...Rape During The Antebellum Period The first African slaves arrived in Virginia, North America in 1619. As the plantations of the antebellum south flourished, the African slave trade gained momentum. Between the 16 and 19th centuries, America had an estimated 12 million African slaves (Slavery in the United States, Junius P. Rodriguez ). Enslavement of the African Americans formally commenced in the 1630s and 1640s. By 1740, colonial America had a fully developed slavery system in place, granting slave owners an absolute and tyrannical life-and-death authority over their slaves or 'chattels' and their children (Slavery in the United States, Junius P. Rodriguez ). Stripped of any identity or rights, enslaved black men and women were considered legal non-persons, except in the event of a crime committed. Documents and research on the slave era in the antebellum south are awash with horror stories of the brutal and inhuman treatment of slaves, particularly women (Slavery in the United States, Junius P. Rodriguez). Considered 'properties' by their masters, enslaved black women endured physical and emotional abuse, torture, and sometimes even death. By the 1800s, slavery had percolated down mainly to the antebellum south. While a majority of enslaved men and women were designated as 'field servants' performing duties outside the house, a smaller percentage, particularly women were employed as domestics or 'house servants', mammies and surrogate mothers. In the absence of any security...
Words: 3238 - Pages: 13
...consider the Antebellum Period (1825-1850) as dull, characterless, and constant. However, through social discipline, education, and alcohol temperance, one can adjust to see that the reform movements during the Antebellum Period actually expanded democratic ideals. The Antebellum Period was marked and progressed along a time where no social discipline existed. During...
Words: 894 - Pages: 4
...In the novel, Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America, author Robin C. Sager explores various marriages within the South. This novel analyzes various abusive relationship dynamics, which include verbal, physical, sexual abuse, as well as the effects of alcohol and neglect. This book explores a series of questions that address the nature of marriage in Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin during antebellum America. Sager declares that when domestic roles in a marriage are unclear, tensions within a household increase, which causes an increase in domestic violence. Two decades leading up to the Civil War, marital issues were at an all time high, and many struggled to discover what it truly meant to be married. Sager begins the novel revealing how the...
Words: 484 - Pages: 2
...iconic line from the Declaration of Independence. In it, Thomas Jefferson provides a rallying cry for the American Revolution. But in addition to serving as the mantra of America’s founding fathers, it raised a lot of questions, particularly regarding the exact definition of “men.” As history has shown, in contrast to the notion of a united mankind, “men” in Jeffersonian America referred almost exclusively to white, landowning males. And yet, when one considers the private life of Thomas Jefferson - the life he led with his slave Sally Hemings - his views on race become a much more complicated topic. The issue of interracial sex became a divisive issue during the nineteenth century. By the mid 1800’s, white males who had enjoyed a sort of...
Words: 1275 - Pages: 6
...Cheryl Brooks Revision Eng 434 November 6, 2013 The Bloomer Costume: Who Else Wears the Pants? The Emerging Woman of the Antebellum Period! Introduction For social activist, Amelia Bloomer, bloomers served as a uniform of women’s liberation in America. Whether it was luck or fate, the trend-setting slacks worn for comfort catapulted change in the arena of fashion and politics. Ridiculed by the public, mocked in cartoons, and denied entrance into political meetings, Amelia was admired and encouraged by her liberal-minded husband to be true to herself and to use her talent of writing to change the world. In this paper, I will argue that the Bloomer Costume provided America with a symbolism for comprehending a new kind of woman emerging on the scene during the Antebellum Period. The Bloomer Costume lithograph is one of the few pictures published by Currier and Ives depicting a female exemplifying beauty, strength, confidence, individualism and power, while striving to have a voice in society. At the time that bloomers were worn by Amelia Bloomer, our country began to witness the rise of the woman. Women in America were beginning to speak out for their right to be heard and considered in society. I will offer an interpretation of how the pants worn by Amelia Bloomer helped to fuel the Women’s Movement of the Antebellum Period. The History of the Bloomer Fashion and Dress Reform Bloomers are a man-like trouser worn underneath a shorter skirt. Although Amelia...
