an ordinary little farming town. he and another were there giving a lecture. a white man named william white. mr. white is white. we have a black abolitionist mr. douglass and mr. white. douglass said there were people in the audience who looked very angry like they were going to do something about their antagonism to the speaker. after the lecture, 30 white men started to tear down the platform and beat up frederick douglass and william white. one of douglass' hands was broken. he said william white saved his

life that day. a man with a big stick was about to hit him over the head and william white stopped it from happening. they do get away. they are not murdered that day in pendleton, indiana. douglass felt grateful to white for the rest of his life. he is an unsung hero. there are hundreds of people that we don't know about who took an active part in the movement. douglass said i shall never forget we were like two brothers. we were ready to dare and do and die for each other. william white was a noble person. this is high praise from one abolitionist to another. we must remember although douglass was a black man and

slave and was involved with prejudice, he had a good heart. he did not have hate. there were decent men like william white. this experience reminds us this was dangerous. this was a dangerous line of work. some people would fight back. some speakers when they were attacked or physically assaulted, they were fight back. douglass and white were ready to fight back. some would not fight back. the men would just curl up in a ball on the ground and not fight back. pacifists. it is interesting that the female abolitionists were threatened with violence. we don't have any accounts of females being physically

assaulted or killed like what happened to some of the men. let's talk for a few minutes about those female abolitionists. one of the most beloved females in the period was a woman from massachusetts named lucretia mott. mott was a quaker. her parents are interesting people. her father was a sea captain. he was gone for months and months at a time. sometimes gone for a full year. while he was away traveling the globe as a sea captain. her mother would run the household. she was very capable and very well organized. i guess she had to be if you were going to be married to a sea captain. she grew up in a household with the woman who was a strong,

competent woman. she went to school and she married a man named james mott. they settled in philadelphia. she got more and more interested in the anti-slavery movement. both of the motts supported the anti-slavery movement. james is the businessman and lucretia was the activist. their home was a stop on the underground railroad. fugitives stayed at the mott household. she begins to speak out against slavery. she goes out on the lecture circuit. she admitted she was an average speaker. she did not describe herself as a brilliant orator. she impressed audiences with the force of character and her

her integrity and sweetness. she was beloved by other abolitionists. she is ridiculed in the mainstream press. she was called a quote she devil, closed quote. that is a famous line. unfeminine and unnatural. she keeps at it. in the 1830s, this is the approach of most abolitionists. they are trying to change public opinion. they do that by writing and speaking. there were other newspapers aside from the ones i discussed. there were dozens of people that go out on the lecture circuit. some petitioned congress to try to end slavery. the petitions were rejected.

some advocated boycotts that people should boycott items that were made by slave labor. that is very hard to do. that doesn't really pan out because slaves raise cotton and cotton is used in so many aspects of daily life in so many households. in the 1840s more and more abolitionists start to debate going into politics. should we go into politics? well, some of them said no. william garrison said no. he said politics is a dirty business. we should just stick with what we're doing. some other abolitionists said, well, maybe we can have more impact if we get inside the political system. so in the 1840s and '50s you start to see a tiny number of abolitionists getting elected to national office and sometimes local office. for example, a congressman from pennsylvania, thaddeus stevens,

he is an abolitionist. in the 1850s the united states senator from massachusetts, charles sumner, although there is still abolitionist who is say this is a mistake. the abolitionists are focused on the goal of ending slavery, but they do have some rather spirited internal debates about how to do that. they also debate the role of women, and believe it or not, some abolitionist men said that female abolitionists were hurting the cause, that they were distracting people from the important issue, that they were discrediting the movement, and frederick douglass and william lloyd garrison said no, they're not. they advocated the right of women to participate in the movement. so let's talk more about some of the female abolitionists. shall we? again, these are very

interesting people who have been the subject of some really excellent biographies. the grimke sisters of south carolina. it is a french name. the ancestors were french protestants who came to south carolina in the colonial period and the family by the early 19th century was very wealthy. they had a beautiful house in charleston. they had plantations in the countryside, and two of the daughters in the grimke family, sara and angelina grimke are the ones who become abolitionists. even as children they seem to have been very sensitive to wrongdoing. they noticed when they thought people were badly treated. sara, the older of the two sisters, started saying when she was still pubescent girl, she started saying that slaves should be able to read so they

