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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:
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 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.html?body=suggested_books.html
Less expected is the website called, "Writing Women into History: Woman's Suffrage and Abolition Movement," from the Kelton House Museum and Garden in Columbus, Ohio:
http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/wwih.htm
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).
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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