on lectures in history, boston college professor heather cox richardson teaches a class on the new roles women assumed in the workforce in 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 focused on issues like prohibition and women suffrage. this class is just over an hour. let's go ahead and start. as you know the theme of this course comes from the idea that the civil war dramatically changes american history because what it really does is it destroys everything everybody believed about the relationship

between america and the american government. so once the war is over and this is a good day to talk about this, today is the anniversary of the firing on fort sumter. everybody has different ideas about what the nation is supposed to become. we've really gone through a lot of that with ideas that african american men who fought for the union had ideas what america should be and certainly white southerners had ideas about what america should be. the northerners had ideas. the indians and chinese who were out west had ideas about what america should be. and certainly the northern men who had fought and won the war had ideas. about what the country should be. but the critical question as to what it was going to be was who was going to have a say in it. we've gone through that as well. who had a say in what that new nation was going to be was going to have a dramatic effect on what it eventually became. so today i want to talk about women and women's lives in the late 19th century and their role in what was really the

reconstruction, the true rebuilding of the north, the south, and the west into a new nation in the wake of the civil war. and the story of women is way more crucial to that story than most people realize. most people when they think about women's rights and women's roles in america start here. and you probably know about this from your high school days. with the seneca falls convention of 1848. when a number of women came together, women and men as well, came together in seneca falls, new york, to talk about women's rights. and the idea of rights for women came out of the abolitionist movement especially in 1840 when a number of female abolitionists went to london for the first anti-slavery convention. while they were there to speak about women rights the women were not allowed to speak. they had to sit in the gallery and were not allowed to talk. so on the way home, a number of them get talking, and they say this is not right. that if really people are supposed to be free and equal,

that women should have rights as well. and out of that comes the organization of the seneca falls convention in 1848. and this is the group of people who issue the declaration of sentiments which is based on the declaration of independence but calls for rights for women and tries to fight back against what they consider the oppression of men. you all learn about this. and everybody talks about this being the beginning of women's rights in america. and it is. it's an important symbolic moment. essentially, after 1848 with the declaration of sentiments and the seneca falls convention, nothing happens. it happens in new york, new york's got a lot of other things going on. they're fighting a battle over property rights in new york. there's a lot of things going on in the east, especially in the northeast in the 1840's and the 1850s. and one person looks at the seneca falls convention and says, you know, it's almost as

if we're talking about martians voting and having rights. it's just not on people's radar screens at a national level. and not a lot of changes after the declaration of sentiments. the real change for women and for women's rights comes not out of the declaration of sentiments in 1848, but rather out of the american civil war. we talked some in this class about that. women's roles changed during the civil war dramatically. so they go into the war both in the north and the south believing that they are going to be able really to maintain the roles they had before the civil war. that breaks down almost immediately. you know, they start with the idea they're going to be help mates if you will, and very quickly women have to take over a whole new set of roles during the civil war. so first of all, they begin by supporting the troops. and both in the north and the south. and especially in the north that quickly becomes taking on very public roles.

women had public roles before because abolitionist movement. during the civil war the roles of women really take on new dimensions. we have for example women working in the new government jobs. when i talked about the creation of american money, somebody had to physically take those large plates of paper and cut them into bills. and those were women. those were government girls who did the cutting. and actually if you look at these now and sometimes you see them in museums or you can buy them on the internet. if you look at the edges, you can tell when the women were cutting them because by the end of the day they got tired and the edges aren't straight. if you collect them you want the ones with the straight edges. women are working in the government, they're beginning to work as clerks. in the northern fields they're taking over for the men folk who have gone off to war. they're working in factories in both the north and the south. and they begin to do a number of things that are not usually part of women's roles.

so, for example, we have women getting involved in nursing. which had always been a male, considered a dirty male profession. you get women involved in nursing. this is the point at which nursing becomes a female rather than a male profession. this is the beginning of the switch to that. as men go off to war you get women involved in teaching, it had always been a male profession. it becomes a pink collar profession. you have women when they are nursing going into spaces where they had previously been excluded. you didn't used to want your daughters to be in a hospital which is dirty and full of men in various stages of undress who are messy, you know. they're dying or they're bleeding. these are spaces that women began to enter. you also have women buying bonds that i talked about.

