Ch. 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture

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John Greenleaf Whittier: Quaker who was the unofficial poet laureate of the antislavery movement, influential in his writings against inhumanity, injustice, and intolerance.
Gilbert Stuart: Rhode Island painter who became a renowned artist in Britain, known for his idealized portraits of Washington.
Robert Owen: Scottish textile manufacturer who founded a community of about a thousand people in 1825 at New Harmony, Indiana, which failed to produced communitarian harmony and quickly collapsed.
Seneca Falls Convention: Convention for women's rights in 1848, at which Stanton read a "Declaration of Sentiments", launching the modern women's rights movement and demanding female suffrage.
Benjamin Stillman: Pioneer chemist and geologist who wrote and taught at Yale for more than half a century.
Hudson River School: Art school that specialized in romantic paintings of local landscapes.
Emily Dickinson: Reclusive female poet of Amherst, Massachusetts, whose entire body of two thousand poems were published only posthumously.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Puritan author who grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, best known for his novels The Scarlet Letter and The Marble Faun.
Francis Parkman: American historian with terrible vision, he chronicled in darkness the conflict between France and Britain for North America.
Maine Law of 1851: Called "the law of Heaven Americanized", it prohibited the manufacture and sale of liquor.
James Fenimore Cooper: The first American novelist to gain worldwide fame, he decided that he could write better than what he viewed as "insipid" English novelists, he wrote such famed works as The Spy, Leatherstocking Tales, and The Last of the Mohicans.
John Trumbull: American painter who had fought in the Revolutionary War and made it his practice to recreate scenes of the war.
Transcendentalism: A liberalization of Puritan theology, it held the belief that each person possessed an inner ability to illuminate the highest truth, therefore, understanding came from within, and not from any external authority.
The Mormons: Drilled a militia to protect their controversial polygamist sect, they moved west under Young's leadership and settled in Utah in 1848, which would not achieve statehood for another 48 years due to their controversial presence.
Daguerreotype: Crude ancestor of photography, pioneered in 1839 by a Frenchman, after whom it was named.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Transcendentalist Bostonian who was trained as a Unitarian minister before rejecting the pulpit for the life of a writer, becoming an influential lyceum lecturer and known for his Harvard address "The American Scholar". He was also known for his philosophy and outspoken criticism of slavery.
Oneida Community: Radical community founded in New York in 1848, practicing free love, birth control and eugenic selection of parents. It lasted for more than thirty years due to the prosperous silver and steel industry.
Mary Lyon: Established Mount Holyoke Seminary for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts in 1837.
Lyceum lecture association: Organizations that numbered about three thousand in 1835, providing platforms for lecturers in areas such as science, literature, and philosophy.
James Russell Lowell: Succeeded Longfellow at Harvard, he was a poet who was also known for his essays and literary criticism, as well as the satirist of the Biglow Papers.
Walt Whitman: Brooklyn poet who wrote the collection Leaves of Grass, known for his unconventional style and frank dealings with topics such as human sexuality.
Charles Grandison Finney: Greatest of the revival preachers, he was trained as a lawyer before becoming an evangelist. Led revivals in Rochester and New York City in 1830 and 1831. He invented the "anxious bench", where sinners were to sit in full view of the congregation. Served as president of Oberlin College in Ohio.
Deists: Philosophical/religious group that relied on reason rather than revelation and on empirical fact rather than the Bible, rejecting original sin and Christ's divinity.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Mother of seven who insisted on leaving the word "obey" out of his marriage vows, and was the first to advocate suffrage for women.
Joseph Smith: Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he claimed to have received his doctrine on golden plates from an angel.
Edgar Allan Poe: Virginian poet and writer of short stories, known for his mastery of horror, as well as his precarious mental and physical health.
The Second Great Awakening: Wave of religious revivals around 1800 that encouraged a culture of evangelicalism responsible for an upswing in prison reform, the temperance cause, the feminist movement, and abolition.
American Peace Society: Formed in 1828 under the leadership of men such as William Ladd, crusading for harmony and nonviolent co-existence with one's neighbors in the pre-Civil War years.
Brigham Young: Backwoods preacher who had only eleven days of formal schooling, but supplied the strict administration and visionary leadership necessary to lead the Mormons away from persecution.
