5.5Reform and reawakening

The same democratic ferment fueled a wave of reform movements. A religious revival, the Second Great Awakening, convinced many Americans that they could perfect society. Reformers campaigned for temperance, public schools, humane prisons and asylums, and women's rights.

At the Seneca Falls Convention (1848), activists including Elizabeth Cady Stanton issued a Declaration of Sentiments demanding equality for women, including the vote. Above all, a growing abolitionist movement, led by figures such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, condemned slavery as a sin. These moral crusades increasingly strained a party system that had tried to keep slavery out of national politics.