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

believing that they should have a say in that government. they gave everything for that government. they feel like they should have a say in what happens. certainly more of a say than those white southerners that andrew johnson was pardoning at such an extraordinary rate during the summer of 1865. so by the fall of 1865, all about 1600 of the former confederates had received presidential pardons or had been part of that blanket proclamation. and they look at that and they're wait a minute, wait a minute, how many come these guys who picked up guns and tried to destroy the u.s. government have a say and we don't? and you're going see a similar pattern incidentally after world war ii when it's no coincidence that you get the women -- the second wave of women's activist after world war ii out of a very similar set of circumstances. so what happens is coming out of the war. women expect that they're going to be able to have a say in this new reconstructed government.

and that of course is not what happens. what happens is coming out of the war, the focus for various reasons son african american male suffrage. and especially women look at this. and they're willing to let that happen. but they also expect that they're going to be included as well. and a woman you're going to hear more from me and already heard from me, julia ward howell. put hit the way. she said when we're writing that 14th amendment, women should be included. if we're talk about citizenship and having a say in american society, women belong in that amendment. they should have rights under that amendment. and of course when congress is discussing the 14th amendment at great length, some congress members do introduce the idea that women should be considered full citizens with a say in american society. and they're laughed out.

the idea that somehow women should have rights and participate in american society is a non-starter. to suffragettes, especially those who worked so hard for the war really stung. julia ward howell said the civil war came to an end leaving the slave not only emancipated but endowed with the full dignity of citizenship. the women of the north had greatly helped to open the door which admitted him to freedom and safeguard the ballot. was this door to be shut in their face? and in 1868, when that door was shut in their face, two really dramatic things happen. two suffragette associations form in america. most you have know from your textbooks these organization join together in 1890. most people who look at the advance of women's suffrage across the country really look

at that 1890 merger as being crucial. and yet these things come out of the 14th amendment. they come out of the idea if african american men should be included in american citizenship, so should women. so should white women are the people that these women are primarily concerned with. but women should have a say in american society. so what happens is first the national women's suffrage association forms these are women keady stanton and susan b. anthony, and they tend to be more radical. they want a wide number of reforms that are going to level the playing field with property ownership, divorce laws, the different economic inequalities between the sexes. and they are seen really as radicals. three months later, you get the

organization of the american women suffrage association. and that's a much more moderate group. and it's an interesting group for my purposes today because it's formed primarily by lucy stone and julia ward howell. they demanded only the vote with the idea that once you get the vote, you have a say in your government and you can change the laws if you don't like the laws. now, this is always the part where i want to talk a little bit about julia ward howell. julia ward howell is the same woman who wrote the battle hymn of the republic in 1862. i've talked to you about her before. she begins to take on a much more public role during the civil war especially through her writing. she is actually a brilliant thicker. her diaries are at harvard. and she is -- she becomes involved in the american woman's suffrage association because she really wants the vote. now, she's a much more moderate character than say elizabeth

cady stanton. and she wants the vote for this reason. her husband is abusive and every time she wants to leave him, he says, great, go, you'll never see your kids again. because in this era, children are the property of their fathers. and if women divorce their husbands, in fact, they can be kept from the kids. so she stays married to him and she tries to continue to have access to the kids. and the great part of this story is, he's really awful to her. i read through her diaries a few years ago. he's really awful to her. he keeps trying to get her to destroy the diaries. and he keeps telling her she is stupid and nobody is going to listen to her and she doesn't matter, and that he is really the shining light in the couple because he is a very famous reformer. and i always try to make a point to talk about her and this situation because i want you all to leave this room and for the rest of your lives to remember that julia ward howell is an incredibly important thinker,

writer, you're going to hear more about her in a minute. and she was married to some jerk nobody remembers. that's my part for her. all right. so what happens after the organization of these two suffrage groups to try and push for women to have a say in american society? well, this is the era right after the civil war when legislators are trying to create a world in which equal rights really is the underpinning of the american government. so this is a period when people are talking about everybody having equal rights, everybody should have a say in american society, and they're really trying to expand with the 14th amendment which theoretically includes everybody except indians not taxed, that's an important caveat, important exception. but out west, unlike where seneca falls took place in new york, out west in the organization of those

territories that i talked about during the war, those territories that come in the west so quickly, the idea of women's suffrage takes off. in 1869 in wyoming territory, wyoming territory gives women a vote when they put together their constitution. there are very few women in wyoming territory, i promise you. but it gives women the vote with the idea that in these new western territories, women should have the right to have a say in the construction of that society. takes off. the next year, in 1870, utah gives women the vote. so about 1,000 women in wyoming. there's about 17,000 in utah. and they give women the vote in utah in 1870 because there is a referendum coming up on whether or not polygamy should be included in the state laws. and the expectation of the legislators who include the women is that women will vote against polygamy.

that by opening up the vote, you're going to move society forward and of course women will vote against polygamy. women go to the polls in utah, and they vote in favor of polygamy. that stops the spread of women's suffrage across the west dead for years and years and years. the idea that somehow expanding the vote is going to create a better society hits real trouble when it hits utah and women vote in a way that most of the people who gave them the vote thought that they would not. so this is going to change the idea of women's suffrage spreading state by state, especially through the west, in the early 1870s. still, if you look at that date, women have hope because in 1870, congress is going to be debating a new constitutional amendment to protect african-american voting in the south and that's the 15th amendment.

