American Women Advance in the 19th Century: The 1800s as an Era of Growth for Women’s Rights in the United States

During the 1800s, the legal and social status of women in the United States improved significantly. Historians can document this development in a number of specific instances.

Women in the U.S. began voting in 1869. The first state to enact women’s suffrage was Wyoming, quickly followed by other states. By the end of the century, the majority of women in the country had a legislative guarantee for their right to vote.

Likewise, women began serving on juries during the 1800s. They served on an equal basis with men. In this development, too, Wyoming was the first state to promote the practice of having men and women serve equally on juries. After Wyoming began this custom in 1870, several other states followed suit.

By 1864, it was established legal precedent for women to testify in court: a woman’s statement was admitted into evidence on the same basis as a man’s statement. It is difficult to determine exactly when the practice began, but in 1864, Senator James Harlan, a lawyer himself, cited the practice in the Congressional Globe as well-established. (The Globe is the predecessor to the Congressional Record).

Women were elected to public office during the 1800s. Susanna Salter was elected mayor of Argonia, Kansas, in 1887. Julia Addington was elected as a county superintendent of schools in Iowa in 1869. Annie White Baxter was elected as a county clerk in Missouri in 1890. In 1896, Martha Hughes Cannon was elected a state senator in Utah.

Many more examples can be named: In 1894, Colorado elected three women to its legislature — Clara Cressingham, Carrie Holly, and Francis Klock.

Lauren Eisenhuth was elected in 1892 to be the state superintendent of public instruction in North Dakota. In 1898, Permeal French was elected to be the superintendent of public instruction in Idaho.

This trend — women becoming empowered in electoral politics and empowered in the legal justice system — began in the western states, perhaps because men and women often worked as a team, creating homesteads out of undeveloped land. This trend also took root where most voters identified with the Republican Party: the Republicans, having succeeded in their primary goal of abolishing slavery, turned to women’s rights as their next major task.

By contrast, the Democratic Party, having lost the U.S. Civil War, still felt the sting of defeat, and was not energized to pursue any major political initiatives.

The list of women elected to public office in the 1800s is much longer than can be presented here.

By 1888, the mayor and all the members of the city council in Oskaloosa, Kansas, were women. In 1887, all the members of the city council in Syracuse, Kansas, were women.

Women made great advances in higher education during the nineteenth century. In 1836, women began studying at Wesleyan College; in 1837 at Oberlin College. In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from medical school at Geneva Medical College in New York, earning her M.D.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler earned her M.D. in Boston in 1864.

In 1858, Sarah Jane Woodson Early became a professor at Wilberforce College.

By 1899, it was common for women to be enrolled at universities and colleges across America.

Armed with professional degrees, women made their way into various careers. In 1869, Arabella Mansfield became the first woman admitted to the bar and granted a law license in the United States. By 1879, women who were lawyers were arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1870, Ada Kepley became the first woman to be a judge in the United States.

By the end of the century, women were regularly graduating from law school and practicing as attorneys across the United States.

The long list of other developments during the 1800s in the United States includes: Women were recognized as having full legal agency to negotiate, conclude, and sign contracts; to own and inherit property; and to keep or invest their earnings.

Although it was not until 1916 that Jeanette Rankin was elected as the first woman to serve in the United States Congress, her election was the result of the advancements made during the preceding century.

The nineteenth amendment, ratified in August 1920, guaranteed women’s right to vote, but it was by that point in time a merely symbolic act. It wasn’t needed because women had already been voting for half a century.

A Painful Struggle: America Works to Defeat Slavery

The development of the United States is one of continuously expanding freedom. From times before the nation’s beginning in 1776, the America made progress along various lines in the direction of increasing liberty.

The gravest and greatest of these steps was, of course, the elimination of slavery. The majority of Americans resisted slavery: the first slaves were imported into Brazil and other South American regions in 1510, but North America was able to hold out against slavery for more than another century.

Prior to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation, the majority of the residents in the majority of the thirteen colonies opposed slavery. Led by Roger Wiliams, Rhode Island made slavery illegal in 1652. Samuel Sewall published abolitionist writings in Massachusetts as early as 1700.

