The Antebellum Period And The Women's Rights Movement

558 Words3 Pages

The Antebellum period is characterized by many different reform movements. The most successful of these movements were temperance and abolition, but the women’s rights movement was also an important Antebellum movement. These women were instrumental in moral education and temperance. They fought for education and prison reform. They challenged separate spheres and cultural norms. Antebellum women were an important part of the struggle for equality. In the early nineteenth century, many people believed in separate spheres for men and women. The public sphere was for men, and the domestic sphere was for women. Women began challenging the separate spheres by getting involved in the church and in public reform movements. Women like Dorothea Dix, Mary Walker Ostram, and Catherine Beecher were critical in the temperance, prison reform, and education reform movements. After these movements involved women in the public sphere, they began to fight for the rights of slaves. The abolitionist movement gave women more power. Women such as Maria W. Stewart gained political experience by speaking to audiences of men and women, which was considered a social taboo. This also brought attention to women and their …show more content…

Women were fighting for more protection for married women, not for the abolishment of marriage. This allowed the women’s rights activists to gain the support of affluent men and fathers and prompted the enactment of married women’s property laws in Mississippi, Main, and Massachusetts between 1839 and 1845. In 1848, New York gave women full legal control over property their brought to the marriage. Also in 1848, a group of 70 female and 30 male women’s rights activists met for a convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The convention issued the Declaration of Sentiments to persuade Americans that women and men were