Women’s+Rights

= = = = =Women's Rights: 1820-1860 =

By Allison Irwin, Brittany Kirnum, & Sammi Panso
**IMPORTANT IDEAS:** 
 * At the beginning of the 19th Century, employment opportunities began to open up for women.
 * Feminism began to develop through the advancement of individuals and then spread nationally.
 * The debate on slavery and the Temperance movement were major catalysts for women's rights.
 * Because of the feminist movement, women began to see real changes in the laws that had once restricted them.
 * Without the change that these women fought for, the equality that we all value may never have become a reality.

 Sources:
 * IMPORTANT PEOPLE:**
 * Catharine Beecher
 * made advanced for women's role in educational professions
 * editor of many popular women's magazines of the time
 * led campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday
 * Sarah J. Hale
 * contributed greatly towards education
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">helped found Vassar College
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">Frances Wright
 * <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;">“The Great Red Harlot of Infidelity”
 * <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;">had radical views on many controversial topics such as, birth control, divorce laws, and legal rights of married women
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">Elizabeth Blackwell
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">first American women to earn a degree in medicine (1849)
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">Phoebe Palmer
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">Methodist preacher that created religious passion in thousands of North Americans
 * **<span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">Sarah & Angelina Grimké **
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 81%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">were among the first women to reach out to mixed audiences, through their writings and lectures
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 81%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">wealthy sisters from South Carolina slaveholding family
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 81%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">in 1837 Angelina infamously held an antislavery lecture to an audience of both men and women, severely offending Massachusetts ministers
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 81%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">they felt that this violated the “separate sexual spheres” required by God
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 81%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">these ministers then asked fellow clergy members to forbid women from speaking at church lectures
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 81%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">in response to their actions, Sarah Grimké released //**Letters on the Condition of Women and the Equality of the Sexes**// in 1840
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">this pamphlet contained the first feminist principles
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">she spoke out against the unequal pay for women as well as the unequal educational opportunities of the time
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">she stated that men and women should be treated equally because they were both given natural rights by God
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">in 1839, Angelina had also written **//American Slavery As It Is//** with her husband, Theodore Weld
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">this was a collection of firsthand accounts of life under slavery
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">it became one of the most influential abolitionist publication of the era
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">Lucretia Mott and Cady Stanton
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">organized the first women's rights convention in July of 1848
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">held at Seneca Falls, NY, the convention was where the **Declaration of Sentiments** originated
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">listed the grievances of women
 * <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;">**<span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">Sojourner Truth **
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">an escaped slave that was later bought freedom
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">became famous as a preacher, singer, and antislavery and feminist orator
 * <span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 90%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">at a women's rights convention in Akron Ohio in 1851, Sojourner delivered a speech entitled **“Ain't I A Woman,”** demanding that Americans recognize the rights of black women too

A History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1 (Rochester, N.Y.: Fowler and Wells, 1889), pages 70-71.

Halsall, Paul, ed. "Sojourner Truth: 'Ain't I a Woman?', December 1851." Modern History Sourcebook. N.p., Aug. 1997. Web. 15 Mar. 2010.

"Women's Rights ." Digital History. N.p., 15 Mar. 2010. Web. 15 Mar. 2010. <http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=630>.

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