Illustrated Timeline of Key Ideas/Events/People from 1820-1840

The Shakers were a religious group founded by Mother Ann Lee, who was from England. The first Shaker community was established in New York, and after that, there were more communities established, ranging from Maine to Kentucky. The Shakers aimed to establish communities in America based on their ideologies. The Shaker communities were based on the idea that males and females are spiritually equal, so most of the things they did in the community were separated by sex.

The American Colonization Society was an organization founded in 1816 to encourage free blacks to colonize Africa. This organization promoted the abolition of slavery and the colonization of free blacks in Africa. The country of Liberia was created based on this idea. The aim of this organization was to have the free blacks colonize Africa after they were emancipated instead of staying in America.

Communitarianism was a social reform movement based on the idea that a community with common ownership of property could develop a well-functioning society. Different people and groups of people used the idea of communitarianism to establish communities based on their ideologies. Communitarianism aimed to accomplish a community that was less competitive and more individualistic.

New Harmony was a community in Indiana established by British industrialist Robert Owen in 1825. This community was one of the few at the time not to be based on religious ideology. The goal of New Harmony was to create a community with the idea that a person's character was formed from themself. Owen believed people could be transformed by changing the circumstances they were in. New Harmony influenced things like the labor movement, the women’s rights movement, and schools.

The temperance movement was a widespread movement led by militant Christians to reduce the use of alcohol. The American Temperance Society, founded in 1826, aimed to reduce everyone’s alcohol consumption. By the 1830s, the society claimed to have persuaded hundreds of thousands of people to give up consuming alcohol. By 1840, the consumption of alcohol dropped to half of what it was in the decade before. The temperance movement aimed to reduce the consumption of alcohol.

Perfectionism was the idea that social ills that were thought to be incurable could be eliminated. The idea was popularized by the religious revivals of that century. People acted on the idea by making environments where the character of these afflicted people could change. With this, many institutions were created, like asylums and prisons. Perfectionism aims to transform the character of afflicted people into self-disciplined members of society.

Feminism is a word used to describe the widespread movement for equality for women in all facets of life. Early in the feminist movement, women tried to wear down the barriers that prevented them from achieving equality. A famous feminist writer was Margaret Fuller. Also, there were conventions, the most well-known at Seneca Falls, that consisted of women discussing their equality. The feminist movement aimed to achieve equality for women.

The American Anti-Slavery Society was an organization founded in 1833 that fought for the emancipation of slaves and equality for blacks. William Lloyd Garrison was one of the most famous people in the movement. He was most famous for his anti-slavery newspaper called The Liberator. Another famous person in the movement was Theodore Weld, a young minister who was a great speaker. A big thing Weld did was label slavery as a sin. This society aimed to end slavery and gain equality for blacks.

Moral suasion was an abolitionist strategy to end slavery by trying to convince slave owners and indifferent people of the North that slavery was evil. A lot of the abolitionists were pacifists, so instead of advocating for violence to end slavery, they used moral suasion to try to convince people that slavery was a sinful institution. The language used was mainly provocative, trying to gain the attention of the masses. Moral suasion aims to convince people that slavery is evil.

Gentlemen of property and standing were usually merchants with close commercial ties to the South that resisted abolition and even incited violence against abolitionists. These people disrupted abolitionist meetings. They also almost ended up killing William Lloyd Garrison. Elijah P. Lovejoy was the first martyr of the abolition movement after he died trying to protect his printing press from a mob. Gentlemen of property and standing aimed to stop abolitionists from trying to end slavery.

The gag rule was a rule adopted by the House of Representatives in 1836 that said they wouldn’t accept any petitions for the emancipation of slaves. Led by John Quincy Adams, the rule was repealed in 1844. The gag rule prohibited the consideration of petitions to congress to emancipate slaves. The gag rule aimed to limit the abolitionist’s freedom of speech.

A common school was a tax-supported state school in the 1800s that was open to all children. Horace Mann served as the director of the state's board of education and was the era's leading education reformer. Mann hoped that common schools could bring equality in the nation by bringing children from all classes together in a similar learning environment. Common schools aim to help people, regardless of their background, be able to advance in society.

The Liberty Party was an abolitionist party that nominated James G. Birney as its candidate for president. Some abolitionists feared that William Lloyd Garrison’s radical views on things like women’s rights and abolitionists voting and running for office would hinder the anti-slavery movement’s growth, so they created the Liberty Party. In 1848, this party merged with the Free Soil Party. The Liberty Party aimed to grow the abolition movement by making it a political movement.

Brook farm was a transcendentalist community established in Massachusetts in 1841 that mostly housed writers, teachers, ministers, and other intellectuals. The community was modeled partly by the ideas of Charles Fourier, a French social reformer. Everything in the community was specifically planned out, like the number of people, the income earned, and even the times for leisure. This community aimed to show that manual labor and intellectual labor could coexist well together.

Dorothea Dix was important in showing the public the unfortunate situation of mentally ill people. She went on a two-year investigation into how the mentally ill were treated in Massachusetts, and when she presented her findings, many leading reformers came to support her. With all of her findings, she convinced 20 states to reform their treatment of the mentally ill. The aim of her efforts was for the better treatment of the insane.

Oneida was a utopian community founded in New York in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes. Noyes believed that he and his followers were sinless. Noyes also taught his followers that they were all a family of equals. So, they practiced a “complex marriage,” which meant that a man could have relations with any woman if they accepted him. The community was a very dictatorial environment. Oneida aimed to create a place where Noyes and his followers could live based on his ideals.

Woman suffrage is a movement to give women the right to vote through a constitutional amendment. This movement was led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s National Women Suffrage Association. This movement took off after the Seneca Falls convention. In this convention, the women made a Declaration of Sentiments similar to the Declaration of Independence but just included “women” in everything. The aim of woman suffrage is for women to earn the right to vote.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an anti-slavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. By showing that slaves were sympathetic Christian people, mistreated by their slave owners, the novel successfully convinced people of the abolitionist message. The novel was based partly on the life of a fugitive slave, Josiah Henson. By 1854, over one million copies of the novel were sold. The novel aimed to show slaves in a good light in order for more people to accept the abolitionist position.