Industrialization and Political Activism: 1861 to 1899

By Facts On File

Written in engaging and accessible prose by experts in the field, this reference introduces readers to the "hidden" history of women in America from 1861 to 1899, bringing their achievements to light and helping them gain the recognition they deserve.

Chapters include:

• Arts and Literature
• Business
• Education
• Entertainment
• Family
• Health
• Politics
• Science and Medicine
• Society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Facts On File
• Release date: Feb 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781438183220

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title

Industrialization and Political Activism: 1861 to 1899

Copyright © 2020 by Infobase

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Contents

Chapters

Women in American History, 1861–1899

Women in Society, 1861–1899

Women's Health, 1861–1899

Women's Education, 1861–1899

Women in Politics, 1861–1899

Women in Science and Medicine, 1861–1899

Women in the Arts and Literature, 1861–1899

Women in Business, 1861–1899

Women in Entertainment and Sports, 1861–1899

Women and Family, 1861–1899

Chapters

Women in American History, 1861–1899

The beginning of the Civil War was a defining moment in America's history. For some women it also meant the acceleration of a movement toward the new woman of the 20th century. Between 1861 and 1899, an increasing population, the change of status of many territories to states, the population shift to the west and to cities, the end of government land grants, and the closing of the frontier all contributed to a changing America. Growth in the industrial and commercial sectors and advancing technology brought wealth to what was once primarily an agricultural country. The development of a consumer society in the industrial age promoted a growing cash economy. At the same time, the Indian Wars, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age further fragmented races and classes of people. America was hardly the melting pot that the myth of progress and prosperity promised. Nonetheless, for many, especially women, doors of opportunity opened as never before, though hierarchies of race, class, gender, and geography continued to play decisive roles.

Women in the North and South

Both the abolitionist movement and the suffrage movement were well developed before the Civil War gave women even more opportunities to have a voice than society had allowed them in the past. While most white women still cultivated ideals of submissiveness, piety, and domesticity, in the North the anti-slavery movement struck a sympathetic chord in women who chafed at the restrictions of marriages in which they were subordinate to their husbands, and at the dictates of prescriptive literature written mostly by males. These women rejected the admonition that it was not ladylike to speak in public, and voiced their opposition to slavery through the abolitionist movement.

At first, the rationale for giving slaves their freedom was presented on moral and humanitarian grounds; later, political action took precedent. Women were instrumental in the political activities that led to the Civil War (1861–65), and which culminated in ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that freed the slaves (1865), the Fourteenth Amendment that extended protection of the Constitution to all citizens and defined citizens and voters as male (1868), and the Fifteenth Amendment that gave African-American men the right to vote (1870). The women of the suffrage movement did not work for the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments because they advocated an amendment that included universal suffrage, not suffrage only for men.

The Suffrage Movement

Activists in the suffrage movement made a conscious decision during the war years that the war was temporarily more important than furthering their cause. After the end of the war, these women resumed suffrage movement activities throughout the rest of the 19th century and beyond, gaining adherents and workers until the vote was won. The actual wording of the Nineteenth Amendment (ratified in 1920) dates to 1878, when the Woman Suffrage Amendment was first introduced in and rejected by the U.S. Congress. Between 1870 and 1875, several women tried to get their message across by attempting to vote and to practice law. In 1872 Susan B. Anthony, a founder of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), attempted to vote in the presidential election in Rochester, New York, as did Sojourner Truth, an outspoken female African-American activist and former slave, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Anthony was arrested and tried; Truth was turned away from the polls. That same year Victoria Woodhull, a free thinking, free love advocate, convinced Elizabeth Cady Stanton (who cofounded the NWSA with Anthony in 1869) and the National Feminists to form a political party and nominate her as a candidate for president of the United States. All these attempts were unsuccessful.

In 1868 Susan B. Anthony founded the suffragette newspaper The Revolution. The motto of the paper was The true Republic—men, their rights and nothing more: women their rights and nothing less. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the suffragettes, all women did not agree that women should be allowed to vote. Some adhered to societal norms that held women's influence should be confined to the home, and some agreed with men who predicted that women would just vote the way their husbands told them to vote. Some men were afraid women would push for temperance laws and the closing of saloons. These attitudes make it all the more significant that long before the establishment of the Nineteenth Amendment, several western territories gave women the right to vote. The first was Wyoming in 1869, followed by Colorado in 1893, and Utah and Idaho in 1896. The specific reasons varied from state to state, but primarily women were needed in the territories. Giving women the vote and the rights to their property, and more liberal divorce laws, made the west more inviting.

The Impact of the Civil War on Women's Lives

Women in both the North and South found that circumstances during and following the Civil War and the end of slavery gave them opportunities to participate more fully in American public life. At the beginning of the war, women of the North, as well as the South, looked for ways to help with the war effort. They gathered at meetings, usually under the leadership of men, and organized ways to gather and send supplies to the front. Mostly they folded bandages and sewed clothing. The Northern women's relief efforts culminated in the U.S. Sanitary Commission that gathered food and medical supplies for the soldiers. In the process of organizing, the mostly middle-class women learned many managerial skills. Working-class urban women were less committed to the war. The newspapers blamed these women for promoting the draft riots precipitated by their resentment that their men were forced to go to war, while wealthier families were able to buy exemption from duty.

