The Antebellum period was a time of reform and improvement. After the War of 1812, America went through a period of westward expansion, patriotism and an economic emergence as a world power. Their new found power as a country inspired reformation. Abolitionists worked to end the institution of slavery through protests, rallies, and the formation of societies; women’s rights activists advocated in a similar way. Simultaneously, many Americans supported the government’s efforts to remove Native Americans from their own land. Americans during the Antebellum period were ambitious, but contradictory in their activism; while many activists fought for the rights of slaves and women, others sought to curtail rights of Native Americans.
During the
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late 18th century and 19th century, many people disagreed with the institution of slavery, and strived for its abolition. The earliest leaders of America struggled with the institution of slavery; it was a controversial topic among the founding fathers because there were many different views. Slavery was not a permanent institution, and that gave people the opportunity to oppose and fight against it. Slavery was outlawed in the North, but Northerners continued to benefit from the output of slavery in the south. Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin in 1792; many thought that this would continue to weaken slavery, but this was not the reality. The Cotton Gin made cotton easier and cheaper to produce, so more slaves were needed to pick cotton. Slavery down South was brutal because of the laws and culture. Many activists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison fought for African-American rights. Douglass was a black man who escaped his slave owner, and wrote a narrative about his life as a slave. He ran away to England because he was afraid of being captured, but he returned to establish a newspaper. William Lloyd Garrison also founded a newspaper called The Liberator, and organized the New England Anti-Slavery Society. In 1835, the society initiated an enormous propaganda campaign. It provided the slave states with abolitionist literature, and sent representatives all over the Northern states to organize state and local antislavery societies. Literature and slave narratives were effective because they illustrated the raw truth about slave treatment. The Grimké sisters were also influential activists; their fight for slaves’ rights brought their own lack of rights as women to their attention. They were condemned for their actions because they were taking part in unfeminine activities, but they continued to fight. Many women, including slaves, were condemned for their revolutionary participation; the presence of a female speaker led a mob to burn Pennsylvania Hall in 1838. Pennsylvania Hall was built as a space for abolitionists to meet and discuss the evils of slavery, but angry mobs destroyed it after the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women publically met there. Although the hall and everything is stood for was welcomed, women’s participation was not. Women, up to the 19th century, were supposed to be occupied by housework, and occasionally they were allowed to watch after their husband’s business’.
After centuries of exclusion from the rest of society’s tasks, women decided to voice their opinions about their rights. In the early 19th century, the United States decided to reform the educational institutions, seeking to raise their standards. However, male students were the sole beneficiaries of this reform; women were not admitted into universities. Emma Hart Willard, one of the most prominent voices for women’s education, ran Middlebury Female Academy: an institution where geometry, philosophy, and other topics were taught. She proposed to establish her school to New York and have it publically funded, but New York refused; she built her school there anyway. Two years later she founded Troy Female Seminary. Emma Willard’s courage provided opportunities for other women’s rights activists. Although there was an influx of revolutionary women, many women were excluded. African American and other minorities were not included in the fight for women’s rights. Emma Willard had many reservations about the institution of slavery. Like the Antebellum period, there was a sense of improvement, but still a repetition of
history. During the Antebellum period, a time of reformation and improvement, many settlers and farmers directed their energy towards removing Native Americans from American territory. The Indian Removal Act was an example of white oppression against minorities in a free land. Americans were prompted to remove the Native Americans from their land because they wanted it for agricultural reasons; they justified their actions by saying Native American’s contact with white men led to alcoholism. In 1830, congress approved of President Jackson's Indian Removal Act which intended to extract the remaining Native American population until their extinction. The Indian Removal Act claimed to offer a fair exchange for the Native American land west of the Mississippi River, but they were placed on land that did not interfere with white men’s agriculture. Although the North and the South had different views on the genocide, the American government removed the Native Americans, who were forced to travel by foot on what is known as the Trail of Tears without sufficient clothing, food, or shelter. They were forced to relocate during the harsh and cold winter, further decreasing their survival rate. By the 1850s, more than 100,000 Native Americans had been forced out of their land. Americans were unable to see the beneficial factors of Native Americans; they labeled them as brutes who were wasting white land. Americans justified their actions with an ideal known as manifest destiny: western expansion in America was universally important. Although the Americans provided land for the Native Americans, it strengthened their power over them. As many activists were taking steps forward regarding the rights of minorities during the Antebellum period, Native Americans continued to be ostracized. The Antebellum period was a time of reform and improvement for many, yet in the same era lives were tarnished and ruined. Many activists sought to improve the lives of slaves and women, but Native Americans were treated with no mercy. The Indian Removal Act was an example of the contradiction of the Antebellum period because Americans were reverting to their ancestors treatment of the Native Americans. There were many people willing to participate in new reforms, but many minorities were left out like the Native Americans. African American women were discouraged to advocate for women’s rights, and women were excluded from participating in abolitionist activities. The selective advocacy embodies the contradictory activism during Antebellum period. Although the Antebellum period contained many flaws, it led up to the Civil War which sparked many reforms for women, Native Americans, and slaves, ultimately leading to another era of reform and improvement.
