This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the viewpoints and reform activities of women in the years immediately prior to the Civil War. While many women in the North were advocating the abolition of slavery, Southern women were still defending their way of life.

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Josh Brown of the American Social History Project explains a political cartoon from 1839 in which the enforcement of the "gag-rule," which prohibited discussion about slavery in the House of Representatives, is satirized.

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This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the wave of thousands of German immigrants that arrived in America between 1820 and 1860. These immigrants contributed to many early reform movements, and made cultural contributions as well.

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This iCue Mini-Documentary describes how, when a group of women were forbidden from speaking at an anti-slavery convention in 1840, they decided to devote themselves to fighting for more freedom for women.

This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the religious conviction which drove John Brown to become an abolitionist. He believed slavery was a sin.

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Professor Robert D. Johnston explores the issue of class in the United States, focusing particularly on the middle class. He argues for the middle class as a respectable, valuable social class, capable of radical social action; he uses the figures Martin Luther King, Jr., John Brown, and politician and physician Harry Lane (1855-1917) as examples.

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