to Southerners.
John Browns raid at Harpers Ferry became one of the immediate causes of the American Civil War.
After the Civil War ended, the 13th Amendment finally abolished slavery and the 14th
Amendment, which granted citizenship and provided for due process, and 15th Amendment, which
guaranteed the right to vote to adult males, extended those rights that Abolitionists fought for to former
slaves.

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Womens Rights including Womens Suffrage

In 19th century America, women could not vote, sit on juries, or hold public office. There were few
opportunities for education because it was believed that a womans place was in the home. In 1848, a
convention organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton met in Seneca Falls, NY, and released
a document modeled on the Declaration of Independence. In this Seneca Falls Declaration, the leaders
called for women to have the right to vote, exercise authority over their property, educational and
employment opportunities, and the right of self-determination. Susan B. Anthony also became a leader in
the movement for womens rights.
For a long time, nothing much came of this document or convention. It was more than 70 years
later, in 1920, before women were finally given the right to vote (suffrage) in national elections by the 19th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Temperance
The Temperance Movement was a movement to curb (lessen) the use of alcohol. Many men
under the influence of alcohol would abuse their wives and children, or abandon their families altogether.
It was fairly common for a man to get paid on Friday and spend all of his pay on alcohol without ever
going home to his wife and children. Abraham Lincoln addressed the temperance issue as early as 1842.
Although there were attempts at reform during the 19th century, it was only in the 20th century
that the Temperance Movement finally gained the victory it sought with the passage of the 18th
Amendment in 1919. This amendment banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol within
the United States. The amendment was repealed in 1933 in the 21st Amendment.

Prison and Mental Health Reform

Dorothea Dix is best remembered as a social and political activist whose work on behalf of the
mentally ill precipitated major prison reform beginning in the 1840's. In March of 1841 she entered the
East Cambridge Jail where she volunteered to teach a Sunday School class for women inmates. Upon
entering the jail she witnessed such horrible images that her life was changed forever. Within the confines
of this jail she observed that prostitutes, drunks, criminals, retarded individuals, and the seriously mentally
ill were all housed together in unheated, unfurnished, and foul-smelling quarters. When asked why the jail
conditions were so bad, the answer she was given was that the insane do not feel heat or cold.
Her documentation of the deplorable prison conditions across the country and overseas led to the
establishment of many new mental institutions.