Event Summary

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The main events we learned about throughout this chapter were mostly about the rights that we have today. Some of the events were The Second Great Awakening, the Reformers movement in the Treatment of Prisoners and the Mentally Ill, improvements in the Educational system, Slavery, Equal rights for all women, and the Declaration of Sentiments.

The Declaration of Sentiments was very similar to the Declaration of Independence because it had a list of complaints. However, instead of a list of bad things King George III did to the colonists, it was a list of things that the men did to the women that the women didn't like. They were fighting for their rights as a woman. They were fighting for the rights we are lucky to still have. The changes they made were changes that were needed. The Declaration of Sentiments was created at a convention that was held in Seneca Falls. Of the approximate 300 people who attended, 40 were men. Two people that created the Declaration of Sentiments were Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; two women who fought for what they believed in.

Mott and Stanton met in 1840 at a World Anti-Slavery Convention. They were two very different people, yet they agreed on one thing: something had to be done about womens rights. These women fought for their rights for such a long time. The men treated them as if they were slaves, some men would beat their wives. The women would be stuck with the cleaning, cooking and taking care of the kids because men thought that was all they were capable of. The rights we have now are what the women back then fought for. The fight for no slavery actually started the movement for women's rights.Slavery was abolished in 1833. There were Abolitionists who were people that were against slavery. Sojourner Truth and Fredrick Douglass helped make the voices of the people more powerful. Sojourner Truth and Fredrick Douglass were former slaves. Fredrick escaped from slavery. Then he talked to a group of Abolitionists and told them about the treatments of slaves.
Horace Mann helped with the education of their young generation. Some of the kids only went to school for ten weeks in a year and the teachers were under paid. Horace Mann became the State's Supervisor of Education and he traveled around the other states. Most of the schools only allowed boys and not girls or African Americans. In the South they only allowed a few girls by yet no African Americans. In 1837 to the 1860's they began letting in women to the schools. Dorothea Dix was visiting a jail to teach the prisoners. She was just trying to do a good deed, but when she went in she saw what was happening to the prisoners like the mentally ill or maybe even the wrongly accused. After her visit she decided she wanted to help some of the prisoners, like the mentally ill or the ones accused for a small crime but punished for it. After her decision she traveled to other states and made reports about treatment that the mentally ill receive. Dix showed reformers, even women, could lead a society to make useful changes in the US. These events all lead together as if it was a path meant for those who choose to follow it. The path may lead to the success they had but they worked for it, they worked for that chance to say something many others wish they would have. Those thoughts started an important change in our country. History changed with people who decided their destiny for themselves instead of just following it.