Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Women In The Late

We have gone through that with the africanamerican men who had fought for the union had some ideas for what the union should be, and certainly white southerners had in idea about what america should be. The northerners who won had an idea, the indians and the chinese at west had ideas about what america should be and certainly the northern men who had won the war had ideas about what the country should be. The critical question as to what it was going to be was who was going to have a say in it. We have gone to that as well, but who had a say in what that new nation was going to be was going to have a dramatic affect on what it eventually became. Today i want to talk about women and womens lives in the late 19th century and their role in what was really the reconstruction, the true rebuilding of the north, south, and the west into a new nation in the wake of the civil war. The story of women is more crucial to that story than most people realize. Most people when they think about womens rights in america start here and you probably know about this from high school, the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 when a number of women came together. Women and men as well came together to talk about womens rights and the idea of rights for women came out of the Abolitionist Movement in 1840 when a number of female abolitionists went to london for the first world antislavery convention. While they were there to speak about human rights, the woods those women were not allowed to speak. On the way home, a number of them get talking and say this is is people are supposed to be free and equal, women should have rights as well. Out of that comes the organization of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. This is the group of people who issued the declaration of sentiments which is based on the declaration of independence, but calls for rights for women and tries to fight back against what they consider the oppression of men. Andall learned about this everybody talks about this being the beginning of womens rights in america. It is, it is a symbolic moment, but after the Seneca Falls Convention, nothing happens. This happens in new york, new york has got a lot of other things going on. They are fighting a battle over property rights, there is a lot of things going on in the east especially in the northeast in the 1840s and 50s and one person looks at the Seneca Falls Convention and says it is almost as if we are talking about martians voting and having rights. It is not on peoples radar screens at a National Level and not a lot changes after the declaration of sentiments. Women andhange for for womens rights comes not out of the declaration of sentiments in 1848, but rather out of the american civil war. We have talked to some in this class about that, womens roles changed during the civil war dramatically. They going to the war both in the north and south believing they are going to be able to maintain the roles they had before the civil war. That breaks down almost immediately. They start with the idea that they will be helping, and very women very quickly, women have to take over a whole new set of roles during the civil war. All, they begin by supporting the troops both in the north and the south. Especially in the north, that quickly becomes taking on a very public roles. Women often had public roles before because of the Abolitionist Movement and because of politics, but during the civil war, the roles of women take on a new dimensions. We have for example, women working in of the new government jobs. When i talked about the creation of american money, somebody actually physically had to take those large plates of paper and cut them into bills. Those were women, those were government girls who did the cutting. If you look at these now and sometimes you see them in museums, if you look at the edges, you can tell when the women were cutting them because by the end of the day they got tired and the edges are not straight. If you collect them, you want the ones with the straight edges. Women are working in the government, working as clerks, in the northern feels they are taking over for the men who have gone to war. They are working in factories in both the north and the south, and they begin to do a number of things they are not that are not usually a part of womens roles. We have women getting involved in nursing which had always been a male concerted a dirty, male profession. You get women involved in nursing and this is when nursing becomes a female rather than a male profession. As men go off to war you get women involved in teaching which had always been a male profession, becomes a pink collar profession because the women are the ones who are there to do the teaching. You have women when they are new sing nursing going into spaces where they had been excluded. You did not used to want your daughters to be in a hospital which is dirty and full of men in various stages of undress who are messy. They are dying or they are bleeding, these are spaces women begin to enter. You also have women buying bonds that i talked about. For the first time in American History, women literally own a piece of the american government. They are buying bonds on which the government and the military depends. And of course they are sending their sons and husbands off to fight this war. Heavily ininvested the u. S. Government. They are part of the u. S. Government, they have supported it with their money, they have supported it with their lives, they have supported it with their sons on a with their efforts, and some of them quite literally put their lives on the line for the u. S. Government. We had civil war spies and we have even a few women fighting as civil war soldiers. There is a great story about that, a woman who is discovered many years later when she applies for a pension and is able to prove that she fought during the civil war. There are not many of them, but