of a woman to a major political party. watch live on c-span. listen on the c-span radio out. or on demand at c-span.org. you can get every minute of both conventions, starting july 18. on lectures in history, boston college professor heather cox richardson teaches a class on the new roles woman's assumed in workforce and politics during the late 19th century. she describes the gains women made in fields, such as nursing, teaching, and social work. she also looks at the growth of political organizations run by women that focus on issues like prohibition and women's suffrage. this class is just over an hour. let's go aheadn: and start. the theme of this course comes from the theme of civil war

dramatically changed. it destroyed everything people believed about america and the american government. once the war's over -- and this is an important day to talk about it, the anniversary of firing at fort sumter -- everybody has different ideas of what the nation is supposed to become. there were ideas about what african-american people should be. -- the northerners had ideas of what america should be. the indians and chinese out west had ideas about what america should be. and certainly the northern man who had won the war had thoughts on what america should be. but the critical question on was what it would be was who was going to have a say in it. he will go through that as well. who was going to have a say on what that nation would be would have a dramatic effect on what

that nation became. today, i want to talk about lives in theen's 19th century, and their role in what was the reconstruction and the rebuilding of the north, south, and west. the story of women is way more crucial to that story than most people realize. most people think about women's rights and women's role in america starts here. and you probably know about this from your high school days, with the seneca falls convention of 1848. when a number of women -- and men -- came together in seneca about new york, to talk women's rights. and the idea of rights for one came out of the abolitionist movement, especially in 1840, when a number of abolitionist's for a slavery convention. and when they went to speak about human rights, they had to sit in a gallery and they were not allowed to speak.

so on the way home, a number of them get talking and say this is not right. if really people are supposed to and equal, then women should have rights as well. out of that comes the organization of the seneca falls convention in 1848. this is a group of people who issued the decoration of sentiments, which is based on the decoration of independence, but calls for rights for women and tries to fight back what .hey call the oppression of men you all learn about this. everybody talks about this being the beginning of women's rights in america, and it is. important symbolic movement, but essentially after 1848 and the decoration of sentiment from the seneca falls convention nothing happens. ,it happens in new york -- new york has a lot of other things going on. there is a battle over property rights in new york. there is a lot of things going on, especially in the east and northeast to and one person was at the seneca falls convention,

and it is almost as if we are talking about martians voting and having rights. it is just not on people's radar screens at the national level. so not much change happens from the declaration of sentiment. the real change for women and women's rights comes not out of the declaration of sentiments in 1848 rather from the american civil war. women's roles changed during the civil war dramatically. war, in the the north and south, believing that they are going to be able to really maintain the roles they had before the civil war. that breaks down almost immediately. , andstart with the idea very quickly, women have to take over a whole new set of roles during the civil war. first of all, they begin by supporting the troops both in , the north and the south.

especially in the north, that quickly becomes taking on very public roles. in public roles before because of the abolitionist movement, but during the civil war the roles , of women take on a new dimension. so we have, for example women , working in the new government jobs. when i talked about the creation of american money, somebody actually physically had to take the large pieces of paper and cut them in bills. those are women. those are government girls who did the cutting. if you look at these now -- you can see them in the museum or by them on the internet -- you can see them and tell if women were cutting them, because at the end of the day, they are tired and the edges are not straight. if you collect them, you want the ones with the straight edges. women are beginning to work in the government as clerks. they are taking over for the menfolk. in the field.

they are working in factories both in the north and the south. and they begin to do a number of things that are not usually part of women's roles. those, for example we have women , getting involved in nursing, which has always been considered kind of a dirty, male profession. you get women involved in nursing, at which point it becomes a female instead of a male profession. as men go off to war, you get women involved in teaching. again, it had always been a male profession. it becomes a pink caller profession simply because only the woman are there to do the teaching. you have women going into spaces where they had previously been excluded. yourid not used to want daughters be in a hospital, which is dirty and full of men ,n various stages of undress who are messy. they are dying or bleeding. these are spaces that women begin to enter. you also have women buying bonds.

