7. Women in the Abolition Movement
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Women of all races identified with the abolition movement, some as Christians, some as humanitarians, some from personal experience, and many were notorious household names for their quest to end slavery in the United States.
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Phyllis Wheatly, Library of Congress
It’s easy to compartmentalize the various human rights struggles of history. Most human rights issues are and always have been linked. The struggle for the emancipation of enslaved people was intertwined with the struggle for women’s rights, both in the people advocating for it and in the systemic and political issues they raised. As members of an oppressed class themselves, women brought empathy, compassion, intelligence, and plenty of organizational skills to the abolition movement.
Recognizing the connection between racial and gender oppression, iconic suffrage pioneer Susan B. Anthony famously urged her followers to “make the slave’s case our own.” But she is just one of many examples.
Advocacy for abolition goes way back. Phyllis Wheatly brought abolitionist ideas to American culture with her poetry. Wheatley was born in West Africa and taken to Boston as a child. In 1773 she was emancipated and became the first published African-American woman poet. Her poems included the reflection on slavery, “On Being brought From Africa,” which opened people’s eyes to the humanity of enslaved people. Her work was even praised by George Washington.
One of America’s earliest advocates for ending slavery was Abigail Adams, who once counseled her husband to “remember the ladies” when he and the Continental Congress were debating independence. In September of 1774, Abigail wrote to John: “I wish most sincerely there was not a Slave in the province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me--fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.” For Abigail Adams, the cause of liberty meant liberty for all.
Leading up to the Civil War, many women called for abolition in private letters and poems, but it was highly unusual for a woman, especially an African-American woman, to speak in public on the matter. On September 21, 1832, Maria W. Miller Stewart spoke before the African-American Female Intelligence Society in Boston’s Franklin Hall. Stewart’s jeremiad, a form of speaking derived from the sermons of New England ministers, accused white Americans of breaking their covenant with God by supporting slavery. Stewart believed that God would judge Americans for the sin of slavery. She traveled throughout New England sharing her message with Christian Americans.
Women who had experienced the horrors of slavery were incredibly powerful representatives of the abolition movement. Amy Hester (Hetty) Reckless was born into slavery in southern New Jersey. She escaped violence at the hands of her mistress and settled in Philadelphia in 1826, operating a safe house on the underground railroad and supporting education for black children. In 1833, Hetty became a founding member of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Reckless also worked with the Female Vigilant Association starting in 1838, assisting enslaved people on their Underground Railroad journey, often at considerable personal risk.
Black women also wrote powerful pieces to teach people about the horrors of slavery. In 1861, Harriet Jacobs published her autobiography, "Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl." The book chronicles Jacobs’s life on a North Carolina plantation. She wrote about her abuse and her escape from her owner who sought to sexually abuse her. She got out by hiding in a crawlspace in her grandmother’s attic for seven years. When Jacobs finally escaped to New York, she worked as a nanny while supporting both the abolitionist and feminist causes. Her employer eventually purchased her freedom, and Jacobs helped found two schools for formerly enslaved people.
Recognizing the connection between racial and gender oppression, iconic suffrage pioneer Susan B. Anthony famously urged her followers to “make the slave’s case our own.” But she is just one of many examples.
Advocacy for abolition goes way back. Phyllis Wheatly brought abolitionist ideas to American culture with her poetry. Wheatley was born in West Africa and taken to Boston as a child. In 1773 she was emancipated and became the first published African-American woman poet. Her poems included the reflection on slavery, “On Being brought From Africa,” which opened people’s eyes to the humanity of enslaved people. Her work was even praised by George Washington.
One of America’s earliest advocates for ending slavery was Abigail Adams, who once counseled her husband to “remember the ladies” when he and the Continental Congress were debating independence. In September of 1774, Abigail wrote to John: “I wish most sincerely there was not a Slave in the province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me--fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.” For Abigail Adams, the cause of liberty meant liberty for all.
Leading up to the Civil War, many women called for abolition in private letters and poems, but it was highly unusual for a woman, especially an African-American woman, to speak in public on the matter. On September 21, 1832, Maria W. Miller Stewart spoke before the African-American Female Intelligence Society in Boston’s Franklin Hall. Stewart’s jeremiad, a form of speaking derived from the sermons of New England ministers, accused white Americans of breaking their covenant with God by supporting slavery. Stewart believed that God would judge Americans for the sin of slavery. She traveled throughout New England sharing her message with Christian Americans.
Women who had experienced the horrors of slavery were incredibly powerful representatives of the abolition movement. Amy Hester (Hetty) Reckless was born into slavery in southern New Jersey. She escaped violence at the hands of her mistress and settled in Philadelphia in 1826, operating a safe house on the underground railroad and supporting education for black children. In 1833, Hetty became a founding member of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Reckless also worked with the Female Vigilant Association starting in 1838, assisting enslaved people on their Underground Railroad journey, often at considerable personal risk.
Black women also wrote powerful pieces to teach people about the horrors of slavery. In 1861, Harriet Jacobs published her autobiography, "Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl." The book chronicles Jacobs’s life on a North Carolina plantation. She wrote about her abuse and her escape from her owner who sought to sexually abuse her. She got out by hiding in a crawlspace in her grandmother’s attic for seven years. When Jacobs finally escaped to New York, she worked as a nanny while supporting both the abolitionist and feminist causes. Her employer eventually purchased her freedom, and Jacobs helped found two schools for formerly enslaved people.
Harriet Jacobs, Library of Congress
Harriet Tubman, Public Domain
Harriet Tubman has a historical resume that is quite impressive. After her escape from bondage, Tubman made thirteen trips back to the south to free more than seventy enslaved people. In addition, Tubman gave many powerful speeches on behalf of abolition and women’s rights. Even though she could neither read nor write.
Sojourner Truth, who escaped from slavery in 1826, also rose to prominence speaking about intersectional equal rights. Her speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” reminded folks that Black women were women too, and yet were not treated as such. It profoundly integrated the issues of racial and gender equality, and reminds us that women’s history isn’t experienced the same way for all women.
In spite of their own struggles to gain equal legal and social rights in America society, American women were in the forefront of the struggle to end slavery. They wrote pamphlets, gave speeches on behalf of enslaved people, and they dedicated their lives and their talents to the task of improving the lives of freed people.
More and more white women began to connect the struggle for emancipation from slavery to the journey for equal legal and social rights for women. Margaret Fuller, a philosopher and Transcendentalist colleague of Thoreau and Emerson, noted that restrictions on the economic and political freedom of women were comparable to the restrictions imposed on enslaved people. To be clear, legally not being allowed to own property is not on the same level as being property--but Fuller’s point allowed others to consider a more equality-oriented perspective.
Lucretia Mott was active in William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society and helped to found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. She was a Quaker preached, accustomed to speaking her mind in religious spaces, and found it impossible to reconcile that she could not outside her congregation. Her sister, Martha Coffin Wright was a friend and supporter of Harriet Tubman. Both were organizers of the first women’s rights in 1848 at Seneca Falls, NY.
Lydia Maria Child insisted abolition should be included in a broader social reform context. Born into a religious family, Child trained to be a teacher and founded a school in Watertown, Massachusetts in 1826. She published the Juvenile Miscellany, a magazine for children, but she lost her southern subscribers when she published her anti-slavery views. However that didn't stop her. In 1833 Child argued for immediate emancipation of enslaved people in An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.
Sojourner Truth, who escaped from slavery in 1826, also rose to prominence speaking about intersectional equal rights. Her speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” reminded folks that Black women were women too, and yet were not treated as such. It profoundly integrated the issues of racial and gender equality, and reminds us that women’s history isn’t experienced the same way for all women.
In spite of their own struggles to gain equal legal and social rights in America society, American women were in the forefront of the struggle to end slavery. They wrote pamphlets, gave speeches on behalf of enslaved people, and they dedicated their lives and their talents to the task of improving the lives of freed people.
More and more white women began to connect the struggle for emancipation from slavery to the journey for equal legal and social rights for women. Margaret Fuller, a philosopher and Transcendentalist colleague of Thoreau and Emerson, noted that restrictions on the economic and political freedom of women were comparable to the restrictions imposed on enslaved people. To be clear, legally not being allowed to own property is not on the same level as being property--but Fuller’s point allowed others to consider a more equality-oriented perspective.
Lucretia Mott was active in William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society and helped to found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. She was a Quaker preached, accustomed to speaking her mind in religious spaces, and found it impossible to reconcile that she could not outside her congregation. Her sister, Martha Coffin Wright was a friend and supporter of Harriet Tubman. Both were organizers of the first women’s rights in 1848 at Seneca Falls, NY.
Lydia Maria Child insisted abolition should be included in a broader social reform context. Born into a religious family, Child trained to be a teacher and founded a school in Watertown, Massachusetts in 1826. She published the Juvenile Miscellany, a magazine for children, but she lost her southern subscribers when she published her anti-slavery views. However that didn't stop her. In 1833 Child argued for immediate emancipation of enslaved people in An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.
Sojourner Truth, Library of Congress
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Margarett Fuller, Library of Congress
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Lydia Maria Child, Library of Congress
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Sarah Grimke, Library of Congress
While most people relate abolition to the northern states, there were certainly Southern women who worked to end slavery too. Sarah and Angelina Grimke were born to unimaginable wealth and raised on a South Carolina plantation that included hundreds of enslaved people. They were so wealthy each family member had a personal slave. Using Christian arguments of charity and compassion, both sisters came to abhor slavery. In the 1820s, Angelina wrote to William Llyod Garrison and he published her letter in his liberal journal The Liberator. She was widely criticized and her writings were burned in Charleston. Faced with the ridicule, the Grimke sisters doubled down and became among the most vocal and famous critics of slavery. As feminists, they broke the taboo regarding women’s presence on the lecture circuit, which contributed to their profound and positive influence on both movement, but they faced considerable backlash. Their male abolitionist peers tried to withdraw them from the speaking circuit. When Angelina married Theodore Dwight Weld a pro-slavery mob burned down Pensylvania Hall where they were married. When they traveled through New England speaking to “mixed audiences” a mob of protesters surrounded them, because who were they to speak to men? Two sisters, two movements, too bad for racists and sexists.
The Grimke sisters were originally inspired to oppose slavery in part because their brother had consentual children with an enslaved woman. One of these children was Francis James Grimke, who later served as a minister in Washington, D. C.. He married Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten, who came from a prominent free Black abolitionist family in Philadelphia. Forten’s family had a long history of helping enslaved people escape bondage. She trained as a teacher, becoming the first Black graduate of the Salem Normal School in 1856. She was one of the first African-American teachers in Salem and was a member of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, a precursor of the black women’s club movement that flourished in the early twentieth century.
Another South Carolina native, Mary Boykin Chesnut, was the matriarch of a family that owned nearly 1,000 slaves. However, in February of 1861, as Confederate war sentiment was increasing in intensity, Mary Chesnut began to compose a diary that revealed the inner life of the plantation. While not specifically an abolitionist document, Chesnut’s diary, which was published long after her death, provided important material for historians hoping to understand the life of the plantation.
Some women contributed to the abolitionist cause by articulating a religious and moral position against slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a member of a famous family of ministers. In 1832, Harriet moved with her father to Cincinnati, Ohio, a river town that was a northern destination for many escaping enslaved people. She’d listen to debates about slavery at the her dad’s Seminary group and after hearing about, you know, the absolutely legal terror happening to human beings, she used her talent to take a stand against the oppression. In 1852, while sitting upstairs in the attic and having her sister watch her many children, Stowe wrote and published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which detailed the horrific conditions and dangers of plantation life. The book and play based on the story were both wildly popular. Legend has it that President Abraham Lincoln told Stowe in 1862, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Kind of a backhanded compliment, Abe, but it can’t be denied Stowe’s work really affected her readers’ opinions of the political issue. Her home was a stop along the underground railroad.
By the late 1850’s the divisions between the north and south were raw. Talk of secession was eminent. John Brown, a radical abolitionist from New York had not only murdered some pro-slavery folks, but led a raid on Harper’s Ferry Virginia. Harriet Tubman was supposed to be with him, but she was on another mission… seems someone knew she was destined for more. The South felt attacked and when Lincoln was elected it was the last straw.
The Grimke sisters were originally inspired to oppose slavery in part because their brother had consentual children with an enslaved woman. One of these children was Francis James Grimke, who later served as a minister in Washington, D. C.. He married Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten, who came from a prominent free Black abolitionist family in Philadelphia. Forten’s family had a long history of helping enslaved people escape bondage. She trained as a teacher, becoming the first Black graduate of the Salem Normal School in 1856. She was one of the first African-American teachers in Salem and was a member of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, a precursor of the black women’s club movement that flourished in the early twentieth century.
Another South Carolina native, Mary Boykin Chesnut, was the matriarch of a family that owned nearly 1,000 slaves. However, in February of 1861, as Confederate war sentiment was increasing in intensity, Mary Chesnut began to compose a diary that revealed the inner life of the plantation. While not specifically an abolitionist document, Chesnut’s diary, which was published long after her death, provided important material for historians hoping to understand the life of the plantation.
Some women contributed to the abolitionist cause by articulating a religious and moral position against slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a member of a famous family of ministers. In 1832, Harriet moved with her father to Cincinnati, Ohio, a river town that was a northern destination for many escaping enslaved people. She’d listen to debates about slavery at the her dad’s Seminary group and after hearing about, you know, the absolutely legal terror happening to human beings, she used her talent to take a stand against the oppression. In 1852, while sitting upstairs in the attic and having her sister watch her many children, Stowe wrote and published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which detailed the horrific conditions and dangers of plantation life. The book and play based on the story were both wildly popular. Legend has it that President Abraham Lincoln told Stowe in 1862, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Kind of a backhanded compliment, Abe, but it can’t be denied Stowe’s work really affected her readers’ opinions of the political issue. Her home was a stop along the underground railroad.
By the late 1850’s the divisions between the north and south were raw. Talk of secession was eminent. John Brown, a radical abolitionist from New York had not only murdered some pro-slavery folks, but led a raid on Harper’s Ferry Virginia. Harriet Tubman was supposed to be with him, but she was on another mission… seems someone knew she was destined for more. The South felt attacked and when Lincoln was elected it was the last straw.
Julia Ward Howe, Library of Congress
One of the earliest battles in the Civil War occurred at Port Royal on the Atlantic coast between Charleston and Savannah, Georgia. The Union victory effectively freed the 10,000 enslaved people of the region...but being free and having means for a future are two different things. So! The “Port Royal Experiment” was born! Abolitionists did what they do best. They served. They established schools, medical facilities, and paved the way for land ownership for these recently freed African-Americans. The Penn School, which is still around today, was run by abolitionists Charlotte Forten, Ellen Murray, and Laura Towne. The school provided literacy and history instruction as well as practical skills like basketmaking, shoemaking, and carpentry to African-American children.
We’ve talked about a lot of influential written work by women, but a song can also capture a historical moment. When Julia Ward Howe met President Lincoln in 1861, she penned new words to the familiar tune, “John Brown’s Body,” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was created. The song was a popular and invigorating anthem among Union soldiers not only toward victory, but the moral imperative to end slavery. She said:
“Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on. As He died to make men holy,
let us die to make men free; While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.”
We’ve talked about a lot of influential written work by women, but a song can also capture a historical moment. When Julia Ward Howe met President Lincoln in 1861, she penned new words to the familiar tune, “John Brown’s Body,” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was created. The song was a popular and invigorating anthem among Union soldiers not only toward victory, but the moral imperative to end slavery. She said:
“Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on. As He died to make men holy,
let us die to make men free; While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.”
Harriet E. Wilson, Public Domain
Efforts to improve the lives of free African people in the south continued after the War, and surprise, surprise, women were key in establishing schools. In 1868, Martha Schofield, a Quaker from Pennsylvania, brought her life savings of $468 to Aiken, South Carolina to establish a school for newly freed African-American folks. Students could learn basic academics and life skills--like cooking and sewing. The Schofield Normal and Industrial school is now a public middle school, and, oh, you bet the students there learn about Martha Schofield to this day.
Social norms in the 19th Century demanded middle-class and wealthy women devote their energies to home and family, but jokes on society because those expectations were so frustrating to many women, not only did they want to upset gender norms, but fight for racial equality too. Thus, American women found their voice and their place in both the struggle for women’s rights and the abolition movement. As we’ve learned, some women wrote books, others wrote songs. Some started schools, others risked their lives on the Underground Railroad. Some had power and wielded it to help others, and some women were born enslaved but became powerful through their actions. Regardless of how these and many more women attempted to create a more equal country, their attempts were not in vain. We can celebrate them and follow in their herstorical footsteps now--all these years later.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. Would the federal government get involved? Would this come to war? Would women’s advocacy be well received? How would women’s politicization impact their role in society? Was suffrage an obvious next step?
Social norms in the 19th Century demanded middle-class and wealthy women devote their energies to home and family, but jokes on society because those expectations were so frustrating to many women, not only did they want to upset gender norms, but fight for racial equality too. Thus, American women found their voice and their place in both the struggle for women’s rights and the abolition movement. As we’ve learned, some women wrote books, others wrote songs. Some started schools, others risked their lives on the Underground Railroad. Some had power and wielded it to help others, and some women were born enslaved but became powerful through their actions. Regardless of how these and many more women attempted to create a more equal country, their attempts were not in vain. We can celebrate them and follow in their herstorical footsteps now--all these years later.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. Would the federal government get involved? Would this come to war? Would women’s advocacy be well received? How would women’s politicization impact their role in society? Was suffrage an obvious next step?
