What problems in the north led to reform movements of the early 1800s?

There are at
least two ways to answer this question.  One way is to simply look at each reform movement from
this time period and determine what problem it was trying to address.  So, we could say that
there were the following problems:

• Lack of education, which was
  being addressed by Horace Mann and others in the movement for free common schools.


• Bad prisons, which was being addressed by the prison reform movment.


• Abusive mental institutions, which was being addressed by Dorothea Dix and
  others.
• Lack of schools for the deaf and blind, which was being addressed
  by reformers such as Thomas Gallaudet and Samuel Howe.
• Lack of rights for
  women, which led to the Seneca Falls movement.
• Excessive use of alcohol
  among some people, which led to the temperance movement.
• The problem of
  slavery, which led to the abolitionist movement.

However, we can
also ask if there was an overarching problem or condition that led to this impulse for reform in
general.  Here, we can say that the problem was that society was losing its cohesiveness.  This
was the time of the commercial revolution when more people started living in towns and working
for wages.  This pulled apart the bonds that had tied people together when everyone lived in
small communities.  As society began to lose its cohesion, people started to think that reform
was necessary to fix a variety of social ills that arose.  This can be seen as the overarching
problem that helped lead to most of the reform movements mentioned above.