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The First Public Schools Are Instituted
Horace Mann led the education reform, arguing in favor of free public schools for everyone. By the 1820s, New York had public schools in every town. -
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The Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening took place in the 1820s and 1830s. It was a revival of religion that spread across the country. Preachers taught that people could repent for their sins, often by doing good deeds, and could end up going to Heaven. -
Abolition Movement Is Started
In the 1830s, many people started to doubt the morality of slavery and began to oppose it. pic. by David Paul Ohmer -
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Fighting Slavery
The 1830s marked the start of the abolition movement, which ended in 1868 when the 14th amendment was passed. It was one of the main causes of the Civil War. -
World Anti-Slavery Convention
At the World Anti-Slavery Convention, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two leaders of the women's rights movement, met, and decided to hold a women's rights convention. -
Dorothea Dix Teaches Sunday School in Prison
In 1841, Dorothea Dix first taught Sunday school in a prison in Boston. In that prison she observed the horrible conditions there, such as inmates bound in chains and beaten. Dix went to prisons around the state and observed the conditions, which she reported to the state legislature. Dix's observations started the reform to make conditions better for prisoners and the mentally ill. -
Frederick Douglass Publishes His Autobiography
In 1845, escaped slave Frederick Douglass published his autobiography, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass. He became a leader of the abolition movement, and his book was very influential. -
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Women's Suffrage Movement
In 1848, kicked off by the Seneca Falls Convention and the Declaration of Sentiments, women and some men began to petition for voting rights for women, among other rights. The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, granted these rights to women.