Draw your Own Conclusions
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Was the abolition movement sexist and classist?
As far as progressive movements go, abolition was incredible, but it had a dark side. Women were denied seats at meetings, pulled off the speaking circuit, and otherwise discriminated against. Do the ends justify the means? 
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How were the experiences of enslaved women similar yet sometimes different than those of men?
In this inquiry students explore laws, court transcripts, and autobiographical accounts about enslaved men and women, to highlight the differences in their experiences.
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In what ways were free Black women in the antebellum south part of the economy?
Let's break the stereotype that Black women only worked as domestics and in forced labor-- it's just not accurate. What DID Black women do?
Was slavery different from indentured servitude?
No everyone in the colonies were free and those that were bound to labor had varying degrees of freedoms. In this inquiry, students will compare the experiences of Harriet Jacobs a formerly enslaved woman and Harriet Wilson an indentured servant.
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Was Seneca Falls the start of the women's rights movement?
In this inquiry students explore the "myth of Seneca Falls," coined by Lisa Tetrault. Was this really the beginning? Should the organizers, who did not include any women of color be heroified? Let's dig in.
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Ah Toy, Public Domain
Fanny Wright, Wikimedia Commons
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How did Gold Rush women continue the Cult of Domesticity and how did they stretch or change it?
In this inquiry, students explore the primary and secondary sources related to women's roles in the Gold Rush.
Should 19th century women speak publicly about abolition?
In this inquiry, students explore the prolific writing about the Cult of True Womanhood by 19th century authors. Their vision for women was one of submission, modesty, humility, and domesticity... but was the literature reflective of real women? Of the women writers, were they models of this vision?
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Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- The National Women's History Museum has lesson plans on women's history.
- The Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History has lesson plans on women's history.
- The NY Historical Society has articles and classroom activities for teaching women's history.
- Unladylike 2020, in partnership with PBS, has primary sources to explore with students and outstanding videos on women from the Progressive era.
- The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has produced recommendations for teaching women's history with primary sources and provided a collection of sources for world history. Check them out!
- The Stanford History Education Group has a number of lesson plans about women in US History.
Period Specific Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- Women and Slavery:
- C3 Teachers: In November of 1815, an enslaved woman known only as Anna jumped out of a third floor window in Washington DC in what was assumed to be a suicide attempt. Presumed dead, abolitionists used her story to expose the harsh realities of slavery and advocate for better treatment of slaves. In 2015, the Oh Say Can You See research project uncovered an 1828 petition for freedom from an Ann Williams for herself and three children. This woman was the same “Anna” who had leapt from the window, still alive but severely injured from her fall, a contrast to the widely held belief that she had died in the fall. In 1832, a jury ruled in her favor, granting Ann and her three children freedom from master George Williams. Ann and her children went on to live free in Washington, subsisting on the weekly $1.50 that Ann’s still enslaved husband was able to provide for his family. This inquiry and the compelling question seeks to address the autonomy that enslaved African Americans had, and the question of what freedom meant to Anna.
- Stanford History Education Group: In 1937, the Federal Writers' Project began collecting what would become the largest archive of interviews with former slaves. Few firsthand accounts exist from those who suffered in slavery, making this an exceptional resource for students of history. However, as with all historical documents, there are important considerations for students to bear in mind when reading these sources. In this lesson, students examine three of these accounts to answer the question: What can we learn about slavery from interviews with former slaves?
- Gilder Lehrman: Women always played a significant role in the struggle against slavery and discrimination. White and black Quaker women and female slaves took a strong moral stand against slavery. As abolitionists, they circulated petitions, wrote letters and poems, and published articles in the leading anti-slavery periodicals such as the Liberator. Some of these women educated blacks, both free and enslaved, and some of them joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and founded their own biracial organization, the Philadelphia Women’s Anti-Slavery Society. The little-known history of most of these women is a fragmented one. While several of the most well-known activists are mentioned in accounts of the abolitionist movement, there is scant reference to most other female abolitionists. Some brief biographies make reference to the births and deaths of the lesser-known women but offer only limited mention of their work. Through research and analysis in the classroom, students will learn about the diversity of women who participated in anti-slavery activities, the variety of activities and goals they pursued, and the barriers they faced as women.
- National History Day: Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the daughter of Lyman and Roxanna Beecher. Harriet grew up in a household that held equality and service to others in the highest regard. Her father and all seven of her brothers became ministers, while her sisters, Catherine and Isabella, were champions of women’s education and suffrage. Harriet received a formal education at Sarah Pierce’s Academy, one of the first institutions focused on educating young women. There she discovered her talent for writing. Harriet became a teacher and author, proving to be an outspoken woman in a time when female voices often went unheard. Following in her family’s tradition of service, she became a passionate abolitionist. She published more than thirty works in her lifetime, the most famous of which was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel that exposed the evils of slavery. Through her writings and speaking engagements, Harriet Beecher Stowe effectively helped to open the eyes of the world to the urgent problem of slavery in the United States. Did Stowe misrepresent slavery?
- Gilder Lehrman: The accounts of African American slavery in textbooks routinely conflate the story of male and female slaves into one history. Textbooks rarely enable students to grapple with the lives and challenges of women constrained by the institution of slavery. The collections of letters and autobiographies of slave women in the nineteenth century now available on the Internet open a window onto the lives of these women and allow teachers and students to explore this history. Using the classroom as a historical laboratory, students can use these primary sources to research, read, evaluate, and interpret the words of African American slave women. The students can be historians; they can discover the history of African American slave women and write their history.
- Gilder Lehrman: Children’s Attitudes about Slavery and Women’s Abolitionism as Seen through Anti-slavery Fairs: Over two days, students will examine the attitudes that children from northern states had about slavery during the 1830s to 1860s and how abolitionists tried to change their way of thinking. They will also explore how woman abolitionists used anti-slavery fairs to generate support for the anti-slavery cause.
- Edcitement: Elizabeth Keckly was born into slavery in 1818 near Petersburg, Virginia. She learned to sew from her mother, an expert seamstress enslaved in the Burwell family. After thirty years as a Burwell slave, Keckly purchased her and her only son's freedom. Later, when Keckly moved to Washington, D. C., she became an exclusive dress designer whose most famous client was First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Keckly’s enduring fame results from her close relationship with Mrs. Lincoln, documented in her memoir, Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868). In this lesson, students learn firsthand about the childhoods of Jacobs and Keckly from reading excerpts from their autobiographies. They practice reading for both factual information and making inferences from these two primary sources. They will also learn from a secondary source about commonalities among those who experienced their childhood in slavery. By putting all this information together and evaluating it, students get the chance to "be" historians and experience what goes into making sound judgments about a certain problem—in this case, how did child slaves live?
- PBS and DPLA: This collection uses primary sources to explore women in the antebellum reform movement. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.
- PBS and DPLA: This collection uses primary sources to explore Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.
- PBS and DPLA: This collection uses primary sources to explore Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.
- Seneca Falls:
- Stanford History Education Group: When the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920, the fight for women’s suffrage had already gone on for decades. Many women had hoped that women would win suffrage at the same time as African Americans. However, the Fifteenth Amendment only extended suffrage to African-American men. In this lesson, students explore the broad context of the women’s suffrage movement through reading selections from Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
- Gilder Lehrman: Under the leadership of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a convention for the rights of women was held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. It was attended by between 200 and 300 people, both women and men. Its primary goal was to discuss the rights of women—how to gain these rights for all, particularly in the political arena. The conclusion of this convention was that the effort to secure equal rights across the board would start by focusing on suffrage for women. The participants wrote the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, patterned after the Declaration of Independence. It specifically asked for voting rights and for reforms in laws governing marital status. Reactions to the convention and the new Declaration were mixed. Many people felt that the women and their sympathizers were ridiculous, and newspapers denounced the women as unfeminine and immoral. Little substantive change resulted from the Declaration in 1848, but from that time through 1920, when the goal of women’s suffrage was attained with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the Declaration served as a written reminder of the goals of the movement.
- Edcitement: In the spirit of Abigail Adams's challenge to her husband (and his colleagues), this lesson looks at the women's suffrage movement that grew out of debates following the Declaration of Independence and the conclusion of the Continental Congress by "remembering the ladies" who are too often overlooked when teaching about the "foremothers" of the movements for suffrage and women's equality in U.S. history. Grounded in the critical inquiry question "Who's missing?" and in the interest of bringing more perspectives to who the suffrage movement included, this resource will help to ensure that students learn about some of the lesser-known activists who, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony, participated in the formative years of the women's rights movement.
william lloyd garrison: The Declaration of Sentiments, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833
The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1833. The group’s organizer was William Lloyd Garrison, who authored this document. He was well-known as an uncompromising advocate for immediate emancipation. No female members of AASS signed this document.
More than fifty-seven years have elapsed since a band of patriots convened in this place, to devise measures for the deliverance of this country from a foreign yoke. The corner-stone upon which they founded the Temple of Freedom was broadly this—“that all men are created equal; and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness.” At the sound of their trumpet-call, three millions of people rose up as from the sleep of death, and rushed to the strife of blood; deeming it more glorious to die instantly as freemen, than desirable to live one hour as slaves. They were few in number—poor in resources; but the honest conviction that Truth, Justice, and Right were on their side, made them invincible.
We have met together for the achievement of an enterprise, without which that of our fathers is incomplete...Their grievances, great as they were, were trifling in comparison with the wrongs and sufferings of those for whom we plead. Our fathers were never slaves—never bought and sold like cattle—never shut out from the light of knowledge and religion—never subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters.
But those for whose emancipation we are striving—constituting, at the present time, at least one-sixth part of our countrymen—are recognized by the law, and treated by their fellow- beings, as marketable commodities, as goods and chattels, as brute beasts; are plundered daily of the fruits of their toil without redress; really enjoying no constitutional nor legal protection from licentious and murderous outrages upon their persons, are ruthlessly torn asunder—the tender babe from the arms of its frantic mother—the heart-broken wife from her weeping husband—at the caprice or pleasure of irresponsible tyrants. For the crime of having a dark complexion, they suffer the pangs of hunger, the infliction of stripes, and the ignominy of brutal servitude. They are kept in heathenish darkness by laws expressly enacted to make their instruction a criminal offence.
These are the prominent circumstances in the condition of more than two millions of our people, the proof of which may be found in thousands of indisputable facts, and in the laws of the slaveholding States.
Hence we maintain,—that in view of the civil and religious privileges of this nation, the guilt of its oppression is unequalled by any other on the face of the earth... We further maintain,—that no man has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother—to hold or acknowledge him, for one moment, as a piece of merchandize—to keep back his hire by fraud—or to brutalize his mind by denying him the means of intellectual, social, and moral improvement.
The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable.
American Anti-Slavery Society. Declaration of sentiments of the American anti-slavery society. Adopted at the formation of said society, in Philadelphia, on the 4th day of December, . New York. Published by the American anti-slavery society, 142 Nassau Street. William S. New York, 1833. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/rbpe.11801100/.
Questions:
More than fifty-seven years have elapsed since a band of patriots convened in this place, to devise measures for the deliverance of this country from a foreign yoke. The corner-stone upon which they founded the Temple of Freedom was broadly this—“that all men are created equal; and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness.” At the sound of their trumpet-call, three millions of people rose up as from the sleep of death, and rushed to the strife of blood; deeming it more glorious to die instantly as freemen, than desirable to live one hour as slaves. They were few in number—poor in resources; but the honest conviction that Truth, Justice, and Right were on their side, made them invincible.
We have met together for the achievement of an enterprise, without which that of our fathers is incomplete...Their grievances, great as they were, were trifling in comparison with the wrongs and sufferings of those for whom we plead. Our fathers were never slaves—never bought and sold like cattle—never shut out from the light of knowledge and religion—never subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters.
But those for whose emancipation we are striving—constituting, at the present time, at least one-sixth part of our countrymen—are recognized by the law, and treated by their fellow- beings, as marketable commodities, as goods and chattels, as brute beasts; are plundered daily of the fruits of their toil without redress; really enjoying no constitutional nor legal protection from licentious and murderous outrages upon their persons, are ruthlessly torn asunder—the tender babe from the arms of its frantic mother—the heart-broken wife from her weeping husband—at the caprice or pleasure of irresponsible tyrants. For the crime of having a dark complexion, they suffer the pangs of hunger, the infliction of stripes, and the ignominy of brutal servitude. They are kept in heathenish darkness by laws expressly enacted to make their instruction a criminal offence.
These are the prominent circumstances in the condition of more than two millions of our people, the proof of which may be found in thousands of indisputable facts, and in the laws of the slaveholding States.
Hence we maintain,—that in view of the civil and religious privileges of this nation, the guilt of its oppression is unequalled by any other on the face of the earth... We further maintain,—that no man has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother—to hold or acknowledge him, for one moment, as a piece of merchandize—to keep back his hire by fraud—or to brutalize his mind by denying him the means of intellectual, social, and moral improvement.
The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable.
American Anti-Slavery Society. Declaration of sentiments of the American anti-slavery society. Adopted at the formation of said society, in Philadelphia, on the 4th day of December, . New York. Published by the American anti-slavery society, 142 Nassau Street. William S. New York, 1833. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/rbpe.11801100/.
Questions:
- On what occasion was this document written?
- What pronouns are used throughout this document to describe Americans?
- In what capacity are women referenced in this document?
Lucretia Mott: memoir
Lucretia Mott was a leader in the first wave of feminism in the United States and one of four women present at the inaugural meeting of the AASS. She would go on to form the Pennsylvania Female Anti- Slavery Society four days later and was a leader at the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, NY.
At that time I had no idea of the meaning of preambles, and resolutions, and votings. Women had never been in any assemblies of the kind. I had attended only one convention — a convention of colored people — before that; and that was the first time in my life I had ever heard a vote taken. . . . When, a short time after, we came together to form the Female Anti- Slavery Society, there was not a woman capable of taking the chair and organizing that meeting in due order; and we had to call on James McCrummel, a colored man, to give us aid in the work.
Anna Davis Hallowell, ed., James and Lucretia Mott, Life and Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 121.
Questions:
At that time I had no idea of the meaning of preambles, and resolutions, and votings. Women had never been in any assemblies of the kind. I had attended only one convention — a convention of colored people — before that; and that was the first time in my life I had ever heard a vote taken. . . . When, a short time after, we came together to form the Female Anti- Slavery Society, there was not a woman capable of taking the chair and organizing that meeting in due order; and we had to call on James McCrummel, a colored man, to give us aid in the work.
Anna Davis Hallowell, ed., James and Lucretia Mott, Life and Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 121.
Questions:
- Based off of this source was the Abolition movement sexist?
Sarah Grimke: letter to Angelina Grimke
Concord, Massachusetts
September 6, 1837
My dear sister,
There are few things which present greater obstacles to the improvement and elevation of woman to her appropriate sphere of usefulness and duty, than the laws which have been enacted to destroy her independence, and crush her individuality; laws which, although they are framed for her government, she has had no voice in establishing, and which robe her of some of her essential rights. Woman has no political existence. With the single exception of presenting a petition to the legislative body, she is a cipher in the nation; or, if not actually so in representative governments, she is only counted, like the slaves of the South, to swell the number of law-makers who form decrees for her government, with little reference to her benefit, except so far as her good may promote their own. . .
Here now, the very being of woman, like that of a slave, is absorbed in her master. All contracts made with her, like those made with slaves by their owners, are a mere nullity. Our kind defenders have legislated away almost all of our legal rights, and in the true spirit of such injustice and oppression,, have kept us in ignorance of those very laws by which we are governed. They have persuaded us, that we have no right to investigate the laws, and that, if we did, we could not comprehend them. . . .
What a mortifying proof this law affords, of the estimation in which woman is held! She is placed completely in the hands of a being subject like herself to the outbursts of passion, and therefore unworthy to be trusted with power. Perhaps I may be told respecting this law, that it is a dead letter, as I am sometimes told about the slave laws; but this is not true in either case. The slaveholder does kill his slave by moderate correction, as the law allows; and many a husband among the poor, exercises the right given him by the law, of degrading woman by personal chastisement. And among the higher ranks, if actual imprisonment is not resorted to, women are not unfrequently restrained of the liberty of going to places of worship by irreligious husbands, and of doing many other things about which, as moral and responsible beings, they should be the sole judges. . . .
I do not wish by any means to intimate that the condition of free women can be compared to that of slaves in suffering, or in degradation; still, I believe the laws which deprive married women of their rights and privileges, have a tendency to lessen them in their own estimation as moral and responsible beings, and that their being made by civil law inferior to their husbands, had a debasing and mischievous effect upon them, teaching them practically the fatal lesson to look unto man for protection and indulgence. . . Hoping that in the various reformations of the day, women may be relieved from some of their legal disabilities, I remain,
Thine in the bonds of womanhood,
Sarah M. Grimké
Sarah M. Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, addressed to Mary S. Parker (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838), 74-83.
Questions:
September 6, 1837
My dear sister,
There are few things which present greater obstacles to the improvement and elevation of woman to her appropriate sphere of usefulness and duty, than the laws which have been enacted to destroy her independence, and crush her individuality; laws which, although they are framed for her government, she has had no voice in establishing, and which robe her of some of her essential rights. Woman has no political existence. With the single exception of presenting a petition to the legislative body, she is a cipher in the nation; or, if not actually so in representative governments, she is only counted, like the slaves of the South, to swell the number of law-makers who form decrees for her government, with little reference to her benefit, except so far as her good may promote their own. . .
