Eastern, catch washington today or report on the stories of the day. Listen to cspan anytime, tell your smart speaker, play cspan radio. Since 1979 and partnership of the cable industry cspan provided coverage of the halls of congress of the house and Senate Floors to congressional hearings, party briefings and committee meetings. Cspan gives you a front row seat to how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruption and completely unfiltered. Cspan, unfiltered you have government. One of the gallaghers book include created america just the way you are New York Times notable book. Attention in the focus and numerous publications. Her newest book in the old west. O suffragists, an untold american story, is available for purchase from politics and prose. If you use the link in the chat box which is also available on our web site, youll be able to purchase the book with a 10 is discount 10 discount. Just be sure to use the code special 10 when checking out. Now, please join me in welcoming to the smithsonian winifred gallagher. Hi, wynn fellowed. Hi, kathy. Thanks so much, its wonderful to be with you. Before i begin, aye like to see a few id like to say a few words about the woman you see on your screen from north dakota. She was a Norwegian Immigrant who spoke no english at all when she arrived in the u. S. , but she filed her homestead claim, lived on it for five years, then sold it for a nice profit which she used to start out in a new career as a photographer with her own studio. Like the other women well talk about tonight, she made the most of the unusual opportunities that the American West afforded to new women. Id like to explain also that well pick up with slides later in my talk partly because the women, because women in general particularly the ones that im going to talk about were not much photographed until the womens Rights Movement really picked up later in the 19th century. If i began thinking about new women in the old west during my 12 years of living half time in rural wyoming. I was impressed by the strong, versatile women starting with the 80yearold mayor who pretty much ran local affairs from government to business, and thats not even counting the actual cowgirls. Was there something in the water . I did some research and found that my friends were carrying on a long tradition of independent, competent and civicmindedness. It began in the old west era of the 1840s into the early 19th into the early 20 century when more than half of america was settled. But historians failed to notice, however, that women busy building homes and communities from scratch not only joined, but at a crucial moment led the massive human rights revolution that enfranchised half the nation. Indeed, by the time the 19th amendment was finally ratified in 1920, most western women had already votedded for years, sometimes for decades before their sisters in a single state back east. The colonization of the west and the Suffrage Movement were overlapping epochs, and three generations of women were critical to both. Yet their doublebarreled achievements have simply been neglected. According to or the foundational myth, strong silent men won the west. In fact, women were equal ily are essential equally essential to the process. Moreover, they were not just stereotypical martyrish or quakers with hearts of gold who supported men in various ways, but single homesteaders and doctors, entrepreneurs and suffragists. In their experimental, improvised Settler Society, these hard working, determined women found unique opportunities; social, political, economic to become more equal to men by acting more as equals. All of these white, black and asian women were new to the west, but some of them and some of the native american Hispanic Women they displaced also came to per sonify what was called the new woman. These new women rejected the 19th century selfsacrificing domesticity and anticipated the early 20th century, more liberate model of womanhood based on the kind of independent, fulfilling way of life traditionally limited to men. Officiating womens experience in the west requires understanding something about their position in larger American Society which was terrible. By ageold law and custom the, they were citizens in name only. They had no official place in civic life and very few legal rights. According to americas version of English Common law, a married woman a wife became a [inaudible] who was covered by or officially absorbed into her husbands person. In exchange for his support and protection, she was legally obliged to serve and obey him. She could not own, inherit, control property including her own she could not sue in court, run a business, divorce or even claim custody of her own children. The connection between womens lack of economic status and lack of rights was highlighted in america just after the revolutionary war. While the men fought, many women including abigail adams, the future first lady capably ran their families farms and enterprises. In recognition of their service and patriotism, new york, new jersey, massachusetts and New Hampshire allowed them to vote. Then the men returned from the war. By the time of the constitutions ratification in 1788, most women had been disenfranchised. New jersey held on until 1807. By the mid 19th century as the Industrial Revolution rapidly gathered steam and rapidly urbanized america, womens status declined still further, at least those of the middle and upper classes in towns and cities. In the old agrarian economy, home and work were intermeshed on farms where the labor of both sexes sustained the family. Especially in the booming urban areas, mens jobs