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Anne Lee and the Shakers Emigrate to the US
Anne Lee, an 18th century British factory worker believed she was the female embodiment of Jesus. She preached that believers need to return to the simplicity of the early Church, sharing their property, withdrawing from the world and practicing celibacy. Shaker communities were organized into “families” of 30 to 100 members, each of which was supervised by a panel of 8 people (4 men and 4 women). Their ministry was guided by equally of men and women. -
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism was a literary and artistic movement in New England in the 1820s through 1840s. Transcendental writers and artists believed that human beings were truly divine because they were part of nature, itself the essence of divinity. Their intellectual capacities did not define their capabilities for they could “transcend” reason by having faith in themselves. -
Robert Owen Founded Community in New Harmony, IN
Scottish industrialist and philanthropist, Owen wanted to create a new order. He argued that social ills (ignorance, poverty, crime) were due to environmental factors (slums, overwork, lack of education) and could be cured through healthy democratic, egalitarian communities, with a population of 1,000 to 2,000 people on 600 to 1,800 acres of land. This community ended up collapsing. -
Joseph Smith Published the Translation of the Book of Mormon
Smith preached that God sent an angel name Moroni to Smith to reveal to him golden tablets. These tablets contained information that Native Americans were actually one of the tribes of Israel. In these tablets, God also revealed to Smith his intentions for the “latter days” of creation, now approaching. He attracted rural followers, most of whom had been displaced by changes in the North. -
Horace Mann Becomes Secretary of First Board of Education in MA
Horace Man was a proponent of public education, believing that children should be molded by teachers and school officials into a state of perfection. For those who argued that school that school taxes violated property rights, Mann responded that private property was actually held in trust for the good of the community. By teaching middle-class morality and order, the schools could turn potential rowdies into law-abiding citizens. -
Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers “the American Scholar” Address at Harvard
He urged Americans to put aside their devotion to things European and seek inspiration in their immediate surroundings, because he believed it was America’s destiny to fulfill “expectations of the world.” The new industrial society of New England troubled him. Because he put so much emphasis on self-reliance, Emerson disliked powerful governments – “the less government the better” -
Dorothea Dix’s “Memorial” is Published
Hospitals for mentally ill patients were meant to cure, not just confine them. But these were staffed with people who were not trained to work with such patients. Dix, who was a schoolteacher that became a social worker, spent 30 years trying to improve conditions for the mentally ill. She wrote that the mentally ill were being kept in cages and closets, “chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.” Her memorial was meant to shock state legislators into action. -
Henry David Thoreau Built a Cabin at Walden Pond
As a transcendentalist, he set out to prove that if necessary an individual could get along without the products of civilization. He did not try to be entirely self-sufficient. He used manufactured plaster in building his Walden cabin, but he also gathered clamshells and made a small quantity of line himself, to prove that it could be done. -
John Humphrey Noyes Established Oneida Community
He attracted over 200 followers with his utopian vision of multiple marriage partners (he came up with the term “free love”), community nurseries, group discipline and common ownership of property. Noyes fled to Canada in 1879 after he was charged with adultery. The Oneida Community reorganized in 1881 as a joint-stock company and went back to conventional sexual mores. -
Seneca Falls Convention about Women’s Rights
Organizers of this event included Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. About 300 people showed up including abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The group debated, voted on and passed a Declaration of Sentiments. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, it demanded specific social and legal changes including a role in lawmaking, improved property right, equity in divorce and access to education and professions. -
Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” is Published
Thoreau considered war to be immoral because it advanced the cause of slavery. To protest he refused to pay the MA poll tax. For this he was arrested and spent a night in jail (he aunt came and paid the tax for him immediately). This essay explained his view of the proper relation between the individual and the state, resulting from that experience. -
Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" is Published
On the surface, this is the story of Thoreau’s experiment of living solitary existence at Walden Pond. But it was also a criticism of the social behavior of the average American, an attack on unthinking conformity, on subordinating one’s judgment to that of the herd.