Here now, the very being of woman, like that of a slave, is absorbed in her master. All contracts made with her, like those made with slaves by their owners, are a mere nullity. Our kind defenders have legislated away almost all of our legal rights, and in the true spirit of such injustice and oppression,, have kept us in ignorance of those very laws by which we are governed. They have persuaded us, that we have no right to investigate the laws, and that, if we did, we could not comprehend them. . . .
What a mortifying proof this law affords, of the estimation in which woman is held! She is placed completely in the hands of a being subject like herself to the outbursts of passion, and therefore unworthy to be trusted with power. Perhaps I may be told respecting this law, that it is a dead letter, as I am sometimes told about the slave laws; but this is not true in either case. The slaveholder does kill his slave by moderate correction, as the law allows; and many a husband among the poor, exercises the right given him by the law, of degrading woman by personal chastisement. And among the higher ranks, if actual imprisonment is not resorted to, women are not unfrequently restrained of the liberty of going to places of worship by irreligious husbands, and of doing many other things about which, as moral and responsible beings, they should be the sole judges. . . .
I do not wish by any means to intimate that the condition of free women can be compared to that of slaves in suffering, or in degradation; still, I believe the laws which deprive married women of their rights and privileges, have a tendency to lessen them in their own estimation as moral and responsible beings, and that their being made by civil law inferior to their husbands, had a debasing and mischievous effect upon them, teaching them practically the fatal lesson to look unto man for protection and indulgence. . . Hoping that in the various reformations of the day, women may be relieved from some of their legal disabilities, I remain,
Thine in the bonds of womanhood,
Sarah M. Grimké
Sarah M. Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, addressed to Mary S. Parker (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838), 74-83.
Questions:
- Based off of this source, do you think the Abolition movement was sexist?
Charlotte Forten: Diary
Charlotte Forten was the wife of Sarah and Angelina Grimke’s nephew, a man of mixed race after their brother Henry Grimke had sexual relations with a woman he enslaved, Henry’s mother. Charlotte Forten Grimke worked as a teacher and was the first Black graduate of the Salem School.
June 18, 1856. Amazing, wonderful news I have heard to-day! it has completely astounded me. I cannot realize it.—Mr. Edwards [principal] called me into his room with a face full of such grave mystery, that I at once commenced reviewing my past conduct, and wondering what terrible misdeed I,—a very “model of deportment” had committed within the precincts of our Normal [school] world. The mystery was most pleasantly solved. I have received the offer of a situation as teacher in one of the public schools of this city,—of this conservative, aristocratic old city of Salem!!! Wonderful indeed it is! I know that it is principally through the exertions of my kind teacher, although he will not acknowledge it.—I thank him with all my heart. I had a long talk with the Principal of the school, whom I like much. Again and again I ask myself—‘Can it be true?’ It seems impossible. I shall commence to-morrow.—19 June 19, 1856. To-day, a rainy and gloomy one I have devoted to my new duties. Of course I cannot decide how I like them yet.—I thought it best to commence immediately, although the term has not quite closed. I could not write about it yesterday, the last day of my school-life. Yet I cannot think it quite over until after the examination, in which Mr. Edwards has kindly arranged that I shall take part...
Jan. 18, 1857. Dined with Mr. and Mrs. P[utnam]. We talked of the wrongs and sufferings on our race. Mr. P[utnam] thought me too sensitive.—But oh, how inexpressibly bitter and agonizing it is to feel oneself an outcast from the rest of mankind, as we are in this country! To me it is dreadful, dreadful. Were I to indulge in the thought I fear I should become insane. But I do not despair. I will not despair; though very often I can hardly help doing so. God help us! We are indeed a wretched people. Oh, that I could do much towards bettering our condition. I will do all, all the very little that lies in my power, while life and strength last!
Forten, Charlotte. Journal of Charlotte Forten. National Humanities Center: Making of African American Identity. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/identity/text3/charlottefortenjournal.pdf.
Questions:
June 18, 1856. Amazing, wonderful news I have heard to-day! it has completely astounded me. I cannot realize it.—Mr. Edwards [principal] called me into his room with a face full of such grave mystery, that I at once commenced reviewing my past conduct, and wondering what terrible misdeed I,—a very “model of deportment” had committed within the precincts of our Normal [school] world. The mystery was most pleasantly solved. I have received the offer of a situation as teacher in one of the public schools of this city,—of this conservative, aristocratic old city of Salem!!! Wonderful indeed it is! I know that it is principally through the exertions of my kind teacher, although he will not acknowledge it.—I thank him with all my heart. I had a long talk with the Principal of the school, whom I like much. Again and again I ask myself—‘Can it be true?’ It seems impossible. I shall commence to-morrow.—19 June 19, 1856. To-day, a rainy and gloomy one I have devoted to my new duties. Of course I cannot decide how I like them yet.—I thought it best to commence immediately, although the term has not quite closed. I could not write about it yesterday, the last day of my school-life. Yet I cannot think it quite over until after the examination, in which Mr. Edwards has kindly arranged that I shall take part...
Jan. 18, 1857. Dined with Mr. and Mrs. P[utnam]. We talked of the wrongs and sufferings on our race. Mr. P[utnam] thought me too sensitive.—But oh, how inexpressibly bitter and agonizing it is to feel oneself an outcast from the rest of mankind, as we are in this country! To me it is dreadful, dreadful. Were I to indulge in the thought I fear I should become insane. But I do not despair. I will not despair; though very often I can hardly help doing so. God help us! We are indeed a wretched people. Oh, that I could do much towards bettering our condition. I will do all, all the very little that lies in my power, while life and strength last!
Forten, Charlotte. Journal of Charlotte Forten. National Humanities Center: Making of African American Identity. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/identity/text3/charlottefortenjournal.pdf.
Questions:
- What does Forten-Grimke do for a living?
- How is she treated by Mr. Putnam?
martha morris: Sale of Home to Maria Battiste
December 31, 1845
Before me, notary public, appeared Miss Martha Morris “ who declared and acknowledged that for and in consideration of the sum of $700 payable by Maria Battiste, a free woman of color, cash in hand paid the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged... has this day given, granted, bargained, sold, transferred, aliened, conveyed, set over and delivered, and by these present doth give, grant, bargain, sell, transfer, alien, convey, set over and deliver unto the said Maria Battiste the following described property.”
Sale, Martha Morris to Maria Battiste, Book I, page 183, December 31, 1845, Conveyance Records, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.
Questions:
Before me, notary public, appeared Miss Martha Morris “ who declared and acknowledged that for and in consideration of the sum of $700 payable by Maria Battiste, a free woman of color, cash in hand paid the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged... has this day given, granted, bargained, sold, transferred, aliened, conveyed, set over and delivered, and by these present doth give, grant, bargain, sell, transfer, alien, convey, set over and deliver unto the said Maria Battiste the following described property.”
Sale, Martha Morris to Maria Battiste, Book I, page 183, December 31, 1845, Conveyance Records, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.
Questions:
- What does this document show about the work of a free Black woman in Louisiana?
Theodore Weld: Letter to Sarah and Angelina Grimké, 1837
Theodore Weld was a fellow abolitionist and later married Angelina Grimké. He wrote this letter to the sisters while they were out on speaking tour. He was doubtful that they would be effective.
My dear sisters
I had it in my heart to make a suggestion to you in my last letter about your course touching the “rights of women”, but it was crowded out by other matters perhaps of less importance...
As to the rights and wrongs of women, it is an old theme with me. It was the first subject I ever discussed. In a little debating society when a boy, I took the ground that sex neither qualified nor disqualified for the discharge of any functions mental, moral or spiritual; that there is no reason why woman should not make laws, administer justice, sit in the chair of state, plead at the bar or in the pulpit, if she has the qualifications, just as much as tho she belonged to the other sex... Now as I have never found man, woman or child who agreed with me in the “ultraism” of woman’s rights... What I advocated in boyhood I advocate now, that woman in EVERY particular shares equally with man rights and responsibilities... Now notwithstanding this, I do most deeply regret that you have begun a series of articles in the Papers on the rights of woman. Why, my dear sisters, the best possible advocacy which you can make is just what you are making day by day. Thousands hear you every week who have all their lives held that woman must not speak in public. Such a practical refutation of the dogma as your speaking furnishes has already converted multitudes... Besides you are Southerners, have been slaveholders; your dearest friends are all in the sin and shame and peril. All these things give you great access to northern mind, great sway over it...You can do more at convincing the north than twenty northern females, tho’ they could speak as well as you. Now this peculiar advantage you lose the moment you take another subject...
Let us all first wake up the nation to lift millions of slaves of both sexes from the dust, and turn them into MEN and then when we all have our hand in, it will be an easy matter to take millions of females from their knees and set them on their feet, or in other words transform them from babies into women... I pray our dear Lord to give you wisdom and grace and help and bless you forever.
Your brother T. D. Weld
*ultraism: holding of extreme opinions
Weld, Theodore. “The Letters of Theodore Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah M. Grimké, 1822−1844.” New York: Da Capo Press, 1970. 425−432.
Questions:
My dear sisters
I had it in my heart to make a suggestion to you in my last letter about your course touching the “rights of women”, but it was crowded out by other matters perhaps of less importance...
As to the rights and wrongs of women, it is an old theme with me. It was the first subject I ever discussed. In a little debating society when a boy, I took the ground that sex neither qualified nor disqualified for the discharge of any functions mental, moral or spiritual; that there is no reason why woman should not make laws, administer justice, sit in the chair of state, plead at the bar or in the pulpit, if she has the qualifications, just as much as tho she belonged to the other sex... Now as I have never found man, woman or child who agreed with me in the “ultraism” of woman’s rights... What I advocated in boyhood I advocate now, that woman in EVERY particular shares equally with man rights and responsibilities... Now notwithstanding this, I do most deeply regret that you have begun a series of articles in the Papers on the rights of woman. Why, my dear sisters, the best possible advocacy which you can make is just what you are making day by day. Thousands hear you every week who have all their lives held that woman must not speak in public. Such a practical refutation of the dogma as your speaking furnishes has already converted multitudes... Besides you are Southerners, have been slaveholders; your dearest friends are all in the sin and shame and peril. All these things give you great access to northern mind, great sway over it...You can do more at convincing the north than twenty northern females, tho’ they could speak as well as you. Now this peculiar advantage you lose the moment you take another subject...
Let us all first wake up the nation to lift millions of slaves of both sexes from the dust, and turn them into MEN and then when we all have our hand in, it will be an easy matter to take millions of females from their knees and set them on their feet, or in other words transform them from babies into women... I pray our dear Lord to give you wisdom and grace and help and bless you forever.
Your brother T. D. Weld
*ultraism: holding of extreme opinions
Weld, Theodore. “The Letters of Theodore Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah M. Grimké, 1822−1844.” New York: Da Capo Press, 1970. 425−432.
Questions:
- What is Weld most concerned with? See the underlined line. Why?
Sarah and Angelina Grimké: letter to Weld and Whittier, 1837
Brethren beloved in the Lord.
As your letters came to hand at the same time and both are devoted mainly to the same subject we have concluded to answer them on one sheet and jointly. You seem greatly alarmed at the idea of our advocating the rights of woman ...These letters have not been the means of arousing the public attention to the subject of Womans rights, it was the Pastoral Letter which did the mischief... This Letter then roused the attention of the whole country to enquire what right we had to open our mouths for the dumb; the people were continually told “it is a shame for a woman to speak in the churches.” Paul suffered not a woman to teach but commanded her to be in silence. The pulpit is too sacred a place for woman’s foot etc. Now my dear brothers this invasion of our rights was just such an attack upon us, as that made upon Abolitionists generally when they were told a few years ago that they had no right to discuss the subject of Slavery. Did you take no notice of this assertion? Why no! With one heart and one voice you said, We will settle this right before we go one step further. The time to assert a right is the time when that right is denied. We must establish this right for if we do not, it will be impossible for us to go on with the work of Emancipation ...
And can you not see that women could do, and would do a hundred times more for the slave if she were not fettered? Why! we are gravely told that we are out of our sphere even when we circulate petitions; out of our “appropriate sphere” when we speak to women only; and out of them when we sing in the churches. Silence is our province, submission our duty. If then we “give no reason for the hope that is in us”, that we have equal rights with our brethren, how can we expect to be permitted much longer to exercise those rights?... If we are to do any good in the Anti Slavery cause, our right to labor in it must be firmly established...What then can woman do for the slave when she is herself under the feet of man and shamed into silence? ...
With regard to brother Welds ultraism on the subject of marriage, he is quite mistaken if he fancies he has got far ahead of us in the human rights reform. We do not think his doctrine at all shocking: it is altogether right...
May the Lord bless you my dear brothers...
A. E. G.
[P.S.] We never mention women’s rights in our lectures except so far as is necessary to urge them to meet their responsibilities...
Weld, Theodore. “The Letters of Theodore Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah M. Grimké, 1822−1844.” New York: Da Capo Press, 1970. 425−432.
Questions:
As your letters came to hand at the same time and both are devoted mainly to the same subject we have concluded to answer them on one sheet and jointly. You seem greatly alarmed at the idea of our advocating the rights of woman ...These letters have not been the means of arousing the public attention to the subject of Womans rights, it was the Pastoral Letter which did the mischief... This Letter then roused the attention of the whole country to enquire what right we had to open our mouths for the dumb; the people were continually told “it is a shame for a woman to speak in the churches.” Paul suffered not a woman to teach but commanded her to be in silence. The pulpit is too sacred a place for woman’s foot etc. Now my dear brothers this invasion of our rights was just such an attack upon us, as that made upon Abolitionists generally when they were told a few years ago that they had no right to discuss the subject of Slavery. Did you take no notice of this assertion? Why no! With one heart and one voice you said, We will settle this right before we go one step further. The time to assert a right is the time when that right is denied. We must establish this right for if we do not, it will be impossible for us to go on with the work of Emancipation ...
And can you not see that women could do, and would do a hundred times more for the slave if she were not fettered? Why! we are gravely told that we are out of our sphere even when we circulate petitions; out of our “appropriate sphere” when we speak to women only; and out of them when we sing in the churches. Silence is our province, submission our duty. If then we “give no reason for the hope that is in us”, that we have equal rights with our brethren, how can we expect to be permitted much longer to exercise those rights?... If we are to do any good in the Anti Slavery cause, our right to labor in it must be firmly established...What then can woman do for the slave when she is herself under the feet of man and shamed into silence? ...
With regard to brother Welds ultraism on the subject of marriage, he is quite mistaken if he fancies he has got far ahead of us in the human rights reform. We do not think his doctrine at all shocking: it is altogether right...
May the Lord bless you my dear brothers...
A. E. G.
[P.S.] We never mention women’s rights in our lectures except so far as is necessary to urge them to meet their responsibilities...
Weld, Theodore. “The Letters of Theodore Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah M. Grimké, 1822−1844.” New York: Da Capo Press, 1970. 425−432.
Questions:
- Why does Grimké feel she needs to speak on women's rights first?
Catherine beecher: memoir
Catharine Beecher, the older sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, was an avid writer and reformer. She opposed the Grimke sisters' public speaking efforts.
My Dear Friend ...
It is the grand feature of the Divine economy, that there should be different stations of superiority and subordination, and it is impossible to annihilate this beneficent and immutable law... In this arrangement of the duties of life, Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior, and to the other the subordinate station, and this without any reference to the character or conduct of either. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it is for the interest of females, in all respects to conform to the duties of this relation. And it is as much a duty as it is for the child to fulfil [sic] similar relations to parents, or subjects to rulers. But while woman holds a subordinate relation in society to the other sex, it is not because it was designed that her duties or her influence should be any the less important, or all−pervading...
Woman is to win every thing by peace and love; by making herself so much respected, esteemed and loved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify her wishes will be the free−will offering of the heart... But the moment woman begins to feel the promptings of ambition, or the thirst for power, her [protection] is gone...
Whatever... throws a woman into the attitude of a combatant... throws her out of her appropriate sphere. If these general principles are correct, they are entirely opposed to the plan of arraying females in any Abolition movement: because it enlists them in an effort... it brings them forward as partisans in a conflict that has been begun and carried forward by measures that are any thing rather than peaceful in their tendencies; because it draws them forth from their appropriate retirement, to expose themselves to the ungoverned violence of mobs, and to sneers and ridicule in public places; because it leads them into the arena of political collision, not as peaceful mediators to hush the opposing elements, but as combatants...
If petitions from females will operate to exasperate... if they will increase, rather than diminish the evil which it is wished to remove; if they will be the opening wedge, that will tend eventually to bring females as petitioners and partisans into every political measure that may tend to injure and oppress their sex... then it is neither appropriate nor wise, nor right, for a woman to petition for the relief of oppressed females...
In this country, petitions to congress, in reference to the official duties of legislators, seem, IN ALL CASES, to fall entirely[outside] the sphere of female duty.
Beecher, Catherine. "An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, in Reference to the Duty of American Females." Philadelphia: Henry Perkins, 1837. 96−107.
Questions:
My Dear Friend ...
