uring the decades preceding the Civil War, reformers launched
unprecedented campaigns to educate the deaf and the blind,
to rehabilitate cure the mentally ill, extend equal rights
to women, and abolish slavery. Inspired by the Declaration
of Independence, the Enlightenment's faith in reason,
and liberal and evangelical religious principles, educational
reformers created a system of free public education; prison
reformers constructed specialized institutions to rehabilitate
criminals, temperance reformers sought to end the drinking
of hard liquor; and utopian socialists established ideal
communities to serve as models for a better world. Our
modern systems of free public schools, prisons, and hospitals
for the infirm and the mentally ill are products of this
first age of American reform.
Background
The decades before the Civil War saw the birth of the
American reform tradition. America's first age
of reform was also an era of extraordinary intellectual
and artistic ferment.
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Learn more about the first American reform movements and
the emergence of a distinctive American culture
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