AMERICA IN THE 1850s

 

COMMENTARIES


A Nation of Law In a Time of Change:
A Frame for Understanding the 1850s

 

 

 

The 1850s has been a kind of black hole in women's studies. Monograph after article after dissertation traced the early woman's organizations of the 1830s up through the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and the ringing "Declaration of Sentiments." Then, suddenly, readers of the secondary literature found themselves in the Civil War and then in the middle of the split of the woman's rights movement over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments which guaranteed the civil rights and suffrage of black males. How had the movement formed? What had it achieved? Who participated? This essay is an effort to shed light on those questions by looking at the 1850s.

 

Using Documents on the First National Women's Rights Convention to Teach Women's Studies

 

 

 

 

SPECIAL TOPICS

 

 

 

 

The Search for An American Voice:
Rhetoric and Reform in the 1850's

 

 

 

FEATURED BOOKS

 

The Story of What Happened
When Yankee Doodle Went to London--
American Superiority at the World's Fair

 

 

 

A Boy's Book on
How to Climb the Ladder of Success--
The Bobbin Boy, or
How Nat Got an Education

 

 

 

 

Narrative Guides to Online Materials

 

 

"A slaveholder's profession of Christianity is a palpable imposture. He is a felon of the highest grade. He is a man-stealer. It is of no importance what you put in the other scale."

Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are you the foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared to do and dare in their behalf?

--Wm. Lloyd Garrison writing in his
Introduction to Frederick Douglass's Narrative

 

 

 

The Famine Irish

 

 

"Song of the Kansas Emigrant"
John Greenleaf Whittier

We cross the prairie as of old The fathers crossed the sea,
To make the West,
as they the East,
The homestead of the free.
We go to rear a wall of men On Freedom's southern line,
And plant beside the Cotton tree
The rugged northern pine.
We're flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow,
The blessing of our mother land
Is on us as we go.
We go to plant the common school
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wilds
The music of her bells. Upbearing, like the ark of God.
The Bible in our van.
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man."

"Bleeding Kansas"

 

 

STUDENT PROJECTS

 

 

 

The Lyceum Movement

Author: Maura Ford

 

 

 

 

 

Temperance in the 1850's

Author: Theresa Battaglio

 

 

 

 

 

The Laying of the Atlantic Cable

Author: Jared Procopio

 

 

 

Daily Life in the 1850's

Authors: Theresa Battaglio, Maura Ford, and Jared Procopio

 

 


Public and Private Education for Women;
Worcester Academy

Authors: Jocelyn Smith, Lindsey Smith,
Jared Procopio, and Theresa Battaglio

 

 

 

 

 

The E Pluribus Unum Project is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is co-directed by Dr. John McClymer, Professor of History, Assumption College; Dr Lucia Knoles, Professor of English, Assumption College; and Dr. Arnold Pulda, Director of Gifted and Talented student programs for the public schools in Worcester, MA. Visitors are encouraged to send inquiries or suggestions.