It is the grand feature of the Divine economy, that there should be different stations of superiority and subordination, and it is impossible to annihilate this beneficent and immutable law... In this arrangement of the duties of life, Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior, and to the other the subordinate station, and this without any reference to the character or conduct of either. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it is for the interest of females, in all respects to conform to the duties of this relation. And it is as much a duty as it is for the child to fulfil [sic] similar relations to parents, or subjects to rulers. But while woman holds a subordinate relation in society to the other sex, it is not because it was designed that her duties or her influence should be any the less important, or all−pervading...
Woman is to win every thing by peace and love; by making herself so much respected, esteemed and loved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify her wishes will be the free−will offering of the heart... But the moment woman begins to feel the promptings of ambition, or the thirst for power, her [protection] is gone...
Whatever... throws a woman into the attitude of a combatant... throws her out of her appropriate sphere. If these general principles are correct, they are entirely opposed to the plan of arraying females in any Abolition movement: because it enlists them in an effort... it brings them forward as partisans in a conflict that has been begun and carried forward by measures that are any thing rather than peaceful in their tendencies; because it draws them forth from their appropriate retirement, to expose themselves to the ungoverned violence of mobs, and to sneers and ridicule in public places; because it leads them into the arena of political collision, not as peaceful mediators to hush the opposing elements, but as combatants...
If petitions from females will operate to exasperate... if they will increase, rather than diminish the evil which it is wished to remove; if they will be the opening wedge, that will tend eventually to bring females as petitioners and partisans into every political measure that may tend to injure and oppress their sex... then it is neither appropriate nor wise, nor right, for a woman to petition for the relief of oppressed females...
In this country, petitions to congress, in reference to the official duties of legislators, seem, IN ALL CASES, to fall entirely[outside] the sphere of female duty.
Beecher, Catherine. "An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, in Reference to the Duty of American Females." Philadelphia: Henry Perkins, 1837. 96−107.
Questions:
- Why does she feel women's role is special?
- What concerns her about public speaking and women's rights?
sarah moore grimké: series of letters
Sarah Grimke published the following series of letters in 1837 in order to further promote her ideas.
LETTER III. THE PASTORAL LETTER OF THE GENERAL ASSOCIATION OF CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS OF MASSACHUSETTS. No one can desire more earnestly than I do, that woman may move exactly in the sphere which her Creator has assigned her; and I believe her having been displaced from that sphere has introduced confusion into the world... The New Testament has been referred to [as justifying the inferiority of women], and I am willing to abide by its decision, but must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the MEN who did that work...
‘Her influence is the source of mighty power.’ This has ever been the flattering language of man since he laid aside the whip as a means to keep woman in subjection. He spares her body; but the war he has waged against her mind, her heart, and her soul, has been no less destructive to her as a moral being. How monstrous, how anti-christian, is the doctrine that woman is to be dependent on man! Where, in all the sacred Scriptures, is this taught? Alas, she has too well learned the lesson which MAN has labored to teach her. She has surrendered her dearest RIGHTS, and been satisfied with the privileges which man has assumed to grant her...
LETTER X. INTELLECT OF WOMAN. It will scarcely be denied, I presume, that, as a general rule, men do not desire the improvement of women. There are few instances of men who are magnanimous enough to be entirely willing that women should know more than themselves, on any subjects except dress and cookery; and, indeed, this necessarily flows from their assumption of superiority...
LETTER XII. LEGAL DISABILITIES OF WOMEN. Woman has no political existence... That the laws which have been generally adopted in the United States, for the government of women, have been framed almost entirely for the exclusive benefit of men, and with a design to oppress women, by depriving them of all control over their property... Men frame the laws, and, with few exceptions, claim to execute them on both sexes... Although looked upon as an inferior, when considered as an intellectual being, woman is punished with the same severity as man, when she is guilty of moral offences...
Thine in the bonds of womanhood, SARAH M. GRIMKÉ
Sarah M. Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838), 12, 15-17, 23, 27, 33, 40-41, 45, 54-55, 61, 74, 81, 83, 86- 87, 121-123.
Questions:
LETTER III. THE PASTORAL LETTER OF THE GENERAL ASSOCIATION OF CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS OF MASSACHUSETTS. No one can desire more earnestly than I do, that woman may move exactly in the sphere which her Creator has assigned her; and I believe her having been displaced from that sphere has introduced confusion into the world... The New Testament has been referred to [as justifying the inferiority of women], and I am willing to abide by its decision, but must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the MEN who did that work...
‘Her influence is the source of mighty power.’ This has ever been the flattering language of man since he laid aside the whip as a means to keep woman in subjection. He spares her body; but the war he has waged against her mind, her heart, and her soul, has been no less destructive to her as a moral being. How monstrous, how anti-christian, is the doctrine that woman is to be dependent on man! Where, in all the sacred Scriptures, is this taught? Alas, she has too well learned the lesson which MAN has labored to teach her. She has surrendered her dearest RIGHTS, and been satisfied with the privileges which man has assumed to grant her...
LETTER X. INTELLECT OF WOMAN. It will scarcely be denied, I presume, that, as a general rule, men do not desire the improvement of women. There are few instances of men who are magnanimous enough to be entirely willing that women should know more than themselves, on any subjects except dress and cookery; and, indeed, this necessarily flows from their assumption of superiority...
LETTER XII. LEGAL DISABILITIES OF WOMEN. Woman has no political existence... That the laws which have been generally adopted in the United States, for the government of women, have been framed almost entirely for the exclusive benefit of men, and with a design to oppress women, by depriving them of all control over their property... Men frame the laws, and, with few exceptions, claim to execute them on both sexes... Although looked upon as an inferior, when considered as an intellectual being, woman is punished with the same severity as man, when she is guilty of moral offences...
Thine in the bonds of womanhood, SARAH M. GRIMKÉ
Sarah M. Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838), 12, 15-17, 23, 27, 33, 40-41, 45, 54-55, 61, 74, 81, 83, 86- 87, 121-123.
Questions:
- What topics on women's rights does Grimké tackle?
margarett fuller: woman in the nineteenth century
Margarett Fuller was a writer and an editor. In the 1840’s she was an editor for the Transcendentalist journal, Dial. In the July 1843 issue she wrote an article titled "The Great Lawsuit: Man Versus Men: Woman Versus Women." This piece is considered a classic among feminist literature. The larger version discusses controversial topics such as prostitution and slavery, marriage, employment, and reform.
Much has been written about woman's keeping within her sphere, which is defined as the domestic sphere. As a little girl she is to learn the lighter family duties, while she acquires that limited acquaintance with the realm of literature and science that will enable her to superintend the instruction of children in their earliest years. It is not generally proposed that she should be sufficiently instructed and developed to understand the pursuits or aims of her future husband; she is not to be a help-meet to him in the way of companionship and counsel, except in the care of his house and children. Her youth is to be passed partly in learning to keep house and the use of the needle, partly in the social circle, where her manners may be formed, ornamental accomplishments perfected and displayed, and the husband found who shall give her the domestic sphere for which she is exclusively to be prepared.
Were the destiny of Woman thus exactly marked out; did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent's or guardian's roof till she married; did marriage give her a sure home and protector; were she never liable to remain a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection of a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment; and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement; we would still demand for her a far wider and more generous culture, than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere.
Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 160 Nassau Street, 1845.
Questions:
Much has been written about woman's keeping within her sphere, which is defined as the domestic sphere. As a little girl she is to learn the lighter family duties, while she acquires that limited acquaintance with the realm of literature and science that will enable her to superintend the instruction of children in their earliest years. It is not generally proposed that she should be sufficiently instructed and developed to understand the pursuits or aims of her future husband; she is not to be a help-meet to him in the way of companionship and counsel, except in the care of his house and children. Her youth is to be passed partly in learning to keep house and the use of the needle, partly in the social circle, where her manners may be formed, ornamental accomplishments perfected and displayed, and the husband found who shall give her the domestic sphere for which she is exclusively to be prepared.
Were the destiny of Woman thus exactly marked out; did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent's or guardian's roof till she married; did marriage give her a sure home and protector; were she never liable to remain a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection of a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment; and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement; we would still demand for her a far wider and more generous culture, than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere.
Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 160 Nassau Street, 1845.
Questions:
- What concerns Fuller about the idea that women need male protection?
unknown: Negro womens children to serve according to the condition of the mother
This act was passed by the General Assembly of Virginia in 1662. This was a reversal of the usual common laws that governed the colonies and England, that the status of the child was determined by the father. The act allowed owners to actively expand their labor force through procreation. White women were also denied autonomy in some ways, levied with heavy fines or indentured servitude if they gave birth to a bastard child who was of color. In 1691, Virginia banned interracial marriage, which remained a crime until the Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia in 1967.
WHEREAS some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any Christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, he or she so offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.
Hening, William Waller ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 (New York: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 2:170.
Questions:
WHEREAS some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any Christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, he or she so offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.
Hening, William Waller ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 (New York: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 2:170.
Questions:
- Why do you suppose enslaved Black women were punished differently than white men for the same “crime”?
- How do white men benefit from producing children with the enslaved women they own?
The prosecution: State of Missouri vs Celia (An Enslaved Woman)
Examination by the Prosecution in the case of Celia, an enslaved woman who killed her master.
I went to the jail to convene with Celia (defendant) at the request of several citizens. The object of my conversation was to ascertain whether she had any accomplices in the crime. This was 8 or 10 days after she had been put into the jail. I asked her whether she thought she should be hung for what she had done. She said she thought she would be hung. I then told her to tell the whole [tale.] She said the old man (Newsom, the deceased) had been having sexual intercourse with her. That he had told her he was coming down to her cabin that night. She told him not to come, and that if he came she would hurt him. He came that night. There was very little fire in the cabin. She said his face was toward her. He did not raise his hand when she went to strike the first blow but sunk down on a stool or towards the floor... The stick with which she struck was about as large as the whole fort of a [illegible] chair, but not so long. She thought she did not kill him with the first blow... She said she struck the second blow because he groaned. She was afraid he was not dead... I asked her whether she had told anyone that she intended to kill the old man. She said that she never had...
Cross Examination by the Defense
She said the old man had had sexual intercourse with her. Her second child was his. The deceased bought her in [illegible] County. Can’t say positively whether Celia said that the deceased had forced her, [all] the way home from [illegible] County. Have heard that he did, but don’t know with certainty, whether she told me so. Said she was about nineteen years old at the time we were covering. The stick with which she struck was about as large as the top part of the back of a [illegible] chair, but not so long. She turned around in her chair to show me the size of the stick. Not so long as the part above the seat of the chair...
Callaway County Circuit Court. “State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave,” June 25, 1855. Missouri State Archives. https://mdh.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/mocases/id/0.
Questions:
I went to the jail to convene with Celia (defendant) at the request of several citizens. The object of my conversation was to ascertain whether she had any accomplices in the crime. This was 8 or 10 days after she had been put into the jail. I asked her whether she thought she should be hung for what she had done. She said she thought she would be hung. I then told her to tell the whole [tale.] She said the old man (Newsom, the deceased) had been having sexual intercourse with her. That he had told her he was coming down to her cabin that night. She told him not to come, and that if he came she would hurt him. He came that night. There was very little fire in the cabin. She said his face was toward her. He did not raise his hand when she went to strike the first blow but sunk down on a stool or towards the floor... The stick with which she struck was about as large as the whole fort of a [illegible] chair, but not so long. She thought she did not kill him with the first blow... She said she struck the second blow because he groaned. She was afraid he was not dead... I asked her whether she had told anyone that she intended to kill the old man. She said that she never had...
Cross Examination by the Defense
She said the old man had had sexual intercourse with her. Her second child was his. The deceased bought her in [illegible] County. Can’t say positively whether Celia said that the deceased had forced her, [all] the way home from [illegible] County. Have heard that he did, but don’t know with certainty, whether she told me so. Said she was about nineteen years old at the time we were covering. The stick with which she struck was about as large as the top part of the back of a [illegible] chair, but not so long. She turned around in her chair to show me the size of the stick. Not so long as the part above the seat of the chair...
Callaway County Circuit Court. “State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave,” June 25, 1855. Missouri State Archives. https://mdh.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/mocases/id/0.
Questions:
- Why did Celia kill her master?
- In what ways was Celia robbed of her humanity and autonomy (ability to make her own choices)?
harriet jacobs: incidents of a slave girl
This autobiography was one of the first published throughout the north by a woman who escaped slavery. It served to show abolitionists some of the different ways enslaved women were treated. Jacobs appeals to white women in particular. For white women, sexual relations between their husbands and the enslaved women was complicated. On the one hand, this was adulty (cheating), on the other, there was no such thing as rape in marriage. White women were at the will of their spouse who had the right to rape her in some states until 1973. Relations between masters and the enslaved allowed white women some agency over their sex life, all the while benefitting her financially.
DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family... My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import [meaning]. I tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master's age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months... But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him—where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection? No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men. The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage... The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe...
In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right? Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so full, and my pen is so weak! There are noble men and women who plead for us, striving to help those who cannot help themselves. God bless them! God give them strength and courage to go on! God bless those, every where, who are laboring to advance the cause of humanity!..
The state of things grew worse and worse daily. In desperation I told him that I must and would apply to my grandmother for protection. He threatened me with death, and worse than death, if I made any complaint to her. Strange to say, I did not despair...
My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children? Did the other slaves dare to allude to [suggest] it, except in whispers among themselves? No, indeed! They knew too well the terrible consequences...
Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes. I am telling you the plain truth... northerners consent to act the part of bloodhounds, and hunt the poor fugitive back into his den... Nay, more, they are not only willing, but proud, to give their daughters in marriage to slaveholders. The poor girls have romantic notions of a... happy home. To what disappointments are they destined! The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of his own household.
Jacobs, Harriet A., Lydia Maria Child, Jean Fagan Yellin, and John S. Jacobs. Incidents in the life of a slave girl: written by herself. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Questions:
DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family... My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import [meaning]. I tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master's age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months... But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him—where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection? No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men. The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage... The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe...
In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right? Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so full, and my pen is so weak! There are noble men and women who plead for us, striving to help those who cannot help themselves. God bless them! God give them strength and courage to go on! God bless those, every where, who are laboring to advance the cause of humanity!..
The state of things grew worse and worse daily. In desperation I told him that I must and would apply to my grandmother for protection. He threatened me with death, and worse than death, if I made any complaint to her. Strange to say, I did not despair...
My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children? Did the other slaves dare to allude to [suggest] it, except in whispers among themselves? No, indeed! They knew too well the terrible consequences...
Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes. I am telling you the plain truth... northerners consent to act the part of bloodhounds, and hunt the poor fugitive back into his den... Nay, more, they are not only willing, but proud, to give their daughters in marriage to slaveholders. The poor girls have romantic notions of a... happy home. To what disappointments are they destined! The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of his own household.
Jacobs, Harriet A., Lydia Maria Child, Jean Fagan Yellin, and John S. Jacobs. Incidents in the life of a slave girl: written by herself. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Questions:
- What did she imply when she said she was, “subject to his will in all things”?
- What does this source tell you about the life of an enslaved woman?
- What does this source tell you about the life of a slave owner’s wife?
- How might white women have been complicit in the exploitation of enslaved women?
delia garlic: life experiences
Delia Garlic lives at 43 Stone Street, Montgomery, and insists she is 100 years old. Unlike many of the old Negroes of the South, she has no good words for slavery days or the old masters, declaring: “Dem days wuz hell...”
No’m, dey warn’t no good times at his house. He wuz a widower an’ his daughter kept house for him. I nursed for her, an’ one day I wuz playin’ wid de baby. Ut hurt its li’l han’ an’ commenced to cry, an’ she wirl on me, pick up a hot iron an’ run it all down my arm an’ han’. It took off de flesh when she done it...
I was sol’ by de speculator to a man in McDonough, Ga. I don’t ricollect his name, but he was openin’ a big hotel at McDonough an’ bought me to wait on tables. Byt when de time come aroun’ to pay for me, his hotel done fail. Den de Atlanta man dat bought de hotel bought me too. Fo’long dough I was sold to a man by de name of Garlic, done in Lousiana, an’ I stayed wid him ‘till I wuz freed. I wuz a regular fiel’ han, plowin’ an’ hoein’ an’ choppin’ cotton.
Us heard talk ‘bout de [Civil] war, but us didn’t pay no ‘tention. Us never dreamed dat freedom would ever come.
Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 1, Alabama, Aarons-Young. to 1937, 1936. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn010/.
Questions:
No’m, dey warn’t no good times at his house. He wuz a widower an’ his daughter kept house for him. I nursed for her, an’ one day I wuz playin’ wid de baby. Ut hurt its li’l han’ an’ commenced to cry, an’ she wirl on me, pick up a hot iron an’ run it all down my arm an’ han’. It took off de flesh when she done it...
I was sol’ by de speculator to a man in McDonough, Ga. I don’t ricollect his name, but he was openin’ a big hotel at McDonough an’ bought me to wait on tables. Byt when de time come aroun’ to pay for me, his hotel done fail. Den de Atlanta man dat bought de hotel bought me too. Fo’long dough I was sold to a man by de name of Garlic, done in Lousiana, an’ I stayed wid him ‘till I wuz freed. I wuz a regular fiel’ han, plowin’ an’ hoein’ an’ choppin’ cotton.
Us heard talk ‘bout de [Civil] war, but us didn’t pay no ‘tention. Us never dreamed dat freedom would ever come.
Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 1, Alabama, Aarons-Young. to 1937, 1936. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn010/.
Questions:
- What sort of work did Garlic do?