Words: 1492 - Pages: 6
...Introduction For all their good intentions, historians’ analysis of antebellum and postbellum women in South Carolina is often riddled with bias against a familial hierarchy that has existed in families since Biblical times. While this domestic and societal order is not fiction, it is only, for purposes in this research, a contextual experience that creates an understanding of women and their approach and reaction to events prior to, during, and after the Civil War, for ethical and moral values assigned to this status are of a different approach altogether. The Civil War’s effect on South Carolinian society was dramatic, as with many other states in the Union. On the homefront, a noticeable difference occurs in the woman’s role within her family structure and in her relationship to the culture in which she lived. An Antebellum South Carolina Antebellum Carolina On the eve of civil war, South...
Words: 1869 - Pages: 8
...The Antebellum era in America was a time of rapid reformation that largely shaped the future framework of the nation we live in today. The reformists in any and all of the movements sought to unify like minds to force change in society that they believed to be unjust or a hindrance to self-betterment. Many of their goals were successful, and the effects of the reformists can still be seen to this day. With their willingness to fight for equality and improved quality of life, the reformists in early America helped change the habits of citizens, the education of the American youth, the criminal justice system, the advancement of women’s rights in society, and ignited the debate on slavery more than it had ever been. The temperance crusade could...
Words: 827 - Pages: 4
...City of Women: Sex and Class in New York City 1790-1860, written by Christine Stansell, gives of a new perspective of the lives of the “laboring women” in antebellum New York. This non-fiction book is based between the time after the ratification of the Constitution and before the Civil War. After the ratification of the constitution America economy underwent a radical shift into urban industrialization and a immense number of immigrants which put pressure on the economy. During this transformation of the economy, the conditions of women and their usual boundaries were radically expanded without no further choice, and most of the time this caused an increase in poverty. One example is if the man of the household was injured and he was most likely crippled for the rest of his life, the woman would have to take both responsibilities as domestic homemaker and bread-winner (Stansell)....
Words: 435 - Pages: 2
...During the antebellum period, with many new inventions such as transportation has led to the spread of many diseases. But as physicians did not yet realize that sterilization of hands and instruments also played a major role in controlling the spread of diseases like yellow fever and cholera, epidemics ran rapid throughout the nation. Newborn’s life expectancy was only twenty four years, and failures by physicians in explaining the reasons behind these epidemics only created more hostilities amongst fellow Americans. However, as Americans tried to deal with this ongoing problem they were not successful. Yellow fever and cholera killed more than one fifth of the population in New Orleans between 1832 C.E. through 1833 C.E. Again, cholera stretched...
Words: 691 - Pages: 3
...and Ida H. Harper cowrote, “In the indifference, the inertia, the apathy of women, lies the greatest obstacle to their enfranchisement.” The undeniable fact is that women prior to the 19th Amendment faced a host of social, economic, and political restrictions. Through the work of reformers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, women of the twenty-first century hold the same political and economic stature of men. The historiography of womens rights presents itself as an uphill battle for the majority of the 19th century and slowly began to gain support in the early 20th century. Post Revolutionary War, women were encouraged to raise the future generations of Americans, this became known as “Republican Motherhood” and remained in effect for decades. With the emergence of a market economy and rapid...
Words: 1233 - Pages: 5
...States of America. A two-year tour of the United States with her sister provided Frances Wright with the material for her Views of Society and Manners in America, published in 1821, an enthusiastic account of Americans' patriotic idealism and the different attitudes that the new Americans had in terms of manners and general values in comparison to the British. Though this work was not the entirely feminist work that Wright would later become known for, it did put her into the public view. Wright later formulated a plan to immigrate to the United States and create a southern settlement on which slaves could work to earn profits toward their eventual emancipation. Frances Wright purchased a tract in Tennessee called Nashoba and recruited slaves and abolitionists to join her. Though the farm never produced enough to achieve her initial goal, a result that was not unprecedented as Wright had little to no experience running a farm on her own. When Wright made a brief journey back to England, Nashoba and the politics surrounding it provoked a national scandal after its remaining settlers proclaimed a doctrine of free love. Upon her return to the United States, Wright paid to transport of the slaves to Haiti, where they would be free, and moved to another utopian community in Indiana. An anti-clerical lecture tour consolidated Wright’s unpopularity among the American middle class. In these lectures, Wright recommended the abolition of capital punishment in the prisons of America, an...