you know about the 15th amendment. it's the one that protects voting. women lobby hard to be included in the 15th amendment. when congress passes and then the states ratify that amendment in 1870, women are not included. when they are not included, suffragists are furious. and they do something very smart. they decide they're not going to try to lobby any longer for women's suffrage specifically. what they're going to do is they're going to argue that they are citizens under the 14th amendment, because, of course, they've either been born in america or naturalized in america. so women decide in the presidential election, the tight presidential election of 1872,

women decide that they are going to test their right to vote under the 14th amendment. and across the country in 1872, suffragists try to vote. they try to register to vote. and what that means they will go up to a registrar and have their names enrolled, it's called, and be able to cast a ballot or not. in 1872 across the country, they try and do that, and some of them succeed. others do not. there's a really important court case i want you to remember. and that is -- starts in missouri. as you remember, missouri is kind of a mess of a state because it was so evenly divided between confederates and unionists and they've got that 1865 constitution that prohibits democrats from voting, being lawyers, being doctors, being ministers, all those things. so who gets to vote and how the government is going to work in missouri is really a crucial spot in the country. in 1872, a woman named virginia miner tries to register to vote

under this idea that she should be able to vote under the 14th amendment. she goes to the registrar and the guy who is at the registrar is a guy named happerset. and she goes and tries to register to vote, and happerset refuses to let her register. she sues him. and the case miner v. happerset is going to work its way through the courts and it's going to be decided by the supreme court in 1875. i'll tell you about that in a minute. but the one you've heard about in this year, in the year of 1872 without probably putting in context, is that susan b. anthony does register to vote. she registers to vote in new york. and she actually casts a ballot in that election. but after she casts a ballot, she is arrested for the crime of voting. that's kind of an interesting concept to get your head around, the crime of voting. the argument about it being a

crime to vote, interestingly enough, they get her under the enforcement acts that were put in place to protect african-american voting in the south. but the crime of voting, the argument behind that is that if people who should not have a right to have a say in american society vote, they're diluting the votes of those people who do have a right to vote. by the time she is arrested in 1872 for voting, susan b. anthony is a very well-known figure. this is very public case and she is very public about it. after she's arrested and then let out on bail, there's a story behind that. but after that happens, she actually goes around her region of new york giving a number of speeches about the fact she's been arrested for the crime of voting. and in the trial, the trial just adds fuel to the fire. because in the trial, what happens is susan b. anthony is the only woman in the courtroom.

she is not allowed to testify on her own behalf because she's a woman. and after her lawyer and the prosecuting attorney present their cases, the judge simply reads the decision he had already written before the trial. and in a -- in a wonderful moment, she watches this happen and she gets up and answers him and she won't shut up. and he says, you need to sit down now, that's enough, you need to stop. she's like, no i'm not going to and she tells him exactly what she thinks of him. it's become such a powerful cause as she's giving these speeches about what happened that it becomes sort of a flashpoint where people look at the question of who really should have a say in american society. and one of the things that anthony says as she's speaking across new york is this.

she's so mad at what happened, she says, this government is not a republic. it is an odious aristocracy, a hateful oligarchy of sex. now, this often is mispunctuated when you see it in other places. pay attention to how this is punctuated the right way. she says an oligarchy of wealth where the rich govern the poor, an oligarchy of learning where the educated govern the ignorant. or even the ol' darky of race where t where the saxon rules the african american might be endured. she's actually okay with the idea of rich people governing the poor. educated people governing the uneducated. but this of sex carries dissension, rebellion into every home in the nation. this should sound familiar

to you guys because this is 1872 when many people especially in the north are turning against the idea of laborers having a say in american society. so what you're seeing here is once again the switch from the idea that everybody should have a say in american society to the idea that's developing in the 1870s that we've talked about some in the 1880s that in fact maybe not everybody should have a say in american society. and the question after the 1870s is where do you draw the boundaries and how do you draw the boundaries. and women's roles in this is going to be crucial to drawing the boundaries. all right, so what happens? in 1875, congress -- i'm sorry -- the supreme court hands down the miner v. happerset decision. when you read that for this for this week, read my version of it, because it's a very long, kind of borg decision until the very end of it.

they go through everything they can think of that women have done in american history. they say, the question at hand is are women citizens. they say they did this, they did they and they did this, and yes of course they're citizens. but then there's a kicker at the end of it. the kicker at the end of it is they say of course women are citizens, but citizenship does not necessarily convey the right to vote. this is a really big deal. because with this decision, the supreme court unhinges citizenship and voting. remember this is reconstruction. and this is 1875 and in 1876, you're going to have a tax on black voting across the south that returns the southern states to the control of white democrats. the idea of women voting is intimately connected to the question of who should have a say in american society.

