The reform movements that arose during the antebellum period in America focused on specific issues: temperance, abolishing imprisonment for debt, pacifism, antislavery, abolishing capital punishment, amelioration (the act of improving something) of prison conditions (with prison's purpose reconceived as rehabilitation rather than punishment), the humane treatment of animals, the humane and just treatment of Native Americans, the establishment of public institutions for the care of the destitute, orphans, blind, and mentally ill, the establishment of public schools, the abolition of tobacco use, vegetarianism, health reform, homeopathic medicine, women's rights (the establishment of a woman's right to own property apart from her husband and her right to sue for divorce), and the amelioration of labor conditions (higher pay, the right to form unions, the right to strike, and the demand for limits on the number of work hours, and safe working conditions).

Question

Universal Reform

Although many people became convinced or active in one or two of these issues, the leading activists for these causes were often interchangeable, and would meet at loosely linked conventions of reformers, where they shared enthusiasms and political strategies, and jostled for leadership niches in the various reform movements. All these causes did not arise at the same time, but were added or fully articulated one by one. As each arose, many reformers—who took to calling themselves "universal reformers"—took them on and added them to their own collection of causes.

Religious Foundations of Radical Reform

The reformers were often nourished by Anabaptist roots—especially Baptist or Quaker—or by a form of faith that was essentially Puritanism that decided to reform its doctrine of "endless misery," into an optimistic one of a progressively more joyful heaven on earth. The center of the reform movement was New England (especially Boston) and areas further west, like Ohio and then Michigan, where New Englanders were resettling.

Persistence of the Reform Movement

Historians have often focused on the antebellum period as the "era of reform" in America, culminating in the anti-slavery crusade of the Civil War, but it is also true that 1865 did not mark the end of the reform movement, but initiated a period that persists until today in which reformers, seemingly vindicated by the end of slavery as a result of the war, shifted their thinking so as to focus on the secular State, particularly the federal government, as the main instrument for reforming society along Progressive lines.

Two-Part Question
Part A
Multiple Choice Question
Key reform issues focused on
A.
foreign policy, marriage, women's rights, and religion.
B.
women having the right to work and gain equal pay.
C.
abolishing capital punishment, debtors prisons, humane treatment of animals, antislavery, just treatment of Native Americans, and temperance.
D.
abolising of slavery, just treatment of women, and prohibition.
Part B
Multiple Choice Question
Religious reform sought progressive practices to ensure people worked hard to go to heaven.
A.
True
B.
False

Answer 1

Part A: C. abolishing capital punishment, debtors prisons, humane treatment of animals, antislavery, just treatment of Native Americans, and temperance.

Part B: A. True