Women's Role In The Antebellum Reform Movement

In the early 19th century, a wave of social reform movements swept across the nation, seeking to cleanse society of social evils. During the early 19th century, women joined the workforce in mills giving them a taste of independence and allowing them to defy the Cult of Domesticity. Women also joined antebellum reform movements such as abolition and temperance allowing them to expand their influence outside of the private sphere and realize the similarity between the strife of African slaves and their own struggles. Women in this time period desired to not only better their society but also themselves and sought to do this by reforming education for women and in order to gain more opportunities. The women in the movement sought to provide

Middle-class women made up the majority of reformers as many people saw it as a logical extension of the women’s role as the nurturer of society. The influence of woman on the movement can be seen in the reformers focus on home life and moral issues such as temperance, prostitution, education, prison and asylum reform. The movement hoped to make society purer. Eventually, abolition, the movement for the abolition of slavery and equal rights for African slaves, dominated the reform movement with Women taking joining in many key leadership positions (T 362). The existence and activities of the Female Anti-Slavery Society showed female influence on abolition. The society called “for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia” as part of a national movement to call slavery to the attention of Congress, in response Congress passed the Gag Rule which prohibited any further discussion of slavery in the House (Doc C). The abolition movement introduced women to the concepts of human rights and equality that would eventually be used by women to justify women’s rights (T 370). Elizabeth Stanton’s, one of the movement’s most outspoken leaders, autobiography Eighty Years and More illustrates this as she cites the Abolition movement as the inspiration for the Seneca Convention, “My experiences at the World Anti-Slavery Convention… I could not see what to do or where to begin, my only thought was a public meeting for protest and discussion” (Doc A). The abolition movement resulted in the connection of the struggle of slaves to the frustrations women faced in everyday life. Women such as Sarah M. Grimké, another women’s rights activist, recognized this connection, “Women by surrendering herself to the tutelage of man may in many cases live at her ease, but she will live the life of a slave,” (Doc B), and used it to further their cause, “men do not