who is a good member of society and who should have a right to participate in the construction of that new nation and the government that rules that nation. meanwhile, if this is the philosophical argument about who should have a say in american society, women are not sitting home eating bon-bons waiting for this to play out. because with the loss of so many men during the civil war and the dramatic change in the economy -- we talked about the rise of industry, women in factories, the changing agriculture, the push west, the rise of cities. women's roles changed dramatically in the late 19th century. at the very minute you have men moving into cities and moving out west and dying in huge numbers, as well as coming back to their homes from the war crippled, either in body or in mind. and those things open up entire

new realms of opportunity for women, both in the north and the south. and african-american women and white women as well as immigrant women. i've talked to you before about edmonia lewis. she's a great example of somebody for mohammed whom the late 19th century, especially the post war years opens up a lot of doors. she is the woman who i mentioned before shows up in the chicago exhibition of 1873. ed monya lewis is one of our most famous american sculptors. she was educated at oberlin college at the time. she is african-american and indian. and she especially after the civil war became for many americans a symbol of human rights. the idea that this extraordinarily talented woman happened to come in an african-american and indian skin to many people seemed unimportant compared to her talent.

not to everybody, i have to say. but because she is so visible, because she is so popular, she becomes a symbol of what women can do, what all women can do. she gets a lot of her training actually in rome because there the prejudices are not as strong as they are in america. so she gets a lot more opportunity there and a lot more training there, becomes very famous in rome. by 1873, when i say she's a well-known sculptor, as you know, an agriculturalist, a farmer in this period let's say made $1 a day, ballpark. not a lot of money. a good living, $300 to $500 a year in that money. in 1873, she had two commissions. those two commissions were worth $50,000 each. uh-huh. in 1877, she was the sculptor

ulysses s. grant chose to make his bust. and he was very pleased with what she had done. she is obviously very well-known and opening up the door to women in the arts. one of the things she does is she sculpts -- this is her minnehaha from 1868. she puts almost a neo classical look on americans, especially american women, especially american women of color. so her minnehaha is very famous, but perhaps even more famous is this statue of 1867 called forever free. she's doing a lot with this sculpture here. you can see the main character standing has chains on. the chains are broken, but they're not off, which is interesting. for our purposes today, one of the things that is more interesting is that the man in this sculpture is unclothed, but the woman is clothed. which is a real reversal of the idea of african-american women

as being somehow objects that are not -- that are not bounded. she's dressed. she is, if you will, taking part in society in a way that he, without clothes, is doing less of. it's sort of the protected woman and the idea that she can carry -- she can carry herself forward into modern american society, even though he's bigger and more powerful and even though she's at his feet, there's a lot going on in that particular statue. you're looking at this and thinking okay, edmonia lewis, never heard of her. my life was complete without hearing about her. it actually wasn't. she is only one of the women in the late 19th century who dramatically change american culture after the civil war. so she is a sculptor, but here's a woman i would lay money none of you have ever heard of. her name is augusta jane evans. she is a southern novelist after

the civil war. and she is the first female american author to earn more than $100,000. she proceeds edith wharton of course. but the reason that she is important and the reason i bring her up is because i've talked a lot about the north so far today. southern women are in an especially pinched spot, if you will. they're from a region of the country that has just lost the civil war and as i've talked about is devastated. economically and psychologically as well. and the man, especially the white man returning home are often really unable to assume positions in society again. so you've got a bunch of women who are financially dependent. they've got to find some way to make money, and they know they're living through a dramatic time in america. and they're talented and they're educated. so coming out of the civil war, you have a huge number of female writers.

north and south, but primarily in the south. what they write are things that now don't make it across our radar screen very often, but she is famous as a romance novelist. the southern women especially worked out a lot of the tensions between the north and the south through romance novels and through the explorations you could do with romance novels of boundaries, of gender, of economics, of race. a whole lot of these things and they're really, really interesting. you can see some of the ideas of that picked up when we read the virginian. which does a lot of things, obviously, when we read that. and it's about the west mostly, but he is definitely tying in to the incredible popularity of post civil war roam mantz novels. but this lady may be more familiar to you. this is louisa may alcott.

her 1868 novel "little women" was the best seller in that year. it sold 35,000 copies in its first year. she really pioneers the way for northern female writers. she actually didn't like writing these books, but they become enormously popular. one of the reasons they become enormously popular is because her "little women" of 1868 explores a whole bunch of new roles for women. how many of you have read that book? if you think about it, and there's four girls in "little women." only one of them is a traditional stay-at-home precivil war girl and that's beth. beth finally dies of some unspecified illness. while she is still living at home with her parents, dropping mittens out the window. sorry. i'm making a little bit of fun. but beth is kind of a home body, she doesn't like to leave the house.

