Gender in the 1800s
In the 1800’s gender roles were being challenged extensively. During the Civil War women were given the opportunity to be a part of jobs they weren’t permitted to do before. They were beginning to discover that they were capable of more than just staying at home, taking care of children, and pleasing their husbands. Which is why when the Civil War ended many women were not complaint to going back to their domestic lives. Women became more curious about the things they could do. They started to challenge and question their roles in society. These actions and questions were critical because they eventually led to the start of women’s rights movements as well as their success.
The Cult of Domesticity
The Cult of Domesticity, also known as the Cult of True Womanhood, began in the 1820’s and was a major movement in the United States. It was founded on the theory that nineteenth century women were both physically and mentally inferior to men. “A women has a head almost to small for intellect but just big enough for love.” From Barbra Welters’, The Cult of True Womanhood. This kind of thinking was fostered by the cult and shaped the assumption that women were unsuited for any occupation requiring high intelligence.
Furthermore the cult fostered the idea that women were emotionally unstable and therefore not suited to work outside the home. The cult encouraged women to follow the path of ideal womanhood which consisted of: piety, purity, domesticity and submissiveness. The first ideal, piety, or religion was the core of a woman’s virtue. It was better for women to pray than to think. Male mates were encouraged to look for piety in a woman before anything else because it was believed that the woman of the nineteenth century was the “new Eve”, she was thought to be working with God to help the world in any way she could, therefore religion was thought to be essential in a woman. A lack of religion was considered the worst human characteristic. The second ideal, purity, without sexual purity a woman was thought to be unworthy of the love of a man and unfit for their company. A woman’s virginity was seen as the greatest gift to give to her new husband. The third ideal, domesticity, this came from the belief that a woman’s place was in the home. Housework was seen to be an uplifting and rewarding task for a woman. A woman was expected to take care of the home, children, and provide a space for her husband to come home and relax without being bothered. The fourth and final ideal, submissiveness, this was seen as the most feminine of virtues. Women were expected to submit to fate, to duty, to God, and most importantly, to men. Men on the other hand were seen as the protectors, the doers and the actors in life. The Cult had a profound effect on women’s day-to- day lives. Many women found themselves relying on “how-to” guides to gain insight on how to fulfill their roles as dictated by the Cult. |
Women's Suffrage
The Civil War
Nursing is perhaps the role that Americans today associate with Civil War women, however women also took up roles as spies and many dressed up as male soldiers in order to fight. Approximately 250 female Civil War soldiers have been documented by historians, and there were undoubtedly more.
During the Civil War many women took new roles at home after their husbands, fathers, and brothers went out to fight in the war. As more and more of their male relatives were called into battle women seized the opportunity to work outside the home. The more and more women did this the more they realized that they were equally capable of doing the jobs that their male relatives were expected to do.
During the Civil War many women took new roles at home after their husbands, fathers, and brothers went out to fight in the war. As more and more of their male relatives were called into battle women seized the opportunity to work outside the home. The more and more women did this the more they realized that they were equally capable of doing the jobs that their male relatives were expected to do.
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman’s name at birth was Araminta Ross. She was one of 11 children born into slavery in Maryland, in approximately 1821. When she was very young she started working as a house slave but was soon sent to work in the field; at age 12 she shielded a fellow field hand from an angry master and was struck in the head by a two-pound weight. She never completely recovered from this blow; and throughout her whole life she suffered from episodes that resembled narcolepsy (a condition characterized by an extreme tendency to fall asleep whenever in relaxing surroundings).
In 1849 Tubman escaped to the North later going back to the South to lead her family to freedom; she tried to do the same for her husband but he was remarried by then. Instead of taking him to the North she started helping slaves escape. Little did she know she would become the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad--a secret network of safe houses where runaway slaves could safely stay on their journey north to their freedom. She did this over the course of 10 years; at one point the bounty for Tubmans capture was a total of $40,000 which would equal $1.2 million in 2018. When The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed her job became a lot harder and she had to start bringing people farther North to Canada. She made 19 trips from Maryland to the South and back to the North towards freedom. Tubman earned the nickname “Moses” by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison after Moses in the Bible because he led his people to freedom just like she did. She later became a leader in the abolitionist movement and during the Civil War she was a spy in South Carolina as well as a nurse and cook. In the War’s early years Tubman worked for the Union as a nurse but she later acted as a spy for the union. “They had lived their lives as invisible people, that quality of invisibility, which Harriet Tubman knew so well, became the basis for using ex-slaves as spies for the Union.” says Thomas B Allen in his book Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent: How Daring Slaves and Free Blacks Spied for the Union During the Civil War. During the Civil War African American spies became essential. Some say that without them the Union Army might not have triumphed. On June 2 1863, Tubman, under command of Colonel James Montgomery departed with about 150 black soldiers on a gunboat raid up the Combahee River. Because of the intel Tubman’s spies provided, her “army” was able to surprise the Confederate rebels. When Tubman arrived at each plantation the slaves would usually run and hide in fear. But once they realized that her ship could take them behind the Union line to freedom the would come out running in all directions to Tubman’s ship. It is said that once they would hear Tubman’s singing women and children, and men would run for the boats, for freedom. Tubman and her army managed to free around 700 slaves; this, was one of the largest liberation of slaves in American history. This is how in addition to being the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad she also became: the first American woman to lead a military operation. |
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Women's Rights After The Civil War
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This period marked a pivoting point in women’s history. Women had been given the opportunity to earn their own money, to manage their own finances, and to be independent. They had realized they were more than capable of doing these things and they were no longer willing to complacently fill the domestic and submissive roles they had occupied before the war. Women yearned for higher education, and many women did begin to go to college after the Civil War, thus gaining bitter criticism. In 1885 historian Henry Adams complained in a letter of protest to the American Historical Association when he found a woman historian listed in the program of an upcoming AHA meeting, Adams wrote this: “Our young women are haunted by the idea that they ought to read, to draw, or to labor in some way, not for any such frivolous abject as making themselves agreeable to society… but “to improve their minds.” They are utterly unconscious of the pathetic impossibility of improving those poor little her, thin, wiry, one-stringed instruments which they call their minds, and which haven’t range enough to master one big emotion much less to express it in words or figures.” After the war more and more women began challenging and questioning society’s expectations for them and although most women were forced to go back to their domestic roles, many women refused to conform to the lives they had managed before the war.
Soon after the Civil War the Women’s Suffrage movement began to strengthen. On May 15, 1869 Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA), their mission was to secure an amendment to the Constitution in favor of women’s suffrage. They planned to do so by pushing for suffrage state by state which would eventually force the federal government to pass the amendment. In the 1890s the NWSA became the mother of all the Suffragist groups and suffragists began working together toward the same goal: obtaining the vote for women. |
The Declaration of Sentiments
The Declaration of Sentiments was written at the first women's suffrage convention in 1848. The work was written using parallels to the Declaration of Independence, but instead of outlining reasons for independence, it outlines the rights women should possess. It shocked Americans at the time due to its radical statements, but kick-started the women's suffrage movement full-force. (Cokely)
Document: (Stanton) |
"He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice" - Declaration of Sentiments |