2) Was there any degree of autonomy in the lives of enslaved women in the revolutionary or antebellum America? Use the documents to address the question of whether or not an enslaved woman could protect the humanity and if so, explore how this might be achieved. Also include how the specific era (revolutionary or antebellum) affected her autonomy.
In early America, between the years of 1825-1850, America was rapidly changing and reforming the way people lived. Societal problems and major discrepancies that had previously been overlooked began to rapidly gain awareness. The main idea of the reforms in the United States at this time was the relatively new sense of democracy. Reform sought to maximize these benefits in light of Democracy and for this reason came up with many changes in which greater good can be found through freedom, justice, and equality of all people. In addition to extending social and political equality for women and the means to economic affluence for the poor (through education), a number of reforms also extended to various oppressed groups of freedom and justice. Abolitionists in the North sought to emancipate slaves in the cotton-cultivating South through the use of moral suasion as revealed by Patrick Reason’s engraving showing the deprivation of the Negro race in regards to their rights as humans, and later, political freedoms.
The Antebellum Era between the years of 1825 to 1850 was abundant with many reform movements that signified great change within the people of the nation. Although many of these changes were good and lasting reforms, extremists’ stark views did the contrary and inhibited change. Luckily, reform movements such as the women’s rights movement, the abolition of slavery, and temperance all led the nation in the right direction towards the expansion of democratic ideals. These ideals encompass the belief that all citizens are equal and are entitled to certain unalienable rights.
“The connection between the revivals of the Second Great Awakening and abolition was so strong that it would hardly be an overstatement to say that the revivals were responsible for antislavery becoming a radical national movement.” During the time period, evangelical religion underlay the culture of America to such an extent that the revivals of the 1830s resulted in “tangible” structures for social reform — the revivals touched many aspects of political and social life. The revivals implicitly created political obligations and led to a demand for an activist
In one section of “Men and Women’s Studies: Premises, Perils, and Promise,” Michael Kimmel discusses how men have helped women to gain equal rights within the educational system (Kimmel, 26). He explains that as pro-feminists, men who made efforts to understand feminism and support women, as well as implement equal rights for women, realized the importance of women’s education (Kimmel, 26). According to his essay, many American men, as well as women, helped to create an educational system for women, which was seen as a “revolt” against inequality and the subordination of women (Kimmel, 26-27). Kimmel argues that pro-feminists tried to provide an opportunity for every woman to study; one such example is Henry Durant, an American pro-feminism activist, who established Wellesley College for
Education did not form part of the life of women before the Revolutionary War and therefore, considered irrelevant. Women’s education did not extend beyond that of what they learned from their mothers growing up. This was especially true for underprivileged women who had only acquired skills pertaining to domesticity unlike elite white women during that time that in addition to having acquired domestic skills they learned to read a result becoming literate. However, once the Revolutionary War ended women as well as men recognized the great need for women to obtain a greater education. Nonetheless, their views in regards to this subject differed greatly in that while some women including men believed the sole purpose of educating women was in order to better fulfil their roles and duties as wives and mothers others believed the purpose of education for women was for them “to move beyond the household field.” The essays of Benjamin Rush and Judith Sargent Murray provide two different points of view with respects to the necessity for women to be well educated in post-revolutionary America.