they are a great story. You have women in the north coming out of this war believing that they should have a say in that government. They gave everything for that government. They feel like they should have a say in what happens. Certainly, more of a say than that white southerners Andrew Johnson was pardoning at such an extraordinary rate ring the summer of 1865 so that by the fall of 1865 all but about 1500 of the former confederates have received residential pardons. They look at that and say wait a minute, how come these guys who picked up guns and tried to destroy the u. S. Government have a say and we dont . You are going to see a similar pattern after world war ii when you get the womens the second wave of womens activism out of world war ii out of a similar set of circumstances. So what happens is coming out of the war, women expect they are going to have a say in this new constructed government and that of course, is not what happens. What happens is coming out of the war, the focus is on africanamerican male suffrage. Especially women suffragists look at this and they are willing to let that happen, but they also expected that they are going to be included as well. You hear more from me about julia ward who put it this way, she said when we are writing that 14th amendment, women should be included. If we are talking about citizenship and having a say in American Society, women belong in that. They should have rights under that amendment. And of course, when congress is discussing the 14th amendment at great length, congress some congressmen actually do introduce the idea that women should be included in the 14th amendment and that women should be considered fullservice and citizens. And they are laughed at, the idea that women should have rights and be able to participate in society is a nonstarter in 1868. This two suffragists, especially those who have worked so hard for the war, just really stung. Said that civil war came to an end leaving the slave not only emancipated but endowed with citizenship. The women of the north had greatly helped open the door which admitted him to freedom and its safeguard, the ballot. Was this door to be shut in their face . In 1868, when the door was shut in their face, two really dramatic things happened. Two Suffrage Associations formed in america. Most of you know that these organizations joined in 1890 and most people who look at the advance of womens suffrage across the country really look at that 1890 merger as being crucial. And yet, these things come out of the 14th amendment. They come out of the idea that if africanamerican men and should be included in american citizenship, so should women. So should white women is the people that if these women are primarily concerned with. Women should have a say in American Society. First the National Womens Suffrage Association forms and these are women like Elizabeth Cady stanton and susan b. Anthony who were very active in the Abolitionist Movement and they tend to be more radical. They want a wide number of reforms for american women, they are going to level the Playing Field between men and women with property ownership, divorce laws, the different economic inequalities between the sexes. They are seen as radicals. You get tos later, the organization of the american womens Suffrage Association and that is a much more moderate group. It is interesting for my purposes today because it is formed primarily by lucy stone and Julia Ward Howe. They demanded only the vote with the idea that one should get the vote once you get the vote, you have a say in government and can change the laws if you do not like the laws. This is always a part where i want to talk about Julia Ward Howe. Howe is the same woman who wrote the battle hymn of the republic in 1862, i have talked about her before, she begins to take on a much more public role during the civil war especially through her writing. She is a brilliant thinker, her diaries are at harvard. She becomes involved in the American Woman Suffrage Association because she really wants the vote. She is a much more moderate character than say Elizabeth Cady she wants the vote for this reason, her husband is abusive. Every time she wants to leave him, he says great, go, you will never see your kids again. Era, childrens are the property of their fathers. If women divorce their husbands, they can be kept from their kids. She stays married and try to continue to have access to the kids. The great part of this story is he is really awful to her, i read through her diaries, he is really awful to her and keeps trying to get her to destroy the diaries. He keeps telling her she is stupid and nobody is going to listen to her, and that he is really the shining light in the couple because he is a very famous reformer. I always try to make a point to talk about her in this situation because i want you all to leave this room and for the rest of your lives to remember that Julia Ward Howe is an incredibly important figure, writer, youre going to hear more about her in a minute, and she is married to some jerk nobody remembers. That is my part for her. What happens after the organization of these two suffrage groups to try and push for women to have a say in American Society . This is the era right after the legislators are trying to create a world in which equal rights really is the only underpinning of the american government. This is a period when people are talking about everybody having equal rights, everybody should have a say in American Society and they are trying to expand that with the 14th amendment which theoretically includes everybody except indians not taxed. That is an important caveat, important exception. Out west, unlike where seneca falls took place, out west in the organization of those territories that i talked about that come in the west so quickly, the idea of womens suffrage takes off. Territory, wyoming they give women the vote when they put together their constitution. There are very few women in wyoming