Words: 967 - Pages: 4
...Code Noir & Plaçage: The Influence of Race and Gender in Antebellum Louisiana Since the founding of Louisiana in 1682, various countries and systems of law have presided over it, creating a diverse social and legal culture that has always been unique in comparison to the rest of colonial America. Equally as diverse as the different power structures which existed in Louisiana is its racial composition: a myriad of groups such as Mulattoes, Quadroons, and Octoroons. Louisiana presented an interesting social dichotomy: freed people of color arguably experienced the best standard of living in comparison to the rest of colonial America, whereas the lives of the enslaved were some of the most brutal and repressed. However, to reduce Louisiana to solely a colony that struggled with race-related issues oversimplifies something inherently more complex; antebellum Louisiana was an intersection of social class, gender, and race both politically and socially. Each cultural nuance of Louisiana contributed to the creation of plaçage, which...
Words: 1639 - Pages: 7
...Ian Cohen Tuesday, October 2, 2012 Book Analysis 1 Much of African-American history in America over the past four centuries is a recollection of stories from the years when African-Americans were utilized as slaves on the plantations of affluent, white farmers. In the book, Celia, A Slave written by Melton A. McLaurin, Celia’s fate in many ways did in fact seem predetermined. As an enslaved woman who killed her white master in the nineteenth-century US South, I agree with the statement that it was very unlikely for Celia to ever escape with her life. The story accounts of Celia’s life bound together in a vivid way to relay the circumstances surrounding a female slave’s cruel life and the ways that she took matters into her own hands. “Slavery was an institution fundamental to the existence of Southern society, a permanent part of the Southern way of life,” (McLaurin, 18). Hence, the fact that in many ways, Celia’s fate was decided on the day that Robert Newsom claimed her, as the options that she once had would no longer be available. In 1855, slavery was a major source of sectionalism in the United States. It was in this chaotic setting that Celia was put on trial for murdering her master, Robert Newsom, who had been consistently raping her for five years. Throughout Celia’s trial the two main views on slavery were seen: some saw them as people and others just saw them as property. “Her experience suggests…that slaves were powerless to protect there most basic humanity...
Words: 1365 - Pages: 6
...Women of the Civil Rights Movement: The role of women in the Civil Rights Movement In The American Journal of Legal History, Bernie D. Jones reviews the work of Legacies of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Grofman (2000), and describes the ends to the means. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act indisputably were effectual for altering the framework of the questionable American life, for the most part in the southern states. As a consequence, both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were accountable for the stoppage of vast opposition to the civil rights movement and the fitting fusion into the American Society by African Americans. By way of the Acts, public facilities that avidly participated in segregation became outlawed. Throughout the nation, as a result of the enforcement of the Acts, the former, not so easily attainable education opportunities and employment prospects that consistently had been refused, now, awarded African Americans impressively large supporting political control. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 pioneered immeasurably. Women were given distinctive safeguarding subject to employment discrimination law. Emphatically, invigorating the women’s movement, consequently, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 served movements of other ethnic civil rights. (p. xvi) VOICE OF OMISSION No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women. We are rarely...
Words: 2507 - Pages: 11
...revolutions of 1960s have made fulfilling such a responsibility less daunting than ever. Invaluable references, including Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Evelyn Brooks Higgingbotham, ed., Harvard Guide to African American History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, Jr., eds., The African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001); and Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro- American Slavery (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988), provide informative narratives along with expansive bibliographies. General texts covering major historical events with attention to chronology include John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000), considered a classic; along with Joe William Trotter, Jr., The African American 1  Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); and, Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, The African American Odyssey (Upper Saddle River: Printice-Hall, Inc., 2000). Other general texts not to be overlooked are Colin A. Palmer’s Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America Vol. I: 1619-1863 and Vol. II (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998), which emphasizes culture; and, Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson’s...
Words: 6155 - Pages: 25
