Age of Reform late 1820's-1850's

An Age of Reform

Historians have labeled the period 1830–50 an “age of reform.” At the same time that the pursuit of the dollar was becoming so frenzied that some observers called it the country’s true religion, tens of thousands of Americans joined an array of movements dedicated to spiritual and secular uplift. There is not yet agreement as to why a rage for reform erupted in the antebellum decades. A few of the explanations cited, none of them conclusive, include an outburst of Protestant Evangelicalism, a reform spirit that swept across the Anglo-American community, a delayed reaction to the perfectionist teachings of the Enlightenment, and the worldwide revolution in communications that was a feature of 19th-century capitalism.

What is not in question is the amazing variety of reform movements that flourished simultaneously in the North—women’s rights, pacifism, temperance, prison reform, abolition of imprisonment for debt, an end to capital punishment, improving the conditions of the working classes, a system of universal education, the organization of communities that discarded private property, improving the condition of the insane and the congenitally enfeebled, and the regeneration of the individual were among the causes that inspired zealots during the era.

~ Encyclopedia Britannica