In all thirteen colonies, energetic abolitionist movements were at work prior to 1776.

Once the nation was established as independent from Britain, is was clear that the “Founders wanted to abolish slavery,” as Ben Shapiro writes:

From its founding, the United States attempted to come to grips with slavery and phase it out. The state of Vermont was the first sovereign state to abolish slavery, in 1777.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that King George III “waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither.” Rebellion against England’s king was a step toward ending slavery.

Although slavery vanished from most of the original thirteen states, and from those later added to the union, it stubbornly resisted American efforts to eradicate it from some of the states, particularly those which had integrated it into agricultural economies of tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane.

Continuing the struggle against slavery, the U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, including the famous and controversial “three-fifths clause.” This phrase was introduced as an anti-slavery tactic: It both created a congnitive dissonance by its disconcerting logic, and denied power to a bloc of pro-slavery states. Ben Shapiro explains:

The Constitution of the United States is frequently seen as enshrining slavery, but the so-called three-fifths clause was an attempt to do the opposite. The whole question of popular apportionment rested on whether to count slaves as full people for purposes of representation. To do so would have put the slaveholding south at a significant advantage: they would have counted slaves in their population, not allowed them to vote, then used their increased representation in order to re-enshrine slavery. As James Madison noted, the delegates from South Carolina fought for blacks to be counted as whole people so as to include them “in the rule of representation, equally with the Whites.” The three-fifths compromise was designed to curb the South’s expansionist tendencies with regard to slavery by preventing them from stacking the electoral deck. The Constitution also allowed slave importation to continue until 1808 — but Congress moved in 1807 to end it there.

By 1807, then, the U.S. was ahead of schedule in its efforts to end slavery. A small but entrenched group of leaders continued to support slavery.

The final end of slavery was possible because the nation’s economy was based, not on slavery, but on free enterprise. Not only was the industrial part of the country not dependent on slavery, but rather it actively opposed slavery.

Yet abolitionism was not confined to any one part of the United States. Before and during the war, significant abolitionist movements existed in all states. The South was not a united monolithic pro-slavery bloc.

For at least these two reasons, then, a massive amount of energy was poured into the war to end slavery: because the larger part of the economy did not rely on slavery, and because the larger part of society was opposed to slavery:

The United States fought a great and massive Civil War to free the slaves, in which over 620,000 Americans died, nearly half the total number of Americans to die in all wars combined. The economy of the United States was not built on slavery — in fact, the South’s economic power was dismal compared to that of the north, which is why the north was able to overcome the south during the Civil War.

Between 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and 1865, when the Civil War ended, America achieved its goal of ending slavery.

In South America, Brazil kept slavery long after the United States had ended it. Slavery was not abolished Brazil until 1888. Likewise, Cuba maintained slavery until 1886.

The movement to abolish slavery in the United States was part of a larger trend to expand freedom for all people. As soon as the Civil War was over, and slavery was gone, this movement went on to obtain another great goal. The abolitionist movement gave birth to the suffrage movement, with the goal of women voting. The same political party, the part of Lincoln, energized both movements. By 1869 — not 1920 as sometimes reported — women in the United States began voting regularly.

Throughout American history, the nation has worked to increase liberty, expanding suffrage to larger and larger segments of society, creating more economic opportunities, and allowing more and varied forms of expression.

The common thread which connects the points of U.S. history from the 1600s to the present is the persistent drive to expand freedom.

Some People Are Citizens, Others Are Residents: What’s the Difference?

Usually people are citizens of the country in which they live, but not always. A person can live in one country, and yet be a citizen of a different country.

A person could be an American citizen, but never have been in the United States at any point in her or his entire life. Another person might live in the U.S. for 20, 30, or 40 years, and yet not be a citizen.

A citizen has rights, privileges, duties, and obligations. Each of those words has specific meaning: Rights belong to citizens, and citizens can legally claim their rights; rights cannot be legally denied to citizens. Privileges are given to citizens, but can be taken away legally. A duty is something that you should do, but which nobody will force you to do. An obligation is some that you’re required to do, and somebody will force you to do it.