- Does this work seem to fit with the expectations for women in her time?
catherine haun: memoir
Catherine Haun was young and newly married when she and a group of goldseekers headed west. She wrote this abbreviated account of her journey.
Early in January of 1849 we first thought of emigrating to California... At that time the "gold fever" was contagious and few, old or young, escaped the malady. On the streets, in the fields, in the workshops and by the fireside, golden California was the chief topic of conversation. Who were going? How was best to "fix up" the "outfit"? What to take as food and clothing? Who would stay at home to care for the farm and womenfolks? Who would take wives and children along? Advice was handed out quite free of charge and often quite free of common sense. However, as two heads are better than one, all proffered ideas helped as a means to the end. The intended adventurers dilligently collected their belongings and after exchanging such articles as were not needed for others more suitable for the trip, begging, buying or borrowing what they could, with buoyant spirits started off.
Some half dozen families of our neighborhood joined us and probably about twenty-five persons constituted our little band... Our caravan had a good many women and children and although we were probably longer on the journey owing to their presence—they exerted a good influence, as the men did not take such risks with Indians and thereby avoided conflict; were more alert about the care of the teams and seldom had accidents; more attention was paid to cleanliness and sanitation and, lastly but not of less importance, the meals were more regular and better cooked thus preventing much sickness and there was less waste of food...
During the entire trip Indians were a source of anxiety, we being never sure of their friendship. Secret dread and alert watchfulness seemed always necessary... One night after we had retired, some sleeping in blankets upon the ground, some in tents, a few under the wagons and others in the wagons, Colonel Brophy gave the men a practice drill. It was impromptu and a surprise. He called: "Indians, Indians!" We were thrown into great confusion and excitement but he was gratified at the promptness and courage with which the men responded. Each immediately seized his gun and made ready for the attack. The women had been instructed to seek shelter in the wagons at such times of danger, but some screamed, others fainted, a few crawled under the wagons and those sleeping in wagons generally followed their husbands out and all of us were nearly paralized with fear. Fortunately, we never had occasion to put into actual use this maneuver, but the drill was quite reassuring and certainly we womenfolk would have acted braver had the alarm ever again been sounded...
[O]ne day found a post with a cross board pointing to a branch road which seemed better than the one we were on. . . . We decided to take it but before many miles suddenly found ourselves in a desolate, rough country that proved to be the edge of the "Bad Lands" I shudder yet at the thought of the ugliness and danger of the territory...
To add to the horrors of the surroundings one man was bitten on the ankle by a venemous snake. Although every available remidy was tried upon the wound, his limb had to be amputated with the aid of a common handsaw. Fortunately, for him, he had a good, brave wife along who helped and cheered him into health and usefulness; for it was not long before he found much that he could do and was not considered a burden, although the woman had to do a man's work as they were alone. He was of a mechanical turn, and later on helped mend wagons, yokes and harness; and when the train was "on the move" sat in the wagon, gun by his side, and repaired boots and shoes. He was one of the most cheery members of the company and told good stories and sang at the campfire, putting to shame some of the able bodied who were given to complaining or selfishness...
During the day we womenfolk visited from wagon to wagon or congenial friends spent an hour walking, ever westward, and talking over our home life back in "the states" telling of the loved ones left behind; voicing our hopes for the future in the far west and even whispering a little friendly gossip of emigrant life.
High teas were not popular but tatting [intricate knotwork], knitting, crocheting, exchanging recipes for cooking beans or dried apples or swapping food for the sake of variety kept us in practice of feminine occupations and diversions.
We did not keep late hours but when not too engrossed with fear of the red enemy [a racist phrase used by white people to describe Native peoples] or dread of impending danger we enjoyed the hour around the campfire. The menfolk lolling and smoking their pipes and guessing or maybe betting how many miles we had covered the day. We listened to readings, story telling, music and songs and the day often ended in laughter and merrymaking...
Across this drear country I used to ride horseback several hours of the day which was a great relief from the continual jolting of even our spring wagon. I also walked a great deal and this lightened the wagon. One day I walked fourteen miles and was not very fatigued...
The men seemed more tired and hungry than were the women. Our only death on the journey occurred in this desert. The Canadian woman, Mrs. Lamore, suddenly sickened [after childbirth] and died, leaving her two little girls and grief stricken husband. We halted a day to bury her and the infant that had lived but an hour, in this weird, lonely spot on God's footstool away apparently from everywhere and everybody...
[W}e reached Sacramento on November 4, 1849, just six months and ten days after leaving Clinton, Iowa, we were all in pretty good condition...
Haun, Catherine. "A Woman's Trip Across the Plains in 1849." From Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey. New York: Schocken Books, 1992. 166–85.
Questions:
Early in January of 1849 we first thought of emigrating to California... At that time the "gold fever" was contagious and few, old or young, escaped the malady. On the streets, in the fields, in the workshops and by the fireside, golden California was the chief topic of conversation. Who were going? How was best to "fix up" the "outfit"? What to take as food and clothing? Who would stay at home to care for the farm and womenfolks? Who would take wives and children along? Advice was handed out quite free of charge and often quite free of common sense. However, as two heads are better than one, all proffered ideas helped as a means to the end. The intended adventurers dilligently collected their belongings and after exchanging such articles as were not needed for others more suitable for the trip, begging, buying or borrowing what they could, with buoyant spirits started off.
Some half dozen families of our neighborhood joined us and probably about twenty-five persons constituted our little band... Our caravan had a good many women and children and although we were probably longer on the journey owing to their presence—they exerted a good influence, as the men did not take such risks with Indians and thereby avoided conflict; were more alert about the care of the teams and seldom had accidents; more attention was paid to cleanliness and sanitation and, lastly but not of less importance, the meals were more regular and better cooked thus preventing much sickness and there was less waste of food...
During the entire trip Indians were a source of anxiety, we being never sure of their friendship. Secret dread and alert watchfulness seemed always necessary... One night after we had retired, some sleeping in blankets upon the ground, some in tents, a few under the wagons and others in the wagons, Colonel Brophy gave the men a practice drill. It was impromptu and a surprise. He called: "Indians, Indians!" We were thrown into great confusion and excitement but he was gratified at the promptness and courage with which the men responded. Each immediately seized his gun and made ready for the attack. The women had been instructed to seek shelter in the wagons at such times of danger, but some screamed, others fainted, a few crawled under the wagons and those sleeping in wagons generally followed their husbands out and all of us were nearly paralized with fear. Fortunately, we never had occasion to put into actual use this maneuver, but the drill was quite reassuring and certainly we womenfolk would have acted braver had the alarm ever again been sounded...
[O]ne day found a post with a cross board pointing to a branch road which seemed better than the one we were on. . . . We decided to take it but before many miles suddenly found ourselves in a desolate, rough country that proved to be the edge of the "Bad Lands" I shudder yet at the thought of the ugliness and danger of the territory...
To add to the horrors of the surroundings one man was bitten on the ankle by a venemous snake. Although every available remidy was tried upon the wound, his limb had to be amputated with the aid of a common handsaw. Fortunately, for him, he had a good, brave wife along who helped and cheered him into health and usefulness; for it was not long before he found much that he could do and was not considered a burden, although the woman had to do a man's work as they were alone. He was of a mechanical turn, and later on helped mend wagons, yokes and harness; and when the train was "on the move" sat in the wagon, gun by his side, and repaired boots and shoes. He was one of the most cheery members of the company and told good stories and sang at the campfire, putting to shame some of the able bodied who were given to complaining or selfishness...
During the day we womenfolk visited from wagon to wagon or congenial friends spent an hour walking, ever westward, and talking over our home life back in "the states" telling of the loved ones left behind; voicing our hopes for the future in the far west and even whispering a little friendly gossip of emigrant life.
High teas were not popular but tatting [intricate knotwork], knitting, crocheting, exchanging recipes for cooking beans or dried apples or swapping food for the sake of variety kept us in practice of feminine occupations and diversions.
We did not keep late hours but when not too engrossed with fear of the red enemy [a racist phrase used by white people to describe Native peoples] or dread of impending danger we enjoyed the hour around the campfire. The menfolk lolling and smoking their pipes and guessing or maybe betting how many miles we had covered the day. We listened to readings, story telling, music and songs and the day often ended in laughter and merrymaking...
Across this drear country I used to ride horseback several hours of the day which was a great relief from the continual jolting of even our spring wagon. I also walked a great deal and this lightened the wagon. One day I walked fourteen miles and was not very fatigued...
The men seemed more tired and hungry than were the women. Our only death on the journey occurred in this desert. The Canadian woman, Mrs. Lamore, suddenly sickened [after childbirth] and died, leaving her two little girls and grief stricken husband. We halted a day to bury her and the infant that had lived but an hour, in this weird, lonely spot on God's footstool away apparently from everywhere and everybody...
[W}e reached Sacramento on November 4, 1849, just six months and ten days after leaving Clinton, Iowa, we were all in pretty good condition...
Haun, Catherine. "A Woman's Trip Across the Plains in 1849." From Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey. New York: Schocken Books, 1992. 166–85.
Questions:
- What type of source is this?
- According to Haun, how did women contribute to the journey?
- According to Haun, how did these women continue the cult of domesticity and how did they stretch or change it?
Luzena Stanley Wilson: memoir
This excerpt comes from Luzena Stanley Wilson’s account of her family’s 1849 overland journey and life in early California as dictated to her daughter.
At last we were near our journey's end. We had reached the summit of the Sierra, and had begun the tedious journey down the mountain side... The first man we met was about fifty miles above Sacramento... The sight of his white shirt, the first I had seen for four long months, revived in me the languishing spark of womanly vanity; and when he rode up to the wagon where I was standing, I felt embarrassed, drew down my ragged sun-bonnet over my sunburned face, and shrank from observation. My skirts were worn off in rags above my ankles; my sleeves hung in tatters above my elbows; my hands brown and hard, were gloveless; around my neck was tied a cotton square, torn from a discarded dress... and my husband and children and all the camp, were habited like myself in rags...
My poor tired babies were asleep on the mattress in the bottom of the wagon, and I peered out into the gathering gloom, trying to catch a glimpse of our destination. The night before I had cooked my supper on the camp fire, as usual, when a hungry miner, attracted by the unusual sight of a woman, said to me, "I'll give you five dollars, ma'am, for them biscuit." It sounded like a fortune to me, and I looked at him to see if he meant it. And as I hesitated at such, to me, a very remarkable proposition, he repeated his offer to purchase, and said he would give ten dollars for bread made by a woman, and laid the shining gold piece in my hand... The next day when I looked for my treasure it was gone. The little box where I had put it rolled empty on the bottom of the wagon, and my coin lay hidden in the dust, miles back, up on the mountains. So we came, young, strong, healthy, hopeful, but penniless, into the new world... A wilderness of canvas tents glimmered in the firelight; the men cooked and ate, played cards, drank whisky, slept rolled in their blankets, fed their teams, talked, and swore all around; and a few, less occupied than their comrades, stared at me as at a strange creature, and roused my sleeping babies, and passed them from arm to arm to have a look at such a novelty as a child.
Wilson, Luzena Stanley. Luzena Stanley Wilson, 49er: Her Memoirs as Taken Down by her Daughter in 1881. Mills College, Calif.,: Eucalyptus Press, 1937.
Questions:
At last we were near our journey's end. We had reached the summit of the Sierra, and had begun the tedious journey down the mountain side... The first man we met was about fifty miles above Sacramento... The sight of his white shirt, the first I had seen for four long months, revived in me the languishing spark of womanly vanity; and when he rode up to the wagon where I was standing, I felt embarrassed, drew down my ragged sun-bonnet over my sunburned face, and shrank from observation. My skirts were worn off in rags above my ankles; my sleeves hung in tatters above my elbows; my hands brown and hard, were gloveless; around my neck was tied a cotton square, torn from a discarded dress... and my husband and children and all the camp, were habited like myself in rags...
My poor tired babies were asleep on the mattress in the bottom of the wagon, and I peered out into the gathering gloom, trying to catch a glimpse of our destination. The night before I had cooked my supper on the camp fire, as usual, when a hungry miner, attracted by the unusual sight of a woman, said to me, "I'll give you five dollars, ma'am, for them biscuit." It sounded like a fortune to me, and I looked at him to see if he meant it. And as I hesitated at such, to me, a very remarkable proposition, he repeated his offer to purchase, and said he would give ten dollars for bread made by a woman, and laid the shining gold piece in my hand... The next day when I looked for my treasure it was gone. The little box where I had put it rolled empty on the bottom of the wagon, and my coin lay hidden in the dust, miles back, up on the mountains. So we came, young, strong, healthy, hopeful, but penniless, into the new world... A wilderness of canvas tents glimmered in the firelight; the men cooked and ate, played cards, drank whisky, slept rolled in their blankets, fed their teams, talked, and swore all around; and a few, less occupied than their comrades, stared at me as at a strange creature, and roused my sleeping babies, and passed them from arm to arm to have a look at such a novelty as a child.
Wilson, Luzena Stanley. Luzena Stanley Wilson, 49er: Her Memoirs as Taken Down by her Daughter in 1881. Mills College, Calif.,: Eucalyptus Press, 1937.
Questions:
- What type of source is this?
- How does Wilson feel about her appearance at the end of the journey? Why?
- According to Wilson, how did Gold Rush women continue the cult of domesticity and how did they stretch or change it? Give examples from her experience.
mrs. a c. hunt: diary
Feel tired out. Could not make my work go off well at all and did not get through till late; stewed peaches, cooked beans and rice, made eight loaves of bread and Dutch cheese. Bertie very unwell with his teeth [?] and exceedingly fretful, [Written crosswise on page]: Bad news from the mountains, fire and Indians destroying mines.
First Week of July. Cam and John have bought an eating house, will open next week. Have been very busy preparing fruit to make pies.
I was homesick and could have cryed [sic], but Cam feels so sadly when I get discouraged that I try hard to be cheerful when he is about. He helps me all he can about my work, but there is much to do with so many boarders, and all being out of money we cannot get rid of them. Board is $12.00 per week here in advance and almost all lodge on the ground in the open air.
I have made some $30.00 out of the butter and cheese smearcase [cottage cheese] I have made since we arrived, in fact have made all the money Cam and John have had, as their last copper was spent at Council Grove in Eastern Kansas, but the work made me sick and now I sell the milk at 10cts per quart and make $2.75 a day. My butter brought $1.00 per lb and balls of smearcase 40cts per doz.
Second third and fourth weeks. Weary days of labor and pain. Have made 175 loaves of bread and 450 pies. Taken all the care of the children and done all the house work but the washing. Ho hum[?]
Hafen, LeRoy. “Diary of Mrs. A C. Hunt,” Colorado Magazine, 21 (September 1944): 161-170.
Questions:
First Week of July. Cam and John have bought an eating house, will open next week. Have been very busy preparing fruit to make pies.
I was homesick and could have cryed [sic], but Cam feels so sadly when I get discouraged that I try hard to be cheerful when he is about. He helps me all he can about my work, but there is much to do with so many boarders, and all being out of money we cannot get rid of them. Board is $12.00 per week here in advance and almost all lodge on the ground in the open air.
I have made some $30.00 out of the butter and cheese smearcase [cottage cheese] I have made since we arrived, in fact have made all the money Cam and John have had, as their last copper was spent at Council Grove in Eastern Kansas, but the work made me sick and now I sell the milk at 10cts per quart and make $2.75 a day. My butter brought $1.00 per lb and balls of smearcase 40cts per doz.
Second third and fourth weeks. Weary days of labor and pain. Have made 175 loaves of bread and 450 pies. Taken all the care of the children and done all the house work but the washing. Ho hum[?]
Hafen, LeRoy. “Diary of Mrs. A C. Hunt,” Colorado Magazine, 21 (September 1944): 161-170.
Questions:
- What type of source is this?
- How did Hunt contribute to her family's income?
- According to Hunt, how did Gold Rush women continue the cult of domesticity and how did they stretch or change it?
unknown: gold mountain wives
In China, folk songs sung by women reflected their longing for their husbands who left to seek their fortunes in California, which they referred to as “Gold Mountain.” This song reflects the pros and cons of marrying a gold miner.
O, just marry all the daughters to men from Gold Mountain:
All those trunks from Gold Mountain– you can demand as many as you want!
O, don’t ever marry your daughter to men from Gold Mountain: Lonely and sad– a cooking pot is her only companion!
Hom, Marlon K. “Gold Mountain Wives: Rhapsodies in Blue.”Chinese America: History and Perspectives. Berkeley: University of California, 1987. 46.
Questions:
O, just marry all the daughters to men from Gold Mountain:
All those trunks from Gold Mountain– you can demand as many as you want!
O, don’t ever marry your daughter to men from Gold Mountain: Lonely and sad– a cooking pot is her only companion!
Hom, Marlon K. “Gold Mountain Wives: Rhapsodies in Blue.”Chinese America: History and Perspectives. Berkeley: University of California, 1987. 46.
Questions:
- What type of source is this?
- According to this song, was marrying a miner desirable?
- According to this song, how did the Gold Rush impact women across the ocean?
elisha crosby: excerpt
Elisha Crosby was an early California pioneer, lawyer, politician, diplomat, and civil servant. He wrote autobiographical essays about his official life in early California, including his experience as a delegate at the constitutional convention that created the state, his time as a state senator from 1848 until 1852, and his work managing land claims by Spanish-speaking Californios. He wrote briefly about Ah Toy, the famous brothel owner in San Francisco.