so for the first time in american history, women literally own a piece of the american government. they are buying the bonds on which the government and military depend. and of course, they are sending their sons and husbands off to fight the war. so women have invested really heavily in the u.s. government. they are part of the u.s. government, they have supported it with their money. they have supported it with their lives. they have supported it with their sons. they have supported it with their efforts. and some of them quite literally have put their lives on the line for the u.s. government. we have civil war spies. we have even a few women fighting the civil war soldiers. there is a great story about that. a woman who is discovered only many years later when she applied for a pension and is able to prove that, in fact, she fought during the civil war. there are not many stories, but

you do have them. so you have women coming out of this war believing that they should have a say in that government. they gave everything for that government. should haveke they a say in what happens. certainly, more of a say than those white southerners that injured jackson was -- andrew johnson was pardoning at an extra mayor gray after 1865. many former confederates had received presidential pardons. organ part of a blanket proclamation -- or in part -- or blankett of a proclamation. so they look at those guys and say how come he's guys, who fought against the government, have a say and we do not? you're going to see a similar pattern after world war ii. the second wave of women activism after a very similar set of circumstances.

so coming out of the war, women expect that they're going to be able to have a say in this new initiative government. and that, of course, is not what happens. the focus, for various reasons, is on african-american male suffrage. suffragistsly women look at that, and they are willing to let that happen. but they also expect that they will be included as well. a woman you're going to hear mee about me -- about from is julia ward how. she put it this way. when the u.s. rights of 14th amendment, women should be included. women belong in that amendment. they should have rights under that amendment. of course, when congress is discussing the 14th amendment, someeat length, congressmen actually do introduce the idea that women should be included in the 14th amendment and reconsidered.

since with a say in american society. and they are laughed out. the idea that somehow women should have rights and be able to participate in american society is just a nonstarter. and this, to suffragists, especially for those who work so stone --he war, this this stung. julia ward howe says that the civil war came to an end not leaving only the slaves emancipated but with a full was this door to be shut in their face? 1968, to dramatic things happened. association's form in america.

they were very active in the abolitionist movement. yet these things come out of the 14th amendment. they come out of the idea that if african-american men should

be included, so should women. white women primarily. women should have a say in american society. what happens is the association forms and user women like elizabeth cady stanton and susan b anthony. they tend to be more radical that are going to level the playing field regarding divorce laws and different economic inequalities between the sexes. they are seen as radical. three months later, you get the organization of the american women's suffrage association. that is a much more moderate group because it forms primarily by julia ward and lucy stone. they demand it only the vote. once you get that, you can change the laws if you don't like it. this is always the part where i want to talk about julia ward howe. she is the same woman who wrote this. she begins to take on a much more public role during the civil war especially through her writing. she becomes involved in the american women's suffrage association because she really

wants the vote. she is a much more moderate character than elizabeth cady stanton. she wants it for this reason. her husband is abusive and every time she wants to leave him, he says great. go. you will never see your kids again. in this era, children are the property of their fathers. if women divorce their husbands, they can be kept from their kids. she stays married to him to have access to the kids. the great part of the story, i read her diary. he keeps telling her she is stupid and doesn't matter. he is the shining light in the couple because he is a very famous reformer. i always try to make a point to talk about her and the situation.

i want you to all leave this room and remember for the rest of your lives -- always remember that julia ward howe is an incredibly important thinker, writer and she was married to some jerk nobody remembers. that's my part for her. what happens after the organization of these two suffrage groups? this is the air right after the civil war when legislators are trying to create a world in which equal rights are the underpinnings of the government. everyone should have a say in american society and they are really trying to expand that with the 14th amendment. that is an important caveat.

out west, in the organization of those territories. the idea of women's suffrage takes off. in wyoming territory, they give women the vote. there are very few that it gives women the vote with the addition that women should have a right to the construction of that society. it takes off and in the next year, utah gives women the vote. about a thousand women. in wyoming. 17,000 in utah.

they give women the vote in utah in 1870. there is a referendum coming up on whether polygamy should be included. the expectation is that women vote against polygamy. by opening up the vote, they are going to move society forward. they end up voting in favor of polygamy. that stops women's suffrage debt. women's suffrage dead. it hits real trouble when it hits utah and women vote in a way that they thought it would not. that changes the idea of women's suffrage spreading state-by-state in the early 1870's. still, you look at that date and women have hope because in 1870, congress is going to be debating a new constitutional amendment

to protect african-americans voting in the south and that is the 15th amendment. amendment.e 15th protectingamendment voting. women lobby hard to be included in the 15th amendment. when congress passes and the states ratify it women are not included. when they are not included, suffrage continues. they do something very smart and they say they are not going to try and lobby anymore for women's suffrage the ethically. suffragemen's specifically. what they are going to do is argue that they are citizens

under the 14th amendment. women decide that they are going to test their right to vote under the 14th amendment. across the country, suffrage is tried to vote. they try to register to vote. they go up to a registrar and have their names enrolled and tried to cast a ballot. in 1872, they try and do that and some of them succeed. others do not and there is an important case and want you to remember. missouri was so easily divided by the union and confederate's. who gets to vote and how it works is a crucial spot in the country.

