Summary Lecture explores four different types of PUBLIC ACTIVITY that women engaged in during the antebellum period: Benevolence Moral Reform Antislavery Womens Rights Womans Sphere and civic engagement

Benevolence Womens societies created for pious purposes Response to urbanization/industrialization & the problems they brought: poverty, crime, illness Philadelphia 1840

Benevolence Foundation for womens public activity Charitable & humanitarian ends Clerical approval Bible societies, missionary societies, maternal societies, Sunday-school associations (to impart spiritual values to the children of the poor) Catherine Beecher

Benevolence Limited to North Urbanization Proximity to other women Clientelethe poor and impious needed their help Second Great Awakening Religious upheaval Belief in the need to improve the world Womens piety made them the perfect volunteers for this job Charles Finney

Benevolence Benefits of Benevolence: Skills: organizational, literary, financial Providence Employment Society, 1830s: Run by wealthy women from prominent families to help poor seamstresses; created a small garment society that became a model employer and offered good wages Access to the public activities : Almshouses, asylums, hospitals, jails Gender Consciousness : Spurred empathy for female victims (widows, abandoned, prostitutes) & disdain for their oppressors Limitation of Benevolence Did not challenge the womans sphere Almshouse

Benevolence S ARAH H ALE Early Life Lost mother, sister, brother Widowed with five children after 9 years of happy marriage Opened millinery business with sister- in-law that failed Turned to writing Sarah Hale

Godeys Ladies Book Moral and spiritual exemplar devoted to female improvement Womans sphere is celebrated Major focus on female education Benevolence

Godeys Ladys Book Exalts female influence and sacrifice Organizations Seamans Aid Society: helped abandoned wives, widows, children Created boarding house, clothing store and workshop, infant school, free library Opposes womans rights Opposes fashion Benevolence Fashion plate from Godeys Ladys Book

Moral Reform Aggressive benevolence Abate social ills Change mens behavior Double standard Impose a single pure moral standard on everyone A very guilty Richard Robinson sneaks away from the freshly murdered--and quite modest, it appears--Helen Jewett. A rendition by an artist without a taste for the racy. Changing masculinity Fears about out-of-control young men moving to cities to work as clerks

Moral Reform Domestic agenda Raising children with piety and moral education Public agenda All female staff Protest in front of brothels (singing hymns and shaming) Petition state legislatures to make seduction a crime Successful in MA 1846, NY 1848

Abolition Elizabeth Chandler Quaker Writer Justification for female involvement Moral superiority Sisterhood Break up of slave family Sexual abuse Elizabeth Margaret Chandler

Female Antislavery Societies Over 100 groups by 1838 Boston Society, 1832 Maria Weston Chapman & her sisters Mostly middle- & upper class white women Petitioning & Fund-raising Maria Weston Chapman

Philadelphia, 1833, integrated Fortens: Charlotte, Margaretta, Harriett, Sarah, Role of Black women Pragmatic goals: Vigilance Committee, Education Racism, Fall River, 1835 Female Antislavery Societies Charlotte Forten ( ). Taught freed slaves and wrote Life on Sea Islands

Female Antislavery Societies National Female Anti-Slavery Society Meetings, , and the burning of Philadelphia Hall (1838)

Fund- Raising Funds for literature and lecturers Antislavery Fairs 1834 first fair, Lydia Maria Child, $200 Maria Weston Chapman Wealth, educated, international connections Elegant expensive goods Holiday event Thousands of $ Frederick Douglass

Literature Literacy Increase in women authors/readers Lydia Maria Child Popular writer: The Frugal Housewife An Appeal,1833 Loses popularity Edits antislavery newspaper Lydia Maria Child

Literature Harriet Jacobs Slave autobiography Gave voice to slaves Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Sexual abuse of slave women Harriet Jacobs,

Petitioning Importance Immediate results: a signature Measurement of success Grassroots support network Topics of Petitions Opposing annexation of Texas Supporting abolition in DC 1838: 70% of signatures are women

Petitioning Gag Rule 1837 House of Reps automatically tabled all antislavery petitions One of the few political activities open to women Meaning of petitioning Required knowledge Self-confidence Influenced womans right

Lecturing Controversial & difficult Unpleasant: mob attacks, egg showers, verbal attacks, bad weather, poor accommodations Threatened gender norms Maria Stewart Wealth Boston widow first woman to lecture to mixed audiences,

Lecturing Grimke Sisters, South Carolina sisters

Lecturing Letter to Garrison, Agents of NYASS Spoke to women Promiscuous Pastoral letter Beecher letter Letters on the equality of the sexes, 1838, Sarah

Lecturing Abby Kelley Lectured for over 20 years long unrelieved moral torture Opened up the West to Garrisonians Lectured alone Persecuted Satan Abby Kelley,

Abolition & Womans Rights Leadership Role models Widened the womans rights network Paved the way for future feminist lecturers Susan B. Anthony, at the age of 30

Womans Rights Challenged womans sphere Male-dominated professions Obstacles Training Licensing Gender assumptions: Women are delicate Jane Swisshelm quote Jane Swisshelm

Womans Rights Elizabeth Blackwell ( ) Womans Sphere She focused on women as nurturers Medical School Rejection Geneva Graduation 1849 Rejection Shunned Dispensary in NY Elizabeth Blackwell

Womans Rights Antoinette Brown Blackwell ( ) Womans Sphere: Women had a moral nature Seminary Oberlin: But no degree Rejection Lyceum speaker Ordination South Butler, NY, 1853 Antoinette Brown Blackwell

Womans Rights Seneca Falls, 1848 Roots in Abolition Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton at World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, 1840 Women rejected as delegates and had to sit in the balcony Lucretia Mott

Womans Rights Declaration of Independence We hold these truths to be self evidence: that all men and women are created equal... Issues : Addressed womens exclusion from: Higher education Professions Pulpit Profitable employment Frederick Douglass supports womans suffrage resolution

Womans Rights What Seneca Falls ignored: Black women Segregation? Interracial mvmt? Working-class women Lowell Mills Wages, hours, conditions Domestic duties Reproductive control Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Womans Rights Frances Wright, Background Raised by aunt in England, early travel writer Befriends Marquis de Lafayette, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson Nashoba Utopian society to free slaves Forbids marriage, private property, religion Bad overseeing, malaria, poor land, resistance: freed slaves Frances Wright

Womans Rights Public Lecturing, 1820s Mixed audiences Sexual emancipation Critiqued clergy Womans Rights Castigated Monster Quiet ending Married in Paris, left husband and daughter and moved to Cincinnati