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ANTEBELLUM AMERICA THE YEARS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

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Page 1: ANTEBELLUM AMERICA THE YEARS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

THE YEARS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

Page 2: ANTEBELLUM AMERICA THE YEARS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

ANTEBELLUM AMERICA The years before the Civil War (1830s-

1860) are known as the antebellum years. These years witnessed a religious revival,

several social reform movements and the growth of slavery and sectional tensions.

During these years a diverse mix of reformers dedicated themselves to such causes as free public education, temperance, better treatment of the mentally ill, women’s rights, and abolishing of slavery.

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ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

The enthusiasm for reform had many historic sources:

The Puritan sense of mission The Enlightenment belief in human

goodness and prefectability The policies of Jacksonian Democracy The changing relationship between men

and women The changing relationship among the

social classes and ethnic groups

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ANTEBELLUM AMERICA

The most important and significant source were the powerful religious motives behind the reformers’ zeal.

These powerful religious motives led to the far-reaching SECOND GREAT AWAKENING.

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING Religious revivals swept through America

during the early decades of the 19th century. They were partly a reaction to the

rationalism (belief in human reason) which had become fashionable during the Enlightenment and American Revolution.

Calvinist (Protestant) teachings of original sin and predestination had been rejected by believers in more liberal and forgiving doctrines, such as those of the Unitarian Church.

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING Calvinism began a

counterattack against these liberal views in 1795.

This counterattack was led by Reverend Timothy Dwight who was President of Yale College.

Dwight started a series of campus revivals, which motivated a generation of college-educated young men to become evangelical preachers of the Christian gospels.

Unlike the early Calvinists, the new breed allowed free will, or “free agency,” to play a role in salvation.

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

Presbyterian minister, Charles G. Finney, in 1823, started a more radical form of revivalism in upstate New York.

Instead of delivering sermons based on rational arguments, he appealed to people’s emotions and fear of damnation and persuaded thousands to publicly declare their revived faith.

He preached that all were free to be saved through faith and hard work – ideas that strongly appealed to the rising middle class.

Because of Finney’s influence western New York became known as the “burned-over district” for its frequent “hell-and-brimstone” revivals.

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING In the South and on the

advancing western frontier, Baptist and Methodist circuit preachers, such as Peter Cartwright, would travel from one location to another and attract thousands to hear their dramatic preaching at outdoor revival or camp meetings.

They converted many of the unchurched into respectable members of the community.

By 1850, the Baptists and Methodists had become the largest Protestant denominations in the country.

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING Much of the religious

enthusiasm of the time was based on the widespread belief that the world was about to end with the second coming of Christ.

The preacher William Miller gained tens of thousands of followers by predicting a specific date (Oct. 21, 1844) when the second coming would occur.

There were obvious disappointments when nothing happened on the appointed day, but the Millerites would continue as a new religion, the Seventh-Day Adventists.

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING Another religious group,

the Church of the Latter-Day Saints , or Mormons was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith.

Smith based his religious thinking on a book of Scripture - the Book of Mormon – which traced a connection between the Native Americans and the lost tribes of Israel.

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

The Mormons were persecuted in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois.

Their practice of polygamy created enemies.

1844, Smith and his brother were murdered by a mob in Illinois.

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THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING Brigham Young led the

Mormons to Salt Lake City, Utah.

Here the community became a prosperous frontier theocracy and cooperative commonwealth.

They cultivated semi-arid Utah by effective and cooperative methods of irrigation.

Mormons later broke polygamy laws passed by Congress in 1862 and 1882.

As a result, Utah was refused statehood until 1896.

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IMPACT OF THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

Became perhaps the most important era in the history of American religion.

Hundreds of thousands became “born-again” Christians.

Shattered and reorganized churches and new sects.

Fostered new reform movements. Women were vital in these new

reform movements.

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IMPACT OF THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

The SGA and reform movements offered many middle-class women opportunities to escape the “cult of domesticity” and take part in public life.

Most affected by SGA: poor, working class and middle class.

Wealthier, better-educated levels of society not as affected by the revivalism.

SGA gave rise to the establishment of several utopian communities seeking perfection.

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THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS In Europe, during the early

years of the 19th century, a romantic movement in art and literature stressed intuition and feelings, individual acts of heroism, and the study of nature.

At the same time, in the United States from 1820-1860, these romantic and idealistic themes were best expressed by transcendentalists, a small group of New England writers and reformers.

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TRANSCENDENTALISTS Transcendentalists questioned the doctrines of

established churches and the capitalistic habits of the merchant class.

They argued for a mystical and intuitive way of thinking as a means for discovering one’s inner self and looking for the essence of God in nature.

Their views challenged the materialism of American society by suggesting that artistic expression was more important than the pursuit of wealth.

They supported a variety of reforms, especially the antislavery movement.

