3.4: Moral Reform

Teaching

Many communities, particularly in the North, had had public schools since the Colonial period. As early as 1650, Massachusetts required that all communities with at least 50 families have a school for the children. However, there were no professional qualifications for teachers early on, and most schools were Dame Schools, or schools run by an unmarried woman such as a widow or a young unmarried woman, and these were often operated out of the woman’s home, while schools in larger communities were operated by male teachers in a schoolhouse, paid by public funds. By the early 19th century, public education was viewed as a way to infuse respect and love for American culture and Republican ideals into the next generation, and thanks to the ideals of Republican Womanhood and the Cult of Domesticity, women were viewed as the ideal teachers.

While some women used the ideal of Republican Womanhood to access education for themselves, other women used the ideal of True Womanhood to argue that women’s virtues of piety and purity made them ideal teachers. Catharine Beecher, founder of the Hartford Female Seminary, wrote several essays regarding the fitness of women to be teachers and encouraging women who did not have children to devote themselves to educating the children of others. In 1829, Ms. Beecher presented “Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education” to the trustees of the Hartford Female Academy, in which she argued,

“It is to mothers, and to teachers, that the world is to look for the character that is to be enstamped on each succeeding generation, for it is to them that the great business of education is almost exclusively committed. And will it not appear by examination that neither mothers nor teachers have ever been properly educated for their profession.” (Beecher 1829, 17)

Beecher not only argued that women were the most important in the formation of children’s character, but she also argued that they had not been properly educated to do so. She continued to be a tireless advocate for women’s education and women’s entry into the teaching profession for most of the 19th century, encouraging single women to become teachers as an alternative to marriage rather than remaining a burdensome “old maid” to their family. In the 1830s, Catharine Beecher moved to Ohio, then the frontier, and continued writing essays encouraging single women to move West and become teachers. As California opened up during the 1850s, many single women moved to settle the newly acquired lands in the West, carrying the ideals of True Womanhood with them and teaching them to a new generation.

By the end of the Civil War, teaching had transitioned to a largely female career, resulting in lower pay, lack of housing, and longer hours than for male teachers. The reasons for the disparity in pay were a combination of the idea that women did not have families to support, so they did not need the same pay as men, and that teaching was an extension of motherhood, which received no pay at all. In many respects, teaching was a highly exploitive career for women, but it was embraced by many women who wished to contribute to society and morally influence the next generation.

Prostitution

As discussed in the previous section on Antebellum working class women, prostitution was a booming business during the Industrial Revolution, serving as employment opportunities for lower and working class women in either a full or part time capacity due to the low wages found in factory and domestic work. Sensible Victorians often referred to prostitutes as “Soiled Doves,” women who had once been pure and innocent but had fallen on hard times and been forced to sell themselves for survival. This was the only way women of the middle and upper classes understood prostitutes, and it was with this understanding that they set out to save them from a life of shame.

Middle- and upper-class reformers organized themselves into groups that traveled into the most unsavory parts of town to speak to prostitutes directly. They carried with them the Bible and preprinted tracts with Bible verses, which they handed out to women they saw on the streets. As they did this, two problems they had not expected emerged: most prostitutes were not interested in the reformers’ message, and the reformers, by exposing themselves to the rough areas of town, were sometimes mistaken for prostitutes themselves. Thus, it became too controversial and too frustrating for most reformers to continue to visit the women in the streets, and so they turned to the media to raise awareness and shame the men who frequented the brothels.

in 1834, thousands of upper- and middle-class women formed the New York Female Moral Reform Society and published a newsletter called The Advocate of Moral Reform and Family Guardian. The newsletter was intended to expose not only the horrors of prostitution but the immorality of the men who frequently patronized them. Unlike most reformers, the NYFMRS was unafraid to be seen on the seedy streets of New York, and so they went to the brothels and took down the names of the men who entered, printing them in The Advocate. They believed they had a religious imperative to end immoral behavior in New York City, which had seen a heavy rise in prostitution, alcohol, and gambling during the Industrial Revolution. Using the ideals espoused in the Cult of Domesticity, women reformers such as the NYFMRS claimed the power to influence the morality of their husbands, sons, and other male relatives within their community. They believed that prostitution went hand in hand with alcohol, and many began to advocate for banning the substance altogether.

The Grimké Sisters

The Quakers were among the earliest American groups to speak out against the institution of slavery, and their faith led them to create the Underground Railroad, a system of safe houses leading the enslaved out of bondage, during the mid-18th century. After the American Revolution, Northern states began abolishing slavery, and by 1830, slavery was only legal in the South; the Underground Railroad expanded its role and reach, using sympathetic whites and former slaves to conduct enslaved people to freedom in the North. Among the most vocal and radical of female Quaker activists were Sarah and Angelina Grimké.

Born into a prominent slaveholding family in South Carolina, the Grimké sisters saw slavery and its effects on enslaved people firsthand. When Sarah first learned how to read and write, she began teaching some of her family’s slaves until her father forbid her from continuing. In 1821, Sarah traveled to Philadelphia with her father, where she met a number of Quakers and was so influenced by their antislavery ideas that she decided to stay and join their faith. Her younger sister, Angelina, joined her in Philadelphia in 1829, converted to the Quaker faith, and the sisters became members of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. The women wrote essays and gave speeches decrying the institution of slavery and were viewed as radical because they spoke in front of audiences of men and women. In 1836, Angelina Grimké published An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, a pamphlet in which she encouraged Southern women to use their influence to end slavery in the South. “I know you do not make the laws, but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do; and if you really suppose you can do nothing to overthrow slavery, you are greatly mistaken.” (Grimké 1836, 16) Her pamphlet so enraged Southern men that it was publicly burned and Grimké herself was threatened with death if she ever returned to the South.

Moses

While most abolitionist women circulated petitions and pamphlets or made speeches, others were driven to more dangerous activities, such as operating stations or acting as conductors on the Underground Railroad. Because it was illegal, the Underground Railroad used coded terms like “stationmaster” and “conductor” to refer to those who operated the safehouses and led enslaved people to freedom. A number of anonymous families in the South and along the Northern banks of the Ohio river helped runaway slaves by giving them food, clothing, and shelter as they were running, serving as safe places to stop and rest as they made their way North to freedom. Others, such as Harriet Tubman, actively traveled between the North and the South, leading enslaved people to freedom using the system of safehouses created by abolitionists. Conductors and station operators helped runaways at great risk to themselves and their families, both because they were breaking the law, risking fines and imprisonment, and because if their neighbors discovered their activities, they might even be killed by mob violence. Tubman herself had a bounty of several hundred dollars on her head, yet she made over a dozen trips South and led nearly one hundred enslaved people to freedom in the North, including most of her family.

Thousands of women worked tirelessly for the end of slavery throughout the Antebellum period. Some, like the Grimké sisters, wrote and spoke about the evils of slavery while others, like Harriet Tubman, risked their lives to free enslaved people. Regardless of their activities, abolitionist women used the ideals of True Womanhood to appeal to men, who alone had the power to make slavery illegal.