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𝐵𝑜𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓃, 𝑀𝒶𝓈𝓈𝒶𝒸𝒽𝓊𝓈𝑒𝓉𝓉𝓈

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𝐵𝑜𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓃, 𝑀𝒶𝓈𝓈𝒶𝒸𝒽𝓊𝓈𝑒𝓉𝓉𝓈

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where Dorothea worked

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𝒸𝓇𝒶𝓂𝓅𝑒𝒹 𝓅𝓇𝒾𝓈𝑜𝓃 𝒸𝑒𝓁𝓁

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𝒸𝓇𝒶𝓂𝓅𝑒𝒹 𝓅𝓇𝒾𝓈𝑜𝓃 𝒸𝑒𝓁𝓁

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"𝓉𝓇𝒶𝓃𝓆𝓊𝒾𝓁𝒾𝓏𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝒾𝓇 𝓊𝓈𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓉𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓎 𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 19𝓉𝒽 𝒸𝑒𝓃𝓉𝓊𝓇𝓎"

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"𝓉𝓇𝒶𝓃𝓆𝓊𝒾𝓁𝒾𝓏𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝒾𝓇 𝓊𝓈𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓉𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓎 𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 19𝓉𝒽 𝒸𝑒𝓃𝓉𝓊𝓇𝓎"

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video about Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐚 𝐅𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬, 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐘𝐨𝐫𝐤

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𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐚 𝐅𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬, 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐘𝐨𝐫𝐤

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where Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton hosted a national women's convention

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𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 "𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧" 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐬

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𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 "𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧" 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐬

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𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐚 𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧

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𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐚 𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧

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the organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention

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𝐰𝐞𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝟐 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤

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𝐰𝐞𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝟐 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤

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Women's Rights Movement Begins

The campaign for women's suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and '30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had.

At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States- temperance leagues, religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti- slavery organizations-and in many of these, women played a prominent role.

Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the "Cult of True Womanhood": that is, the idea that the only "true" woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.

Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen of the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists-mostly women, but some men-gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women's rights. They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.

Most of the delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, "that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.

Civil Rights and Women's Rights During the Civil War

During the 1850s, the women's rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution's protection to all citizens-and defines "citizens" as "male"; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees Black men the right to vote.

Some women's suffrage advocates believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women's votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African Americans.

In 1869, a new group called the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Others argued that it was unfair to endanger Black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.

Gallery: The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the organization's first president.

By then, the suffragists' approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were "created equal," the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men.

They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral "maternal commonwealth."

This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would "ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained."

Did you know? In 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed an amendment to the Constitution that prohibited all discrimination on the basis of sex. The so-called Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified.

Winning the Vote at Last

Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.

Still, southern and eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a "Winning Plan" to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with a special focus on those recalcitrant regions.

Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Woman's Party founded by Alice Paul focused on more radical, militant tactics-hunger strikes and White House pickets, for instance-aimed at winning dramatic publicity for their cause.

World War I slowed the suffragists' campaign but helped them advance their argument nonetheless: Women's work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men.

Finally, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. And on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.

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Women's Suffrage - The U.S. Movement, Leaders & 19th Amendment

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The women's suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

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𝓌𝑒𝒷𝓈𝒾𝓉𝑒 2 𝓁𝒾𝓃𝓀

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𝓌𝑒𝒷𝓈𝒾𝓉𝑒 2 𝓁𝒾𝓃𝓀

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Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was an author, teacher and reformer. Her efforts on behalf of the mentally ill and prisoners helped create dozens of new institutions across the United States and in Europe and changed people's perceptions of these populations. Charged during the American Civil War with the administration of military hospitals, Dix also established a reputation as an advocate for the work of female nurses. Her own troubled family background and impoverished youth served as a galvanizing force throughout her career, although she remained silent on her own biographical details for most of her long, productive life.

Dorothea Dix's Early Life

Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, in 1802. Her father Joseph was an itinerant Methodist preacher who was frequently away from home, and her mother suffered from debilitating bouts of depression. The oldest of three children, Dorothea ran her household and cared for her family members from a very young age. Joseph Dix, though a strict and volatile man prone to alcoholism and depression, taught his daughter to read and write, fostering Dorothea's lifelong love of books and learning. Still, Dorothea's early years were difficult, unpredictable and lonely.

Did you know? Louisa May Alcott was a nurse under Dorothea Dix during the Civil War. Alcott recalled that Dix was respected but not particularly well liked by her nurses, who tended to "steer clear" of her. Alcott wrote of her experiences in "Hospital Sketches," years before achieving fame with the classic "Little Women."

