The reform movements that arose during the antebellum period in America focused on specific issues: temperance, abolishing imprisonment for debt, pacifism, antislavery, abolishing capital punishment, amelioration of prison conditions (with prison's purpose reconceived as rehabilitation rather than punishment), the humane treatment of animals, the humane and just treatment of Native Americans, the establishment of public institutions for the care of the destitute, orphans, blind, and mentally ill, the establishment of public schools, the abolition of tobacco use, vegetarianism, health reform, homeopathic medicine, woman's rights (including, at first, especially the establishment of a woman's right to own property apart from her husband and her right to sue for divorce), and the amelioration of labor conditions (including higher pay, the right to form unions, the right to strike, and the demand for limits on the number of work hours, and safe working conditions).
I think Jackson was right to initiate the spoils system because by completely removing officials from time to time prevented any one party from maintaining a stranglehold on government.
Edwards was a philosopher and minister who held a sermon during the great awakening that warned sinners that they were going to hell unless they repented and asked god for mercy. I believe his sermon was called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