This can be made clear with examples: Freedom of the press is a right; people can print whatever they want on a piece of paper. To drive 70 miles per hour is a privilege; the government could change the speed limit to 60 miles per hour and people would have no recourse. To vote is a duty; citizens should do it, but they are not forced to do it. To pay taxes is an obligation; if people try to avoid doing it, they will be forced to do it.

Non-citizen residents do not have as many rights and privileges as citizens. Victor Davis Hansen writes:

A resident of America should be easily distinguished from a citizen by the etymologies of the respective two nouns. “Resident” derives from the Latin residere, “to sit down or settle.” It denotes the concrete fact of living in a particular place. In contrast, “citizen” entails a quality, a privilege of enjoying particular rights predicated on responsibilities — and not necessarily on location at any given time.

If a citizen of the United States happens to be in Norway on the day of a Norwegian election, the U.S. citizen does not get to vote in Norway, even though he’s there in that country, because he’s not a citizen of Norway.

Likewise, if a citizen of Norway happens to be in the United States on the day of a U.S. election, the Norwegian does not get to vote in the U.S., even though he’s right there on election day, because he’s not a citizen of the U.S.

Citizenship is not about a person’s race or religion; it’s not about a person’s gender or age. It’s about a piece of paper; it’s about the government under which you are. There are approximately 195 countries in the world. Every human being is a citizen of one of them.

Are there exceptions? Yes. A small number of people have dual citizenship, or multiple citizenships. But the governments involved place pressure on them to select one citizenship to the exclusion of others, once they reach the age of adulthood, sometime between age 18 and age 25, depending on the country. There is also a very small number of people who have no citizenship; they are usually considered criminals. Victor Davis Hanson explains:

An American resident can be a citizen or subject of any foreign nation who just happens to be living within the boundaries of the United States. US citizens, however, are entitled to constitutional protections wherever they go — to the extent possible given the constraints of their hosts. Most specifically, citizenship ensures the right to a US passport and, with it, leave and return to America whenever one wishes.

Having a citizenship doesn’t determine who you are, what you believe, or which political opinions you have. Simply because a person is a citizen of Germany or Switzerland, or of Poland or Czechia, doesn’t mean that she or he will love or hate certain people, or vote a certain way. It merely means that they are registered with a certain government.

The American Identity: A Nation Built on the Idea of Freedom

In the first few decades of the twenty-first century, the word ‘identity’ has gained a new, larger, and different role in society and in politics. This trend started already at the end of the twentieth century. Therefore it might be, in the context of American History, well and fitting to ask about “the nation’s enduring identity” in the words of Ben Shapiro.

What is it that lies at the core of the identity of the United States? Part of the answer lies in the fact that it is founded on ideas. Most, or even all, previous nation-states were founded on the concept of a dynasty: that the right to rule was the property of a family — one particular family, the royal family — and that like other property, could be handed down through inheritance. The United States is different: It is a nation based on ideas.

In other words, there is a choice in history: either a nation-state is founded on the exclusive hereditary rights of a dynastic family to rule, or it is founded on concepts.

In the case of the United States, the ideas on which the nation is founded include: liberty, freedom, equality, and the rule of law.

Liberty and freedom are slightly different, but those minutiae can be left to philosophers instead of historians. The “rule of law” is worth understanding: This concept speaks about the uniform, neutral, and equal application of laws to any citizen in a nation. The speed limit on a local road, e.g., is the same, even if the driver happens to be a congressman or a senator, even if the driver happens to be wealthy or influential. Anyone caught driving faster than the speed limit is liable to get a ticket and liable to have to pay the fine.

The United States is founded on these ideas, but it has not always implemented them perfectly. American history is a series of steps toward ever-increasing levels of freedom; that path has not always been smooth or direct.