The first Chinese courtesan who came to San Francisco was Ah Toy. She arrived I think in 1850 and was a very handsome Chinese girl. She was quite select in her associates was liberally patronized by the white men and made a great amount of money.
Crosby, Elisha. 1878. https://noelccilker.medium.com/the-strangely-alluring-ah-toy- 8bf70d8333ba.
Questions:
The first Chinese courtesan who came to San Francisco was Ah Toy. She arrived I think in 1850 and was a very handsome Chinese girl. She was quite select in her associates was liberally patronized by the white men and made a great amount of money.
Crosby, Elisha. 1878. https://noelccilker.medium.com/the-strangely-alluring-ah-toy- 8bf70d8333ba.
Questions:
- What type of source is this?
- What words does he use to describe Ah Toy?
- According to Crosby, was Ah Toy limited by her sex?
sing kum: excerpt
Brothels offered women wealth and funds, but they often were exploitative and women were coerced into sexual slavery. This letter written by a Chinese girl who fled to a Christian Mission home in California after a life in sexual slavery describes her experience.
Miss B,--
You ask me to write about my life. I can not write very well, but will do the best I can.
I was born in Sin Lam, China, seventeen years ago. My father was a weaver and my mother had small feet. I had a sister and brother younger than myself. My father was an industrious man, but we were very poor. My feet were never bound; I am thankful they were not. My father sold me when I was about seven years old; my mother cried. I was afraid, and ran under the bed to hide. My father came to see me once... He seemed very sad, and when he went away he gave me some cash and wished me prosperity. That was the last time I saw him. I was sold four times. I came to California about five years ago. My last mistress was very cruel to me. She used to whip me, pull my hair, and pinch the inside of my cheeks. A friend of mine told me about this place and that night I ran away... I was afraid my mistress was coming after me. I rang the bell twice, and when the door was opened I ran in quickly. I thank God that he led me to this place...
Yours Truly,
Sing Kum
San Francisco January 4, 1876
Kum, Sing. “Letter by a Chinese Girl (1876).” In Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present, edited by Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang, and Him Mark Lai, 1st ed., 15– 16. University of California Press, 2006. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pppwn.10.
Questions:
Miss B,--
You ask me to write about my life. I can not write very well, but will do the best I can.
I was born in Sin Lam, China, seventeen years ago. My father was a weaver and my mother had small feet. I had a sister and brother younger than myself. My father was an industrious man, but we were very poor. My feet were never bound; I am thankful they were not. My father sold me when I was about seven years old; my mother cried. I was afraid, and ran under the bed to hide. My father came to see me once... He seemed very sad, and when he went away he gave me some cash and wished me prosperity. That was the last time I saw him. I was sold four times. I came to California about five years ago. My last mistress was very cruel to me. She used to whip me, pull my hair, and pinch the inside of my cheeks. A friend of mine told me about this place and that night I ran away... I was afraid my mistress was coming after me. I rang the bell twice, and when the door was opened I ran in quickly. I thank God that he led me to this place...
Yours Truly,
Sing Kum
San Francisco January 4, 1876
Kum, Sing. “Letter by a Chinese Girl (1876).” In Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present, edited by Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang, and Him Mark Lai, 1st ed., 15– 16. University of California Press, 2006. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pppwn.10.
Questions:
- What type of source is this?
- How old was Sing when she came to California?
- According to Sing, were women free or rich during the Gold Rush?
harriet jacobs: incidents of a slave girl
When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for
the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.
My mother's mistress was the daughter of my grandmother's
mistress. She was the foster sister of my mother; they were both
nourished at my grandmother's breast. In fact, my mother had
been weaned at three months old, that the babe of the mistress
might obtain sufficient food. They played together as children;
and, when they became women, my mother was a most faithful
servant to her whiter foster sister. On her death-bed her mistress
promised that her children should never suffer for any thing;
and during her lifetime she kept her word. They all spoke
kindly of my dead mother, who had been a slave merely in
name, but in nature was noble and womanly. I grieved for
her, and my young mind was troubled with the thought who
would now take care of me and my little brother. I was told
that my home was now to be with her mistress; and I found it a happy one...
When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died. As I saw the cheek grow paler, and the eye more glassy, how earnestly I prayed in my heart that she might live! I loved her; for she had been almost like a mother to me. My prayers were not answered. She died, and they buried her in the little churchyard, where, day after day, my tears fell upon her grave...
After a brief period of suspense, the will of my mistress was read, and we learned that she had bequeathed [given] me to her sister's daughter, a child of five years old. So vanished our hopes...
Dr. Flint, a physician in the neighborhood, had married the sister of my mistress, and I was now the property of their little daughter... When we entered our new home we encountered cold looks, cold words, and cold treatment. We were glad when the night came. On my narrow bed I moaned and wept, I felt so desolate and alone... My heart rebelled against God, who had taken from me mother, father, mistress, and friend... I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons [wreaths], while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings...
Little attention was paid to the slaves' meals in Dr. Flint's house. If they could catch a bit of food while it was going, well and good. I gave myself no trouble on that score, for on my various errands I passed my grandmother's house, where there was always something to spare for me...
My grandmother's mistress had always promised her that, at her death, she should be free; and it was said that in her will she made good the promise. But when the estate was settled, Dr. Flint told the faithful old servant that, under existing circumstances, it was necessary she should be sold... At that time, my grandmother was just fifty years old. Laborious years had passed since then; and now my brother and I were slaves to the man who had defrauded her of her money, and tried to defraud her of her freedom...
Dr. Flint was an epicure [a person who prefers fine food and drink]. The cook never sent a dinner to his table without fear and trembling; for if there happened to be a dish not to his liking, he would either order her to be whipped, or compel her to eat every mouthful of it in his presence. The poor, hungry creature might not have objected to eating it; but she did not object to having her master cram it down her throat till she choked... This poor woman endured many cruelties from her master and mistress; sometimes she was locked up, away from her nursing baby, for a whole day and night... to the slave mother... day comes laden [loaded] with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies.
On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction- block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was brought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, "Gone! All gone! Why don't God kill me?" I had no words wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of daily, yea, of hourly occurrence.
DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family... My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import [meaning]. I tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master's age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months... He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles my grandmother had instilled. He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of. I turned from him with disgust and hatred. But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him--where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection? No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men. The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage... The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe...
In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right? Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so full, and my pen is so weak! There are noble men and women who plead for us, striving to help those who cannot help themselves. God bless them! God give them strength and courage to go on! God bless those, every where, who are laboring to advance the cause of humanity!..
The state of things grew worse and worse daily. In desperation I told him that I must and would apply to my grandmother for protection. He threatened me with death, and worse than death, if I made any complaint to her. Strange to say, I did not despair. I was naturally of a buoyant [happy] disposition, and always I had a hope of somehow getting out of his clutches. Like many a poor, simple slave before me, I trusted that some threads of joy would yet be woven into my dark destiny.
The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition. My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children? Did the other slaves dare to allude to [suggest] it, except in whispers among themselves? No, indeed! They knew too well the terrible consequences.
My grandmother could not avoid seeing things which excited her suspicions. She was uneasy about me, and tried various ways to buy me; but the never-changing answer was always repeated: "Linda does not belong to me. She is my daughter's property, and I have no legal right to sell her." The conscientious man! He was too scrupulous to sell me; but he had no scruples whatever about committing a much greater wrong against the helpless young girl placed under his guardianship, as his daughter's property.
Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes. I am telling you the plain truth. Yet when victims make their escape from the wild beast of Slavery, northerners consent to act the part of bloodhounds, and hunt the poor fugitive back into his den, "full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness." Nay, more, they are not only willing, but proud, to give their daughters in marriage to slaveholders. The poor girls have romantic notions of a sunny clime, and of the flowering vines that all the year round shade a happy home. To what disappointments are they destined! The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness.
Jacobs, Harriet A., Lydia Maria Child, Jean Fagan Yellin, and John S. Jacobs. Incidents in the life of a slave girl: written by herself. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Questions:
the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.
My mother's mistress was the daughter of my grandmother's
mistress. She was the foster sister of my mother; they were both
nourished at my grandmother's breast. In fact, my mother had
been weaned at three months old, that the babe of the mistress
might obtain sufficient food. They played together as children;
and, when they became women, my mother was a most faithful
servant to her whiter foster sister. On her death-bed her mistress
promised that her children should never suffer for any thing;
and during her lifetime she kept her word. They all spoke
kindly of my dead mother, who had been a slave merely in
name, but in nature was noble and womanly. I grieved for
her, and my young mind was troubled with the thought who
would now take care of me and my little brother. I was told
that my home was now to be with her mistress; and I found it a happy one...
When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died. As I saw the cheek grow paler, and the eye more glassy, how earnestly I prayed in my heart that she might live! I loved her; for she had been almost like a mother to me. My prayers were not answered. She died, and they buried her in the little churchyard, where, day after day, my tears fell upon her grave...
After a brief period of suspense, the will of my mistress was read, and we learned that she had bequeathed [given] me to her sister's daughter, a child of five years old. So vanished our hopes...
Dr. Flint, a physician in the neighborhood, had married the sister of my mistress, and I was now the property of their little daughter... When we entered our new home we encountered cold looks, cold words, and cold treatment. We were glad when the night came. On my narrow bed I moaned and wept, I felt so desolate and alone... My heart rebelled against God, who had taken from me mother, father, mistress, and friend... I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons [wreaths], while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings...
Little attention was paid to the slaves' meals in Dr. Flint's house. If they could catch a bit of food while it was going, well and good. I gave myself no trouble on that score, for on my various errands I passed my grandmother's house, where there was always something to spare for me...
My grandmother's mistress had always promised her that, at her death, she should be free; and it was said that in her will she made good the promise. But when the estate was settled, Dr. Flint told the faithful old servant that, under existing circumstances, it was necessary she should be sold... At that time, my grandmother was just fifty years old. Laborious years had passed since then; and now my brother and I were slaves to the man who had defrauded her of her money, and tried to defraud her of her freedom...
Dr. Flint was an epicure [a person who prefers fine food and drink]. The cook never sent a dinner to his table without fear and trembling; for if there happened to be a dish not to his liking, he would either order her to be whipped, or compel her to eat every mouthful of it in his presence. The poor, hungry creature might not have objected to eating it; but she did not object to having her master cram it down her throat till she choked... This poor woman endured many cruelties from her master and mistress; sometimes she was locked up, away from her nursing baby, for a whole day and night... to the slave mother... day comes laden [loaded] with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies.
On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction- block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was brought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, "Gone! All gone! Why don't God kill me?" I had no words wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of daily, yea, of hourly occurrence.
DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family... My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import [meaning]. I tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master's age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months... He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles my grandmother had instilled. He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of. I turned from him with disgust and hatred. But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him--where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection? No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men. The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage... The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe...
In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right? Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so full, and my pen is so weak! There are noble men and women who plead for us, striving to help those who cannot help themselves. God bless them! God give them strength and courage to go on! God bless those, every where, who are laboring to advance the cause of humanity!..
The state of things grew worse and worse daily. In desperation I told him that I must and would apply to my grandmother for protection. He threatened me with death, and worse than death, if I made any complaint to her. Strange to say, I did not despair. I was naturally of a buoyant [happy] disposition, and always I had a hope of somehow getting out of his clutches. Like many a poor, simple slave before me, I trusted that some threads of joy would yet be woven into my dark destiny.
The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition. My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children? Did the other slaves dare to allude to [suggest] it, except in whispers among themselves? No, indeed! They knew too well the terrible consequences.
My grandmother could not avoid seeing things which excited her suspicions. She was uneasy about me, and tried various ways to buy me; but the never-changing answer was always repeated: "Linda does not belong to me. She is my daughter's property, and I have no legal right to sell her." The conscientious man! He was too scrupulous to sell me; but he had no scruples whatever about committing a much greater wrong against the helpless young girl placed under his guardianship, as his daughter's property.
Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes. I am telling you the plain truth. Yet when victims make their escape from the wild beast of Slavery, northerners consent to act the part of bloodhounds, and hunt the poor fugitive back into his den, "full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness." Nay, more, they are not only willing, but proud, to give their daughters in marriage to slaveholders. The poor girls have romantic notions of a sunny clime, and of the flowering vines that all the year round shade a happy home. To what disappointments are they destined! The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness.
Jacobs, Harriet A., Lydia Maria Child, Jean Fagan Yellin, and John S. Jacobs. Incidents in the life of a slave girl: written by herself. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Questions:
- What did she imply when she said she was, “subject to his will in all things”?
- Why does the mistress feel, “jealousy and rage” toward enslaved girls?
- What does this source tell you about the life of an enslaved woman?
- What does this source tell you about the life of a slave owner’s wife?
harriet e wilson: our nig
Frado, a mixed-race girl abandoned by her white mother after the death of her black father, takes a job as a servant to a lower middle-class white family in the North, only to encounter a world of abuse and abandonment. The book was published in 1859 and was the first novel published by a Black woman in America.
So all the trunks were assembled and crammed with the best selections from the wardrobe of herself and mother, where the last-mentioned articles could be appropriated.
"Nig was never so helpful before," Mary remarked, and wondered what had induced such a change in place of former sullenness.
Nig was looking further than the present, and congratulating herself upon some days of peace...
No sooner were they on their way, than Nig slyly crept round to Aunt Abby's room, and tiptoeing and twisting herself into all shapes, she exclaimed,--"She's gone, Aunt Abby, she's gone, fairly gone;" and jumped up and down, till Aunt Abby feared she would attract the notice of her mistress by such demonstrations...
"No! no! Frado, that's wrong! you
would be wishing her dead; that won't do...
But you forget what our good minister told
us last week, about doing good to those that
hate us; you must go finish your work, or
your mistress will be after you, and remind you severely of Miss Mary, and some others beside."
Nig went as she was told, and her clear voice was heard as she went, singing in joyous notes the relief she felt at the removal of one of her tormentors.
Day by day... The calls upon Frado were consequently more frequent, her nights less tranquil. Her health was impaired... by drudgery in the kitchen. Her ill health she endeavored to conceal...and Mrs. Bellmont, she well knew, would have no sympathy for her. She was at last so much reduced as to be unable to stand erect for any great length of time. She would SIT at the table to wash her dishes; if she heard the well- known step of her mistress, she would rise till she returned to her room, and then sink down for further rest. Of course she was longer than usual in completing the services assigned her. This was a subject of complaint to Mrs. Bellmont; and Frado endeavored to throw off all appearance of sickness in her presence.
But it was increasing upon her, and she could no longer hide her indisposition [illness]. Her mistress entered one day, and finding her seated, commanded her to go to work. "I am sick," replied Frado, rising and walking slowly to her unfinished task, "and cannot stand long, I feel so bad."
Angry that she should venture a reply to her command, she suddenly inflicted a blow which lay the tottering girl prostrate [lying face down] on the floor. Excited by so much indulgence of a dangerous passion, she seemed left to unrestrained malice [hatred]; and snatching a towel, stuffed the mouth of the sufferer, and beat her cruelly.
Frado hoped she would end her misery by whipping her to death. She bore it with the hope of a martyr [being put to death], that her misery would soon close...
Nig was in truth suffering much; her feelings were very intense on any subject, when once aroused. She read her Bible carefully, and as often as an opportunity presented, which was when entirely secluded in her own apartment...
Mrs. Bellmont found her one day quietly reading her Bible. Amazed... she felt it was time to interfere. Here she was, reading and shedding tears over the Bible. She ordered her to put up the book, and go to work, and not be snivelling about the house, or stop to read again...
Mrs. Bellmont, as we before said, did not trouble herself about the future destiny of her servant. If she did what she desired for HER benefit, it was all the responsibility she acknowledged. But she seemed to have great aversion [dislike] to the notice Nig would attract should she become pious [religiou]. [She told her husband] “I found her reading the Bible to-day, just as though she expected to turn pious nigger, and preach to white folks. So now you see what good comes of sending her to school...you know these niggers are just like black snakes; you CAN'T kill them. If she wasn't tough she would have been killed long ago. There was never one of my girls could do half the work."
"Did they ever try?" interposed [asked] her husband. "I think she can do more than all of them together...Just think how much profit she was to us last summer. We had no work hired out; she did the work of two girls--"
"And got the whippings for two with it!" remarked Mr. Bellmont.
"I'll beat the money out of her, if I can't get her worth any other way," retorted Mrs. B. sharply. While this scene was passing, Frado was trying to utter the prayer of the publican, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
Wilson, Harriet E., 1825-1900. Our Nig, or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. New York :Penguin Books, 2009.
Questions:
So all the trunks were assembled and crammed with the best selections from the wardrobe of herself and mother, where the last-mentioned articles could be appropriated.
"Nig was never so helpful before," Mary remarked, and wondered what had induced such a change in place of former sullenness.
Nig was looking further than the present, and congratulating herself upon some days of peace...
No sooner were they on their way, than Nig slyly crept round to Aunt Abby's room, and tiptoeing and twisting herself into all shapes, she exclaimed,--"She's gone, Aunt Abby, she's gone, fairly gone;" and jumped up and down, till Aunt Abby feared she would attract the notice of her mistress by such demonstrations...
"No! no! Frado, that's wrong! you
would be wishing her dead; that won't do...
