In the decades before the Civil War, numerous Americans lent their enthusiasm to various social reform movements. Most studies to date, however, have considered this phenomenon only in the Northeast. In this work, John W. Quist explores reform movements in two individual counties - one in the Old Northwest, the other in the Deep South - to understand better how deeply and extensively the climate of reform penetrated American life.

In both Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, and Washtenaw County, Michigan, Quist investigates those causes that eventually were carried forward by large voluntary associations: namely, evangelical benevolence, temperance, the colonization of blacks to Africa, and the abolition of slavery. He tracks the changes and continuities that occurred in the religious, social, and political constituencies of reform, and notes the development of the means and messages of the reformers.

Although scholars have previously suggested that reform movements lacked appeal in the South because white southerners associated all such efforts with abolition, Quist finds a striking similarity in northern and southern reform campaigns.