1. Women Civil Rights - Position of women in 1865

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  • Created by: Alasdair
  • Created on: 03-06-17 18:22
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  • Position of women in 1865
    • Public affairs before Civil War
      • Showed women taking interest outside home
      • Church societies
        • Result of growth in religious enthusiasm
        • Women often active in Church Societies, Sunday schools and religious meetings
      • Campaign to end slavery
        • Participate in campaign
        • Often ardent abolitionists
          • Supporting end of slavery in South
      • Rescue slaves
        • Some, like former slave Harriet Tubman,played heroic role in rescuing slaves and helping them to reach free territory in North
      • Temperance
        • Took active public role in discouraging drinking of alcohol
      • Suffrage campaign
        • Developed alongside Church Societies, Campaigning to end slavery and temperance
      • Also involved in organisations to help poor, disseminating knowledge about childcare and good motherhood, Bible study and teaching, and campaigns for better working conditions and to improve property rights for women
      • Also concerned with movements for moral reform and opposition to prostitution
      • Women's Place was in Home concept remained well into 20th Century
      • Politically active women remained in minority
    • Political participation
      • Anti-slavery movement led to women organising to promote political cause
        • First female Anti-Slavery Convention dates from 1837 and was model for organisations set up to demand voting rights for women
        • First convention held to discuss female suffrage was held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1948
        • Significantly, it put issue of suffrage into wider context discussing 'the social, civil and religious conditions and rights women'
        • Abolition of slavery and temperance were often concerns of white, middle-class women but there was also AA women who linked abolitionism with women's rights
        • If women had vote they would bring compassion and social concern to bear on political decisions
        • Notable AA  campaigner was Sojourner Truth
        • Main instigators of Seneca Falls convention, which led to regular meetings, were middle-class women like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
        • Cause of women's rights had able and eloquent leaders to act as role models for later campaigners
    • Economic and social developments
      • Interest of women in public causes was reflection of diversification in US society
      • There had been development of urbanisation (villages becoming towns and then becoming cities), new technology bringing easier communication, greater literacy and better education for women before 1865
      • For those who prospered from expansion of trade and industry, there was new interest of domesticity
        • Women not sharing labours on farm or workshop or pioneering expansion but being responsible for home
      • With greater prosperity, more middle-class women did not work outside home and had more time to get involved with 'causes' by mid-19th century, although these were in minority
      • Most women struggled with day-to-day survival and these causes did not concern their daily reality
      • However, for some, expectations that they would look after and nurture family became transferred to wider social concerns
        • Looking after interests of wider community , and bringing 'womanly' values of care and love to those in need
      • To do this effectively, though, required more public profile
      • Led to demands for women to have political representations
    • The impact of the Civil War
      • Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) had done much to publicise opposition to slavery
        • By vivid writing it established view of brutal and degraded system of slavery
      • Many women wanted to vote in order to protest about slavery
      • However, men who led abolitionist movement were not altogether comfortable when cause of women's rights became associated with cause of abolition of slavery
      • Action abolition leaders did not want to lose support by making it appear abolitionists were also feminists
      • After Civil War (1861-5), cause of AA rights and cause of women's rights became separate
    • How did Civil War affect women?
      • Led to more public participation by women
      • Women did not fight, but supported war effort on both sides, and organised considerable array of charitable organisations and fund raising for respective causes
      • War also became something like modern total war when Union forces marched through South destroying crops and plantations in effort to hit economy of Southern heartland
      • With men away, women had to take on greater economic responsibility and were often left alone to take brunt of new type of warfare
      • Ideas  of women being unfit for anything except genteel  domestic activity were at odds with reality of war in the South, while the North's heavy demand for men to fight meant women had to take on more work
      • War brought considerable economic and social change and disruption
      • Industries of N expanded, and in South with eventual end of slavery and granting of political rights to AAs, old ways were challenged
      • If AAs, previously exploited and disenfranchised group could vote and sit in Congress and state legislatures, as was case during Reconstruction, why should not women who had played such an important role in war and campaigned for abolition not get the same?
      • One historian, S.J. Kleinburg (1999) summed up impact as follows:
        • 'The Civil War contributed to redefinition of women's political roles...Women gained in moral authority as they raised funds for relief of both Confederate and Union armies, sewed clothes and nursed the wounded.'
      • Many women didn't want  to return to pre-war domesticity and built on their wartime experience of working in public sphere
    • End of the war
      • By 1985, opportunities for greater change for women seemed strong
      • However, there was also extensive inequalities to overcome
      • Few men supported political rights for women
      • With growth of industry and greater prosperity came view women's place was inside home and men should work outside home
      • By far greatest female employments were in domestic services such as cleaning, or in low-paid manufacturing
      • Westward expansion did mean men and women working together but male attitudes dominated by view of women being responsible for family
      • Limited birth control meant that family size remained relatively large
        • Creating and nurturing families took great deal of women's energies

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