in 1872, a woman tries to register to vote under this idea that she should be able to vote in the 14th amendment. she goes to the registrar and the guy there. refuses to let her register. she sues him and the cases going to work its way to the court. it goes to the supreme court in 1875. all tell you about that in minute. the one you have heard about in the year of 1872 without putting into context is that susan b anthony does register to vote in new york and she actually and she actually cast their ballot. she is arrested for the crime of voting. that is an interesting concept

to wrap your head around. the crime of voting. they get her under the enforcement act that was put in place to protect african-american voting in the south. the crime of voting, the argument behind that is that people should -- who should not have a right to vote is deluding the people who do have a right to vote. susan b anthony is then a very well-known figure and this is a very public case. she is very public about it. after she is let out on bail but after that happens, she goes around giving a number of speeches about the fact that she is been arrested for the crime of voting. in the trial, the trial adds fuel to the fire.

what happens is that she is the only woman in the courtroom. she is not allowed to testify on her own behalf because she is a woman. after her lawyer presents her case, the judge simply reads the decision he had already written before the trial. in a wonderful moment, she watches this happen and gets up. and answers him. she will not shut up. she says she is not going to and what she thinks of him. it becomes such a powerful cause that it becomes a sort of a flash point where people look at the question of who should really have a say in one of this

-- a say in american society. she is so mad at what happens that she says this government is not a republic. it is an odious aristocracy at best. this is often miss punctuated. pay attention. she says, an oligarchy of wealth where the rich govern the poor. wheregarchy of learning the rich govern the ignorant. she is actually ok with the idea of rich people governing the poor, educating people governing the uneducated. even white people governing black people. but this oligarchy of sex causes discord in every home in the

nation. that should seem familiar to you guys. this is 1872 when many people in the north are turning against the idea of laborers having a sense in society. what you are seeing here is the switch from the idea of everyone having a say in society to maybe not everyone should have a say in american society. the question after the 1870's is where do you draw the boundaries and how do you draw them? women's roles are going to be crucial to this. what happens? in 1875, the supreme court handed down the decision. when you read that, read my version.

it was a very long, kind of boring decision until the very end of it to go through everything they can think of that women have done in american history as they say that the question in hand is that they suggest in this. yes, of course they are citizens but then there is a kicker at the end of it. they say of course women are citizens, but citizenship does not convey the right to vote. this is a really big deal. with this decision, the supreme court unhinge his citizenship in voting. remember, this is reconstruction. this is 1875 and in 1876, you're going to have blacks voting across south. it is who should have a say in

american society. who should have a right to participate in the construction of the new nation. meanwhile, if this is the philosophical argument about women in american society. women are not sitting home eating bonbons and watching this play out. we talk about the rise of industry, women's roles have

changed dramatically. men are dying in huge numbers as well is coming back to their homes from the war crippled. either in body or in mind. talk to you before about the millennia lewis. it opens a new realm of opportunity for women, in the north and the south and even immigrant women. it opens up a lot of doors. i mentioned to you before she shows up in 1893. edmonia lewis was educated at oberlin college at the time. she is african-american and indian and she becomes a symbol of human rights. civilally after the war.

this extraordinarily talented woman happened to come in this skin. because she is so visible and popular she becomes a symbol of what women can do. of what all women can do. she gets a lot of her training in rome because their prejudices are not as big as they are in america. she becomes very famous and rome and by 1873, she is an agriculturalist and a farmer. let's say a farmer made a dollar a day. in 1873, she had two commissions and those commissions were worth $60,000 each.

in 1877 she was a sculptor. she is obviously very well-known and opening up the door to women. in the arts. she puts a neoclassical look on american women of color. perhaps even more famous is the statue of 1867 called forever free. you can see her main characters has chains on. they are broken but not off. for our purposes today, the man in this sculpture is unclothed but the woman is clothed.