the other sisters are all modern women, if you will. smeg a governess. she works for a living. doesn't like it all the time, by she works for a living. jo is a writer and wants to -- wants to go out and write the great american novel. and amy is a sculptor. and all three of them are actually fairly successful in those professions. but crucially, all three of them end up settling down, getting married and having children. that's going to be important for the way women reintegrate into this new reconstructed society. so you've got southern writers, you've got northern writers. and by the way, louisa may alcott, we found out nearly 20 years ago now, she also wrote real pot boiler stories which she denigrates in "little women" because they paid better and she preferred them. she wrote a short story called "mask" about women had to hide themselves that people only

discovered fairly recently. interesting stuff. people aren't just reading about women. they're watching them. this is anna dickinson. she is so well-known as a speaker. she is the first american woman to address congress, 1864. very, very well-known, very highly paid. eloquent speaker. she speaks across the country at lectures where she introduces topics. and tells people about subjects they didn't otherwise know about. so now women are not only taking part in the arts, showing their work, they are actually physically in public informing people. they're taking up public roles after the civil war in a way that really they didn't do before the civil war. so they're very visible. and they're also using that visibility to influence american life. here's julia ward howell again. i told you she'd come back to haunt is today.

julia ward howell increasingly focused on her position as a mother, which of course is what is driving her support for suffrage. her position as a mother to say that women are different than men. that women really can do society better than men have done. and what really sets her off is not only did she live through the civil war and watch the incredible carnage of the war, remember, she's in washington in the end of '61, seeing the circling fires around washington, seeing one of her friend one of the first people killed in the war. after the franco prescription drugs prussian war, she decided enough was enough and that women really had to take over the society. sle said after the franco prussian war, said i was visited

by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary cruelness of the contest. seemed a return to barbarism. the question forced itself upon me. why don't the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and bear the cost. so what she does is she issues an appeal to womanhood throughout the world. and she writes to women. she says throughout the world, but it's women with whom she has contact in other countries. and she says, we need to stop war. and she makes this declaration that says, we will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. our husbands shall not come to us wreaking with carnage for caresses and applause. our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

we, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. so this is the idea that women can take on even something like war and stop war if they are willing to exercise their roles as women and as women in politics. while we're on this, this, the idea of joining women together in meetings -- cameron knows where this is going -- becomes mothers' days, where mothers, plural, come together to stop war. if you google mother's day, it will tell you it started by anna jarvis in 1908. that's wrong. anna jarvis starts it because she remembered her mother going to these mothers' days.

this is an attempt to turn it into a day personally for her mother. but the idea of mother's day comes straight out of this post-civil war period with the idea that women as mothers could clean up world politics. isn't that cool? this is where we get mothers days then. this idea of women taking a role and taking a role because they're different starts really to take off in the 1870s. in the 1860s right up through 1870 you get the idea that women should have rights because all humans should have rights. but during the 1870s you get the growth of this idea that women should have rights because they're different. because women have perspective that is going to be able to do things like stop war and stop the dangerous aspects of industrialization.

so in 1874 we get the creation of the women's christian temperance union. the wctu. instantly they became politically involved. they organize under annie whitten meyer. they're trying to stop excessive drinking. they're trying to promote temperance. and many cities have theoretically saloons are being regulated, but they're really not. and they're intimately involved in the political system. so the wctu begins to do things like pour liquor into the sewers. or that's actually not a sewer in '74. it's going to be a much later picture because sewers don't really take off until the 1880s. but they're actively trying to clean up the cities by getting rid of alcohol. and the wctu becomes incredibly powerful.

i'm going to talk in a second about the constitutional convention of idaho in 1889. literally when the guys are trying to organize the constitution, within days, they're still basically figuring out who is suppose to sit in one seat, the first people through the door are the wctu saying out here in idaho we can't have alcohol. they're there before anybody else shows up. that's one of the first things that goes onto that agenda because the wctu is so very powerful and popular. women are not only taking roles in society in sort of atomized ways. because women have entered the teaching professions and because women have entered nursing and because as i talked about, we've got the rise of middle managers. who now have extra money and leisure time, you have the concept coming that women need educations. what i want to talk about now is the rise of women's colleges. because women's colleges are

going to be crucial for the late 19th century. and while women have had seminaries and have had educations before this period, people really point to the organization of smith college in 1875 as a real landmark for the education of women. and radcliffe is going to organize the radcliffe annex, as it's known, is going to organize in 1879. radcliffe is going to be a little bit different than smith because it actually borrows professors from harvard. it's known as the radcliffe annex. smith actually has its own professors. what these colleges are doing is they are setting up women, they're recognizing that women have brains and they're educating women. but there's a funny twist to it because they have to overcome the idea that women are weak vessels who, you know, are going to be injured by the application of their brains, that they're going to turn into, you know, sort of stoop shouldered bespectacled people who can't do a hard day's work. so at the same time that women's colleges are actually quite aggressive about teaching women,

many of the same curricula that men have, women also have to take physical education classes. they have to walk, they have to learn how to have the womanly graces some colleges, not universities, have courses in setting tables. in serving tea, in knowing whether the different places for dishes go. so that women will not be educated out of their sphere. that they'll be able to be good wives and mothers even though they can also read greek. there's a funny hybrid. if anybody is interested in this, one of the things that comes out of the rise of the college movement that i think is fascinating, and you can see it in the later louisa may alcott books is there is a whole series of novels and novelists that come from the 1870s on that write novels about women's colleges. so you get that whole series called the betty wales series where it's set in a women's college. some of you may have read daddy long legs which is set in the 20th century.

