Question

One person’s reform in some cases may be considered an attack on another person’s vital interests. Describe how the antebellum reform movements—particularly temperance, colonization, and women’s rights—involved conflict between different sets of ideas and interests.

Answer 1

One of the most widespread social reform movements during the early 1800s was the temperance movement , which was an organised attempts to eliminate the menace of alcohol consumption .Threat to family life and employee absenteesim were the main argument raised against alcohol consumption . Activists persuaded people to take pleadges of abstention. But at the same time , people who made a living through the sale of liquor had suffered . And people who wished to drink alcohol consider the movement as an outlet of industrialisation which is intruding individual liberty . Alcohol was condemned as a ' Devils drink ' .   Coming to Women's right , the conservative men and women in America was opposed to the reforms that surfaced in the 19 th century . Women Suffrage movement was the movement of high level of political awakening which redefined the exploitative laws . Women were not considered to be the legal guardians of their children and married women were not having the right to sign contracts . So these reform movements also were in conflict to the conservative section of the society . Change is always a product of this kind of conflicts . Change is an outcome of these conflicts . Colonialisation can only be justified as a search for markets or as an attempt to spread the glory of western culture to the surrounding world. So these reforms was mostly a product of interactions between different social dimensions