At 12 Dorothea moved to Boston, where her wealthy grandmother took her in and encouraged her interest in education. Dix would eventually establish a series of schools in Boston and Worcester, designing her own curriculum and administering classrooms as a teenager and young woman. In the 1820s Dix's poor health made her teaching increasingly sporadic, forcing her to take frequent breaks from her career. She began to write, and her books-filled with the simple dictums and morals that were thought to edify young minds-sold briskly. By 1836, persistent health problems caused Dix to close her latest school for good.

Dorathea Dix: The Asylum Movement

That same year Dix traveled in England with friends, returning home months later with an interest in new approaches to the treatment of the insane. She took a job teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison, where conditions were so abysmal and the treatment of prisoners so inhumane that she began agitating at once for their improvement.

Prisons at the time were unregulated and unhygienic, with violent criminals housed side by side with the mentally ill. Inmates were often subject to the whims and brutalities of their jailers. Dix visited every public and private facility she could access, documenting the conditions she found with unflinching honesty. She then presented her findings to the legislature of Massachusetts, demanding that officials take action toward reform. Her reports-filled with dramatic accounts of prisoners flogged, starved, chained, physically and sexually abused by their keepers, and left naked and without heat or sanitation-shocked her audience and galvanized a movement to improve conditions for the imprisoned and insane.

As a result of Dix's efforts, funds were set aside for the expansion of the state mental hospital in Worcester. Dix went on to accomplish similar goals in Rhode Island and New York, eventually crossing the country and expanding her work into Europe and beyond.

Dorothea Dix:The Civil War

Dix volunteered her services one week after the Civil War (1861-1865) began. Shortly after her arrival in Washington in April 1861, she was appointed to organize and outfit the Union Army hospitals and to oversee the vast nursing staff that the war would require. As superintendent of women nurses, she was the first woman to serve in such a high capacity in a federally appointed role.

With supplies pouring in from voluntary societies across the north, Dix's administrative skills were sorely needed to manage the flow of bandages and clothing as the war wore on. Still, Dix often clashed with army officials and was widely feared and disliked by her volunteer female nurses. After months of hard work and exhaustion, she was eventually ousted from her position, stripped of authority by the fall of 1863 and sent home.

Dorothea Dix's Later Life

After the war, Dix returned to her work as a social reformer. She traveled extensively in Europe, evidently disenchanted with her experience during the war, and continued to write and offer guidance to what was now a widespread movement to reform the treatment of the mentally ill. Old hospitals were redesigned and rededicated according to her ideals, and new hospitals were founded in accordance with the principles she espoused. After a long life as an author, advocate and agitator, Dorothea Dix died in 1887 at the age of 85 in a New Jersey hospital that had been established in her honor. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was an author, teacher and reformer. Her efforts on behalf of the mentally ill and prisoners helped create dozens of new institutions across the United States and in Europe and changed people's perceptions of these populations.

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𝓌𝑒𝒷𝓈𝒾𝓉𝑒 𝓁𝒾𝓃𝓀

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𝓌𝑒𝒷𝓈𝒾𝓉𝑒 𝓁𝒾𝓃𝓀

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Eastern State Penitentiary

Eastern State Penitentiary was designed to intimidate prisoners by its appearance. Today a historical society runs tours of the prison, as well as a haunted house around Halloween.

The pretty woman who stood before the all-male audience seemed unlikely to provoke controversy. Tiny and timid, she rose to the platform of the Massachusetts Legislature to speak. Those who had underestimated the determination and dedication of Dorothea Dix, however, were brought to attention when they heard her say that the sick and insane were "confined in this Commonwealth in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, beaten with rods, lashed into obedience." Thus, her crusade for humane hospitals for the insane, which she began in 1841, was reaching a climax. After touring prisons, workhouses, almshouses, and private homes to gather evidence of appalling abuses, she made her case for state-supported care. Ultimately, she not only helped establish five hospitals in America, but also went to Europe where she successfully pleaded for human rights to Queen Victoria and the Pope.

Dorothea Dix, a tireless crusader for the treatment of the mentally ill, was made the Superintendent of Nurses for the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, she retired to an apartment in the first hospital that she had founded, in Trenton, New Jersey.

