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Page 10
But while every new movement in ideas always carries with it other
radical ideas, the practical difficulties of mental, social and legal
adjustment always prevent the full and harmonious development of all
that is involved in any new point of view. In the American colonies the
need for new adjustments in religion, government and practical living
made it inevitable that any very important change in woman's position
should linger. In fact, the student of colonial records finds many
traces of ultra conservatism in the treatment of women, though the
forces had been liberated which must inevitably open the way for her
through the New World of America into a new world of the spirit.
And before the quickening influence of the new life had time to become
commonplace, the struggle with England began. The Revolutionary period
was a time of intense political education for every one. War and
sacrifice glorified the new ideas; and even the children and women could
not escape their influence. Why then did not the American Revolution
pass on to full freedom and opportunity for women? For the same reason
that it did not forever abolish slavery in America. The vested interests
involved were so many, and the changes so momentous and difficult, that
only the most imperative needs could receive attention.
But this does not mean that the interest in a larger life for women was
not active or that women were making no advance in self-direction. There
is evidence that women like Abigail Adams realized the abstract
injustice of their position, and the fact that as early as 1794, Mary
Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" was republished in
Philadelphia shows that her ideas must have had some currency in
America.
After the Revolution, the intimate, stimulating influence of Europe,
which the earlier colonists had enjoyed, was for a time almost entirely
lost. The new States became extremely provincial; and minds untouched by
the larger world always tend to conservatism. Noah Webster, in "A
Letter to Young Ladies," published in Boston, in 1790, declared that
they "must be content to be women; to be mild, social and sentimental."
Three years later the "Letters to a Young Lady," by the Reverend John
Bennett, were republished in Philadelphia, after going through several
London editions. He placed the qualities to be cultivated in this order:
"A genteel person, a simple nature, sensibility, cheerfulness, delicacy,
softness, affability, good manners, regular habits, skill in fancy work,
and a fund of hidden genteel learning." Through the first half of the
nineteenth century these ideals struggled along parallel with the new
ideas that were everywhere springing up from the colonial forest
experiences of the last two generations.
As conservers of morals and as leaders in higher ideals of life, the
advanced women of America came early face to face with two outgrown
abuses. One of these was human slavery and the other was intemperance.
In attacking these abuses, women had to break with all the traditions
that defined their position.
The wealthy and intelligent Englishwoman, Frances Wright, who came to
this country in 1818 to attack slavery, found herself doubly opposed
because she was a woman speaking in public. Had not St. Paul declared:
"It is a shame for women to speak in the church"? Lucretia Mott, born in
the Society of Friends in Nantucket, had escaped the full force of this
injunction, but even she found, when she attacked slavery in public,
that she had invaded a world sacred to men, and she was sternly warned
back. Miss Susan B. Anthony also began her public life as a teacher and
a temperance reformer. It was only when she found herself helpless, in
presence of the prejudices against her sex, that she turned her
attention to freeing women from all purely sex limitation in public
life.
When the Civil War broke out, the women were ready to do their part. It
is quite possible that the names of Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix may be
remembered when Grant and Sherman are forgotten. With the establishing
of new human values the historian of the future may consider the saving
of life and the preventing of misery as more worthy of lasting record
than even military genius. These women and their millions of helpers
had not the resources of organized government at their disposal; but,
instead, they had oftentimes to work against the jealousy of those in
authority. At the close of the war, the Sanitary Commission comprised
seven thousand aid societies scattered over the country, and it had
raised over fifteen millions of dollars. Those women who remained at
home, in the absence of fathers and sons for four years, faced all the
problems of practical life. Who can estimate the value of training in
co�perative work and organization which the Civil War gave to the
American women?
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