Month: January 2010

Limited Liberty for Women after the American Revolution

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The American Revolution forced women to take on new roles. Women participated in every aspect of the Revolution. On the home front, women boycotted British goods and in Middletown, Massachusetts women wove 20,522 yards of cloth to avoid buying British fabric. The boycotts’ success depended on women who made decisions about what items to produce or what material to buy. Women also aided men in the battlefields. Soldier’s wives cooked, did laundry, and nursed for the army as they followed their husbands. Although these duties allowed them to contribute to the Revolution only with traditional “women’s work,” other women took on jobs that were considered traditionally male. Several accounts exist of women who fired cannons in the Revolution. Soldier Joseph Plumb remembered seeing a woman helping her husband load a cannon during the battle of Monmouth. Through activities like firing cannons and helping men in battle, women in the American Revolution stepped outside of their usual roles of household management and child care.

Despite their contributions during the war, women were still not viewed as equal to men. When Thomas Jefferson stated that “all men are created equal,” his words were understood to apply only to men. Property ownership and divorce remained difficult for women to get after the Revolution. Though unmarried women could own property, husbands took control of their wives’ property. Divorce was rarely an option for post-Revolutionary women even if they were abused by their husbands. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence were not granted to women.

The failure of the American Revolution to grant basic rights to women was not corrected in the constitution that was formed after the fighting stopped. Since a woman’s role in the eighteenth century centered around household management and childbearing, the founding fathers never considered women’s rights. Some women, like Abigail Adams, challenged men’s tendency to ignore the rights of women. Abigail wrote to her husband John Adams when the constitution was being formed, “in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire that you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.” Despite Abigail’s request, the original constitution never provided women with equal rights. Women not only did not receive protection from abusive husbands but also could not vote until the nineteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1920. The position of women in American society did not change significantly until the twentieth century.  

 

 

 

Benjamin Franklin: Teenage Author

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At the age of twelve, Benjamin worked as an apprentice at his brother James’s print shop. Although his brother expected Benjamin to be his gopher and do only grunt work, Benjamin had other ideas. Late at night Ben studied the writing of the British essayist Addison and dreamed of becoming a writer. Despite James’s dislike of his brother’s literary ambitions, his newspaper named the Courant sometimes needed an extra contributor. Ben first wrote a few poems related to the news, including one about pirates. Although he later pronounced these early efforts as “wretched stuff,” some of James’s companions thought young Ben had talent. Their praise aggravated James, so Ben knew if he was going to contribute to the paper in the future, he would have to write under a different name.

By age sixteen, Ben was still working on his writing skills. At the same time, James found himself in a dispute with other competing papers. As a result, James was thrilled to discover an anonymous letter left under the print shop door one day. In the letter, a widow named Silence Dogood offered to write a column for the paper. Impressed with her wit and needing content for his paper, James published the first of fifteen essays by Ms. Dogood. He had no idea that Silence Dogood was the pen name for his brother Ben.

The Dogood essays covered a variety of topics. Many showed evidence of what are now cherished American values. For example, when James was jailed because of  the Courant’s outspokenness, Ms. Dogood wrote, “Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.”  The essays also strongly recommended a separation between church and state. Ms. Dogood wrote, “The most dangerous hypocrite in a Commonwealth is one who leaves the gospel for the sake of the law. A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under the color of law.”

Eventually, James began to suspect the true author of the essays and Ben quit writing them. Once his identity was revealed, James’s friends showered Ben with praise. Encouraged, Ben would continue to write long after he left his brother’s print shop.    

Girls in America’s First Public Schools

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The experiences of female students and teachers in the first public schools were much different than their experiences in today’s schools.  The main reason that girls were allowed to attend school in the mid-nineteenth century was because they would someday become mothers and would be responsible for the early education of their young sons.  Public schools sought to teach girls patriotism and good morals so that they would pass on these values to their children.

Schoolbooks tried to instill morals in young girls.  For example, in “Character of a Young Lady,” Noah Webster wrote “the love of virtue is Sophia’s ruling passion.  She loves it, because no other thing is so lovely: she loves it, because it is the glory of the female sex: she loves it as the only road to happiness, misery being the sure attendant of a woman without virtue.”  A virtuous woman would be qualified to raise her own children and run her own household.  These were the chief duties of women in the nineteenth century, and their schoolbooks prepared them for these tasks rather than for careers outside the home.  Webster’s character Sophia “prepares herself for managing a family of her own by managing that of her father.  Cookery is familiar to her…her chief view, however, is to serve her mother, and lighten her cares.” 

The emphasis on women’s domestic role was also evident in the types of lessons that female students received.  Although female students in the lower grades received some instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, the older children’s lessons focused more on their future roles as wives and mothers.  Education reformer Catherine Beecher recommended that girls between ages ten and fifteen should concentrate on domestic skills rather than subjects such as English or science.  Lessons often focused on household tasks like sewing.  In a letter to her former teacher, Missouri public school teacher Martha Rogers wrote that “the parents are very desirous that their daughters should learn needlework.”  The lack of supplies in frontier schools made Martha’s task temporarily impossible, but she was determined that her students would learn this vital skill in the future.