which is a reversal of african objects women that are that are not rounded. she is dressed and taking part in society in a way that he without clothes. she can carry herself forward into modern american society. even though he is bigger and more powerful adn even though she is at his feet, there is a lot going on in that particular statue. you're looking at this and you've never heard of her. she is only one of the women in the late 19th century who dramatically changed american

culture after the civil war. she is a southern novelist and she is the first female american author to earn more than $100,000. she precedes edith wharton. the reason i bring her up is because i have talked a lot about the north so far today. southern women are in an especially pinched spot. they are from a region of the country that has just lost the civil war and is devastated. the men, especially the white men returning home, are often really unable to assume positions in society again. you have a bunch of women who are financially dependent, and they know they are living through a dramatic time in america, and they are talented and educated. coming out of the civil war, you have a huge number of female

writers, north and south, but primarily south. what they write are things that now don't make it across our radar screens often. she is famous as a romance novelist. the southern women, especially, worked out a lot of attention tension between the north and south through romance novels and the explorations you could do with romance novels of boundaries, gender, economics, race. a whole lot of these things, and they are really interesting. you can see some of the ideas when we read virginia. there are a lot of things, and it is about the west mostly, but he is trying to tie into the popularity of post-civil war romance novels. this lady may be more familiar. this is louisa may alcott.

her novel "little women," was the bestseller in that year. it sold 35,000 copies in its first year. she really pioneered the way for northern female writers. she actually didn't like writing these books. they became enormously popular, and one of the reasons is because her "little women" of 1868 spark a whole bunch of new roles for women. if you think about it, there are four girls in "little women," and only one of them is a traditional, stay-at-home, pre-civil war girl, and that is beth. beth eventually dies of some undisclosed illness.

she is kind of a homebody, she doesn't like to leave the house. the other sisters are all modern women. meg works for a living. joe is a writer and wants to go out and write the great american novel. amy is a sculptor. all three of them are actually fairly successful in the professions. crucially, all three of them end up settling down, getting married, and having children. that is going to be important for the way women reintegrate into this new post construction society. you have southern writers, northern writers. louisa alcott, we found out that she wrote real potboiler stories. she wrote a short story called "mask" about women who had to

hide themselves. but people aren't just reading about women, they are watching them. this is anna dickenson. she is so well known as a speaker, she is the first american woman to address congress. 1854. very well-known, very highly paid, eloquent speaker, and she speaks across the country at lectures, where she introduces topics and tells people about subjects they don't otherwise know about. so now, women are not only taking part in the arts, they are actually physically in public, informing people. they are taking up public role after the civil war in a way they really didn't do before the civil war. they are also using the visibility to influence american life.

i told you she would come back to haunt us today. julia ward howe increasingly focused on her position as a mother. her position as a mother to say that women are different than men, that women really can do society better than men have done. what really sets her off is not only did she watch this incredible carnage of the war, feeding fires around washington, one of her friends feed one of the first people killed in the war. after the franco-prussian war, an incredibly bloody war, she decided that enough was enough, and women had to take over world society. she said, in her reminiscences after the franco-prussian war, "i was visited by the senate -- sudden feeling of the cruel

and unnecessary character of the contest. what she does is she issues in appeal to womanhood throughout the world, but women with whom she has contact in other countries. she says, we need to stop war. she makes this declaration that says --

so, this is the idea that women can take on even something like war, to stop war, if they are going to exercise their role as women and women in politics. but, while we are on this, the idea of joining the women together -- cameron knows where this is going. it becomes mother's day's. where mothers, plural, come together to stop war. if you google mother's day, it will say it was started in 1908 by anna jarvis. that is wrong. she started it because she remembered her mother going to mothers days.

her tos is an attempt by make this a day specifically for her mother. the idea of mothers days comes out of the post-civil war period, with the idea that women, as mothers, could clean up world politics. isn't that cool? this idea of women taking on a roll and taking a role because they are different, start really to take off in the 1870's. in the 1860's right up through 1870, you get the idea that women should have rights because all humans should have rights. during the 1870's, you get this idea that women should have rights because they are different. women have a perspective that is going to be able to do things like stop war and stop the dangerous aspects of

industrialization. in 1874, we get the creation of the women's christian temperance union, the wctu. they became politically involved and organized under annie wittenmyer. they are trying to stop excessive drinking, promote temperance. theoretically, saloons are being regulated, but they are really not. the wctu begins to do things like poor liquor in the sewers. it is actually not a sewer in 1874. they are actively trying to clean up the city's by cleaning up the alcohol.