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RALPH WALDO EMERSON Best known. His essays and lectures

expressed the individualistic mood of the period.

In a 1837 address entitled “The American Scholar” he evoked the nationalistic spirit of Americans by urging them not to imitate European culture but to create an entirely new and original American culture.

His poems and essays argued for self-reliance, independent thinking, and the primacy of spiritual matters over material ones.

He became a leading critic of slavery and an ardent supporter of the Union during the Civil War.

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HENRY DAVID THOREAU

* To test his transcendentalist philosophy, he conducted a two-year experiment of living by himself in the woods outside town.

There he used observations of nature to discover essential truths about life and the universe = Walden

Through his essay “On Civil Disobedience,” he established himself as an early advocate of nonviolent protest.

The essay presented his argument for not obeying unjust laws.

His own act of civil disobedience was to refuse to pay a tax that might be used in an “immoral” war – the U.S. war with Mexico.

His sentence was to spend one night in a Concord jail.

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BROOK FARM 1841: George Riley, a

Protestant minister, launched a communal experiment at Brook Farm in Massachusetts.

His goal was to achieve “a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor.”

A bad fire and heavy debts forced the end of the experiment in 1849.

But Brook Farm was remembered for its atmosphere of artistic creativity and an innovative school that attracted the sons and daughters of New England’s intellectual elite.

At various times many of the leading intellectuals of the time lived at Brook Farm.

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MARGARET FULLER

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THEODORE PARKER

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NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

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COMMUNAL EXPERIMENTS

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COMMUNAL EXPERIMENTS The idea of withdrawing from conventional

society to create an ideal community, or utopia, in a fresh setting was not a new idea.

But never before were the social experiments so numerous during the antebellum years.

The early Mormons may be considered an example of a religious communal effort.

Brook Farm may be considered an example of a humanistic or secular experiment.

Although many of the communities were shortlived, these “backwoods utopias” reflected the diversity of the reform ideas of the time.

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THE SHAKERS

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THE SHAKERS One of the

earliest religious communal movements.

Had about 6,000 members by the 1840s.

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THE SHAKERS They held property

in common. They kept men and

women strictly separate – forbidding marriage and sexual relations.

Shaker communities virtually died out by the mid-1900s.

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NEW HARMONY Robert Owen founded a

secular experiment in New Harmony, Indiana.

He hoped his utopian socialist community would provide an answer to the problems of inequity and alienation caused by the Industrial Revolution.

The experiment failed as a result of both financial problems and disagreements among members of the community.

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NEW HARMONY

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NEW HARMONY

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ONEIDA COMMUNITY 1848: John Humphrey

Noyes started a cooperative community in Oneida, New York.

His community would become highly controversial.

Dedicated to an ideal of perfect social and economic equality, members of the community shared property – and later even shared marriage partners.

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ONEIDA COMMUNITY Critics attacked

the Oneida system of planned reproduction and communal child-rearing as a sinful experiment in “free love.”

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ONEIDA COMMUNITY

Even so, the community managed to prosper economically by producing and selling silverware of excellent quality.

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FOURIER PHALANXES 1840s: Many Americans

became interested in the theories of French Socialist Charles Fourier.

To solve the problems of a fiercely competitive society, Fourier advocated that people share work and living arrangements in communities popularly known as Fourier Phalanxes.

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FOURIER PHALANXES This movement

died out almost as quickly as it appeared.

Americans proved to be too individualistic to adapt to communal living.

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REFORMING SOCIETY Reform during the antebellum era went

through several stages. At first, the leaders of reform hoped to

improve people’s behavior through moral persuasion.

After they tried sermons and pamphlets, however, reformers often moved on to political action and to ideas for creating new institutions to replace the old.

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TEMPERANCE The Temperance Movement

was an excellent example of the shift from moral exhortation to political action.

Alcohol abuse was rampant in 19th century America (“the Alcoholic Republic”)

Alcohol abuse decreased the efficiency of labor while increasing injuries in the workplace.

Family life was also hindered by the physical danger to women and children.

1820: Alcohol consumption = 5 gallons of hard liquor per person.

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TEMPERANCE 1826: The American

Temperance Society was formed in Boston.

Using moral arguments, the society tried to persuade drinkers not just to moderate their drinking but to take a pledge of total abstinence.

Within a few years there were about 1000 local groups.

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TEMPERANCE 1840: The

Washingtonians was begun by recovering alcoholics, who argued that alcoholism was a disease that needed practical, helpful treatment.

By the 1840s, the various temperance societies had more than a million members, and it was becoming respectable in middle-class households to drink only cold water.

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TEMPERANCE German and Irish

immigrants were largely opposed to the temperance movement but did not have the political power to prevent state and city governments from siding with the reformers.

Factory owners and politicians joined with the reformers when it became clear that temperance measures could reduce crime and poverty and increase workers’ output on the job.

