A More Perfect World : Benevolence, Moral Reform, Antislavery, & Woman’s Rights

1. A More Perfect World: Benevolence, Moral Reform, Antislavery, & Woman’s Rights

2. Summary • Lecture explores four different types of PUBLIC ACTIVITY that women engaged in during the antebellum period: • Benevolence • Moral Reform • Antislavery • Women’s Rights • Woman’s Sphere and civic engagement

3. Benevolence • Women’s societies created “for pious purposes” • Response to urbanization/industrialization & the problems they brought: poverty, crime, illness Philadelphia 1840

4. Benevolence • Foundation for women’s 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

5. Limited to North Urbanization Proximity to other women Clientele—the poor and “impious” needed their help Second Great Awakening Religious upheaval Belief in the need to improve the world Women’s piety made them the perfect volunteers for this job Benevolence Charles Finney

6. 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 “woman’s sphere” Almshouse

7. Sarah Hale 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 Benevolence Sarah Hale

8. Godey’s Ladies Book “Moral and spiritual exemplar” devoted to “female improvement” Woman’ssphere is celebrated Major focus on female education Benevolence

9. Godey’s Lady’s Book Exalts female “influence” and sacrifice Organizations Seaman’s Aid Society: helped abandoned wives, widows, children Created boarding house, clothing store and workshop, infant school, free library Opposes woman’s rights Opposes fashion Benevolence Fashion plate from Godey’s Lady’s Book

10. Aggressive benevolence Abate social ills Change men’s behavior Double standard Impose a single “pure” moral standard on everyone Moral Reform 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

11. 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

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

14. 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

15. 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 (1837-1914). Taught freed slaves and wrote Life on Sea Islands

16. Female Antislavery Societies • National Female Anti-Slavery Society Meetings, 1837-1839, and the burning of Philadelphia Hall (1838)

17. 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 $ Fund-Raising Frederick Douglass

18. 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

19. Harriet Jacobs Slave autobiography Gave voice to slaves Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Sexual abuse of slave women Literature Harriet Jacobs, 1813-1897

20. 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

21. 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 woman’s right Petitioning

22. 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, 1831-32

23. Lecturing • Grimke Sisters, South Carolina sisters

24. Letter to Garrison, 1834 ‘36 Agents of NYASS Spoke to women “Promiscuous” Pastoral letter Beecher letter Letters on the equality of the sexes, 1838, Sarah Lecturing

25. Lecturing • Abby Kelley • Lectured for over 20 years • “long unrelieved moral torture” • Opened up the West to Garrisonians • Lectured alone • Persecuted • “Satan” Abby Kelley, 1811-1887

26. Abolition & Woman’s Rights • Leadership • Role models • Widened the woman’s rights network • Paved the way for future feminist lecturers Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906 at the age of 30

27. Challenged woman’s sphere Male-dominated professions Obstacles Training Licensing Gender assumptions: Women are “delicate” Jane Swisshelm quote Woman’s Rights Jane Swisshelm

28. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) Woman’s Sphere She focused on women as nurturers Medical School Rejection Geneva Graduation 1849 Rejection Shunned Dispensary in NY Woman’s Rights Elizabeth Blackwell

29. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) Woman’s Sphere: Women had a moral nature Seminary Oberlin: But no degree Rejection Lyceum speaker Ordination South Butler, NY, 1853 Woman’s Rights Antoinette Brown Blackwell

30. 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 Woman’s Rights Lucretia Mott

31. Woman’s Rights • Declaration of Independence • “We hold these truths to be self evidence: that all men and women are created equal. . .” • Issues: • Addressed women’s exclusion from: • Higher education • Professions • Pulpit • Profitable employment Frederick Douglass supports woman’s suffrage resolution

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

33. Frances Wright, 1795-1852 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 Woman’s Rights Frances Wright

34. Public Lecturing, 1820s Mixed audiences Sexual emancipation Critiqued clergy Woman’s Rights Castigated “Monster” Quiet ending Married in Paris, left husband and daughter and moved to Cincinnati Woman’s Rights