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CHAPTER 5: WESTWARD EXPANSION AND REGIONAL DIFFERENCESOUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORYfined in wretched almshouses andprisons. After winning improvementsin Massachusetts, she tookher campaign to the South, wherenine states established hospitals forthe insane between 1845 and 1852.WOMEN’S RIGHTSSuch social reforms brought manywomen to a realization of their ownunequal position in society. Fromcolonial times, unmarried womenhad enjoyed many of the same legalrights as men, although custom requiredthat they marry early. Withmatrimony, women virtually losttheir separate identities in the eyesof the law. Women were not permittedto vote. Their education in the17th and 18th centuries was limitedlargely to reading, writing, music,dancing, and needlework.The awakening of women beganwith the visit to America of FrancesWright, a Scottish lecturer and journalist,who publicly promoted women’srights throughout the UnitedStates during the 1820s. At a timewhen women were often forbiddento speak in public places, Wright notonly spoke out, but shocked audiencesby her views advocating therights of women to seek informationon birth control and divorce. By the1840s an American women’s rightsmovement emerged. Its foremostleader was Elizabeth Cady Stanton.In 1848 Cady Stanton and hercolleague Lucretia Mott organizeda women’s rights convention — thefirst in the history of the world — atSeneca Falls, New York. Delegatesdrew up a “Declaration of Sentiments,”demanding equality withmen before the law, the right to vote,and equal opportunities in educationand employment. The resolutionspassed unanimously with theexception of the one for women’ssuffrage, which won a majority onlyafter an impassioned speech in favorby Frederick Douglass, the blackabolitionist.At Seneca Falls, Cady Stantongained national prominence as aneloquent writer and speaker forwomen’s rights. She had realizedearly on that without the right tovote, women would never be equalwith men. Taking the abolitionistWilliam Lloyd Garrison as her model,she saw that the key to success layin changing public opinion, and notin party action. Seneca Falls becamethe catalyst for future change. Soonother women’s rights conventionswere held, and other women wouldcome to the forefront of the movementfor their political and socialequality.In 1848 also, Ernestine Rose, aPolish immigrant, was instrumentalin getting a law passed in the stateof New York that allowed marriedwomen to keep their property intheir own name. Among the firstlaws in the nation of this kind, theMarried Women’s Property Act encouragedother state legislatures toenact similar laws.In 1869 Elizabeth Cady Stantonand another leading women’s rightsactivist, Susan B. Anthony, foundedthe National Woman Suffrage Association(NWSA), to promote a constitutionalamendment for women’sright to the vote. These two wouldbecome the women’s movement’smost outspoken advocates. Describingtheir partnership, Cady Stantonwould say, “I forged the thunderboltsand she fired them.”WESTWARDThe frontier did much to shapeAmerican life. Conditions alongthe entire Atlantic seaboard stimulatedmigration to the newer regions.From New England, where the soilwas incapable of producing highyields of grain, came a steady streamof men and women who left theircoastal farms and villages to takeadvantage of the rich interior landof the continent. In the backcountrysettlements of the Carolinas andVirginia, people handicapped by thelack of roads and canals giving accessto coastal markets and resentfulof the political dominance of theTidewater planters also moved westward.By 1800 the Mississippi andOhio River valleys were becoming agreat frontier region. “Hi-o, away wego, floating down the river on the O-hi-o,” became the song of thousandsof migrants.The westward flow of populationin the early 19th century led to thedivision of old territories and thedrawing of new boundaries. As newstates were admitted, the politicalmap stabilized east of the MississippiRiver. From 1816 to 1821, six stateswere created — Indiana, Illinois,and Maine (which were free states),and Mississippi, Alabama, and Missouri(slave states). The first frontierhad been tied closely to Europe, thesecond to the coastal settlements,but the Mississippi Valley was independentand its people looked westrather than east.Frontier settlers were a variedgroup. One English traveler describedthem as “a daring, hardyrace of men, who live in miserablecabins. ... They are unpolished buthospitable, kind to strangers, honest,and trustworthy. They raise alittle Indian corn, pumpkins, hogs,and sometimes have a cow or two.... But the rifle is their principalmeans of support.” Dexterous withthe ax, snare, and fishing line, thesemen blazed the trails, built the firstlog cabins, and confronted NativeAmerican tribes, whose land theyoccupied.As more and more settlers penetratedthe wilderness, many becamefarmers as well as hunters. A comfortablelog house with glass windows,a chimney, and partitionedrooms replaced the cabin; the wellreplaced the spring. Industrioussettlers would rapidly clear theirland of timber, burning the woodfor potash and letting the stumpsdecay. They grew their own grain,vegetables, and fruit; ranged thewoods for deer, wild turkeys, andhoney; fished the nearby streams;looked after cattle and hogs. Landspeculators bought large tracts of thecheap land and, if land values rose,122123