Antebellum Era Dbq

During the time period between 1825-1850, known as the Antebellum Period, the series of reform movements that emerged sought to democratic ideals of equality, liberty, the right to vote, and a more centralized government. The Second Great Awakening, one of many religious reforms, expanded equality through the belief that everyone could attain salvation through hard work and faith. The Second Great Awakening was the spark for many of the other reform movements, such as Temperance, Women's Rights, and Abolition. These movements along with reforms of prisons and mental facilities, and education attempted to craft America into a more utopian society.
The Second Great Awakening had started after the Revolutionary War, gained momentum around the
For many women, and as shown in Document C, the two causes were intertwined because they work for their own liberty as well. The role of women in the household had begun to change with the ongoing Industrial Revolution. A group of young single women known as Lowell girls worked in factories. In the middle and upper classes, women became the moral and spiritual leaders of their households, known as the Cult of Domesticity. Along with speaking on temperance and abolition, some women began speaking on women's rights at conventions. One such woman was Lucretia Mott. She was focused mostly on women's rights, publishing her influential Discourse on Woman and founding Swarthmore College. She became a Quaker minister, and was noted for her speaking ability. She advocated the boycotting the products of slave labor. She was an early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society. She worked with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the two women organized the first women's rights convention which was held in Seneca Falls, New York. At the convention, Stanton stated that they were assembled to “declare our right to be free as man is free” (Document I) and presented the Declaration of Sentiments, a document written by Stanton and based on the form of the Declaration of Independence. It declared that men and women were equal and that women had no representation since they couldn't vote. Frederick Douglass, who was in attendance at the convention and helped pass the resolutions in the Declaration of Sentiments called the document the “grand basis for attaining the civil, social, political, and religious rights of women”. The Grimke sisters, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth were also suffragists. The Women's Rights Movement expanded democratic ideals because it pushed for equality and the right to vote for