Immigrants and the Cities Questions:

1. Why did nativists fear immigration?

Because the nativists felt threatened by the immigrants’ different cultural and religious backgrounds and the economic competition they presented. They also feared losing their jobs to them because the immigrants were willing to work for a lower wage.

1. Provide at least three positive and three negative aspects of the rapid growth of American cities in the mid-1800s.

Positive:

• African Americans found many jobs

• A middle class developed

• People found entertainment and an enriched cultural life in places such as libraries and clubs

Negative:

• african americans faced many restrictions and opposition from white workers

• Crowded and noisy since it was compact; people complained it was hard to sleep

• People that lived there were always in a hurry and frustrated

• Immigrants could only afford to live in tenements so diseases spread quick

• as populations rose, urban cities became the center of criminal activity

• fire protection was poor, shortages of first line workers; relied on volunteers

3. What types of economic and political problems encouraged more than 3 million people from Germany and Ireland to immigrate to the United States between 1840 and 1860?

• Ireland had the Irish Famine which was caused by a potato blight.

• Germans came because of their failed revolution, so they came to escape persecution.

  • The Irish did worse because they were hated for being protestant. The German did better, came with more skills and came with more money.

4. N/A

5. What stereotypes did nativists form about immigrants? How were these stereotypes inaccurate, and how did they make life more difficult for immigrants?

• They tried to convince people that they were harming the country.

• They would say that they were thieves and vagabonds, monopolizing the business which belongs to true-borns.

Vocab:

• Nativists: People who opposed immigrants

• Know-Nothing Party: Formed by nativists. When asked questions by outsiders, its members answered, “I know nothing.”

• Middle class: A social and economic level between the wealthy and the poor, families of merchants (managers, accountants, attorney)

• Tenements: Dirty, overcrowded, and poorly built housing structures, immigrants lived in them

Reforming Society Questions:

1. Why were middle-class Americans, particularly women, active in reform movements during the 1800s? What aspects of American society did the reformers hope to change?

• Because they wanted to improve social conditions in the United States since they had more time due to domestic servants doing household chores for them and time saving devices.

• They wanted to change the prison system, they wanted to make reform schools for children, they also tried to prevent alcohol abuse.

2. What societal problems did many reformers blame on the use of alcohol?

• Family violence

• poverty

• criminal behavior

3. Which region of the United States had the most schools? In what region did African Americans and women have the greatest educational opportunities?

• New England had the most schools and the South had the least.

• African Americans and women had the greatest educational opportunities in the North.

• Slaves in the South were not permitted to receive any education.

Vocab:

• Dorothea Dix: a middle-class reformer who helped change the prison system in the U.S. started state hospitals for the mentally ill

• Temperance movement: a movement that encouraged people to use self-discipline to stop drinking hard liquor and to drink beer and wine only in small amounts.

• Lyman Beecher: a minister that preached widely about alcohol’s evil effects

• Horace Mann: the leading voice for the educational reforms. He was appointed as first secretary of education for Massachusetts in 1837 (known as the father of education), he doubled the school budget. His ideas for education spread throughout Latin America and Europe.

• Common-school movement: a movement to improve the education of young Americans

• Catharine Beecher: daughter of Lyman Beecher, was one of the most effective women’s educational reformers during the early 1800’s. She based her campaign on the belief that women had a superior ability to teach the moral lessons that made good citizens. She established an all-female academy in Hartford, Connecticut, and wrote several influential essays

• Emma Willard: Established the first college level institution in the U.S. for women

• Mary Lyon: Founded Mount Holyoke Seminary in Massachusetts in 1837 (womens college)

• Samuel Gridley Howe: He significantly improved the education of visually impaired Americans. He did this by opening a school for people with visual impairments called the Perkins Institute.

• Thomas Gallaudet: Improved the education and lives of hearing impaired people by going to France for 2 years to study their methods. Then he opened his own school in Hartford, Connecticut.

Womens Rights Questions:

1. Why did many female abolitionists also become active in the women’s rights movement?

• Because they discovered that they had to defend a woman's right to speak in public.

2. What were the main goals of the women’s rights movement?

• Equal educational opportunities

• identify laws that negatively affected women

• equal pay for work

3. Why did Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organize the Seneca Falls Convention, and who participated in it?

• They organized it becuase while Elizabeth Cady Stanton was on her honeymoon in London, England, she attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention. While there, the women had to be separated from the men with a curtain and were not allowed to participate. Because of the poor treatment that the women received at the convention, Stanton and Lucretia Mott, decided to hold a convention as soon as they returned home, and form a society to advance the rights of women. Eight years later, Stanton and Mott sent out a notice announcing the Seneca Falls Convention, to be held on July 19, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York. More than 300 people attended the convention. Some of these people included: Frederick Douglass, abolitionist’s, women that worked in nearby factories including Charlotte Woodward.

Vocab:

• Sojourner Truth: Another extremely active speaker for abolition and women’s rights

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A womens rights activist who went to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England during her honeymoon. Because of the treatment she received there, she decided to create her women’s rights convention 8 years later in Seneca Falls, NY.

• Lucretia Mott: Elizabeth's acquaintance who helped plan the Sececa Falls Convention

• Seneca Falls Convention: A convention to form a society to advance the rights of women. Held on July 19th, 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York.

• Declaration of Sentiments: A document which the organizers of the convention wrote to present their case. It modeled on the language of the Declaration of Independence. At the convention, 100 people signed the document, which detailed their beliefs about social injustice against women.

• Lucy Stone: One of the most important women's rights movements in the U.S. She was a well-known speaker for the Anti-Slavery Society. She became one of the first women’s rights activists to suggest changing the institution of marriage.

• Susan B. Anthony: One of the most important women's rights movements in the U.S. She argued that men and women should receive equal pay and that women should be allowed to enter traditionally male professions. She argued that women should be able to own property.

Declaration of Sentiments Questions:

1. What are some of the injustices that the declaration describes?

• Women may not vote,

• women may not own property,

• women may not be payed as much as men are,

• women must look up to men,

• women may not receive a thorough education, and

• women may not be independent.

2. How is the Declaration of Sentiments modeled after the Declaration of Independence?

• It reads, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

3. Are the rights demanded in the declaration granted to women in the United States today? Explain your answer.

• Yes.

  • Women may vote,

  • they may own property,

  • they must be payed equal to men,

  • they do not need to look up to men,

  • they may receive a thorough education, and

  • they are most definitely independent whenever they wish to be.