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TEMPERANCE 1851: Neal Dow, known

as the “Father of Prohibition” sponsored the Maine Law of 1851.

Under this law, Maine became the first state that prohibited the sale and manufacture of liquor.

1857: 12 states had passed various prohibitory laws.

Yet, during the 1850s, many of these laws were repealed or overturned.

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“TEN NIGHTS IN A BARROOM AND WHAT I SAW THERE”

A play by T.S. Arthur in 1854.

It depicted how a stable village was transformed by a new tavern.

2nd best seller in 1854 behind Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Page 45: ANTEBELLUM AMERICA THE YEARS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

“DRUNKARD’S PROGRESS”

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IMPACT OF THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT Much less drinking among women than earlier in the

century. Less per capita consumption of hard liquor. 1850s: The issue of slavery came to overshadow the

temperance movement. 1870s: The movement would gain strength again

with the formation of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and achieve national success with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919.

Given the high rate of alcohol consumption (5 gallons of hard liquor per person in 1820), it is understandable why the temperance movement proved to be the most popular of the prewar reforms.

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THE MOVEMENT FOR PUBLIC ASYLUMS Humanitarian reformers of the 1820s and 1830s

called attention to the increasing numbers of criminals, emotionally disturbed persons, and paupers.

Often these people were forced to live in wretched conditions and were regularly either abused or neglected by their caretakers.

To alleviate these problems, reformers proposed setting up new public institutions – state-supported prisons, mental hospitals, and poorhouses.

They hoped that the inmates of these institutions would be cured of their antisocial behavior as a result of being withdrawn from squalid surroundings and treated to a disciplined pattern of life in some rural setting.

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MENTAL HOSPITALS Dorothea Dix, a former

schoolteacher from Massachusetts, was horrified to find mentally ill persons locked up with convicted criminals in unsanitary cells.

She dedicated the rest of her life to improving conditions for emotionally disturbed persons.

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MENTAL HOSPITALS 1840s: Her travels

across the country and reports of awful treatment caused one state legislature after another to build new mental hospitals to improve existing institutions.

As a result of Dix’s crusade, mental patients began receiving professional treatment at state expense.

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SCHOOLS FOR THE BLIND AND DEAF Two other reformers

founded special institutions to help people with physical disabilities.

Thomas Gallaudet founded a school for the deaf.

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe founded a school for the blind.

1850s: Special schools modeled after the work of these reformers had been established in many states of the Union.

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PRISONS Taking the place of crude jails

and lock-ups were new prisons erected in Pennsylvania.

These penitentiaries experimented with the technique of placing prisoners in solitary confinement to force them to reflect on their sins and repent.

The experiment was dropped because of the high rate of prisoner suicides.

These prison reforms reflected a major doctrine of the asylum movement: structure and discipline would bring about moral reform.

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PRISONS Another penal

experiment, the Auburn system in New York, enforced rigid rules of discipline while also providing moral instruction and work programs.

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PUBLIC EDUCATION The movement to reform public education

focused on the need for establishing public schools for children of all classes.

Middle-class reformers were motivated in part by their fears for the future of the republic posed by growing numbers of the uneducated poor – both native-born and immigrants.

Workers’ groups in the cities generally supported the reformers’ campaign for free (tax-supported) schools.

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FREE COMMON SCHOOLS Horace Mann was a leading

advocate of the common (public) school movement.

As the secretary of the newly founded Massachusetts Broad of Education, he worked for improved schools, compulsory attendance for all school children, a longer school year, and increased teacher preparation.

1840s: The movement for tax-supported schools spread rapidly to other states.

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MORAL EDUCATION Besides the teaching of

basic literacy, Mann and other educational reformers wanted children to be instructed in principles of morality.

William Holmes McGuffey, a Pennsylvania teacher, created a series of elementary textbooks that became widely accepted as the basis of reading and moral instruction in hundreds of schools.

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MORAL EDUCATION The McGuffey

Readers extolled the virtues of hard work, punctuality, and sobriety – the kind of behaviors needed in an emerging industrial society.

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MORAL EDUCATION Objecting to the

evangelical Protestant tone of the public schools, Roman Catholic groups founded private schools for the instruction of Catholic and foreign-born children.

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HIGHER EDUCATION The religious

enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening helped fuel the movement for educational reform.

Beginning in the 1830s, various Protestant denominations founded small denominational colleges, especially in the newer states – Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa.

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HIGHER EDUCATION At the same time,

several new colleges, including Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and Oberlin College in Ohio, began to admit women.

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THE CHANGING AMERICAN FAMILY AND THE WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT

American society was still overwhelming rural in the mid-19th century.

Even so, the growing part of society that was urban and industrial underwent fundamental changes that would be felt for decades to come.

In cities, as a result of the Market Revolution, the roles of men and women, husbands and wives were redefined.