The early public schools not only offered separate lessons for girls, but they also physically separated girls from boys.  Girls and boys entered the schoolhouse through different doors and put their coats in separate coatrooms.  The stove in the middle of the schoolroom served as a dividing marker between the girls who sat on one side of the room and the boys who sat on the opposite side.  Laura Ingalls Wilder’s school experience in Minnesota and Dakota Territory reflected the segregation of girls and boys.  As a student, she sat at a desk with another girl, separated from the boys.

Just as boys and girls learned separately from each other, male and female teachers were also given separate tasks.  Nineteenth century public schools generally employed men to teach the more difficult subjects or to serve as principals.  Iowa teacher Augusta E. Hubbell wrote to her former mentor that “I was much disappointed in the character of my school.  You know they wished a teacher of the higher English branches, but when I arrived a gentleman was employed to teach the higher department, and my pupils were all small children.”  Most female public school teachers taught younger students and had little opportunity for advancement.  Nevertheless, teaching gave women their first opportunity to make a living in a respected profession.  The presence of female teachers also inspired young girls to continue learning and eventually form their own careers.  

Abigail Duniway: A Different Kind of Pioneer

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When you hear the word pioneer, you probably think of people who traveled in covered wagons to settle the West.  Abigail Scott Duniway did go West on the Oregon Trail, but she did not remain a pioneer housewife.  Instead, she became a pioneer for women’s rights.

 

In 1853, the year after her family arrived in Oregon, Abigail Scott married rancher Ben Duniway.  When Abigail’s husband was injured and could no longer work the farm, Abigail had to get a job to support her family. 

 

With the financial help of a male friend, Abigail became one of the first women to open her own store on the frontier.  She sold women’s hats which gave her the opportunity to meet many different women.  Sometimes she heard about their struggles.  One customer’s husband left her and her children without any money.  Abigail found a neighbor who aided the woman by helping her rent a house where she took in borders to make money.  Unfortunately, when her husband returned, he took possession of everything because there were no laws yet that protected women from irresponsible husbands.  Inspired by the stories of the women she encountered in her store, Abigail became an advocate for women’s rights.

 

Abigail knew she needed to get her women’s rights message to the public.  After her first public lecture in 1870, she received invitations to go on lecture tours.  She was joined by women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony on a lecture tour through Oregon and Washington.  Their speeches promoted women’s suffrage, meaning their right to vote.  At the time, only men could vote on state laws.  Abigail wanted Oregon women to have the right to vote on issues such as the right of women to become jurors, to own property, and to hold state legislative offices.  Churches and other establishments often closed their doors to her because of her radical message, but Abigail was satisfied to share her ideas even if she had to lecture outside in bad weather in front of barns or behind saloons. 

 

Eventually Abigail was invited to speak to the Oregon State Legislature and gave her support for a women’s suffrage bill.  Although the bill did not become law, giving a speech in front of lawmakers gave Abigail valuable political experience. 

  

Lecturing was only one tool Abigail used to promote women’s suffrage.  She also published and edited a newspaper which she named New Northwest.  Once again, Abigail led the way for women to hold jobs that were usually held by men.  Abigail used the paper to provide readers with news on constitutional amendments that were up for a vote, along with advice on how to convince men to vote in their favor.  One issue even contained a petition for women’s suffrage addressed to the United States Congress that she instructed readers to copy and hand out to community members.  Abigail no longer published New Northwest after 1886, but she did not stop campaigning for women’s rights.

 

The traveling Abigail did for lecture tours and for her newspaper gave her a different perspective from other suffragists on how women could successfully get the right to vote.  Unlike Abigail, many women’s rights groups not only wanted women’s suffrage, but also advocated prohibition, which meant banning alcohol.  Abigail saw that women gained suffrage more quickly in states like Utah where suffragists didn’t insist on prohibition.  When other suffragists expressed their frustration at some western states’ successes in getting votes for women, Abigail stated, “Women can’t enfranchise women.  They may lead a man to the ballot booth, but they cannot make him vote for us after we get him there.  If we are too insistent [about prohibition] they’ll get stubborn and the advantage is all on their side.”  Women needed to encourage men to vote for women’s suffrage, but the prohibition movement often led men to oppose giving women the right to vote.

 

Despite the obstacles to gaining women’s suffrage, Abigail never doubted that women would gain the right to vote.  She wrote that “although…the final victory remains to be won, so many concessions have been made, all trending in one direction…that it would be indeed an obtuse man or woman who would doubt our ultimate and complete success.”  Some of the new rights for women included a Married Woman’s Property Act, which gave wives the right to own and sell property and keep wages.  In addition, the number of votes for women’s suffrage increased during the proposed Oregon constitutional amendment of 1900.  Still, the prohibition movement continued to discourage men from supporting women’s suffrage.

 

In 1910, Abigail made a new appeal to voters.  She suggested that since women paid taxes, they should not be denied the right to vote.  Abigail’s pioneering efforts finally paid off when Oregon voters approved women’s suffrage in 1912.