During the years 1825-1850, in the United States, was the age of reform. A time where nationalism and pride grew in the hearts of the American people, that they struggled to bring back the true meaning upon which their country was built. Social, intellectual and religious reform movements in the United States during the years 1825-1850, caused the expansion of democratic ideals through the reformers and reform movements; such as the Women’s Rights Movement, Temperance Movement, Abolitionist Movement, Asylum Reform, Jail Reform, Transcendentalism and the Second Great Awakening, by introducing the idea in the increase of women’s rights, encouraging an abstinence from alcohol, abolishing slavery, improving the treatment of the mentally unstable, …show more content…
Many lower class citizens such as women, African American, and immigrants demanded their god-given rights of suffrage and freedom, and being accepted in society as an equal citizen. The Women’s Rights Movement assembled due to the unfair distribution of rights in men and women. According to Document I, women demanded their right to “be free as man is free, to be represented in the gov’t…[and]…we now demand our right to vote according to the declaration of the gov’t under which we live.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton protests of being inferior to men, being governed without their consent, yet still being taxed by the “democratic” gov’t to which they mean nothing. An engraving by Patrick Reason illustrates an African American woman in chains, with the inscription “Am I not a Woman and Sister?” in Document C, where the woman is shown pleading to be seen and listened to, where white women wanted suffrage and African American women still looked towards their taken freedom praying to be free. In the American society at this point in time African American women were at the bottom of the society’s hierarchical pyramid. Immigrants fought for the possibility for their success in