Matthew Maury: Pioneering oceanographer in the mid-19th century whose writings on ocean winds and currents promoted safety, speed, and economy.
Brook Farm: Two hundred acre community in Massachusetts founded in 1841 by a group of twenty transcendentalists, who prospered until the community collapsed in debt after a large building went down in a fire.
Washington Irving: New Yorker who was the first to win international claim as a writer, he combined quiet charm and humor in a pleasing style that made his works Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow worldwide favorites that helped to translate American culture to Europe and vice versa.
William Cullen Bryant: Massachusetts-born member of the Knickerbocker Group, he wrote Thanatopsis at age sixteen, which was one of the first high-quality poems written in America. He made his living by editing the New York Evening Post, setting a journalistic standard.
Lucretia Mott: Prominent figure in the women's rights movement, she was a Quaker who joined the movement when she and her fellow women delegates to the London antislavery convention of 1840 were not recognized.
Asa Gray: Professor at Harvard and pioneering American botanist, he published over 350 books, monographs and papers.
Herman Melville: New Yorker who served eighteen months on a whaling ship, using the experience for his epic masterpiece Moby-Dick, totally ignored during his lifetime.
Horace Mann: Graduate of Brown University who became secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education and campaigned for school reforms, among which were better schoolhouses, longer terms, higher pay for educators, and expanded curriculum.
Dorothea Dix: Teacher and author from New England who traveled over sixty thousand miles in eight years, collecting reports on the treatment of the insane and conditions in asylums, which she used in an 1843 petition to the Massachusetts legislature, gaining improved treatment and conditions for the mentally ill.
Sylvester Graham: Creator of a fad diet that consisted entirely of whole-wheat bread and crackers.
Louis Agassiz: French-Swiss immigrant who taught biology for about 25 years at Harvard, emphasizing the importance of original research and deploring memory work.
William Gilmore Simms: Southern writer of eighty-two novels, known as the Cooper of the South, dealing with themes of the southern frontier and the South during the American Revolution.
Louisa May Alcott: Influential American female author who grew up under the influence of Emerson and Thoreau. She is best known for her novel Little Women.
William H. McGuffey: Ohio teacher and preacher who published a series of grade-school readers in the 1830s, selling 122 million copies.
William H. Prescott: American historian who, with only one eye, wrote accounts of the conquests of Mexico and Peru.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Professor of modern languages at Harvard, he was one of the most popular American poets ever, writing for the upper classes with a style that also appealed to the less cultured. Blended European and American traditions, he is honored with a bust in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.
American Temperance Society: Formed in Boston in 1826, about a thousand local groups forming within a few years, imploring drinkers to swear off the habit and organizing children's clubs against alcoholism.
Unitarian Faith: Religious movement that began in England at the end of the eighteenth century, insisting that God was only one person and denying the deity of Jesus, embraced by leading philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes: Professor of anatomy at Harvard, he regarded Boston as "the hub of the universe" and was also known for his poetry, essays, novels, and witticisms.
George Bancroft: Secretary of the Navy, he founded the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845, known as the Father of American History for his six-volume history of the United States.
Charles Wilson Peale: Maryland-born painter who painted about sixty portraits of Washington, who actually sat for fourteen of them.
Noah Webster: Yale graduate from Connecticut known as the "Schoolmaster of the Republic", who created standard reading lessons and a dictionary in 1828 that helped to standardize the American language.
Knickerbocker group: Group of prestigious American-born writers that vaulted American literature into the realm of international prestige.
Emma Willard: Worked to create respectable women's secondary schools, eventually founding the Troy Female Seminary in 1821.
Henry David Thoreau: Close friend of Emerson, he is best known for his prose work "Walden", as well as his essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience". His writings influenced peacemakers such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Peter Cartwright: One of the best known traveling Methodist preachers, he wandered from Tennessee to Illinois for fifty years, calling for repentance and converting thousands. Known for beating up rowdies at his sermons.
John Audubon: French-American naturalist who was known for his paintings of wild birds in their natural surroundings, best known for his work Birds of America.
Susan B. Anthony: Quaker-raised lecturer for women's rights and one of the most conspicuous leaders of the movement, so much so that progressive women everywhere came to be nicknamed after her.

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Number of cards 57