Transcendentalists
A group of writers who believed people could find truth through nature and their own inner feelings rather than society or institutions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A leading transcendentalist who encouraged Americans to think for themselves and connect with nature.
Henry David Thoreau
A transcendentalist who wrote Walden and supported civil disobedience—peacefully breaking unjust laws.
Antebellum
The period before the Civil War (especially referring to social and political changes in the South).
Shakers
A religious group that practiced simple living, equality, and celibacy; known for communal living and craftsmanship.
New Harmony
A utopian socialist community in Indiana that tried to create a perfect society but failed due to financial issues and conflict.
Oneida Community
A utopian community in New York that practiced communal property, complex marriage, and shared work.
Second Great Awakening
A major religious revival in the early 1800s that encouraged reform movements like temperance, abolition, and women’s rights.
Brigham Young
The Mormon leader who moved the group to Utah to escape persecution.
Mormons / Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
A Christian religious group founded by Joseph Smith; faced persecution and eventually settled in Utah under Brigham Young.
Charles Finney
A famous Second Great Awakening preacher who encouraged emotional conversions and pushed for social reforms.
American Temperance Society
A group that pushed people to stop drinking alcohol to improve morals, families, and society.
Dorothea Dix
A reformer who fought to improve treatment of the mentally ill and helped create mental hospitals.
Asylum movement
A reform effort to create safer, more humane institutions for people with mental illnesses instead of jails or poorhouses.
Horace Mann
The leading education reformer who fought for free public schools, trained teachers, and longer school years.
McGuffey Reader
A popular school textbook that taught reading along with moral lessons like hard work and honesty.
Cult of Domesticity
The idea that women should stay at home, be moral guardians, and raise children while men worked outside.
Seneca Falls Convention
The first women’s rights meeting (1848) where leaders wrote the Declaration of Sentiments demanding equality and suffrage.
American Colonization Society
An early anti-slavery group that wanted to send freed African Americans to Africa (Liberia), not integrate them into U.S. society.
William Lloyd Garrison / The Liberator
A radical abolitionist who published The Liberator, calling for the immediate end of slavery.
Frederick Douglass
A formerly enslaved man who became a powerful abolitionist speaker and wrote an autobiography.
David Walker
A free Black abolitionist who wrote Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, urging enslaved people to resist slavery.
“Peculiar institution”
A Southern euphemism for slavery, used to make it sound less harsh.
Slave codes
Laws in the South that restricted the rights and movements of enslaved people.