The antebellum American antislavery movement began in the 1820s and was sustained over 4 decades by organizations, publications, and small acts of resistance that challenged the legally protected and powerful institution of slavery and the more insidious enemy of black equality, racism. Abolitionists were always a radical minority even in the free states of the North, and the movement was never comprised of a single group of people with unified motivations, goals, and methods. Rather, the movement was fraught with ambiguity over who its leaders would be, how they would go about fighting the institution of slavery, and what the future would be like for black Americans.
Near the end of the Antebellum Era, tensions and sectionalism increased as the states argued over what was constitutional. The South had later seceded from the United States and had become the Confederacy of America while the North had remained as the Union. The South had fully supported states’ rights while the north had strongly disapproved it. However, westward expansion, southern anger with the abolitionists, and the secession of the South that had destroyed the feeling of unity in the country because of the disagreement over slavery had been the main factors to the cause of the Civil War. Therefore, since slavery was the primary reason for the discontent in the country, it had been the primary cause of the Civil War.
The United States was in a period of social and political adjustment in the early 1800s. Reform movements during this time period aimed to increase public awareness about their issues and to create social and political change. Groups such as blacks and women continued to be oppressed, so they created The Abolitionist Movement and The Women’s Rights Movement respectively, which aimed to fight for the rights that political leaders in the 19th century neglected. In the 1800s, the democratic values that most reform movements planned to obtain were free voting and public education. Most reform movements in the United States sought to achieve core democratic values such as liberty in different ways. The Abolitionist Movement aimed to emancipate all
A college education is something that women take for granted today, but in the 1800’s it was an extremely rare thing to see a woman in college. During the mid 1800’s, schools like Oberlin and Elmira College began to accept women. Stone’s father did a wonderful thing (by 19th century standards) in loaning her the money to pay for her college education. Stone was the first woman to get a college education in Massachusetts, graduating from Oberlin College in 1843. Her first major protest was at the time of her graduation. Stone was asked to write a commencement speech for her class. But she refused, because someone else would have had to read her speech. Women were not allowed, even at Oberlin, to give a public address.
American reform movements in the early to mid 1800’s strived at improving our developing society. America was growing larger, and with the expanding population, many new ideas sprang up. Conflicting opinions between the people of the United States caused the emergence of an Age of Reform, where people tried to change things such as the educational system and women’s rights. These movements were the result of our nation’s self-determination and interest in improving the society we live in.
Fredrick Douglass asserted that, “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave,” (“Abolition Through Education,” 2016). The truth in this statement posed a huge threat to the way of life of colonial Americans. Deprivation of education was used to assist in the enslavement of African Americans in developing America; in fact, prohibiting the education of African Americans quickly became the standard, as laws were increasingly put in place to oppress and limit colonial African Americans. During this time there was a widespread belief that if you were African American, then you were not fully a person which led to many basic rights being withheld, including the ability to get an education.
Education for women in the 1800s was far different from what we know today. During her life, a girl was taught more necessary skills around the home than the information out of school books. A woman’s formal education was limited because her job opportunities were limited—and vice versa. Society could not conceive of a woman entering a profession such as medicine or the law and therefore did not offer her the chance to do so. It was much more important to be considered 'accomplished' than thoroughly educated. Elizabeth Bennet indicated to her sisters that she would continue to learn through reading, describing education for herself as being unstructured but accessible. If a woman desired to further he education past what her classes would teach her, she would have to do so independently, and that is what most women did.
This is the first federal law in America addressing education: It was passed by the same and by the same Founding Fathers that also drafted the First. Up to the present time, this law still holds position among the four organic/fundamental American laws. This are the four main laws that all other laws are to be based. When President George Washington signed this Federal law, Article III of that law effectively linked public education and religion as the law declared: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be
The right for women to be educated has been long sought after. The history of women education started the beginning of feminism. Education, over the last two hundred years, has changed women lives in America according to Barbara M. Solomon. In the early years of American history women were discouraged from getting a higher education it would be considered unnatural for women to be educated, and women were only taught domestic skills such as sewing, cooking and child-rearing. American women began to seek opportunities for further education, as well as equal rights. The history of women’s education has evolved through events that have shaped the culture of America today. To better understand the women’s education movement, it is important to know the background of its history.