there is a famous fred astaire movie called "daddy long legs" but sort of misses the point of it being a women's college. there's a whole series of people who take on this idea, and women, girls, read them avidly. you see this in the late louisa may alcott books where jo and her husband, protester baer start a women's college. and there's a wonderful scene in one of those books where the women -- it eventually becomes a coed college, the women and men sit on the staircase and discuss the use of women's education. while women are learning these things and these tend to be middle-class women whose families had the money and time to pull their girls out of the workforce and send them to school, what's really crucial about these things is they're going to create a body of educated, intelligent, connected women. women begin to form social networks in these colleges, the same way i keep saying to you, your networks from school are going to matter in your lives.

so women coming through these colleges are going to have friends. they're going to have friends they took classes with. they're going to have friends they sat 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. and one of the people who is crucial in this is this woman here, jane adams. now, it's worth mentioning, by the way, that by 1870, so many women are getting involved in education, that by 1870, the majority of people graduating from high school in america are women. that early, women of the majority of high school graduates. only about 2% of americans going to college in that year, but women are already 21% of that group. this is not just a few people. jane addams is from illinois.

her father had worked with abraham lincoln. and she was always famous, incidentally, in her life for those eyes, which -- they were blue. you were supposed to basically sink into those eyes. i'll show you a picture later in a minute. pretty much anybody who saw jane addams commented on her eyes. but jane addams did a tour of europe when she was a young woman after going to a seminary. not to smith or radcliffe, but to a seminary, a small women's college. and was horrified by what she saw in europe because she toured the tenement districts in london and she felt that the people she saw there were hardly even people. she actually likened them to animals, and she said this is not right. this is the modern world, because of course, it was the modern world to her. and there's no way in a modern world that people should live like this.

but exactly what one could do about it was not clear. she eventually does what one would expect. she turns to her social networks, to a woman named ellen gates starr, and the two of them begin to talk about how women could have an effect on the terrible conditions created by the urbanization and the industrialization of america rather than europe. because i have shown you pictures here, this is five five points, and five points, again, one of these great pictures. five points is the region of new york, the area of new york that is famous in -- gangs of new york. it's famous for being sort of the most dangerous part of new york. here's another image of five points. so the question is, what can sort of sheltered, middle-class, usually white, not always, but usually white women do to

ameliorate the sort of conditions when they can't vote, they're not involved in the economy. what can they do to stop america from going down this road that we have talked about, where there's very rich and very poor, and everything seems to be falling apart? and the answer is, women see the world differently. they see the world organically. the idea that the way women can heal this split, if you will, is to return the idea of an organic society to america. and the way they can do it is one thing to talk about it, right? but the way they can do it is literally by living in these areas. so in 1889, starr and addams buy what becomes known as hull house. it's in a poor district of chicago, here in chicago. and they begin -- they open it

up, and they live there. they don't say this is nasty and we're not going to live there. they actually live there, and they begin to open services for the immigrants. it's an immigrant community. the immigrants around them. they begin to provide baby-sitting. they begin to talk to people about why their lives are the way they are. they try to clean the debris out of the cities, out of the trash out of the streets. and the garbage especially because they notice that the garbage is carrying flies, and the flies, the areas that have the worst garbage have the most sickness among babies. they take in unwed mothers. they try to provide social services. crucially, because of the social networks i talked about, lots of middle-class women, lots of educated middle-class women come through hull house and later on the henry street settlement started in new york. by lillian wald. i'll talk about that in a minute. but they come through hull house, and they start to listen

to the immigrants and the poor people around them. about why they're poor. about what their lives are like. and they begin to really to value those immigrants and the immigrant experiences. they start to focus on the old world traditions that are still in america. they have presentations of needleworkers, for example, from countries where the women are really famous needleworkers. they try to encourage the daughters of these immigrant women to value their mothers' experiences and crucially, when they're trying to figure out why the cities are the way they are, these educated women go out and collect statistics. they go into factories. they find out what people are paid. they find out how many hours they work. they find out what the work is like. they ask questions, they compile charts. and 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 went to study social work, because this is where the idea had come from.

crucially for historians, these documents that these women collected are invaluable. and they are invaluable in the early 20th century when the supreme court starts to take supreme court starts to take into consideration conditions of life to make supreme court decisions. so for example, in the brandeis brief, brandeis, when he writes the brandeis brief, which puts together a whole bunch of information about conditions in the country, he actually cribs the material from his sister-in-law, who was a settlement house worker. these were called settlement houses. so the settlement house workers like those at hull house and those at the henry street settlement begin to try to re-create an organic society, which they try to do it in a modern way, by gathering statistics and ideas. and crucially, lillian wald brings to the table nursing skills.

