In the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the United States experienced tremendous social and economic change. In the rapidly developing Northeast, transportation, industrialization, urbanization, and immigration brought both challenges and problems.
In the South, slavery became more entrenched, even as it was abolished elsewhere. Cultural and political divides deepened between regions, and new conflicts arose as the country expanded westward. Men and women throughout the country, but especially in the Northeast, responded by organizing themselves into reform movements. The period was so electrically charged with activism that historians called it the "Age of Reform." In the mid-nineteenth century, Worcester was known as a hotbed of reform. Why Worcester?
The reform spirit caught in its net a range of social,
moral, intellectual and political issues. Three reforms stand out for either
their large following or their long-term impact on American society and culture-temperance,
abolition, and women's
rights.
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