Chapter 16 Essay Questions

1. Why did women prove so prominent in the reform crusade of the early nineteenth century? What contribution did they make to social reform?

2. Why did the communitarian movement flourish in the early nineteenth century? What were communitarians trying to prove? Why did most fail?

3. How did each of the following encourage social reform: Second Great Awakening, industrialization, nostalgia for the past?

4. Write your definition of paternalism. Then use this definition to argue that early nineteenth-century American reform efforts were in part paternalistic endeavors by middle-class Americans to "do something for" the less fortunate.

5. What is the single most attractive reform movement of the early nineteenth century to you? Why?

6. What was the relationship between industrialization and the women’s rights movement? What did women reformers want?

7. In what ways did American literature in the early nineteenth century reflect the New Democracy of the Jacksonian age?

8. The text’s authors contend that early nineteenth-century Americans "were more interested in practical gadgets than in pure science," and it is widely known that Americans have always had a love affair with technology. Why?

9. How do the Knickerbocker group, Hudson River school, and transcendentalists all reflect the "nationalism" of early nineteenth-century America? What particularly "American" values did each reflect?

10. The text’s authors label Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville "literary individualists and dissenters." Against what were they dissenting? Why?

11. Why was the flowering of early nineteenth-century American literature almost an exclusively New England phenomenon?

12. The authors claim that in early nineteenth-century America, public schools "existed chiefly to educate the children of the poor." Why were both upper- and lower-class Americans willing to support public education with their tax dollars?

13. Explain why the Mormons became a target for religious intolerance in America.