From its earliest beginnings, the United States worked to eliminate slavery. When, e.g., Samuel Sewall published an abolitionist book in 1700, he was already preceded by a 1652 law, passed by the Rhode Island legislature, which outlawed slavery there. The law, encouraged by Roger Williams, was unevenly enforced, but nonetheless manifests the will of the people of Rhode Island.

This same Roger Williams found his motives for opposing slavery to be united with his motives for nudging America away from British rule, revealing the American spirit to be, from its very beginnings, an abolitionist spirit. A majority of the residents of the thirteen colonies opposed slavery.

Despite a strong abolitionist sentiment, it took considerable time to finally abolish slavery. It was not until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War — i.e., until some point in time between 1863 and 1865 — that slavery in the United States was finally ended.

Which leaves us with a painful and perplexing question: Why, then, did slavery persist in other nations around the world? Why did slavery persist in Cuba until 1886 and in Brazil until 1888? In Madagascar until 1896 and in Egypt until 1904? In Thailand until 1905 and in China until 1909?

The answer, in part, lies in the foundation of the United States on the idea of freedom. Other nations were founded one one group — one family — claiming the right to exercise power over everyone else in the nation.

People in various nations around the world looked at the United States and hoped to copy the American pattern — they hoped to gain the same freedoms and rights for themselves in their various nations. As historian Ben Shapiro writes:

European colonists arrived in America in order to establish a country founded on principles of liberty and religious toleration. America is guilty of many sins in its past — but the principles enshrined in the Constitution are eternal and good. The Constitution’s central natural law principles laid forth the notions of individual liberty and rights to one’s own labor — and over time, those rights would be perfected in the United States, not through centralized government, but through good people struggling to bring about change through blood and sacrifice and persuasion.

In the United States, not only was slavery ended, but the right to own property and the right to vote was extended to citizens of all races; in the world today, there are other nations which allow only some people to vote, and not others. In the United States, a person of any race can be a citizen; in other nations, only people of certain races can be citizens.

In the U.S., women as well as men can vote; in other nations in the world today, women are deprived of full suffrage and not allowed to vote as men vote.

In the U.S., a citizen’s vote is counted as equal to the vote of any other citizen, regardless of wealth. In other nations today, only the wealthy are allowed to vote.

In the words of Ben Shapiro, there is a collection of ideas which constitute “the system upon which our freedoms and prosperity is based.” In addition to the ideas mentioned above, there are ideas like popular sovereignty — the idea that the legitimacy of the government is found in the consent of the governed; a government is valid only if those who are governed by it give their consent to be so governed.

Another foundational principle in the United States is the idea of majority rule. Because the U.S. allows citizens to vote equally, regardless of gender, race, religion, or wealth, it is the majority of ordinary people who can decide major questions of government.

Around the world, the U.S. has served as an example of a nation-state governed by freely-elected representatives. Political revolutionaries and political reformers in other countries have studied the U.S. carefully, and worked to replicate its success. “The truth is, America, while certainly not perfect, has long been a beacon of hope,” as Ben Shapiro notes. “America’s founding principles and documents have allowed it to become a model of freedom and democracy for the world.”

Even those nations which are harshly critical of the United States, even those which firmly oppose the United States, still copy the principles which were first articulated and put into action during the American Revolution of 1776.

How Jefferson Davis Escaped the Death Penalty: Why the Leader of the Confederacy was Never Executed

After the U.S. Civil War ended, the President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, was considered to be a wanted criminal, guilty of treason, as historian Ronald Shafter writes:

The Confederate leader’s prospects were grim in April 1865 after the South surrendered and President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The new president, Johnson, ordered a $100,000 reward — equal to about $1.8 million now — for the capture of Davis, who was fleeing into the South.

After a manhunt by the Union Army, he was captured in Georgia in May 1865. It was widely assumed that he would be convicted of treason and sentenced to death.

Jefferson Davis sat in jail for nearly two years before he was allowed to post bail and await his eventual trial.

President Andrew Johnson, who’d taken office upon the death of Lincoln, began his administration by at first demanding stern justice for the leaders of the Confederacy. As time went on, however, President Johnson began to feel more sympathy for the Confederate officials, who were after all part of the same Democratic Party as Johnson himself.