in the wctu becomes incredibly powerful. i'm going to talk a second about the constitutional convention of idaho in 1869. literally, when the guys are trying to organize the constitution, within days, they are still basically trying to figure it out -- the first people to the door are the wctu. and they are saying, out here in idaho, we cannot have alcohol. they are there before anybody else shows up. is one of the first things that goes on the agenda because the wctu is so powerful and popular. women are not only taking roles in society in atomized waves. because women have entered the teaching profession and because women have entered nursing, and because, as i talked about, we have the rise of middle managers now have extra money in leisure time, you know have concepts coming that women need education. what i want to talk about now is

the rise of women's colleges. women's colleges are going to be crucial. while women have had seminaries and education before this period, people really point to the organization of smith college in 1875 as a real landmark for the education of women. the radcliffe annex, organized in 1879. it would be a little different from smith because it borrows professors from harvard. it's known as the radcliffe annex. what these colleges are doing is they are setting up women -- they recognize that women have brains and they are educating women. there is a funny twist, because they have to overcome the idea that women are weak and are going to be injured by the application of their brain, or they are going to turn into sort of stupid shouldered, bespectacled people who can't do

a hard days work. at the same time, women's colleges are quite aggressive about teaching women much of the same curriculum that men have. women have to take physical education classes, they have to walk, they have to have courses in setting tables, and serving tea, and knowing different places where dishes go, so that women will not be educated out of their sphere. there is a funny hybrid. one of the things that comes out of the rise of the college movement that i think is fascinating is there is a whole series of novels and novelists to come from the end of the 19th century on about women's colleges. some of you may have read "daddy longlegs," which is actually set

in the 20th century. there is a famous fred astaire movie, but it missed the point of it being a women's college. you see this in the late louise may alcott book, when they start their own college. there is a wonderful scene those books where it essentially becomes a coed college. the women and the men sit on a staircase. and they discuss women's education. while women are learning these things -- and these tend to be middle-class women whose families have the money and time to send them to school, what is really crucial about these things is that they are going to create a body of intelligent, connected women. they begin to form social networks at these colleges, the same way i say to you your

networks from school will matter in your lives. women coming to these colleges are going to have friends. they are going to have friends they took classes with, friends they stayed up late talking about social issues with, and these networks are going to have a huge effect on the rest of american society both in terms of what they do but also the way they think about what they do. one of the people who is crucial in this is this woman here, jane adams. it is worth mentioning that, by 1870, so many are getting involved in education. by 1870, the majority of people graduating high school in america are women. only about 2% of americans go to college in that year, but women are already 21% of that group. jane addams is from illinois.

her father had worked with abraham lincoln. she was almost famous, -- and she was always famous, incidentally, for those eyes. they were blue. you're supposed to send into those eyes. i will show you a picture of her later, in a minute. pre-much anyone who saw jane adams commented on her eyes. jane addams did a tour of europe when she was a young woman, after going to a seminary, a small women's college. she was horrified by what she saw in europe. she toured the tenement district in london, and she felt that the people she saw there were hardly even people. she actually likened them to animals. she said, this is the modern world, because it was the modern world for her.

there is no way, in a modern world, that people should look like this. exactly what one could do about it was not clear. she eventually does what one would expect. she turns to her social network, to a woman named ellen gates starr, and they talk about how women could have an effect on the terrible conditions brought about by industrialization in america. five points is the region of new york, the area of new york that is famous in "gangs of new york." it is famous as being sort of the most dangerous part of new york. the question is, what can sheltered, middle-class, usually

white women due to ameliorate these sort of conditions when they can't vote, they are not involved in the economy. what can they do to stop america from going down the road that we talked about, where they are very rich, poor, and everything seems to be falling apart. the answer is that women see the world differently. they see the world organically. the way women can heal the split, if you will, is to return the idea of an organic society to america. it is one thing to talk about it, but the way they can do it is literally by living in these areas. in 1889, starr and addams buy what is called hull house. it is in a poor area of chicago. they open it and they live

there. they begin to open services for the immigrants, the immigrants around them. they begin to provide babysitting, they begin to talk to people about why their lives are the way they are, they try and clean the debris out of the cities, the trash out of the streets, in the garbage especially, because they notice that the garbage is carrying flies, and the areas with the worst garbage have the worst sickness among babies. they try and provide social services. crucially, because of those social networks i talked about, lots of educated, middle-class women come through paul house and later on, the henry street settlement. they come through and they start

