From: Kristi De Simone
Date: 5/1/00
Time: 11:38:38 PM
Remote Name: 155.247.244.89
Question: How did the fight for abolishment of slavery lead to the women's rights movement?
supporters launched the modern movement for gender equality. Answer: Page 338 Chapter 11 The pursuit of Perfection Women were active participants the abolishment process. Between 1835 and 1838, the American Anti- Slavery Society bombarded Congress with petitions, mostly calling for abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Over half of the thousands antislavery petitions sent to Washington had women's signatures on them. Some antislavery women even stepped into the political sphere. Women became public speakers and demanding an equal role in leadership of antislavery societies. The battle to participate equally in the antislavery crusade made a number of women abolitionists acutely aware of male dominance and oppression. For the women the same principles that justified the liberation of slaves also applied to the emancipation of women from all restrictions on their rights as citizens. William Lloyd Garrison a white abolitionist, stepped to the women's side when there were objections to women speaking in public to mixed audiences of men and women, this resulted in a link to blacks' and women's' struggle for equality. Wounded by men's reluctance to extend the cause of emancipation to include women, women activist Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized a new and independent movement for women's rights. The high point of their campaign was the famous convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. The Declaration of Sentiments issued by the first national gathering of feminists charged that "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." It went on to demand that all women be given the right to vote and that married women be freed from unjust laws giving husbands control of their property, persons, and children. Rejecting the cult of domesticity with its doctrine of separate spheres, these women and their male supporters launched the modern movement for gender equality.