Eventually, Johnson went so far as to bring

Southern white supremacists back into the government while resisting new rights for black citizens. After Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the House impeached Johnson, and his trial in the Senate was scheduled for March 1868 — the same month as Davis’s trial.

The trial of President Johnson was protracted, and absorbed so much political energy and public attention, that the trial of Jefferson Davis was delayed again and again. Johnson was eventually acquitted and allowed to remain as president.

Even the Republicans, who’d unswervingly opposed slavery, began to point out that it was unjust to deny a speedy trial. In December 1868, President Johnson issued a pardon to his fellow Democrat Jefferson Davis. Johnson left office to spend a few years away from politics, but was eventually elected to the U.S. Senate.

Jefferson Davis worked in several different businesses after being pardoned by Johnson, eventually becoming the president of an insurance company. He outlived Johnson and “died in 1889 at age 81, unrepentant.” He never expressed any regret for defending slavery, for the rebellion, or for the war.

As the leader of the rebellion, Davis was prevented from engaging in the political process or running for elected office, but his connection to various leaders in the Democratic Party continued until his death. Nearly a century later, it would be a Democratic president who paid the final honor to Jefferson Davis:

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter went one up on Johnson, signing a bill restoring Davis’s full U.S. citizenship rights to bring a close to “the long process of reconciliation” after the Civil War.

It was Andrew Johnson who inadvertently ended up saving Davis’s life: had Johnson’s impeachment trial not exhausted the nation, Davis would have gotten a speedy trial, and most probably executed quickly thereafter.

Bringing Music to America: Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson was born in 1897 in Philadelphia, and even as a child, her musical talent was obvious. She was an excellent vocalist, and sang in the choir at the Union Baptist Church.

As a young adult, she travelled to Europe to get classical voice training and thereby put the finishing touches on her musical education. She was able to work with significant composers, performers, and conductors. It was also easier in Europe for her, as a Black woman, to have access to high-level specialists in the field of vocal music.

Anderson was involved with music at an advanced degree, as historian Kira Thurman writes:

Anderson spent much of the 1930s living in German-speaking Europe, where she studied and performed the music of German composers such as Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf.

In 1957, President Eisenhower invited her to sing at his second inauguration. It was the first time an African American had performed at a presidential inauguration. Eisenhower invited Marian Anderson to sing at the White House on several different occasions.

In that same year, Eisenhower appointed her to be goodwill ambassador for the United States; in that capacity, she toured a number of countries. Eisenhower then appointed her to be a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

The next year, in 1958 Eisenhower named Marian Anderson to be a full delegate to the United Nations.

Although known as an American artist, Marian Anderson’s career began in Europe, as Kira Thurman notes:

She had actually become an international sensation much earlier: in 1935 at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. There, the conductor Arturo Toscanini told Anderson that she had a voice “heard once every hundred years.”

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan invited Marian Anderson to the White House, where he awarded her the National Medal of Arts.

The Spies and the Evidence: Soviet Operatives and the Venona Project

The Cold War, as commonly understood, lasted approximately from 1946 to 1990. But the history of Soviet espionage networks inside the United States goes back much further. One key element of those networks was the Communist Party in the U.S. (CPUSA).

Far from being a political party, taking positions on issues and nominating candidates for elections, the CPUSA was organized to steal military and diplomatic secrets, to influence American government decision-making, and to keep ready a sabotage organization. The CPUSA was prepared to use violence if the moment came for an armed revolution inside the United States.

The U.S. Army’s Signal Intelligence Service was aware of the CPUSA’s activities. Sophisticated mathematics and technology were coordinated in the Venona Project, which confirmed “the involvement of American Communists with Soviet espionage during World War II,” in the words of Maurice Isserman.

The Venona project intercepted and decrypted messages to Moscow from operatives inside the U.S. These messages, directed to intelligence agencies in the Soviet Union, revealed details “about the involvement of several score (perhaps as many as 300) American Communists as accomplices of Soviet espionage during World War II.”

