Reform Movement Research Paper

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The reform movement took place during the 19th century. Inspired by the Second Great Awakening, America's citizens started multiple social reform movements in the antebellum era.These reform movements fought against slavery, women's rights,and the poor treatment of people in prison and asylums. The reform movements influenced the development of the United States by changing the way Americans viewed slavery and women. The reform movements pushed for women's rights to be equal to all other citizens. Originally, women were seen as the inferior gender. According to "Is it a crime for a citizen of the United States to vote?", "We represent fifteen million people-one-hafe the entire population of the country - the Constitution classes us as 'free …show more content…

Before these movements, slaves were greatly repressed and treated as subhuman. For example " Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" states, "(My master) would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping slave. I have often awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood... It was the blood- stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit paper the feeling with which I beheld (saw) it." This expresses that slaves were beaten to the point of blood with no compassion or remorse from their owners. Slavery was popular in the 1800s, causing slaves be kidnapped and transported on slave vessels illegally, the movements caused judges to see the slaves' point of view. "In February and March of 1839, the 53 Africans who would later find themselves on the Amistad arrived at Blanco's slave depot, know as Lomboko, after being arduous ly marched there from Sierra Leone ' s interior. Most of them had essentially been kidnapped, whereas others had been captured in Warfare, taken as debt repayment or punished for crimes...Kidnapped and transported illegally, they never been slaves...the opinion in this case more narrowly asserted the Africans right to resist 'unlawful' slavery. The court ordered the immediate." This shows that the Amistad was one of many slave vessels that abused and illegally taken their slaves, the Amistad case was one that moved towards allowing for Africans to resist. This proves that the reform movements allowed for slaves to be seen as

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