Women's Rights, Female Leadership
Anne Hutchinson to Seneca Falls
Pochahontas - The Powhatan Confederacy was crucial support to the early success of Jamestown
Often misinterpreted as saving his life, Pochahontas was key in the ritual adoption of John Smith.
Pochanhontas later married John Rolfe
Early in the Colonies and the Early Republic
Anne Hutchinson was an Antinomian leader in the early Massachusetts Bay colony. She clashed with Puritan leaders on theology and eventually pressed her views in conflict with male leaders and in open public court. She and Roger Williams are eventually expelled from Massachusetts Bay.
Phillis Wheately (Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral ) was the first published African-American poet. She wrote some about gaining freedom. She was freed after her master's death.
""Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understandThat there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd and join th'angelic train."
In her letters to her husband, Abigail Adams asked John to "Remember the Ladies". "...I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could."
Molly Pitcher was a mythical figure, an amalgam, representing women who courageously and anonymously fought during the Revolutionary War, affecting the acceptable role of women in colonial life.
Judith Sargent Murray ( On the Equality of the Sexes)pushed for the recognition of the intellectual equality of men and women as well as the need for economic independence for women.
"The idea of the incapability of women, is, we conceive, in this enlightened age, totally inadmissible; and we have concluded, that establishing the expediency of admitting them to share the blessings of equality, will remove every obstacle to their
advancement."
Olympe de Gouges (Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen)called for citizenship for women focusing on their key role in the revolution and an equaling of their ability in speech and other rights.
"Male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public
employment according to their capacity and without other
distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents."
Mary Wolstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman) stated that women appeared inferior because of their lack of education and demanded an equaling of educational opportunities. She is also pushed for a more equal social order.
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of
flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual
childhood, unable to stand alone.”
“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”
Sacagawea
The Antebellum Era
Women Led Many Key Reform Movements in the Antebellum Era
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott - Suffrage and Women's Rights
Lucretia Mott (Seneca Falls convention - 1848) was a Quaker leader and abolitionist, aiding in the founding of several antislavery societies in the United States. Mott was also a key participant qt the Seneca Falls Conference.
Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Tubman - Leading Abolitionists
Harriet Beecher Stowe was most prominent for the writing of Uncle Tom's Cabin which educated hundreds of thousands of northerners on the evil nature of slavery. Uncle Tom's Cabin was both published as a book and performed as a play.
Dorothea Dix - Asylum Movement
“I come to present the strong claims of suffering
humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of
Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the
desolate, the outcast. I come as the advocate of
helpless, forgotten, insane men and women; of beings
sunk to a condition from which the unconcerned
world would start with real horror.”
She also served as superintendent of nurses during the Civil War.
Sojourner Truth - in a Field of Her Own
Sojourner Truth - Escaped Slave and Women's Right Activist
"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I could have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man- when I could get it- and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman?"
There is modern disagreement of what the accurate dialect is in which Truth spoke.