But you forget what our good minister told
us last week, about doing good to those that
hate us; you must go finish your work, or
your mistress will be after you, and remind you severely of Miss Mary, and some others beside."
Nig went as she was told, and her clear voice was heard as she went, singing in joyous notes the relief she felt at the removal of one of her tormentors.
Day by day... The calls upon Frado were consequently more frequent, her nights less tranquil. Her health was impaired... by drudgery in the kitchen. Her ill health she endeavored to conceal...and Mrs. Bellmont, she well knew, would have no sympathy for her. She was at last so much reduced as to be unable to stand erect for any great length of time. She would SIT at the table to wash her dishes; if she heard the well- known step of her mistress, she would rise till she returned to her room, and then sink down for further rest. Of course she was longer than usual in completing the services assigned her. This was a subject of complaint to Mrs. Bellmont; and Frado endeavored to throw off all appearance of sickness in her presence.
But it was increasing upon her, and she could no longer hide her indisposition [illness]. Her mistress entered one day, and finding her seated, commanded her to go to work. "I am sick," replied Frado, rising and walking slowly to her unfinished task, "and cannot stand long, I feel so bad."
Angry that she should venture a reply to her command, she suddenly inflicted a blow which lay the tottering girl prostrate [lying face down] on the floor. Excited by so much indulgence of a dangerous passion, she seemed left to unrestrained malice [hatred]; and snatching a towel, stuffed the mouth of the sufferer, and beat her cruelly.
Frado hoped she would end her misery by whipping her to death. She bore it with the hope of a martyr [being put to death], that her misery would soon close...
Nig was in truth suffering much; her feelings were very intense on any subject, when once aroused. She read her Bible carefully, and as often as an opportunity presented, which was when entirely secluded in her own apartment...
Mrs. Bellmont found her one day quietly reading her Bible. Amazed... she felt it was time to interfere. Here she was, reading and shedding tears over the Bible. She ordered her to put up the book, and go to work, and not be snivelling about the house, or stop to read again...
Mrs. Bellmont, as we before said, did not trouble herself about the future destiny of her servant. If she did what she desired for HER benefit, it was all the responsibility she acknowledged. But she seemed to have great aversion [dislike] to the notice Nig would attract should she become pious [religiou]. [She told her husband] “I found her reading the Bible to-day, just as though she expected to turn pious nigger, and preach to white folks. So now you see what good comes of sending her to school...you know these niggers are just like black snakes; you CAN'T kill them. If she wasn't tough she would have been killed long ago. There was never one of my girls could do half the work."
"Did they ever try?" interposed [asked] her husband. "I think she can do more than all of them together...Just think how much profit she was to us last summer. We had no work hired out; she did the work of two girls--"
"And got the whippings for two with it!" remarked Mr. Bellmont.
"I'll beat the money out of her, if I can't get her worth any other way," retorted Mrs. B. sharply. While this scene was passing, Frado was trying to utter the prayer of the publican, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
Wilson, Harriet E., 1825-1900. Our Nig, or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. New York :Penguin Books, 2009.
Questions:
- Who is the source? What bias do they likely have?
- Many people believe that Frado is Harriet E. Wilson, and that this book is an auto-biography of her life. Why do you think she would write it like a novel rather than a history?
- Why did the family call her “Nig”?
- What is Mrs. Bellmont concerned most with? And why is she worried about Frado reading?
- Do you think it matters that these events occurred in a town that was largely anti-slavery (abolitionist)?
- Why is this source important to understanding the effects of indentured servitude?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Joslyn Gage: the history of woman suffrage
This call [Document A], without signature, was issued by Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mary Ann McClintock. At this time Mrs. Mott was visiting her sister Mrs. Wright, at Auburn, and attending the Yearly Meeting of Friends in Western New York. Mrs. Stanton, having recently removed from Boston to Seneca Falls... met Mrs. Mott incidentally for the first time since her residence there. They at once returned to the topic they had so often discussed, walking arm in arm in the streets of London, and Boston, "the propriety of holding a woman's convention." These four ladies... decided to put their long-talked-of resolution into action, and before the twilight deepened into night, the call was written, and sent to the Seneca County Courier. On Sunday morning they met in Mrs. McClintock's parlor to write their declaration, resolutions, and to consider subjects for speeches. As the convention was to assemble in three days, the time was short for such productions; but having no experience in the modus operandi of getting up conventions, nor in that kind of literature, they were quite innocent of the herculean labors they proposed. On the first attempt to frame a resolution; to crowd a complete thought, clearly and concisely, into three lines; they felt as helpless and hopeless as if they had been suddenly asked to construct a steam engine. And the humiliating fact may as well now be recorded that before taking the initiative step, those ladies resigned themselves to a faithful perusal of various masculine productions. The reports of Peace, Temperance, and Anti-Slavery conventions were examined, but all alike seemed too tame and pacific for the inauguration of a rebellion such as the world had never before seen. They knew women had wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty...
After much delay, one of the circle took up the Declaration of 1776, and read it aloud with much spirit and emphasis, and it was at once decided to adopt the historic document, with some slight changes such as substituting "all men" for "King George." ...the women felt they had enough to go before the world with a good case.
The eventful day dawned at last, and crowds in carriages and on foot, wended their way to the Wesleyan church. When those having charge of the Declaration, the resolutions, and several volumes of the Statutes of New York arrived on the scene, lo! the door was locked. However, an embryo Professor of Yale College was lifted through an open window to unbar the door; that done, the church was quickly filled. It had been decided to have no men present, but as they were already on the spot, and as the women who must take the responsibility of organizing the meeting, and leading the discussions, shrank from doing either, it was decided, in a hasty council round the altar, that this was an occasion when men might make themselves pre- eminently useful. It was agreed they should remain, and take the laboring oar through the Convention.
Anthony, Susan et al. The History of Woman Suffrage. 1887. Rochester, N. Y.: Charles Mann.
Questions:
After much delay, one of the circle took up the Declaration of 1776, and read it aloud with much spirit and emphasis, and it was at once decided to adopt the historic document, with some slight changes such as substituting "all men" for "King George." ...the women felt they had enough to go before the world with a good case.
The eventful day dawned at last, and crowds in carriages and on foot, wended their way to the Wesleyan church. When those having charge of the Declaration, the resolutions, and several volumes of the Statutes of New York arrived on the scene, lo! the door was locked. However, an embryo Professor of Yale College was lifted through an open window to unbar the door; that done, the church was quickly filled. It had been decided to have no men present, but as they were already on the spot, and as the women who must take the responsibility of organizing the meeting, and leading the discussions, shrank from doing either, it was decided, in a hasty council round the altar, that this was an occasion when men might make themselves pre- eminently useful. It was agreed they should remain, and take the laboring oar through the Convention.
Anthony, Susan et al. The History of Woman Suffrage. 1887. Rochester, N. Y.: Charles Mann.
Questions:
- When was this document written?
- According to this source, who were the authors of Documents A and B?
- According to this source, how was this event unique or new?
- Would you say the authors were humble or novice? How so?
elizabeth cady stanton: the declaration of sentiments
We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves, by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. “Declaration of Sentiments.” July 19, 1848.
Questions:
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. “Declaration of Sentiments.” July 19, 1848.
Questions:
- Summarize what she is saying.
unknown: the lady's complaint
Custom, alas! doth partial prove Nor give us equal measure. A pain it is for us to love, But it is to men a pleasure.
They plainly can their thoughts disclose, Whilst ours must burn within, We have got tongues and eyes in vain, And truth from us is sin.
Men to new joys and conquests fly, And yet no hazard run. Poor we are left if we deny, And if we yield undone.
Then equal laws let custom find, And neither sex oppress. More freedom give to womankind, Or give to mankind less.
Anonymous. “The Lady's Complaint.” Virginia Gazette. October 15-22, 1736. Retrieved from https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/VAGuide/newspaper.html.
Questions:
They plainly can their thoughts disclose, Whilst ours must burn within, We have got tongues and eyes in vain, And truth from us is sin.
Men to new joys and conquests fly, And yet no hazard run. Poor we are left if we deny, And if we yield undone.
Then equal laws let custom find, And neither sex oppress. More freedom give to womankind, Or give to mankind less.
Anonymous. “The Lady's Complaint.” Virginia Gazette. October 15-22, 1736. Retrieved from https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/VAGuide/newspaper.html.
Questions:
- When was this document written?
- What does this document reveal about women in Virginia before 1848?
- Does the anonymous female author directly ask for the right to vote?
new jersey state constitution: excerpt, 1776
The state of New Jersey’s constitution of 1776 intentionally and liberally granted all landowners, including women and free people of color, the right to vote. In 1790 a revised voting rights law doubled down to add “he or she” pronouns, demonstrating the support of women voters. Joseph Cooper, a Quaker lawmaker was credited with this change. Quakers believed in the equality of the sexes and permitted female preachers. New Jersey women did vote in these early years of the republic, but how many is debated. Some counties report that women represented less than a quarter of voters, but newspapers often credited women voters for the success of one political party over another. Women voted, like all voters, when the vote was contentious, when ballots were anonymous, and when there were easily accessible and local polling sites. Many New Jersey polling places were located in taverns where candidates would buy drinks for their supporters and voters had to orally declare their vote. Bars were not considered appropriate or safe places for women and the evidence shows that women would go in groups to protect one another, voting in secession, one right after the other. New Jersey women lost the vote in 1807 because they were perceived to cast their votes mindlessly for candidates without knowing where the candidates stood on issues. The legislature limited the vote to “free, white, male citizens” 21 years of age disenfranchising free people of color andwomen in one swoop.
All Inhabitants of this Colony of full
Age, who are worth Fifty Pounds
proclamation Money clear Estate in the
same, & have resided within the County
in which they claim a Vote for twelve Months immediately preceding the Election, shall be entitled to vote for Representatives in Council & Assembly.
New Jersey Historical Society. “The Petticoat Politicians of 1776: New Jersey’s First Female Voters.” It Happened Here. https://nj.gov/state/historical/assets/pdf/it-happened-here/ihhnj-er-petticoat- politicians.pdf.
Questions:
All Inhabitants of this Colony of full
Age, who are worth Fifty Pounds
proclamation Money clear Estate in the
same, & have resided within the County
in which they claim a Vote for twelve Months immediately preceding the Election, shall be entitled to vote for Representatives in Council & Assembly.
New Jersey Historical Society. “The Petticoat Politicians of 1776: New Jersey’s First Female Voters.” It Happened Here. https://nj.gov/state/historical/assets/pdf/it-happened-here/ihhnj-er-petticoat- politicians.pdf.
Questions:
- When was this document written?
- What does this document reveal about women in New Jersey before 1848?
- According to this document, do women in New Jersey directly ask for the right to vote?
maria stewart: Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality
Oh, you mothers, what a responsibility rests on you! You have souls committed to your charge, and God will require a strict account of you. It is you that must create in the minds of your little girls and boys a thirst for knowledge, the love of virtue, the abhorrence of vice, and the cultivation of a pure heart... O, do not say, you cannot make anything of your children; but say, with the help and assistance of God, we will try. . . . Perhaps you will say, that you cannot send [your daughters] to high schools and academies... Our minds have too long groveled in ignorance and sin. Come, let us incline our ears to wisdom, and apply our hearts to understanding; promote her, and she shall exalt you; she shall bring you to honor when you do embrace her...
I am of a strong opinion, that the day on which we unite, heart and soul, and turn our attention to knowledge and improvement, that day the hissing and reproach among the nations of the earth against us will cease... It is of no use for us to sit with our hands folded, hanging our heads like bulrushes, lamenting our wretched condition; but let us make a mighty effort, and arise; and if no one will promote or respect us, let us promote and respect ourselves...
Shall it any longer be said of the daughters of Africa, they have no ambition, they have no force? By no means. Let every female heart become united and let us raise a fund ourselves; and at the end of one year and a half, we might be able to lay the corner-stone for the building of a high school, that the higher branches of knowledge might be enjoyed by us... Let each one strive to excel in good housewifery, knowing that prudence and economy are the road to wealth. Let us not say, we know this, or, we know that, and practice nothing; but let us practice what we do know.
How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles? Until union, knowledge, and love begin to flow among us. . . . We have never had an opportunity of displaying our talents; therefore the world thinks we know nothing... The Americans have practiced nothing but headwork these 200 years, and we have done their drudgery. And is it not high time for us to imitate their examples, and practice headwork too, and keep what we have got, and get what we can?
Stewart, Maria. “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build”. Speech, October, 1831. From Teaching American History. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/religion-and-the-pure-principles-of-morality-the- sure-foundation-on-which-we-must-build/.
Questions:
I am of a strong opinion, that the day on which we unite, heart and soul, and turn our attention to knowledge and improvement, that day the hissing and reproach among the nations of the earth against us will cease... It is of no use for us to sit with our hands folded, hanging our heads like bulrushes, lamenting our wretched condition; but let us make a mighty effort, and arise; and if no one will promote or respect us, let us promote and respect ourselves...
Shall it any longer be said of the daughters of Africa, they have no ambition, they have no force? By no means. Let every female heart become united and let us raise a fund ourselves; and at the end of one year and a half, we might be able to lay the corner-stone for the building of a high school, that the higher branches of knowledge might be enjoyed by us... Let each one strive to excel in good housewifery, knowing that prudence and economy are the road to wealth. Let us not say, we know this, or, we know that, and practice nothing; but let us practice what we do know.
How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles? Until union, knowledge, and love begin to flow among us. . . . We have never had an opportunity of displaying our talents; therefore the world thinks we know nothing... The Americans have practiced nothing but headwork these 200 years, and we have done their drudgery. And is it not high time for us to imitate their examples, and practice headwork too, and keep what we have got, and get what we can?
Stewart, Maria. “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build”. Speech, October, 1831. From Teaching American History. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/religion-and-the-pure-principles-of-morality-the- sure-foundation-on-which-we-must-build/.
Questions:
- When was this document written?
- What doees this document reveal about Black women's focus before 1848?
- Does Stewart directly ask for the right to vote?
sarah grimké: Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman
Sarah Grimké is one of the most famous white abolitionists in the Antebellum period. She was born a wealthy slave owner in South Carolina before converting to the Quaker faith and fleeing to the North. She advocated for the immediate emancipation of enslaved people, but her speeches were often contentious as women were not supposed to speak in public, especially to mixed audiences of men and women. Soon she found herself defending women’s rights so that she could advocate for enslaved people. In her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman of 1838, she responded to another white woman, Catharine Beecher, who believed women should have a subordinate role in society and refrain from petitioning on behalf of the enslaved. Her words were radical for 1838 and only won limited support.
LETTER II. WOMAN SUBJECT ONLY TO GOD.
Woman has been placed by John Quincy Adams, side by side with the slave, whilst he was contending for the right side of petition. I thank him for ranking us with the oppressed; for I shall not find it difficult to show, that in all ages and countries, not even excepting enlightened republican America, woman has more or less been made a means to promote the welfare of man, without due regard to her own happiness, and the glory of God as the end of her creation...
LETTER X. INTELLECT OF WOMAN.
It will scarcely be denied, I presume, that, as a general rule, men do not desire the improvement of women. There are few instances of men who are magnanimous enough to be entirely willing that women should know more than themselves, on any subjects except dress and cookery; and, indeed, this necessarily flows from their assumption of superiority...
LETTER XII. LEGAL DISABILITIES OF WOMEN.
There are few things which present greater obstacles to the improvement and elevation* of woman to her appropriate sphere of usefulness and duty, than the laws which have been enacted to destroy her independence, and crush her individuality; laws which, although they are framed for her government, she has had no voice in establishing, and which rob her of some of her essential rights. Woman has no political existence. With the single exception of presenting a petition to the legislative body, she is a cipher in the nation; or, if not actually so in representative governments, she is only counted, like the slaves of the South, to swell the number of law−makers who form decrees for her government, with little reference to her benefit, except so far as her good may promote their own...
That the laws which have been generally adopted in the United States, for the government of women, have been framed almost entirely for the exclusive benefit of men, and with a design to oppress women, by depriving them of all control over their property, is too manifest* to be denied...Men frame the laws, and, with few exceptions, claim to execute them on both sexes...Although looked upon as an inferior, when considered as an intellectual being, woman is punished with the same severity as man, when she is guilty of moral offences...
LETTER XIII. RELATION OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.
In the wealthy classes of society, and those who are in comfortable circumstances, women are exempt from great corporeal exertion, and are protected by public opinion, and by the genial influence of Christianity, from much physical ill treatment. Still, there is a vast amount of secret suffering endured, from the forced submission of women to the opinions and whims of their husbands. Hence they are frequently driven to use deception, to compass* their ends. They are early taught that to appear to yield, is the only way to govern...If she submits, let her do it openly, honorably, not to gain her point, but as a matter of Christian duty. But let her beware how she permits her husband to be her conscience−keeper. On all moral and religious subjects, she is bound to think and act for herself.
Where confidence and love exist, a wife will naturally converse with her husband as with her dearest friend, on all that interests her heart, and there will be a perfectly free interchange of sentiment; but she is no more bound to be governed by his judgement, than he is by hers. They are standing on the same platform of human rights, are equally under the government of God, and accountable to him, and him alone...
Thine in the bonds of womanhood, SARAH M. GRIMKÉ
Grimke, Sarah. Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman. Boston: Old Sturbridge Village, 1838. Retrieved from https://www.teachushistory.org/second-great-awakening-age- reform/resources/sarah-grimke-argues-womens- rights#:~:text=In%20her%20Letters%20on%20the,the%20subordinate%20role%20of%20wome n.
