From the early 1800s to around 1850, there were a series of changes and realizations sweeping across the United States, now that it wasn't so much of a brand new nation. These events were very similar to the Great Awakening that occured in Colonial America, and hence people have called this period the Second Great Awakening. In this second Awakening, there were changes in the ways people viewed several major issues, including treatment of the imprisoned, education and women's rights. These grassroots movements in the Age of Reform were incredibly successful because of the Seneca Falls Convention for Women's Rights, Horace Mann's support of Education Reform, and Dorothea Dix's reforms for the Treatment of the Insane.
The Seneca Falls convention in 1848 was the first organization for Women's Rights in America. It was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady stanton, after being seated in a "women's only" section during a convention for Abolition in London. Fed up by this and other prejudices of women they saw through their lifetimes, they talked about organizing a convention of their own to call to attetion the inequality women suffered, socially and by law. Women could not vote or do many other things that the constitution allowed men to do, and by tradition were treated as the property of a man - their father or husband. The Convention drew around 300 people, 40 of which were men, and addressed these issues and called for people to stand up for their rights as american citizens. This was the start of the large-scale Women's Rights movement, and in 1920, the 19th Amendment was passed, granting Women the right to vote in national and state elections.
Horace Mann was apointed Secretary of Education in Massachusetts in 1837, and from there he strongly pushed for reform in education. He took the old public school system, one that was underfunded, independent from other schools in the same system and taught with little to no enthusiasm, and converted it through legislation and policies into the public school system that almost all states have adopted today. Public education is funded by the state because of his work, school systems for different areas are more closely knit and regulated by a central department, and the teachers do teach children. Before Mann, none of this applied.
Dorothea Dix was a major reform fighter in the 1840s and 50s as well. She fought for the humane treatment of the mentally instable and insane. Treatment for these peple was often brutal and humiliating; mentally ill patients weren's cared for by any stable institution, instead at home and other "institutions" where they were beaten into obedience and not cared for in the least. State by state, Dix filed a series of reports on the treatment of these patients, published them, and pushed for new legislation in each state until such things as mental institutions and hospitals were manditory in each state.
These reforms were all brought about during the early 19th century, when the country was becoming stable and more independent, and had room to expand its new ideas and land. These reforms were also detrimental to the well-being of the United States and from there, the civilized world. Without any of these reform movements in the 19th century, the country would have little dfference in its social standing than it did in the early 1800s.