The nursing profession was one area in which both Northern and Southern women found wartime work related to tasks they had traditionally done in the home, work that was therefore more socially acceptable than many occupations. Following Clara Barton's lead, women used nursing skills to treat soldiers near the battlefields. Southern women whose men fought closer to home often went with their husbands or sons to care for them. During the war Barton was one of many women both North and South who voluntarily took care of the health needs of soldiers. Barton put her Civil War experience to good use when she began organizing the American Red Cross in 1873.

Total war casualties released at the end of the war included 359,000 Union dead and 100,000 wounded, and 280,000 Confederate dead and 100,000 wounded. In the South about 25 percent of the men of military age died, and another 25 percent were wounded. Approximately 400 women who dressed as men to hide their true identity also fought during the war. Their survival rate is unknown.

Former Women Slaves

Slave women had yearned for freedom and the right to have a family and life unencumbered by the duties of field work, or night and day responsibilities in their owners' houses. Having been deprived of the benefits of legal marriage, many had been sold away from their mates and children. Former slave women now had the opportunity to build lives and families of their own, though it was not always possible to find lost family members. After Reconstruction ended, Black Codes were established. Among the many new laws that defined the status of African Americans was the legalization of African-American marriage; however, laws still prohibited interracial marriages.

After the war, single African-American women made use of their greater freedom of movement and frequently changed jobs. Domestic work was their primary means of supporting themselves. By 1880 almost 98 percent of African-American women were domestics. Moving to territories where slavery had never been established or moving North was also a viable option. Rape was an ever-present danger for female domestics of any color, North or South, but was especially so for African-American women, who had so recently been considered property.

In addition, the law in most states and territories stated that the term age of consent referred to the age at which a person could legally consent to having sex. At the end of the 19th century the age was 10 or 12 years. Under these terms, if a woman was raped, she had no legal recourse. In the closing decades of the 19th century, petitions were circulated nationally by the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), requesting legislators to raise the age of consent to 18.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union

Activism for change in the age of consent was just one of the issues with which the WCTU was involved. Their main function from 1874 on was to agitate for government control of liquor. The main motivation was the protection of the home. They argued that male drinking habits meant money wasted on liquor that deprived families of much-needed funds, and sometimes caused violence at home. Before 1874 women's fight against alcoholic beverages in the west included praying in groups outside saloons, and asking saloon keepers to repent of their sins. This rarely worked, but it did attract increasing numbers of members to the WCTU. A more violent approach was taken by Carrie A. Nation, a six-foot-tall crusader, who walked into saloons and used her axe to break nearly everything in sight.

With the formation of the WCTU, tactics changed to political activism and social and educational projects. The women worked closely with churches and industrialists who wanted to cut down on the consumption of liquor that caused employee absenteeism and poor church attendance. In addition to government regulations, the women of the national WCTU worked for, but ultimately failed to achieve, mandated education in schools concerning the ills of alcohol and scientific research into alcoholism.

Under the leadership of Frances Willard (second WCTU president, 1879–99) the organization employed political action in addition to moral persuasion. By enlisting volunteers in local chapters called unions, which were loosely linked to the state unions and the national headquarters, the WCTU quickly became the largest women's organization in the United States, and an effective agent of social change. Willard encouraged the union to campaign for kindergartens, prison reform, child labor laws, protective laws for working women, and women's suffrage. Susan B. Anthony, best known for her leadership of the NWSA, was also an active member of the WCTU.

Heading West

Pioneer movement to the west accelerated after gold was found in California around midcentury. In addition, by 1862, the government had established the Homestead Act that gave 160 acres of land in the public domain to any head of household who would build a house, dig a well, plant 10 acres, fence a specified area, pay a small fee, and live on the land for five years. Land could also be claimed by planting and cultivating 10 acres of trees. These incentives overcame any hesitation concerning the expense of outfitting a wagon and purchasing supplies for a three-to-six-month trip. Weather conditions and long hours of traveling made the trip tiring, especially for the many women involved, some of whom were likely pregnant or traveling with small children. Once settled, the lives of these pioneers continued to be difficult. Houses had to be built, water was scarce, indoor plumbing did not exist, crops failed, and perhaps above all, women missed the company of friends and family. In some areas, fear of Native-American raids was an ever-present concern.

One community that settled in the west was the Mormons. While Utah was still a territory, Mormons practiced polygamy because their religious beliefs required each male to take three wives in order for celestial marriage to seal them in heaven for eternity. Coincidentally this practice helped alleviate the problem of too many single women in the population after the great loss of men in the Civil War. The missionary men who traveled to recruit members for the Mormon Church were frequently gone for long stretches of time, sometimes years. Left on their own, Mormon women were given the opportunity to develop managerial and work skills, while finding the means to support themselves and their children, since their husbands did not always provide support.

Women had to use their ingenuity, learning to run farms and retail establishments. They also dominated the medical profession,