Debate Over Making Fun of Women’s Rights in the Mid-19th Century

CHAPTER 12 PRIMARY SOURCE WRITING ACTIVITYDebating Women’s Rights This activity asks you to analyze the debate over women’s rights in the mid-19th century. Objective: In this activity, you will analyze primary sources to better understand a topic of historical significance and to cultivate strong critical thinking, analysis, and writing skills. Activity Prompt: The women’s rights movement was one of the longest and, ultimately, most successful social movements in American history. Yet, the call for expanded legal and political rights for women was always controversial, especially when the movement began in the mid-19th century. Your task in this activity is to use the historian’s benefit of hindsight to analyze the debate over women’s rights in the first decade following the Seneca Falls Convention of July 1848, which is usually regarded as the birth of the modern women’s rights movement. What new rights did women such as Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton call for in the convention’s Declaration of Sentiments? Based on the report on the New York legislature in March 1856, how did men respond to the new demands of the women’s rights movement? Using the two sources, how would you characterize the challenge that the women’s rights movement posed to traditional patriarchal society? Was it primarily cultural or political (or perhaps some combination of both)? Activity Response Length and Format: Your essay should address the question completely and be approximately 250 to 400 words, double-spaced, in 12-point font. If they are provided, follow your instructor’s specific guidelines in terms of content, length, and formatting Self-Evaluation Following Submission of Essay Prompt: In a paragraph or two, draw connections between this historical time period and events occurring in the United States today. Explain why this topic is relevant to the United States today. What other perspectives would you want to hear on this topic? Why is it important to see multiple perspectives?Steps to Complete This Assignment: Analyze the primary sources provided in this document, review the chapter reading, and respond to the writing activity. Consider how these sources relate to and provide insight into various reform movements in the 19th century, particularly the new politics of gender and sex. Why did the women’s rights movement not enjoy the immediate gains of other reform movements, such as temperance and prison reform? Here are the related steps a. Read the first primary source, The Declaration of Sentiments, which was approved on the final day of the Seneca Falls Convention on July 20, 1848.  b. Examine the second primary source, the New York legislature’s response to petitions for women’s rights in March 1856, as reported by the Plattsburgh Republican newspaper. c. Respond to the Activity Prompt by uploading your attached essay document into the MindTap where prompted to do so. Use the two primary sources included here, as well as the contextual information that you have learned about the controversy surrounding the women’s rights movement of the mid-19th century. d. Once you are ready to upload your essay, also prepare a written response to the related self-evaluation (reflection) prompt that follows the essay.Primary Sources for This Activity Primary Source 1 Source 1 Title/Location: Excerpt from The Declaration of Sentiments (1848); What They Said: Making Fun of Women’s Rights, 12-5b Women’s Right Description of This Source: The Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848 marked the beginning of the modern women’s rights movement. Held in Seneca Falls, New York, over two days, the convention was organized by the early women’s rights leaders Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. With Stanton as its main author, the convention produced the Declaration of Sentiments, a document calling for expanded social, legal, and political rights for women, including, most controversially, the vote. The declaration was modeled on the Declaration of Independence, but it made clear that “all men and women” were created equal. Stanton and the other attendees of the convention then used the space where the American revolutionaries had listed grievances against George III to issue grievances against male-dominated society. The list served as an agenda for the early women’s rights movement. Source 1: When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station, to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners. Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns. He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands. After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it. He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of Theology, Medicine, or Law, she is not known. He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education—all colleges being closed against her. He allows her in church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church. He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for man and woman, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man. He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God. He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life. Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States. In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country. Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration. Credit Line: New York Herald, July 30, 1848. Primary Source  Source 2 Title/Location: Excerpt from the response by the New York Legislature to Petitions for Women’s Rights; What They Said: Making Fun of Women’s Rights, 12-5b Women’s Rights Description of This Source: In 1856, the New York legislature received petitions calling on the state to provide women with many of the same rights listed in the Declaration of Sentiments. The Plattsburgh Republican newspaper provided the following report on the legislature’s response to the complaints. The report made clear that the New York legislators mocked the issues raised by the early women’s rights movement. Rather than respond in a serious fashion, the committee assigned to consider the matter made fun of women’s rights. Although brief and seemingly lighthearted, the report in the Plattsburgh Republican revealed much about gender attitudes in the mid-19th century. Source 2: Judge Foote, of Ontario, the learned chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, last week made a report on “Women’s Rights” that set the whole House in roars of laughter. . . . [The committee has] left the subject pretty much to the married gentlemen. They have considered it with the aid of the . . . experience married life has given them. Thus, aided they are enabled to state, that ladies always have the best piece, and choicest titbit at table—They have the best seat in the cars, carriages and sleighs; the warmest place in winter and the coolest place in summer. They have their choice on which side of the bed they will lie. . . . A lady’s dress costs three times as much as that of a gentleman; and at the present time, with the prevailing fashion, one lady occupies three times as much space in the world as a gentleman. It has thus appeared to the married gentlemen of our committee . . . that if there is any inequality or oppression in the case, the gentlemen are the sufferers. They, however, have presented no petitions for redress, having doubtless made up their minds to yield to an inevitable destiny. On the whole, the committee have concluded to recommend no measure, except, that as they have observed several instances in which husband and wife have both signed the same petition. In such case, they would recommend the party to apply for a law authorizing them to change dresses, so that the husband may wear the petty coats, and, the wife the breeches, and thus indicate to their neighbors, and the public the true relation in which they stand to each other. Credit Line: Plattsburgh Republican, March 29, 1856.