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Dbq Reform Movements From 1825 To 1850

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There were many different so called “reform movements” in the years 1825 through 1850, although, only some were actually making changes to the U.S. that benefited the people as a whole, others were just self proclaimed reforms to cover up the fact that their movement only benefited themselves and the rest of the group they were representing, these were the types of “reforms” that failed to show the value that Americans placed on having a democratic society. That being said, the validity of the statement “Reform movements in the U.S. sought to expand democratic ideals.”, would be partially correct but partially false because not all of these movements were created to expand the ideas of democracy. The documents that expand democratic ideals …show more content…

The Seneca Falls Convention was meant to call attention to the unfair treatment of women, just like this engraving by Patrick Reason. When abolitionist movements started, women were turned away just for being women. Because of this, they started forming their own groups because they wanted to find some way to help. Document B is definitely meant to add credibility to the account that reform movements from 1825 to 1850 meant to expand democratic ideals because it promotes the equal rights of two groups: African Americans and women. This is a core value of democracy: that all people are equal and should be treated with equality. Another document that was meant to expand the ideas of democracy was Document F. Document F is a declaration made at Seneca Falls by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was speaking to the people that attended the convention. This is relevant because the Seneca Falls Convention was a conference that addressed the unfair treatment of women and Stanton makes the declaration to call for the equality of women in politics and for their legal rights, which promotes the expansion of democracy. Stanton was trying to enhance and strengthen the efforts that were being …show more content…

For example, Document A hinders these natural thoughts because the speaker, Samuel F.B. Morse, fears the thought of immigrants coming into the U.S. and changing it and how it operates. He is not wanting to expand democracy for this specific group of people and that, of course, is not an expansion of democracy, it is diminishing these thoughts. F.B. Morse even uses the term “Holy Alliance”, which is an antagonistic phrase against Catholicism. He is definitely not a reformer by any means and his piece argues that the reform movements that took place in 1825 through 1850 were not an expansion of democratic ideals because, in this situation, a core ideal was taken away from a specific group of people and that was their rights and liberty. This relates to Joseph Smith and the Mormons. They were a religious group from the early to mid 1800s and they received a lot of criticism from surrounding areas where they settled. This is kind of like the situation of F.B. Morse against the immigrant groups coming into the U.S. because he did not want them to have the rights that other U.S. natives had. In both of these situations, a specific group was being treated differently and had rights taken away from them because they were different from others that lived in the same place. The points that Angelina Grimke made in her work “Letters to Catherine Beecher, in Reply to an Essay on Slavery and

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