she is the one -- jane addams brings political skills and social skills, if you will. lillian brings social schools. lillian wald says we really need to improve health. she's the driving force behind getting nurses into schools and behind improving public health across the country in general. here, i told you i was going to show you another picture of jane addams. this is jane speaking to a number of children, and again, trying to improve the lives of women. this is a new york picture, even though jane addams is from chicago. i like this image because this is what the settlement house workers are trying to address. women and children primarily, but you cannot improve the lives of women and children without improving society as a whole. but 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, who is very

important in the civil war. if anybody's interested, i always liked pig iron because he was not necessarily the brightest crayon in the box, but what he was really good at was listening to what everybody else said. if you wanted to know what people thought and you're in a hurry in the civil war, you can just read pig iron because he sort of synopsizes what everyone says. he's very involved in the republican party and industrialization. then he has this daughter. and she's got issues of her own that she wants 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. she wanted to take on industrialization. but how do women take on industrialization? see, now they take on politics, social issues. by the late 19th century, women can take on industrialization as consumers. and florence kelley and

josephine shaw lowell begin to advance the idea that women can ameliorate the extraordinarily bad conditions of industrialization, the sweat shops, the terrible pay, the terrible conditions, by refusing to buy products that are made in sweat shops. and they organize eventually in 1891 the national consumers league. and what they did is they would say we will not buy clothing or goods made under unsafe or unhealthy working conditions. and we demand as consumers, as mothers feeding our children, safe food and drink. we need to have the government guarantee these things for us. by virtue of the fact we're consumers, not virtue of the fact that every human being should have a right to these things, but because we are wives

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

stay-at-home solid wives or they're sort of criminals/prostitutes. in this western image. coming out of the civil war. and that has to do with, as you know, the political image of the american cowboy, but those two images of women, either very good or very bad, becomes crucial to the way women's images and women's role in american society develops after the civil war. if that's the image of women with the cowboy, the reality of women in the west is very different. women worked very hard in the west. they work in all the ways that they do in the east. they're homesteaders, they're farmers. they work in factories.

they work in -- i'm sorry, industries growing in the west. basically, the employment patterns of the west for women replicate those of the east. women work as servants when people can afford them. they do laundry, especially in mining areas. they do all the things they do in the east despite the image in the west that women are essentially nuclear wives or prostitutes. but there are, of course, prostitutes in the west. but there are, of course, i have to include this picture because it's fun. there are, of course, prostitutes in the west. and i like this picture especially because of the liquor and the striped stockings. an image taken of striped stockings and liquor signifies this is a picture of two prostitutes. but this is not the only reality of the west. for western women. yes, there are prostitutes, yes, there are wives, but for the most part, there are women doing everything they did back east. the old saying they had to do everything the men did and still take care of the kids at the same time. so the experiences of western women have an image of being stay-at-home wives but the

reality is they're doing everything. although i just said that, because of that image of the cowboy, women really do push the idea and women writers and writers about the west, push the idea very heavily in the late 19th century that good women, good american women, because the cowboy takes on such great power as a symbol of america after the civil war, good american women are housewives. they're in the home taking care of kids. and i put up laura ingalls wilder here because she's born in 1867. she lives through this period, and she is probably our most influential western writer. you know, i say that and you're thinking, laura ingalls wilder, a western writer? her books have been in print

since the 1930s. in my generation, everybody read them. what's fascinating about them, she's from a number of places, but she writes out of south dakota. what's fascinating about them is she wrote them in part because she so thoroughly hated the new deal, but she develops in these books a very specific image of a western woman. and of an american woman, and that's somebody who follows a good man, who stays at home in the home, takes care of the kids. and is rewarded for that good behavior. what's fascinating to me about that is that's not the life she lived. that's the life she wrote. in fact, at one point, the family lives above a saloon. in fact, she worked for other people. in fact, she makes most of her own money. in fact, pa is kind of a loser, but that's not what she develops in these books. that idea of women being in the home, taking care of kids and being rewarded for that really

takes off in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. the reason that i make such a big deal about this looking back to the idea of who should have a say in american society is what i'm suggesting is that by the 1880s, you get the rising idea that women are different, and they should have a say in american society, not because everybody should have equal rights, end of discussion, the way people were talking about in 1866, but rather because they're wives and mothers. and again, yesterday, i was reading the convention notes of the idaho constitutional convention, and i found this and couldn't resist giving it to you, because here in this convention, when they're talking about women's suffrage, mr. king says, i'm in favor of allowing the largest liberty to every citizen of the united states. now, this is interesting because they have just blanket, without discussion, said chinese and indians can't vote, can't hold office, and can't sit on juries. no discussion. they let that one through. here, he says, i firmly believe that a majority of women of this territory, or in any state of the union are just as well qualified for the right of

suffrage as the average man, and here you go. and there are thousands, 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. so while i'm setting up here is the idea that at the very moment that americans are trying to figure out who should have a say in american society, they're cutting out, as you remember, african-americans with the idea that african-americans are corrupting the vote because they want hand-outs from the government. they're cutting out laborers because of the idea that organized labor also wants a hand-out from the government. they're not always even so sure about the robber barrens because they're concerned they are the industrialists are switching the congress and legislatures to unfairly benefit them.