could read the bible. well, it was illegal in south carolina to teach slaves how to read. the younger sister, angelina, is also very sensitive to wrongdoing and exploitation, and when both of the sisters were in their 20s, they became quakers. they became born again protestants and joined the local quaker church. in their conversations with other people, they get more and more outspoken in their criticisms of slavery. the family tries to shut them up. the grimke relatives are deeply embarrassed by this, and some local law enforcement figures visit the household in charleston and say can't you get them to stop? can't you get them to stop saying these things at prayer group meetings when they would meet with other people and talk about the bible and their interpretations of the bible and

finally the family pays them to leave. the family pays them off to go away. they move to philadelphia where they get active in the abolitionist movement. both of the grimke sisters went out on the lecture circuit, and they were both apparently excellent speakers. they both had very melodic, silvery speaking voices based on eyewitness accounts and they were talking about things that they have witnessed themselves. frederick douglass was talking about his experience as a slave. the grimke sisters are talking about what it is like to be from inside the slave-owning class, and they talked about the terrible punishments they witnessed being inflicted on slaves and how horrifying it was to even witness this. they talked about the corrupting influence that being a slave owner had on white people.

and they ground their criticisms in their christian beliefs, their devout protestants. they know the bible very well. that is the foundation of their arguments. they're such good speakers that believe it or not some of their critics said they're not really women. they're men disguised as women because a woman could not be that eloquent or articulate, and sara grimke, the older of the two, starts to think about gender in addition to abolition and slavery and race and starts to think about and speak about gender and published an essay in 1838 summarizing they are thoughts called "letters on the equality of the sexes", and she, too, uses very blunt, straight forward language. no one can accuse william lloyd garrison and frederick douglass

or the grimke sisters about what they believed. she says that men and women are equal in the eyes of god and says, quote, all history attest that is men have subjected women to their will. man has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought and says this being he deeply injured is his inferior. that's a sample quote from a very fiery essay. the grimke sisters got a lot of criticism. for example, in massachusetts in 1837, the year before this essay was published, they gave 17 lectures in the space of a month in different towns in massachusetts.

since the bell has just sounded, take a break for about 10 minutes and then we'll come back and resume our discussion of the grimke sisters. okay. let's resume our discussion. anybody have any questions about anything i talked about so far? please feel free to ask. if you have a question during the lecture, please raise your hand. let's resume our discussion of the grimke sisters of south carolina now leading extraordinary lives as outspoken abolitionists in the north. in 1837 the sisters gave 17 lectures in the space of about a month all over massachusetts. and we have a rare eyewitness account of what they said and how they related to the audience.

this person witnessed angelina, the younger of the grimke sisters speaking. one man said that he would never forget the wonderful manifestation of her power as a speaker. she had a calm and simple eloquence as she spoke, and furthermore, elaborated angelina grimke had a wonderful gift which disarmed prejudice and carried her audience with her. the congregational ministers of massachusetts were not impressed, however, and in june of 1837 they wrote a public letter to the grimke sisters criticizing them, and they had this letter read at the pulpit of every congregational church in the state of massachusetts. so they mean business. this is a public condemnation, and their language is quite critical. they start off by saying your minister, the word minister underlined, your minister is

ordained by god to be your teacher. we appreciate the unostentacious prayers of women in advancing the cause of religion at home, but when a woman assumes the place of a man as a public reformer, she becomes unnatural. the way is open for her degeneracy and ruin. the language here is quite sharp, and this is the kind of criticism that the grimmke sisters got and mott got and eventually this resistance to women participating in reform leads to the woman's rights movement and the birth date as it were for the woman's rights movement is 1848, a meeting in seneca falls, new york. in the 19th century they said woman's rights, woman, singular.

in the first real convention dedicated to issues having to do with women only took place in 1848 in a little town in up state, new york, called seneca falls. the chief figure at this conference is a woman from up state, new york, her name was elizabeth cady stanton, maiden name cady, and married name stanton. elizabeth cady stanton, and once history looked at a woman who became abolitionists and discovered that many of them were first borns. they were either the oldest child in the family or the oldest daughter in the family. many of them were highly educated.