to listen to the immigrants and the poor people around them about why they are poor, about what their lives are like. they start to focus on the overall traditions that are still in america. they have presentations of neil workers, for example. they try and encourage the daughters of the immigrant women to value their mother's experiences. these women go out and they collect statistics. they go into factories. they find out what people are paid, how many hours they work, what the work is like. this is the beginning of social work. it was not an accident that the

university of chicago, in the early 20th century, was a place one would go to study social work, because this is where the idea had come from. crucially, for historians, these documents are invaluable. and, they are invaluable in the early 20th century when the supreme court starts to take into consideration conditions of life. decisions.reme court for example, in the brandeis brief, when he writes the brandeis brief, which puts together a lot of information about conditions in the country, he actually got material from his sister-in-law who was a settlement house worker. these were called settlement houses. a settlement house workers like those at hull house began to try to re-create an organic society, and they try to do it in a modern way, like gathering statistics and ideas. lillian wald brought to the table nursing skills.

jane addams brings other skills, but lillian wald says we need to improve public health. she is really the one behind improving public health across the country in general. i told you i would show you another picture of jane addams. again, trying to improve the lives of children. -- women. this is a new york picture even though jane addams is from chicago. women and children, primarily. you cannot improve the lives of women and children without improving society as a whole. they don't stop here. this woman, florence kelley, is actually the daughter of a very famous industrialist congressman from pennsylvania, a guy named

pig iron kelley. he was important during the civil war. i always liked pig iron because he was not necessarily the brightest crayon in the box, but he was good at listening to other people said. if you want to know what people thought, you can just read pig iron, because he kind of makes a synopsis. the daughter has issues of her own that she is trying to address in american society. she had been at hull house, she had seen the terrible conditions especially of garment workers, and she wanted to take that on. how do women take on industrialization?

we've seen how they take on politics and social issues. by the late 19th century, women can take on industrialization as consumers. florence kelley and this woman josephine shaw lowell, begin to advance the idea that women can ameliorate the extraordinarily bad conditions of industrialization. sweatshops, terrible pay, terrible conditions, by refusing to buy products that are made in sweatshops. they organize eventually, in 1891, the national consumers league. they would say, we will not buy clothing or goods made under unsafe or unhealthy working conditions. we demand, as consumers, safe food and drink for our children. we need to have the government guarantee these things for us. not the fact that every human

being has a right to these things, but we are wives and mothers, and we have to have -- and we deserve to have good things for ourselves, but we also must protect the other mothers who are out there producing these things. if this is women taking on industrial society -- i really only talked about the east, but there is also the west. the west will play an important role in how women's roles play out in the 19th century. this is not a woman on a horse. this is the stereotypical image of a cowboy coming out of the civil war with the movement of the cattle on the planes from 1866 onward. what i didn't talk about was that, by the 1870's, the image of a cowboy has a certain role for women. this has gotten picked up in certain westerns ever since.

women are either good, stay at home wives or they are sort of criminals or prostitutes in this western image coming out of the civil war. this has to do with the image of the american cowboy. those images of women as either very good or very bad become crucial to the way in which women's images develop after the war. if that is the image of women, with the cowboy, the reality of women in the west is very different. women work very hard in the west. they work in all the ways that they do in the east. they are homesteaders, farmers, they work in industries that are growing in the west. basically, the employment patterns in the west for women replicate those in the east. they do laundry.

they do all the things that they do back east. there are, of course -- i have to include this picture because it is fun. there are, of course, prostitutes in the west. i like this image because of the liquor in the striped stockings. this is not the only reality of the west. yes, there are prostitutes, yes, there are wives, but for the most part, there are women doing everything they did back east. that old saying that they had to do everything that man did and still take care of the kids at the same time.

the experiences of western women have an image of being stay-at-home wives, or fallen women as they call it. the reality is that they are doing everything. women really do push the idea, and women writers and writers about the west, push the ideas very heavily in the late 19th century. good, american women. the cowboy takes off with such great power as a symbol of america after the civil war. good, american women are housewives. they are in the home taking care of kids. i put up this picture because she was born in 1867, she lived through this period, and she is probably our most influential western writer. her books have been in print since the 1930's. in my generation, everybody read them.

