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Additional resources for this issue of History Now
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The Age of Reform
These books provide useful surveys of the broad scope
of reform movements in America before the Civil War:
Abzug, Robert H. Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform
and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994)
Ginzberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence:
Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century
United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
McGivigan, John R., ed. Abolitionism and American Reform
(New York: Garland, 1999). A very interesting collection
of essays.
Mintz, Steven. Moralists and Modernizers: America's
Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1995).
Walters, Ronald G. American Reformers, 1815-1860
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1997).
And go to the Digital History website and scroll down
to the "Pre-Civil War Reform" section: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/annot_links_list.cfm
For more information on Thomas Wentworth Higginson, one
of the most fascinating figures in the history of reform,
try these biographies:
Edelstein, Tilden G. Strange Enthusiasm: A Life of
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (New Haven: Yale University,
1968).
Wells, Anna Mary. Dear Preceptor: The Life and Times
of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1963).
This University of Virginia website provides more texts
for Higginson: http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/fdw/volume2/higginson/
Students may be particularly interested in the full text
of Higginson's famous piece on "Negro Spirituals," with
a very helpful introduction, at another Virginia-based
website: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/TWH/TWH_intro.html
Best of all is this section of the E Pluribus Unum website
mounted by Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.
It has a large section on the 1850s, with a fine piece
on Thomas Wentworth Higginson:
http://www.assumption.edu/ahc/HigginsonDefault.html
as well as a fine piece on the temperance movement in
that decade: http://www.assumption.edu/ahc/Theresa%27s%20Main%20Folder/Web%20page%20folder/Title%20Pages/Main%20Title%20Page.html
An interesting website documenting the Black Seminole
influence on the abolitionist movement can be found at:
http://www.johnhorse.com/
The temperance movement is the subject of several good
books. Start with these:
Pegram, Thomas R. Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle
for a Dry America, 1800-1933 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee,
1998).
Tyrrell, Ian R. Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition
in Antebellum America, 1800-1860 (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1979).
The Library Company of Philadelphia provides this great
virtual exhibition on the temperance movement. Don't ignore
the bibliography section for further reading: http://www.librarycompany.org/ArdentSpirits/index.htm
The role of women in antebellum reform and the significance
of the Seneca Falls convention are well covered in:
Epstein, Barbara Leslie. The Politics of Domesticity:
Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century
America (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press,
1981).
Hardesty, Nancy A. Women Called to Witness: Evangelical
Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press, 1999).
Wellman, Judith. The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and the First Woman's Rights Convention
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
Here are two websites that will serve you well when it
comes to the Seneca Falls convention. One from the Library
of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr040.html
and one from the National Organization for Women:
http://www.now.org/nnt/05-98/tour.html
Not surprisingly, there's a Public Broadcasting System
(PBS) site with a helpful lesson plan on nineteenth-century
women and reform: http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/resources/index.php?body=suggested_books.html
If your students are interested in reading de Tocqueville's
Democracy in America, consider this edition, which
is especially well suited to junior high and high school
readers:
Alexis De Tocqueville on Democracy, Revolution, and
Society: Selected Writings. John Stone and Stephen
Mennell,eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
and
Democracy in America. With an introduction by Alan
Ryan. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).
You won't be surprised to learn that the University of
Virginia's website has a splendid segment on de Tocqueville's
masterwork, providing a full text of Democracy in America,
excellent essays on this book and on the work of other
European visitors to America in the nineteenth century,
and maps of de Tocqueville's journey:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.html
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