that is certainly true for elizabeth cady. she is the daughter of a judge. she was born in the 18-teens and grows up in a household of considerable comfort. her family is quite affluent, and her father had a large private library in the house, and young elizabeth loved to read those books. she said to her father once, you know, when i grow up, i am going to be a lawyer. her father said to her, you know, the early 19th century, he said to her what? take a guess. he said no. he said you can't be a lawyer because you're a girl. women cannot be lawyers. mr. cady without perhaps intending to be cruel said to his daughter elizabeth several times because elizabeth was a

very smart little girl, and loved books and was very curious and interested in the world she lived in and her father said to her several times if only you had been a boy. that's one way to create a social activist. he is saying basically you're the wrong gender. he said that to her once on the day of her brother's funeral. she had a brother that died young. that happened a lot in the 19th century, children would die of childhood diseases and he said that to her on the day of her brother's funeral, if only you had been a boy, so that is the atmosphere that elizabeth cady grows up in. her parents are not reformers by any stretch, but she had relatives who were. one of her cousins was an abolitionist and she through her cousin met other reformers and abolitionists and married an abolitionist when she was in her 20s, henry stanton, and the parents weren't happy because he didn't have much money and he

was an abolitionist and went off on the lecture circuit but she was in love with him and they got married and they went to london, england on their honeymoon, an anti-slavery convention taking place in the city even though the british had just abolished slavery in all the overseas colonies in the 1830s, nonetheless abolitionists in england still would host the big conventions and this was a world anti-slavery contention, so delegates came from all over the planet, mostly the english speaking world anyway, so the stantons traveled together to england in 1840 and go with mr. and mrs. mott, james mott and lacretia amott, the two couples go together, and when they get to england they were told the women would not be allowed to end at that the meeting but they could listen if they wanted to if they sat behind a screen where none of the men could see

them because if the men saw them, they would be distracted. lucretia mott didn't like that and neither did elizabeth cady.e that. lucretia mott didn't like that and neither did elizabeth cady. when they were traveling back to the u.s., they said to each other, you know, we should have a meeting about women's rights or woman's rights, you know. we should address discrimination against women as women and they talked about it and the meeting doesn't actually take place until eight years later. the meeting in seneca falls, 1848. and it's largely because elizabeth cady stanton has so much children. elizabeth stanton was highly fertile. she had one child after another. she had a lot of children, one pregnancy after another. it's not until 1848 that she can finally focus on this meeting. they have it in seneca falls, it's advertised in the newspapers in upstate new york. they got a turnout of a couple hundred people.

and at this meeting, they meet for several days, and in a small local chapel, that building where the meeting was held is still standing. it's now a historic site. they discuss various issues that pertain to discrimination against women. and elizabeth cady stanton writes up a document and she models it on -- anybody know? what was her model for this which she called the declaration of principles? right. very good. she modeled it on the declaration of independence. and she starts off by saying, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal. and you can see her background as the daughter of a lawyer, she talks about the legal discrimination that women face, she talks about the fact that women are closed out of the professions, out of the ministry, most universities don't admit women. she talks about the fact that believe it or not in the 19th

century when a couple gets divorced, the husband almost always gets custody of the children because it was assumed in this generation that if a marriage didn't work out it was probably the woman's fault. that she was probably a bad mother and a bad wife so the husband would usually get the custody. and stanton thought that was unfair and she lines up all of these points of discrimination. and she also calls for woman suffrage. that was controversial. there were even some activists at seneca falls who said isn't that a bit too much, too radical. and elizabeth cady stanton said no, i don't think it is. she got older, she came to see it as the key to changing women's lives. so there's a suffrage resolution which is passed in the meeting then closes in july of 1848. now, does any one know when did american women get the right to vote?