territory, i promise you. But it gives women the vote with the idea that in these new western territories, women should have the right to have a say in the construction of that society. It takes off. The next year, in 1870, utah gives women the vote. It is about 1000 women in wyoming, there are about 17,000 in utah. They give women the vote in utah in 1870 because there is a referendum coming up on whether or not polygamy should be included in the state laws. The expectation of the legislators who include the women is that women will vote against polygamy. That by opening up the vote, you were going to move Society Forward and of course women will vote against polygamy. Women go to the polls in wyoming in utah and the vote in favor of polygamy. That stops the spread of womens suffrage across the west dead for years and years. The idea that somehow expanding the vote is going to create a hits real trouble when it hits utah and women vote in a way that most of the people who gave them the vote thought that they would not. Ideais going to change the of womens suffrage spreading statebystate especially through the west in the early 1870s. Still, if you look at that date, 1870 have hope because in congress is going to be debating a new constitutional amendment to protect africanamerican voting in the south and that is the 15th amendment. You know about the 15th amendment, the one that protects voting. Women lobby hard to be included in the 15th amendment. Thencongress passes and the states ratify that amendment in 1870, women are not included. Included,are not suffragists are furious. They do something very smart, they decide that what they are going to do is not to try and lobby any longer for womens suffrage specifically. What they are going to do is they are going to argue that they are citizens under the 14th amendment because of course they have either been born in america or naturalized in america. Women decide in the president ial election, the tight president ial election of 1872, women decided they are going to test their rights to vote under the 14th amendment. Across the country in 1872, suffragists try to vote. They try to register to vote, what that means is they will go to a registrar and have their names enrolled and be able to cast a ballot or not. In 1872 across the country they try and do that and some of them succeed. Others do not. There is a really Important Court case i want you to remember and that is it starts in missouri. As your member, missouri is a mess of a state because it was so evenly divided between confederates and unionists and they have got the 1865 constitution that prohibits democrats from voting, being lawyers, being doctors, all those things. So who gets to vote and how the government is going to work in missouri is really a crucial spot in the country. In 1872, a woman named Virginia Minor tries to register to vote under the idea that she should be able to vote under the 14th amendment. She goes to the registrar and the guy at the register is a guy named hopper sat happerset. He refuses to let her register, and the case minor versus happer set is going to be decided by the Supreme Court in 1875. I will tell you about that in a minute. In one you have heard about this year, in the year of 1872 is that susan b. Anthony does register to vote. She registers to vote in new york and she actually casts a ballot in that election. After she casts a ballot, she is arrested for the crime of voting. That is an interesting concept to get your head around, the crime of the voting. The argument about it being a crime to vote interestingly enough, they get her under the enforcement act that were put in place to protect africanamerican voting in the south. The crime of voting, the argument behind that is that if people who should not have a right to have a say in American Society vote, they are diluting the votes of those who do have a right to vote. Inthe time she is arrested 1872, susan b. Anthony is a very wellknown figure. This is a very public case and she is very public about it. After she is arrested and then let out on bail, there is a story behind that, after that happens she goes around her region of new york giving a number of speeches about the fact she has been arrested for the crime of voting. Trial, the trial adds fuel to the fire because in the trial, what happens is susan b. Anthony is the only woman in the courtroom. She is not allowed to testify on her own behalf because she is a woman, and after her lawyer and the prosecuting attorney present their cases, the judge simply reads the decision he had already written before the trial and in a wonderful moment, she watches this happen and she gets up and answers him and she will not shut up. He says you need to sit down, you need to stop, she says no, im not going to. She thousand exactly what she things of them. It has become such a powerful cause that she is giving the speeches about what happened that it becomes sort of a flashpoint where people look at the question of who should have a say in American Society. One of the things that anthony says as she speaks across new york is this, she is so mad at what happened, she says this government is not a republic. Odious aristocracy, a hateful oligarchy of sex. This often is mispunctuated when you see it in other places. Pay attention to how this is actually punctuated, she says, and oligarchy of wealth where the rich govern the poor. And oligarchy of learning where the educated govern the accurate , or even an oligarchy of race where the sachsen rules the african might be adored. She is actually ok with the idea of rich people governing the poor, educated people governing the uneducated, even white people governing black people, but this oligarchy of sex carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home in the nation. This should sound really familiar because this is 1872 when many people, especially in the north, are turning against the idea of laborers having a say in American Society. What yo