she writes out of south dakota. what is fascinating about them is that she wrote them in part because she so thoroughly hated the new deal. she develops in these books very specific image of a western woman, who follows a man, stays home and takes care of the kids, and is rewarded for that behavior. what is fascinating to me about that is that it isn't the life she lived. that's the life she wrote. in fact, at one point, the family lived above a saloon. in fact, she worked for other people. in fact, she made her own money. that idea of women being in the home, taking their kids and being rewarded for that really takes off in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. the reason i make such a big

deal out of this is that what i am suggesting is that, by the 1880's, she has the idea that women are different and they should have a say in american society not because everyone should have equal rights and of discussion, but rather because they are wives and mothers. yesterday, i was reading the convention notes of the idaho constitutional convention of 1889. here in this convention, when they are talking about women's suffrage, mr. king says, i'm in favor of -- they had just said that chinese and indians could not vote. can't hold office and can't sit

on juries. here he says, "i firmly believe that a majority of women in this territory or any state in the union are just as well-qualified to the right of suffrage as the average man. there are tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of women 10,000 times better qualified than one half of the men who vote in these united states. what i am setting up here is the idea that, at the very moment when americans are trying to figure out who should have a say in american society -- they are cutting out african-americans with the idea that african americans are corrupting the vote. they are cutting out laborers because of the idea that organized labor also wants a handout from the government. they are not always even so sure about the robber barons.

they aren't so sure that the industrialists are switching the congress and legislatures to unfairly benefit them. there is a lot of people like susan b anthony said, that maybe shouldn't have a say. maybe race should be taken into consideration, maybe class, maybe education. but women are good wives and mothers. they are going to vote the right way so long as they are wives and mothers. in 1890, the year after that -- i'm just giving you the line here. the national women's suffrage association and the american women's suffrage association merge to become the national

american women's suffrage association, and they focus on getting the vote. this alienates a number of people who had been a part of the national women's suffrage association. they make susan b anthony the honorary president. she is an elderly woman at this point, and she sailed through europe very shortly thereafter. crucially, the idea of suffrage and women having a say in american society, by 1890, relies not on the idea that everyone shall equal rights, but rather that some people belong in american society because of who they are. i talked about the rise of lynching after 1899 in the idea that certain african-americans did not participate in american society. i talked about the government using the troops in both homestead and palm against strikers. women aren't part of that. women want to suffrage and think

they should have the suffrage because they are good wives and mothers. they are going to clean up american society. they are not going to ask the government for any special favors. they are on the right team, if you will. this is a powerful argument. the first woman elected to congress from montana in 1917 -- she is not the first to sit in congress. she is the first woman elected to congress. she was a member of this organization. this worked, the idea that people should get the boat vote because of being wives and mothers. i want to argue that, when women get the vote, they do it very deliberately. after 1890, after the mississippi constitution i talked about, which restricted the vote based on education or

poll taxes in the south, in the south, but also in the north, there are a number of new constitutions that take the boat vote away from african-american man, poor man, immigrants, at the very moment that women are getting the vote. women get the vote in part because they argue they will purify american society. they are not like the people trying to use the government for the wrong and. they will use the government for good american families. i love this image because women not only wear white when they are arguing for suffrage, but they also push the baby. look at this image, dressed in white and pushing their babies. not because they deserve to have equal rights because everybody does, but because women must participate in an american society, and they must participate in a particular american society.

it is no longer in american society based on the idea that every human need, by definition, -- that every human being, by definition, should have a say. it is now the idea of an american society in which certain people should have a say in american society because they are defending the idea of a nuclear family, of a government that is not beholden to any special interests, that will advance the idea that we talked about from lincoln through horatio alger on into the late 19th century. a middle-class idea, an idea that the government should not respond to everybody. it should not be responding to those organized labor is that many newspapers and thinkers accuse of trying to pervert american society. it should respond to a group of

people who claim not to want special interests, claim not to want any help from the government. paradoxically, because they don't want anything from the government, they are the very ones who should control it. of course, when they become the ones to control it, they will control it for their own interest. this moment is the rise of an articulated look at how women should participate in society that we crystallize in the late 19th century, the idea about an american middle class. any questions? let's pick it up on thursday with dorothy richardson. announcer: you are watching american history tv.

atlow us on twitter @cspanhistory. reason --ok at our our recent visit to provo, utah. >> provo has a difficult early story. narrative isig coming into this place and making it work even though earlier american and even british and other explorers never chose to settle here. this was seen as a difficult place to live and not a desirable patch of land. that was part of the log