19th amendment, very good. in the year -- 1920. very good. and one person who attended the seneca falls conference lived long enough to vote. one woman, charlotte woodward, she was a farmer's daughter and a teenager from upstate new york and she had seen the notice in the newspaper, and she was in favor of woman's suffrage so she went to this conference and was very happy to see there were other people there who thought the same way. she was still alive in 1920, so she lived long enough to vote. she was quite old by then but she did live long enough to vote. i'm sure that nobody at seneca falls thought it would take that long. most of them thought it would probably happen within maybe a generation or less. and in terms of enfranchising women, the united states is in the middle of the pack, you know, behind new zealand, 1893,

the first western style democracy to enfranchise women, behind australia, behind great britain, ahead of portugal, 1976, ahead of kuwait, 2006. so the u.s. is sort of in the middle of the pack. and if elizabeth cady stanton had then told in 1888 that the female suffrage was something that was going to happen decades into the future i think she would have been disbelieving. she had a lot of confidence as did many other reformers that this was the right thing to do. it's interesting, however, that stanton doesn't mention the fact that women had already voted in a part of the united states. we talked about that in an earlier lecture. does any one remember where they used to vote? yeah, new jersey. they voted in new jersey for about a generation from the 1770s to the early 1800s then were disenfranchised, i think i

mentioned this. in an earlier lecture. they were disenfranchised because a member of the new jersey state legislature had lost a race earlier and he blamed it on women voters for some reason. it was actually a kind of ordinary dispute about where to build a court house in a county in new jersey, but he vowed when he got into the state legislature he was going to take away the female suffrage and that's what he did. but stanton never mentions this. it doesn't come up at all at the meeting in seneca falls. she apparently didn't know it. even though she lived in new york most of her life, right next to new jersey, it's very strange. she apparently didn't know because if she did know that women had once voted in the united states surely she would have included it in her argumen as to why women should vote. abigail adams knew it. she mentioned it in a letter in the 1790s. it's puzzling how it is that stanton didn't know this.

she also apparently didn't know that a black woman named maria stewart had written essays earlier in the any 20s, she was a school teacher, she had called for woman suffrage.17820s, she a school teacher, she had called for woman suffrage.20s, she was a school teacher, she had called for woman suffrag20s, she was a school teacher, she had called for woman suffrag820s, she was a school teacher, she had called for woman suffrage. stanton apparently didn't know. hi joe. i saw your hand. they were enfranchised during the revolution when new jersey wrote its state constitution, 1776, and they lost the suffrage in the early 1800s. and they lost it permanent. and didn't vote anywhere else. the whole episode is very puzzling. it's a very strange aspect of american political history and american reform, that stanton who was highly literate, very smart, highly educated, she

published several books. she had a long career as an activist. she lived until the end of the century. that she didn't know that women had once voted in new jersey. it's funny how history gets buried sometimes. knowledge just gets lost. but she never brought it up. nonetheless, there are other woman's rights conventions begin to take place in the u.s. in the 1850s. usually in the northeast and in the midwest. this is a movement that is largely based in those regions. at a convention right here in ohio, in 1851, woman's rights convention we see one of the most famous speeches made by a woman about this whole issue. and that person who made that speech was a black woman, an ex-slave from new york named sojourner truth. sojourner truth was the name she chose for herself when she became emancipated.

she said she was on a sojourn and her goal was truth. her given name was isabella. she was born a slave at the end of the 18th century. she was emancipated because the state of new york put in a law in 1799 stipulating for gradual emancipation. when slaves reach a certain age they would be freed. ironically, she's a slave, ex-slave, but she's a new yorker. and many of the people in the world she grew up in spoke dutch, so she spoke dutch and english. and she apparently, at least early in her life, spoke english with a faint dutch accent. so she's very interesting culturally. in the 1820s, when she becomes emancipated she moved to new york city, she has a conversion experience, she joins the methodist church, she was a gifted public speaker, she was

interested in various reform issues, she moved around, lived in several places. and she was in akron in 1851 when this woman's rights convention took place. she was already quite well known in reform circles as a powerful speaker. sojourner truth was very tall. she was at least six feet tall, she had a very imposing presence. and this convention in akron included some speakers who were against woman's suffrage. and said that women were too weak and delicate for public life and for exercising the suffrage. and that bothered sojourner truth. she asked for permission to speak and she was given permission and she stood up and made this spontaneous speech talking about her life as a woman. and what that had been like. and the famous refrain sort of rhetoric