- Alexis deToqueville: wrote Democracy in America; coined the term "individualism"
- Ann Lee Stanley: leader of the Shakers; her visions led her to believe the end was near
- Brigham Young: took over the lead of the Mormon Church; moved his people to Utah
- Catherine Beecher: believed women should use their moral power to influence change; women should become teachers
- Charles Fourier: British commune organizer; his followers set up over 100 society in the US
- Dorothea Dix: nurse; crusaded for the mentally ill in the 1940's
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton: wrote the Declaration of Sentiments; "all men and women are created equal"
- Harriet Beecher Stowe: wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Henry David Thoreau: wrote Walden; describe the philosophy of civil disobedience
- Herman Melville: wrote Moby Dick; believed individualism without discipline could lead to disaster
- John Humphrey Noyes: leader of the Oneida commune; believed in "complex marriage"; freaky
- Joseph Smith: founder of the Mormon Church; killed by a mob in IL
- Lucretia Mott: organized the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, NY
- Margaret Fuller: wrote Woman in the Ninteenth Century; believed women deserved psychological and social independence
- Nathaniel Hawthorne: wrote The Scarlet Letter; believed individualism against the rules of society could lead to degradation
- Ralph Waldo Emerson: The first transcendentalist; "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Sarah and Angelina Grimke: used passionate speeches and biblical rhetoric to promote feminism and abolitionism
- Sojourner Truth: former slave; gave speeches on behalf of the feminist and abolitionist causes
- Susan B. Anthony: founder of the National American Women's Sufferage Association
- Walt Whitman: wrote Leaves of Grass; his poetry celebrated democracy as a sacred character
- William Lloyd Garrison: published the newspaper The Liberator; vowed to keep writing until every slave was free