there's a lot of people like susan b. anthony said that maybe shouldn't have a say, maybe they shouldn't -- they should be taken into consideration. maybe class should be taken into consideration. maybe education should be taken into consideration. but women are good wives and mothers. they're going to vote the right way, so long as they are wives and mothers. in 1890, the year after that, mind you, there's no direct correlation. i'm just giving you the line here. the national women's suffrage association, american national women's suffrage association merge to become the national

american women's suffrage association in 1890. what they do is focus on getting the suffrage, focus on getting the vote. this alienates a number of the people who had been part of a national women's suffrage association and they make susan b. anthony the president, the honorary president of this organization. she was an elderly woman, and she sailed for europe shortly after. it's clear her moment has passed and the focus will be on suffrage. crucially, there idea of suffrage and women having a say in american society, by 1890, relies not only on the idea that everybody should have equal rights, but rather that some people belong in american society because of the way they think or who they are. so i have talked about the rise of lynching after 1889 and the idea that certain african-americans should not participate in american society. i have talked about the government using the troops in both homestead and pullman against strikers. women aren't part of that. women want the suffrage insist

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

poll taxes in the south, the whole range of new constitutional conventions that led to new constitutions after 1890 in the south, bualso in the north, there are a number of new constitutions that take the vote away from african-american men, from poor men, from immigrants, at the very moment that women are getting the vote. which is really interesting, and women get the vote in part because they argue they will purify american society. they're not like those people trying to use the government for the wrong ends. they will use the government for good american families. and i love these images because women not only wear white when they're arguing for suffrage, but they also push their babies. look at this image here of them dressed in white, pushing their babies. not because they deserve to have equal rights because everybody deserves to have equal rights, but because women must participate in an american society, but they must participate in a particular american society. it is no longer an american

society based on the idea that every human being by definition should have a say in american society. 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 in fact will advance that idea that we talked about from lincoln through horacio alger, onto the late 19th century. a middle class idea, if you will, an ideal that the government should not respond to everybody. should not be responding to those african-americans who have been read out of the country, not responding to the organized labors who many accuse of trying to pervert american society. it should respond to a group of people who claim not to want special interests, who claim not

to want any help from the government. and paradoxically, because they don't want anything from the government, they are the very ones who should control it. and of course, they may be the ones who can control it, they will control it for their own interest. it's this moment, the rise of an articulated look at how women should participate in american society, that we crystallize in the late 19th century, the idea of an american middle class. are there any questions about this? all right. let's pick it up on thursday with a long day. dorothy richardson. coming up this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, saturday night at 8:00 eastern a look at the confederate civil war prison andersonville. state university of new york at

buffalo professor talks about the prison, the 13,000 union soldiers who died, and its commander, henry wirtz. >> by the early fall of 1864, 5,000 men died between august and october 1864, i believe. all in total, nearly 13,000 union soldiers died in andersonville in its entire existence. that's a death rate of about 45% of the total population. extremely high. >> at 9:00, brent glass, director emeritus of the museum of natural history talks about his group, "50 great american places," and his process in selecting the various sites. and at 11:00, steven briere on the influence of foreign relations on american national security and civil liberties. >> for many, many years i think the general view of judges here,

as well as judges abroad, when you have first, you have security needs, like a war, or a real security problem, and you look at the document, the document says this power is primarily the president's, it's congress, it's not the court. sometimes there's a clash, so why is the answer so little? he was not one of the founders, but he did, in fact, know about him. >> sunday at 10:00 on road to the white house rewind, the 1960 democratic and republican national conventions for the democratic party nominating john f. kennedy and vice president richard nixon accepting the republican nomination. >> in this campaign i make a prediction. i say that just as in 1952 and 1956, millions of democrats will

join us, not because they are deserting their party, but because their party deserted them at los angeles two weeks ago. >> all over the world, particularly in the newer nations, young men are coming to power. men who are not bound by the traditions of the past. men who are not blinded by the old fears and hate and rivalries. young men who cast off the old slogan and the old delusions. the republican nominee, of course, is a young man. but his approach is as old as mckinley. >> for a complete american history tv schedule, go to c-span.org. >> next on lectures in history, marshall university professor kent williams teaches a class about women and life on the home front during world war ii. she describes the women aiding in factories and military

auxiliary units and the rise of women's baseball leagues during the time, including the all-american girls professional baseball league, which operated from 1943 to 1954. her class is about an hour ten minutes. >> all right, you guys ready to talk about world war ii on the home front? last time you guys saw part of a documentary called "total war" and i know that some of those images were probably pretty gruesome. one of the reasons i show that to you is to give you a sense of what that concept, total war, means. war is never -- i don't care what war we're talking about -- it is never simply about two armies fighting one another on a battlefield. it is all encompassing.