The year 1841 also marked the beginning of the superintendence of Dr. John Galt at Eastern Lunatic Asylum, in Williamsburg, Virginia, the first publicly supported psychiatric hospital in America. Warehousing of the sick was primary; their care was not. Dr. Galt had many revolutionary ideas about treating the insane, based on his conviction that they had dignity. Among his enlightened approaches were the use of drugs, the introduction of "talk therapy" and advocating outplacement rather than lifelong stays.

In addition to the problems in asylums, prisons were filled to overflowing with everyone who gave offense to society from committing murder to spitting on the street. Men, women, children were thrown together in the most atrocious conditions. Something needed to be done - but what?

Until the 19th century, juveniles offenders were passed into the custody of their parents. During the time of prison and asylum reform, juvenile detention centers like the House of Refuge in New York were built to reform children of delinquent behavior.

After the War of 1812, reformers from Boston and New York began a crusade to remove children from jails into juvenile detention centers. But the larger controversy continued over the purpose of prison - was it for punishment or penitence? In 1821, a disaster occurred in Auburn Prison that shocked even the governor into pardoning hardened criminals. After being locked down in solitary, many of the eighty men committed suicide or had mental breakdowns. Auburn reverted to a strict disciplinary approach. The champion of discipline and first national figure in prison reform was Louis Dwight. founder of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, he spread the Auburn system throughout America's jails and added salvation and Sabbath School to further penitence.

After several bad starts, America finally enjoyed about a decade of real reform. Idealism, plus hope in the perfectibility of institutions, spurred a new generation of leaders including Francis Lieber, Samuel Gridley Howe and the peerless Dix. Their goals were prison libraries, basic literacy (for Bible reading), reduction of whipping and beating, commutation of sentences, and separation of women, children and the sick.

By 1835, America was considered to have two of the "best" prisons in the world in Pennsylvania. Astonishingly, reformers from Europe looked to the new nation as a model for building, utilizing and improving their own systems. Advocates for prisoners believed that deviants could change and that a prison stay could have a positive effect. It was a revolutionary idea in the beginning of the 19th century that society rather than individuals had the responsibility for criminal activity and had the duty to treat neglected children and rehabilitate alcoholics.

In reality it became clear that, despite intervention by outsiders, prisoners were often no better off, and often worse off, for their incarceration. Yet, in keeping with the optimistic spirit of the era, these early reformers had only begun a crusade to alleviate human suffering that continues today.

Medicating the mentally ill is nothing new - Benjamin Hornor Coates, M.D. was working wonders with narcotics way back in 1752.
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Listen up to this radio broadcast about the story of Sing Sing, one of America's most notorious prisons which actually began during the time of reform.
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Prison and Asylum Reform [ushistory.org]

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Eastern State Penitentiary Eastern State Penitentiary was designed to intimidate prisoners by its appearance. Today a historical society runs tours of the prison, as well as a haunted house around Halloween. The pretty woman who stood before the all-male audience seemed unlikely to provoke controversy.

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𝐰𝐞𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤

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𝐰𝐞𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤

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video about Dorothea Dix's life

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When Dorothea Dix, a Boston School Teacher, agreed to teach a Sunday school class at a local jail, she was horrified by what she saw. The conditions were terrible. The inmates lived in cramped, dark cells, the food supply was low, children were jailed with adults, and the mentally ill were beaten and whipped. People who had done little, such as not pay their debts, were kept next to others such as murderers.
This caused Dorothea to file a dramatic report about what she saw to the state legislature. The lawmakers then decided to create new mental hospitals for the mentally ill, outlaw cruel punishments, create a special justice system for children, and stop the imprisonment of debtors.

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Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were outraged by how few political or legal rights women had at the time. They decided to host a national women's convention in Seneca Falls, New York. They wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which proposed equality for women at school, church, work, and when voting. This convention, in 1848, marked the start of an organized women's rights movement in the U.S. Progress was slowly but surely made.
Some states passed laws that allowed women to keep property and wages, or get divorced easier. However, women weren't allowed to vote until 1920, when the 19th Amendment was passed.

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➶➶➶ 𝒫𝓇𝒾𝓈𝑜𝓃 𝑅𝑒𝒻𝑜𝓇𝓂 + 𝒞𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑀𝑒𝓃𝓉𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓎 𝐼𝓁𝓁➷➷➷

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➶➶➶ 𝒫𝓇𝒾𝓈𝑜𝓃 𝑅𝑒𝒻𝑜𝓇𝓂 + 𝒞𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑀𝑒𝓃𝓉𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓎 𝐼𝓁𝓁➷➷➷

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Dorothea Dix

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women protest for their right to vote