Men left home to work for salaries or wages six days a week in the office or factory.

Middle-class women typically remained at home to take charge of the household and children.

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THE CHANGING AMERICAN FAMILY AND THE WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Industrialization also had the effect of reducing the economic value of children.

In middle-class families, birth control was used to reduce average family size, which declined from 7.04 family members in 1800 to 5.2 in 1830.

More affluent women now had the leisure time to devote to religious and moral uplift organizations.

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THE CULT OF DOMESTICITY

The Cult of Domesticity glorified the traditional function of the homemaker.

Men were responsible for economic and political affairs.

Women were viewed as moral leaders in the home and educators of children.

Women were seen as keepers of society’s conscience with special responsibility to raise children to become productive citizens. (“Republican Motherhood”)

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ORIGINS OF THE WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT Women increasingly

challenged their inferior status.

Increased number of women avoided marriage.

Women began working as schoolteachers and in domestic service.

Women played an increasing role in other reform movements of the era especially the Abolitionist Movement.

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WOMEN’S RIGHTS Two sisters, Sarah

and Angelina Grimke, objected to male opposition to their antislavery activities.

In protest, Sarah Grimke, wrote her Letter on the Condition of Women and the Equality of the Sexes (1837)

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WOMEN’S RIGHTS Grimke’s book was

a powerful call for equal rights for women and a critique of the notion of separate spheres.

It raised numerous issues familiar even today.

It raised the issue of “equal pay for equal work.”

Why, Grimke wondered, did male teachers receive higher wages than women teachers.

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WOMEN’S RIGHTS Elizabeth Cady Stanton

and Lucretia Mott, key organizers of the Seneca Fall Convention of 1848, were veterans of the anti-slavery movement.

1840: They had traveled to London as delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Conv., only to be barred from participating because of their sex.

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SENECA FALLS CONVENTION OF 1848

1848: The leading feminists met at Seneca Falls, New York.

At the conclusion of their convention – the first women’s rights convention in American history – they issued a document modeled after the Declaration of Independence.

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THE SENECA FALLS DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS

The Declaration of Sentiments declared that “all men and women are created equal.”

It listed women’s grievances against laws and customs that discriminated against them.

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WOMEN’S RIGHTS Seneca Falls

marked the beginning of a 70 year struggle for suffrage.

But the vote was hardly the only issue discussed at the Conv.

The Dec. of Sentiments condemned the entire structure of inequality that denied women access to education and employment, have husbands control over property and wages and custody of children in the event of divorce.

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WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Equal rights became the rallying cry of the early movement for women’s rights, and equal rights meant claiming access to all the prevailing definitions of freedom.

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FEMINISM AND FREEDOM

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FEMINISM AND FREEDOM The movement for

women’s rights was an international movement.

“Women alone will say what freedom they want,” declared an article in The Free Women, a journal published in Paris in 1832.

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FEMINISM AND FREEDOM Many middle-class

women chafed at the restrictions that made it impossible for them to gain an education, enter the professions, and in other ways exercise their talents.

Whether married or not, early feminists insisted, women deserved the range of individual choices – the possibility of self-realization – that constituted the essence of freedom.

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FEMINISM AND FREEDOM Women, wrote

Margaret Fuller, had the same right as men to develop their talents, to “grow… to live freely and unimpeded.

1845: She published Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

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FEMINISM AND FREEDOM

In this book, Fuller sought to apply the transcendentalist idea that freedom meant a quest for personal development.

“Every path,” to self-fulfillment, she insisted, should be “open to woman as freely as to man.”

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WOMEN AND WORK

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WOMEN AND WORK Women also

demanded the right to participate in the market revolution.

1851: Sojourner Truth insisted that the movement devote attention to the plight of the poor and working class women.

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WOMEN AND WORK

While there were no representatives of the growing numbers of “factory girls: at the Seneca Falls Convention, the participants rejected the identification of the home as the women’s “sphere.”

Women, it was argued, must go to work to emancipate them from bondage.

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WOMEN AND WORK 1850s: Some

feminists tried to popularize a new style of dress, devised by Amelia Bloomer, consisting of a loose-fitting tunic and trousers.

Women who wore this style were ridiculed by the press and public.

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WOMEN AND WORK The “bloomer”

costume attempted to make a serious point – that the long dresses, tight corsets, and numerous petticoats considered to be appropriate female attire were so confining that they made it impossible for women to claim a place in the public sphere or to work outside the home.

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WOMEN AND WORK In one sense, feminism demanded an

expansion of the boundaries of freedom rather than a redefinition of the idea.

Women, in the words of one reformer, should enjoy “the rights and liberties that every ‘free white male citizen’ takes to himself as God-given.”

In every realm of life, declared Elizabeth Cady Stanton, there could be “no happiness without freedom.”

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11 STAGES OF WOMENHOOD