The Soviet Socialst government had a collection of intelligence agencies, with names like NKVD. The famous KGB wasn’t formed until 1954.

Although the Venona Project began yielding data as early as 1943, it was not made public until many years later. Even within the U.S. government, very few people knew about Venona. It was imperative to keep it secret, so that the Soviet Socialists didn’t know that Americans were able to intercept their communications, as Maurice Isserman writes:

“Venona” was the code name assigned a top-secret National Security Agency operation, whose existence was revealed to historians and the public only in 1995. During World War II, codebreakers from the United States Army’s Signal Intelligence Service (a precursor to the National Security Agency) began decrypting thousands of intercepted telegraphic cables sent from the Soviet Embassy and consulates in the United States to Moscow. Among the first decoded Venona cables was conclusive evidence that Soviet spies had managed to penetrate America’s most closely guarded wartime secret, the Manhattan Project. Later decoded messages helped lead F.B.I. agents to an American involved in atomic espionage.

Among other spies, Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel were discovered by the Venona Project. The Rosenbergs transmitted secret information about nuclear weapons to the Soviet. These transmissions enabled the Soviets to develop their own arsenal of highly destructive weapons. Small and large nations were hesitant to oppose or resist Soviet takeovers of weaker countries. Thus the Rosenbergs were complicit in the deaths of millions of people who died under these Soviet-sponsored dictatorships.

The Venona Project, which lasted in various forms until 1980, revealed not only contemporaneous Soviet espionage, but also earlier spy activity. Cases going back to the 1930s were uncovered:

From small beginnings in the 30’s, Soviet espionage efforts in the United States increased exponentially during the war years. Pro-Soviet Americans, many of them secret members of the Communist Party, working within such sensitive agencies as the State Department, the Treasury Department and the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the C.I.A., provided K.G.B. agents with reams of useful information, ranging from well-informed political comments to purloined classified documents. Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White are among those whose long-suspected involvement in such activities seems to be confirmed by the Venona cables.

Some individuals, confronted with evidence from the Venona Project, quickly “defected” and began working for the Americans, and were able to provide even more information about the Soviet Socialist spy network inside the U.S. One such individual was “Elizabeth Bentley, the notorious ‘spy queen’ who gathered information for transmission to Moscow from dozens of Federal employees.”

Other Soviet agents did not cooperate with the U.S. government after their crimes were discovered. They were dealt with, but in low-profile ways, so as not to attract attention and alert the Soviets to the fact the the Americans were able to intercept their communications:

Some of those compromised by their activities during the war left Government service voluntarily; others departed under suspicion and pressure. A few, most notably Hiss, suffered legal consequences. One of the ironies of the Venona Project was that while it helped the F.B.I. detect spies, it did little to enable their prosecution by the Justice Department; the last thing American intelligence services wanted to see at the height of the cold war was a lengthy courtroom discussion of the means by which they were able to ferret out the opposition's agents.

So even after being discovered by the U.S. intelligence agencies, the “hidden landscape of Soviet espionage in the United States in the 30’s and 40’s” remained largely unknown. Only a few specialists inside the U.S. government knew about the Soviet spies, their activities, and how the Americans eventually discovered and deactivated them.

Most of these spies did not do their work because they needed money, or because the Soviets were blackmailing them, although both of those scenarios did occasionally occur. Most of them did it because they embraced the Soviet ideology. Whether they understood what the Soviets were really doing, or whether they were under the illusion of an idealized version of Soviet Socialism, is difficult to discern. Maurice Isserman writes:

Many of them, of course, understood perfectly well the real purpose of the persistent inquiries from Bentley and the other American go-betweens who came by trolling for information. Looking back at their actions and the consequences of those actions, knowing what we now know about the horrific character of the Soviet Union in the Stalin years, knowing also the ultimate fate of the Communist system and ideology, I find it difficult to make the imaginative leap necessary to understand why they did it.

In any case, the danger from Soviet Socialist espionage, from the 1930s up to the 1980s, was greater than most Americans knew. Happily, the heroism of American cryptographers during those years was also greater than most people knew.