Suffrage Sisters
US History/Napp Name: ______
“In the early 19th century, women faced limited options. Prevailing customs encouraged women to restrict their activities after marriage to the home and family. As a result, they were denied full participation in the larger community. Despite such pressures, women actively participated in all the important reform movements of the 19th century. From abolition to education, women worked for reform despite the cold reception they got from many men. Perhaps the most important reform effort that women participated in was abolition. Women abolitionists raised money, distributed literature, and collected signatures for antislavery petitions to Congress. Women also played key roles in the temperance movement, the effort to prohibit the drinking of alcohol. Some women, most notably Dorothea Dix, fought to improve treatment for the mentally disabled. Dix also joined others in the effort to reform the nation’s harsh and often inhumane prison system.
Work for abolition and temperance accompanied gains in education for women. Improvement in women’s education began to improve women’s lives, most notably in health reform. Elizabeth Blackwell, who in 1849 became the first woman to graduate from medical college, later opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Unfortunately, black women enjoyed even fewer educational opportunities than their white counterparts.
The reform movements of the mid-19th century fed the growth of the women’s movement by providing women with increased opportunities to act outside the home. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Lucretia Mott had been ardent abolitionists. Male abolitionists discriminated against them at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840, so the pair resolved to hold a women’s rights convention. In 1848, more than 300 women convened in Seneca Falls, New York. Before the convention started, Stanton and Mott composed an agenda and a detailed statement of grievances.
The participants at the Seneca Falls convention approved all parts of the declaration, including a resolution calling for women to have the right to vote. In spite of all the political activity among middle-class white women, African-American women found it difficult to gain recognition of their problems. A former slave named Sojourner Truth did not let that stop her, however. At a women’s rights convention in 1851, Truth, an outspoken abolitionist, refuted the arguments that because she was a woman she was weak, and because she was black, she was not feminine.” ~ The Americans
1. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was mainly concerned with(1) ending slavery in all the states
(2) reducing consumption of alcoholic beverages
(3) improving treatment of the mentally ill
(4) expanding women’s rights
3. Which of the following BEST identifies a pioneering achievement of Elizabeth Blackwell?
(1) She was a powerful speaker against slavery.
(2) She opened a high school for girls.
(3) She became a licensed doctor.
(4) She became an elementary school teacher.
4. The primary catalyst for the women’s rights movement of the 1830s was the
(1) “Cult of true womanhood.”
(2) American Civil War.
(3) Abolitionist movement.
(4) Rise of free public education.
(5) Second Great Awakening.
5. The “Declaration of Sentiments” of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 stated that
(1) Women should have the right to vote and control their own property.
(2) Women should have equal rights, but only in their own spheres.
(3) Men should willingly accept the cult of domesticity.
(4) Women should have the right to join organizations, but not necessarily have equality with the husband within the family.
(5) Women should be seen, and not heard.
6. Women usually supported temperance because
(1) They loved the religious life
(2) They were sick and tired of being abused by alcoholic men
(3) They enjoyed drinking alcohol
(4) It was the right thing to do
7. The Seneca Falls Convention happened in
(1) New Jersey
(2) New York
(3) Connecticut
(4) Massachusetts / 2. Which of the following was a result of Dorothea Dix’s efforts at social reform?
(1) States banned the sale of alcohol.
(2) Children were never imprisoned.
(3) Slavery was abolished.
(4) Insanity was treated as a mental illness and not a criminal activity.
8. What does the picture imply about what might happen if women gain the right to vote?
(1) That women will be equal to men
(2) That women will still be doing all the work
(3) That women will get out of their family responsibilities
(4) That men will become angry and hurt their wives
9. The two women who organized the Seneca Falls Convention were
(1) Harriet Beecher Stowe and Jane Addams
(2) Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony
(3) Elizabeth Cady and Susan B. Anthony
(4) Elizabeth Cady and Lucretia Mott
10. What was the most controversial right that the women discussed at Seneca Falls?
(1) The right to gain legal guardianship of their children
(2) The right to manager their money
(3) The right to vote
(4) The right to run for office
11. Sojourner Truth was an important
(1) Abolitionist and Feminist
(2) Temperance Worker
(3) Advocate of the “cult of domesticity”
(4) Conductor on the Underground Railroad
Elizabeth Cady Stanton / Susan B. Anthony
1. 1815 – 1902
2. Ms. Stanton grew up with four sisters in the well-to-do household of conservative Judge Cady, in upstate New York.
a) The only boy in the family had died as a youth, and nothing any of the girls did could ever make up to Judge Cady for the fact that he had no son.
b) Elizabeth grew up keenly resentful of the inferiority attached to being a girl.
3. She married Henry Stanton over the strong objections of her father, who resented the young man’s radical, abolitionist views.
4. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is believed to have been the driving force behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, and for the next fifty years played a leadership role in the women's rights movement. / 1. 1820 – 1906
2. At the time Elizabeth Cady Stanton met young Susan B. Anthony in 1851, the Quaker schoolteacher was an abolitionist and active worker in temperance reform.
3. She was a poor writer, but had a marvelous ability to inspire others to work as unceasingly as she did.
4. Her collaboration with Mrs. Stanton, to whom writing and felicity of expression came naturally, was of immense value to her, and gradually she became a most effective and accomplished speaker.
5. Unmarried and free from domestic responsibility, Susan B. Anthony could provide the drive and energy both women needed if they were to accomplish their goal.
6. She one said, “I have never lost my faith, not for a moment. Failure is impossible.”
~ Adapted from Gerda Lerner’s The Woman in American History
Questions:
1- What did the U.S. Constitution deny women? ______
2- What did women suffragists want? ______
3- Identify three significant facts about Elizabeth Cady Stanton: ______
4- Identify three significant facts about Susan B. Anthony: ______
5- Why were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony a successful team? ______
6- Why was it difficult for women to achieve the right to vote and the right to own property? What cultural traditions prevented women from gaining equality in early in American History? ______
This speech was delivered in 1873, after Anthony was arrested, tried and fined $100 for voting in the 1872 presidential election. ~ National Center
“The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:
‘We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people – women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government – the ballot…
For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people is to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are for ever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex…
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no State has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is today null and void, precisely as in every one against Negroes.”
Questions:
1- Why was Susan B. Anthony arrested? ______
2- What does Susan B. Anthony believe about the “we” in the Preamble to the Constitution? ______
3- Why is denying women the right to vote a denial of “consent of the governed”? ______
4- According to Susan B. Anthony, what is the only question left? ______
5- Do you believe that Susan B. Anthony’s speech was effective? Explain your answer. ______