Questions:
LETTER II. WOMAN SUBJECT ONLY TO GOD.
Woman has been placed by John Quincy Adams, side by side with the slave, whilst he was contending for the right side of petition. I thank him for ranking us with the oppressed; for I shall not find it difficult to show, that in all ages and countries, not even excepting enlightened republican America, woman has more or less been made a means to promote the welfare of man, without due regard to her own happiness, and the glory of God as the end of her creation...
LETTER X. INTELLECT OF WOMAN.
It will scarcely be denied, I presume, that, as a general rule, men do not desire the improvement of women. There are few instances of men who are magnanimous enough to be entirely willing that women should know more than themselves, on any subjects except dress and cookery; and, indeed, this necessarily flows from their assumption of superiority...
LETTER XII. LEGAL DISABILITIES OF WOMEN.
There are few things which present greater obstacles to the improvement and elevation* of woman to her appropriate sphere of usefulness and duty, than the laws which have been enacted to destroy her independence, and crush her individuality; laws which, although they are framed for her government, she has had no voice in establishing, and which rob her of some of her essential rights. Woman has no political existence. With the single exception of presenting a petition to the legislative body, she is a cipher in the nation; or, if not actually so in representative governments, she is only counted, like the slaves of the South, to swell the number of law−makers who form decrees for her government, with little reference to her benefit, except so far as her good may promote their own...
That the laws which have been generally adopted in the United States, for the government of women, have been framed almost entirely for the exclusive benefit of men, and with a design to oppress women, by depriving them of all control over their property, is too manifest* to be denied...Men frame the laws, and, with few exceptions, claim to execute them on both sexes...Although looked upon as an inferior, when considered as an intellectual being, woman is punished with the same severity as man, when she is guilty of moral offences...
LETTER XIII. RELATION OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.
In the wealthy classes of society, and those who are in comfortable circumstances, women are exempt from great corporeal exertion, and are protected by public opinion, and by the genial influence of Christianity, from much physical ill treatment. Still, there is a vast amount of secret suffering endured, from the forced submission of women to the opinions and whims of their husbands. Hence they are frequently driven to use deception, to compass* their ends. They are early taught that to appear to yield, is the only way to govern...If she submits, let her do it openly, honorably, not to gain her point, but as a matter of Christian duty. But let her beware how she permits her husband to be her conscience−keeper. On all moral and religious subjects, she is bound to think and act for herself.
Where confidence and love exist, a wife will naturally converse with her husband as with her dearest friend, on all that interests her heart, and there will be a perfectly free interchange of sentiment; but she is no more bound to be governed by his judgement, than he is by hers. They are standing on the same platform of human rights, are equally under the government of God, and accountable to him, and him alone...
Thine in the bonds of womanhood, SARAH M. GRIMKÉ
Grimke, Sarah. Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman. Boston: Old Sturbridge Village, 1838. Retrieved from https://www.teachushistory.org/second-great-awakening-age- reform/resources/sarah-grimke-argues-womens- rights#:~:text=In%20her%20Letters%20on%20the,the%20subordinate%20role%20of%20wome n.
Questions:
- When was this document written?
- What does this document reveal about Abolitionist women's focus before 1848?
- Does Grimké directly ask for the right to vote?
Remedial Herstory Editors. "7. WOMEN IN THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2022. www.remedialherstory.com.
PRIMARY AUTHOR: |
Dr. Barbara Tischler
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Primary Reviewers: |
Kelsie Brook Eckert and Dr. Alicia Guitierrez-Romine
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Consulting Team |
Editors |
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Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University Dr. Barbara Tischler, Consultant Professor of History Hunter College and Columbia University Dr. Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, Consultant Assistant Professor of History at La Sierra University Jacqui Nelson, Consultant Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University Dr. Deanna Beachley Professor of History and Women's Studies at College of Southern Nevada |
Alice Stanley
Reviewers18th Century
Dr. Margaret Huettl Hannah Dutton Dr. John Krueckeberg 19th Century Dr. Rebecca Noel Michelle Stonis, MA Annabelle L. Blevins Pifer, MA Cony Marquez, PhD Candidate 20th Century Dr. Tanya Roth Dr. Jessica Frazier Mary Bezbatchenko, MA |
Survey's on U.S. Women's History
Berry and Gross tell a survey of black women in the United States.
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Susan Ware tells a short introduction to women's history in the United States.
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Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz tells a survey of indigenous people in the United States.
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Jill Lepore tells a survey of the United States.
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Gail Collins tells a survey of Women in the United States.
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Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris place sexuality at the center of slavery studies, spanning early colonialism through the civil war.
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In From Back Alley to the Border, Alicia Gutierrez-Romine examines the history of criminal abortion in California.
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Jan Manion tells the history of women in male clothing who married other women between the Colonial Era and WWI.
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Native American Cultures
Stockel interviews Apache women and stories are told of women warrior ancestors.
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A collection of essays examining power and gender status in native cultures.
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Dive into the history of Cherokee women, and their long standing traditions.
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A collection of historical and contemporary women of Indigenous heritage who have contributed to the survival and success of their families, communities--and the United States of America.
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Colonial Era 1600-1775
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By examining the lives of six specific women in the Salem Witch Trials, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged. Roach believes that the individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation.
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In The Jamestown Bride, Jennifer Potter recounts the lives of the women in Jamestown, but without the resource of letters or journals she turns to the Virginia Company's merchant lists -- which were used as a kind of sales catalog for prospective husbands -- as well as censuses, court records, the minutes of Virginia's General Assemblies, letters to England from their male counterparts, and other such accounts of the everyday life of the early colonists.
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Kathleen Brown examines the origins of racism and slavery in British North America from the perspective of gender. Both a basic social relationship and a model for other social hierarchies, gender helped determine the construction of racial categories and the institution of slavery in Virginia.
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Carol Berkin's multicultural history reconstructs the lives of American women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-women from European, African, and Native backgrounds-and examines their varied roles as wives, mothers, household managers, laborers, rebels, and, ultimately, critical forces in shaping the new nation's culture and history.
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Revolutionary Period 1763-1783
Women of all classes and races were not only supporters and opponents of the American Revolution, they actively promoted, engaged, wrote, fought, and were deeply impacted by the outcome of the American Revolution. There are a lot of perspectives to consider, and we can only brush the surface.
Liberty's Daughters is widely considered a landmark book on the history of American women and on the Revolution itself. Norton brilliantly portrays a dramatic transformation of women's private lives in the wake of the Revolution. This fascinating human story includes lively anecdotes and revealing details from the personal papers of 450 eighteenth-century families.
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Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America’s unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease.
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They baked New England's Thanksgiving pies, preached their faith to crowds of worshippers, spied for the patriots during the Revolution, wrote that human bondage was a sin, and demanded reparations for slavery. Black women in colonial and revolutionary New England sought not only legal emancipation from slavery but defined freedom more broadly to include spiritual, familial, and economic dimensions.
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The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American. In this book, Carol Berkin shows us how women played a vital role throughout the conflict. This incisive and comprehensive history illuminates a fascinating and unknown side of the struggle for American independence.
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Mercy Otis Warren’s book is one of the earliest histories of the American Revolution, and the first to be written by a woman. It charts the progress of the entire revolution, from the imposition of the Stamp Act in 1765 through to ratification of the Constitution in 1787.This book provides brilliant insight into the history of the American Revolution from the perspective of a contemporary who was able to talk to the key figures involved. This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in the Revolutionary period and how the United States was founded.
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Early Republic 1783-1815
Following the American Revolution, US culture morphed and shifted. Women in this new republic found new roles and expectations as mothers: for to give power to the masses in a democracy, meant men needed to be educated, and their mothers needed to do it. The ideal of a Republican Mother emerged and the dynamic women of the colonial and revolutionary eras became a thing of the past.
"A New England Girlhood" is the autobiography of poet Lucy Larcom. Arriving in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1830s after the death of her shipmaster father, eleven-year-old Lucy Larcom went to work in a textile mill to help her family make ends meet. Originally published in 1889, her engaging autobiography offers glimpses of the early years of the American factory system as well as of the social influences on her development.
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In 1762, John Adams penned a flirtatious note to “Miss Adorable,” the 17-year-old Abigail Smith. In 1801, Abigail wrote to wish her husband John a safe journey as he headed home to Quincy after serving as president of the nation he helped create. The letters that span these nearly forty years form the most significant correspondence―and reveal one of the most intriguing and inspiring partnerships―in American history.
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In Mere Equals, Lucia McMahon narrates a story about how a generation of young women who enjoyed access to new educational opportunities made sense of their individual and social identities in an American nation marked by stark political inequality between the sexes.
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Antebellum 1815-1861
The Antebellum Period is full of historical events and movements. From the rise of the abolitionist movement, the Mexican-American War, and the Trail of Tears.
In Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies, John M. Belohlavek tells the story of women on both sides of the Mexican-American War (1846-48) as they were propelled by the bloody conflict to adopt new roles and expand traditional ones.
American women "back home" functioned as anti-war activists, pro-war supporters, and pioneering female journalists. Others moved west and established their own reputations for courage and determination in dusty border towns or bordellos. |
Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave‑owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market.
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This book traces the lived experiences of women lawbreakers in the state of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860 through the records of more than six thousand criminal court cases. By following these women from the perpetration of their crimes through the state’s efforts to punish and reform them, Erica Rhodes Hayden places them at the center of their own stories.
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The brave pioneers who made a life on the frontier were not only male—and they were not only white. The story of African-American women in the Old West is one that has largely gone untold until now. The stories of ten African-American women are reconstructed from historic documents found in century-old archives. Some of these women slaves, some were free, and some were born into slavery and found freedom in the old west.
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abolition movement
Through richly detailed letters from the time and exhaustive research, Wickenden traces the second American revolution these women fought to bring about, the toll it took on their families, and its lasting effects on the country. Riveting and profoundly relevant to our own time, The Agitators brings a vibrant, original voice to this transformative period in our history.
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The Grimke Sisters. Sarah And Angelina Grimke. The First American Women Advocates of Abolition and Woman's Rights by Catherine H. Birney. Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Emily Grimké (1805–1879), known as the Grimké sisters, were the first American female advocates of abolition and women's rights.
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In the first biography of Mott in a generation, historian Carol Faulkner reveals the motivations of this radical egalitarian from Nantucket. Mott's deep faith and ties to the Society of Friends do not fully explain her activism—her roots in post-Revolutionary New England also shaped her views on slavery, patriarchy, and the church, as well as her expansive interests in peace, temperance, prison reform, religious freedom, and Native American rights.
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Native American women
Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine.
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In this haunting and groundbreaking historical novel, Danielle Daniel imagines the lives of women in the Algonquin territories of the 1600s, a story inspired by her family’s ancestral link to a young girl who was murdered by French settlers.
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Daunis Fontaine must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.
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Colonial Women
Amari's life was once perfect. Engaged to the handsomest man in her tribe, adored by her family, and fortunate enough to live in a beautiful village, it never occurred to her that it could all be taken away in an instant. But that was what happened when her village was invaded by slave traders. Her family was brutally murdered as she was dragged away to a slave ship and sent to be sold in the Carolinas. There she was bought by a plantation owner and given to his son as a "birthday present".
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A riveting historical novel about Peggy Shippen Arnold, the cunning wife of Benedict Arnold and mastermind behind America’s most infamous act of treason.
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A young Puritan woman—faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul—plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense.
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Revolutionary Era Women
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Rebellious Frannie Tasker knows little about the war between England and its thirteen colonies in 1776, until a shipwreck off her home in Grand Bahama Island presents an unthinkable opportunity. The body of a young woman floating in the sea gives Frannie the chance to escape her brutal stepfather--and she takes it.
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Antebellum Women
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world.
Twelve-year-old Mary and her Cherokee family are forced out of their home in Georgia by U.S. soldiers in May 1838. From the beginning of the forced move, Mary and her family are separated from her father. Facing horrors such as internment, violence, disease, and harsh weather, Mary perseveres and helps keep her family and friends together until they can reach the new Cherokee nation in Indian Territory.
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The House Girl, the historical fiction debut by Tara Conklin, is an unforgettable story of love, history, and a search for justice, set in modern-day New York and 1852 Virginia.
It all begins when Soft Rain's teacher reads a letter stating that as of May 23, 1838, all Cherokee people are to leave their land and move to what many Cherokees called "the land of darkness". . .the west. Soft Rain is confident that her family will not have to move, because they have just planted corn for the next harvest but soon thereafter, soldiers arrive to take nine-year-old, Soft Rain, and her mother to walk the Trail of Tears, leaving the rest of her family behind.
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Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come.
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How to teach with Films:
Remember, teachers want the student to be the historian. What do historians do when they watch films?
- Before they watch, ask students to research the director and producers. These are the source of the information. How will their background and experience likely bias this film?
- Also, ask students to consider the context the film was created in. The film may be about history, but it was made recently. What was going on the year the film was made that could bias the film? In particular, how do you think the gains of feminism will impact the portrayal of the female characters?
- As they watch, ask students to research the historical accuracy of the film. What do online sources say about what the film gets right or wrong?
- Afterward, ask students to describe how the female characters were portrayed and what lessons they got from the film.
- Then, ask students to evaluate this film as a learning tool. Was it helpful to better understand this topic? Did the historical inaccuracies make it unhelpful? Make it clear any informed opinion is valid.
Documentaries
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Ascent of Woman: is a documentary about prehistoric and Ancient women's history across cultures.
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Witches: A Century of Murder is about the witch trials that plagued England under Kings James IV and I and Charles I.
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Taking Root is a documentary about the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai. She was from Kenya and her work was on environmental protection.
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Feature Length Movies
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The Last Duel highlights the way that rape was handled in medieval Europe. It barely passes the Bechdel Test, with main actors being the male characters, but the whole theme of sex, sexuality, and gender dynamics cannot be ignored.
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Elizabeth tells the story of Elizabeth's Golden era.
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Mary Queen of Scots is a film about the relationship between the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England and her Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots who challenged her throne.
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Catherine the Great is about the career of Catherine of Russia and her challenges as a female leader.
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The Favorite is about the interesting palace life of Queen Anne and her closest female confidants. This film expands upon rumors of lesbianism within the court.
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The Woman King is a film about the Dahomey "Amazons," women warriors who fought European imperialism in West Africa.
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Albert Nobbs is a film about the life of a poor woman living in 19th century Ireland who cross dresses in order to improve her station.
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Victoria and Abdul is a film about the interesting relationship between Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim, an Indian man who earned her confidence.
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Suffragette tells the stories of English women who grappled with a way to have their voices heard in the early movement.
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The Danish Girl is historical fiction based losely on the life and marriage of a transgender pioneer.
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A Call to Spy is about the first British and American women spies that worked on the ground in France during WWII.
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Frida is a film about the first Mexican woman to have her work displayed at the Louvre in Paris, FR.
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Television Series
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The White Queen and the series that follow are based on a historical fiction novel about the rise of the Tudor family in England. The main characters are the women, who through marriage gain and lose the crown.
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The Serpent Queen tells the story of Queen Catherine de Medici of France and the complexities of being a queen regent.
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The Tudors tells the story of Henry VIII and each of his six wives. Remember the old school tale: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
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Victoria is a TV series about the rise and career of Queen Victoria, whose reign spanned much of the 19th century.
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The Crown is a TV series that shows the rise and career of the current Queen of England, Elizabeth II. Her reign began shortly after WWII.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aptheker, Herbert. Abolitionism: A Revolutionary Movement. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005.
Chadwick, John White, ed. A Life for Liberty: Anti-Slavery and Other Letters of Sallie Holley. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899.
Collins, Gail, America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines. New York, William Morrow, 2003.
Cumbler, John T. From Abolition to Rights for All: The Making of a Reform Community in the Nineteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, 1845.
Duberman, Martin, ed. The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1947-. Through Women's Eyes : an American History with Documents. Boston :Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.Indians Editors. “NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN.” Indians. N.D. http://indians.org/articles/Native-american-women.html.
Foner, Eric. Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
Gellman, David N. Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777-1827. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.
Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
Jeffrey, Julie Roy. Abolitionists Remember: Antislavery Autobiographies and the Unfinished Work of Emancipation. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Da Capo Press, 1991. (revised edition)
Painter, Nell. Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.
Soderlund, Jean R. Quakers & Slavery: A Divided Spirit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Ware, Susan. American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery. Cleveland, OH: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1969. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997.
Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005.
Chadwick, John White, ed. A Life for Liberty: Anti-Slavery and Other Letters of Sallie Holley. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899.
Collins, Gail, America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines. New York, William Morrow, 2003.
Cumbler, John T. From Abolition to Rights for All: The Making of a Reform Community in the Nineteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, 1845.
Duberman, Martin, ed. The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1947-. Through Women's Eyes : an American History with Documents. Boston :Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.Indians Editors. “NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN.” Indians. N.D. http://indians.org/articles/Native-american-women.html.
Foner, Eric. Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
Gellman, David N. Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777-1827. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.
Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
Jeffrey, Julie Roy. Abolitionists Remember: Antislavery Autobiographies and the Unfinished Work of Emancipation. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Da Capo Press, 1991. (revised edition)
Painter, Nell. Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.
Soderlund, Jean R. Quakers & Slavery: A Divided Spirit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Ware, Susan. American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery. Cleveland, OH: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1969. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997.
