Lucretia Mott's Historical Context

Tremendous population and territorial growth portended even more significant qualitative changes in American life in the first half of the nineteenth century (1800s). Three "revolutions," the market, democratic, and evangelical reform movements, swept America after the War of 1812. The market/transportation revolution changed the nation's economy from a largely stagnant, agrarian, subsistence traditional economy to a rapidly growing and expanding, diverse, integrated commercial farming and manufacturing market economy. The democratic revolution transformed the nation from a classical republic ruled by "natural" aristocrats to a liberal, representative democracy where the average man could exert considerable political force. The evangelical reform movement transformed a nation of perfunctory, liquor-swilling Christians of a few major varieties into good, God-fearing teetotalers splintered into scores of new sects and denominations. In short, the market and democratic revolutions led to the demise of traditional moral economy, deference, and a sense of community. Religious and social reformers sought to ameliorate the resulting social upheavals and cultural divisiveness.

Historians have called the antebellum period (1815-1860) one of the greatest periods of reform in American history. From the religious revivalism of the Second Great Awakening and New York's Burned-Over-District to the "scientific" discoveries of phrenology and Graham's system, many antebellum Americans sought to improve the human condition. Partly a function of the Enlightenment's optimistic view of the possibility of human progress, partly an extension of the ideology of the American Revolution, and partly the by-product of a rapidly modernizing society, the reform movement centered in the North, especially in fertile Western New York. From Albany to Buffalo, the Grand Canal and Manhattan capital made the region the most commercially advanced section of the nation. The center of the region, Rochester, soon became the nation's leading inland city. With a rich hinterland, ample water power, indigenous financial institutions, and outstanding transportation facilities, the "Flour City" and its environs blossomed into a commercial and cultural mecca. In this region, the fruit of the market, democratic, and evangelical revolutions first ripened. In the late 1 820s, a democratic political movement known as antimasonry took root in Batavia, a sizable town midway between Rochester and Buffalo. Shortly thereafter, in Palmyra, just a few miles south of Rochester, John Smith created the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormonism). It was no accident women's rights advocates met in Seneca Falls, about thirty miles southeast of the emerging metropolis, nor that Frederick Douglass made his 1852 speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" in Rochester. Western New York also served as an important center for other antebellum reform movements, including Sabbatarianism, temperance, and utopian communitarianism.

Of course Rochester was not the only place where reform movements took root. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other commercial centers all had their share of active reformers. Though most reformers used Biblical exhortations and justifications, it is clear that the social upheavals rapid economic development brought contributed to the reform movements as much as strict ideological or religious considerations. Thanks to the very economic development that troubled them, middle-class women like Lucretia Mott had the leisure to question the commercialism and seeming avarice of their husbands and brothers. Freed from the toil of daily labor, made more articulate by increased educational opportunities, decreased printing costs, and accelerated distribution times, and brought closer together by transportation improvements like canals, bridges, and turnpikes, women reformers like Mott sought spiritual fulfillment. Finding it in evangelical religion, they next turned their attention to slavery. Noting similarities between the conditions of slaves and women, they next sought emancipation for themselves. Along the way, they sought to convert men to evangelism and a host of social reform measures.