The United States' attitude towards the education of women was encapsulated in a speech delivered by Mrs. Emma C. Embury on December 10, 1831. Embury spoke at the anniversary ceremony for the Brooklyn Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies. She pointed out that although schooling was becoming more prevalent across the country, female education and its reputation was still lagging behind the education...
The Atlanta Constitution serves as an example of the negativity of Southern rhetoric concerning women's suffrage and rights in the early post Civil War era. . It also shows the development in rhetoric in the South and how discourse concerning women's suffrage evolved throughout the nineteenth century to discuss the movement more objectively. The more objective tone, which indicates change in dealing...
On September 14, 1831, members of the Female Assistance Society of New York met to discuss preparations for their charitable work for the upcoming winter. Eighteen years previously, the organization had been founded by wives of high status New York men who wished to do more than simply be an ordinary housewife. The main focus of this non profit organization was to provide as much assistance as possible...
For many women in the South, the Women's Christian Temperance Union served as an opportunity to organize with other women, gain public career skills, and work outside the home. This experience was later able to transfer in women's work for suffrage. Belle Kearney, a leader within the WCTU and later a women's suffragist, wrote about the beginning of her career in the WCTU in her autobiography, A Slaveholder's...
In November of 1857, G. Holbrook of the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, submitted her article "The Jintlemanly Young Lady," to Rushlight. The article told the story of a young man named Patrick who gave up his seat for a young lady on a train ride. Commenting on this behavior, Holbrook wrote "The true lady and the true gentleman have many qualities in common; each should possess...
"Women don't like the country" was an article featured in the Rushlight, the literary magazine of Wheaton Female Seminary, on July 10, 1861. Writing about a lecture given at the school, the student author complained about the generalization the lecturer made concerning people who spend time in the country. She defended herself and other women in their love for nature by comparing the green country...
In 1877 "From Her Point of View" was published in Wheaton Female Seminary's literary magazine The Rushlight. The story depicted a young woman, "just out of school, and life with all its sorrows and joys awaiting her" sitting by a fire contemplating her future. The young woman was surrounded by "tokens of wealth" but she wished for something different. While her mother's spirit looked down over...
On October 25, 1862, Narcissa L. Barksdale scribbled the words, "but no lives lost," as she wrote to her friend, Alcinda "Alice" Janney, describing the tragedy of how Bayou Sara, Louisiana, "was burnt by the crews of the gunboats." Barksdale showed her discontent with the behavior of the Union soldiers in saying, "I could write pages of outrages committed in that state, but I will desist- as you...
In April of 1830 in Boston, Sarah Josepha Hale made a speech about boarding schools that would change how women were educated. She said that it was good to have women learn their domestic duties, but it was not enough. A woman must learn morals and have mental capacity in order to interact with other people, and mothers who teach their daughters, teach the opposite because they have not learned...
As John Minor, an esteemed law professor, sat in his office at the University of Virginia, he penned a letter to his sister in Galveston, Texas explaining the "unparalleled losses" suffered by Virginia. Previous measures of wealth such as "stocks and servants" lost all value; only land held its value. Minor estimated the total losses in Virginia at "little short of 400 million" noting that enrollment...