in the new factories and offices now supported their wives and children. Eager to codify this huge shift, Victorian Society confined the sexes to what were routinely called desperate spheres separate spheres. Men got the public world of the home excuse me, men got the public world of industry and commerce, law and politics, women got the private world of the home. They continued to do housework and childcare, but they lost the status of economic coproviders for their families. Their only acceptable career was marriage. Indeed, they could compromise their respectable reputations simply by seeking a mans education, in quotes, much less a profession. Just as westward migration began, however, social reformers started to renovate this cloisteredded victorian home, turning it into womens new power center. They built upon a theory involving since the 18th evolving since the 18th century that women were not so much inferior from went as different from them. They were weaker, of course, but also elevated, nurturing. In a treatise on domestic economy which quickly became a secular bible on how respectable people should live, Katherine Beecher a champion of female education and a mother of Home Economics puppet the home and the home put the home and the homemaker at the very center of americas rapidly changing society and its westward expansion. Women were [inaudible] she insisted, but the rightful arbiters of mores, manners, child rearing, religion, charity, important matters previously adjudicated by men. Indeed, beecher went so far as to proclaim that what was later termed womens moral authority, perhaps even superiority, created a balance of power. She said it has been america alone that women it is in america alone that women are raised to an equality with the other sex. That was a pretty radical thing to say back in 1841. This glorification of their domestic role endowed women with a potent religious and social gravitas that elevated their social standing. It also provideed a platform for launching their campaign for further empowerment. Theres a certain irony there that women turned on this which was keeping them down at a certain level. They turned it into an advantage and used it to go from home to world. Enslaved women who had to work could not emulate this new genteel model. Others, whether agrarian wives, bohemians or the first female teachers and nurses [inaudible] if at all, but the aspirational ideals of the domestic american madonna, the sentimental religious Victorian Society and my greated to the west. Migrated to the west. Most 19th century americans, including beecher, considered politics too base a pursuit for women but not all. In july 1848 as migration increased, Katie Stanton elizabeth Katie Stanton, who we see here in all of her mag magnificence [laughter] and lucretia mott, both abolitionists, famously held a meeting in seneca falls, new york, to discuss what were first called woman rights. The event was later promoted as the birth place of suffrage, the right to vote in National Mobile elections, sit on jury, run for office. But seneca falls really only helped to formalize and publicize a cause amid e the ferocious battle to abolish slavery. By the 1830s black abolitionists soon personified by Sojourner Truth upheld universal suffrage or the right to vote regardless of race, sex or creed. They inspired white women abolitionists to rebel against their own second class status which was based on gender instead of race. Stanton and mott were well aware that in their own upstate community the native women of the Iroquois Confederation had long owned property, divorced and elected leaders. After two days, stantoning wrote a declaration of rights and sentiments that elegantly rephrased thomas jefferson. All men and women are created equal. Two little words. Despite the lofty language, the activists first role were distinctly practical and domestic. They prioritized the rights to control property, divorce and maintain child custody, laws that would help protect their families from improvident or abusive husbands. Even these zealots considered suffrage so farfetched that they included it in their declaration only after black abolitionist Frederick Douglass last minute argument. In mainstream society, however, the woman rights proclaimed at seneca falls including equal education and employment were considered so ludicrous that newspapers the idea simply by printing a list of womens rights. In that same year of 1848, change roiled the west. That vast territory stretching past the mississippi river. Gold was discovered in california, the u. S. Annexed the vast oregon territory and also claimed what is now our enormous southwest as spoils from the mexicanamerican war. The rush to the new frontier began in earnest. The west differed from the rest of america in significant ways that affected womens positions starting with demography. Until the turn of the century, white men significantly outnumbered white women there, particularly in towns and cities. And womens scarcity increased their value. Overall supply and demand. So far less popular [inaudible] the west was also home to the great majority of the countrys native american, hispanics and asians which conditioned the white anglosaxon, protestant women who dominated at least early migration to be cast as maternal civilizers among savages in an alleged wilderness. Indeed, the west quickly became a hoe case for the vir showcase for the virtuous homemaker in her snug cabin. She was not only the moral heroine of beechers society, but also of americas transcontinental expansion. Womens status also benefited from conditions in the wests Settler Society which by definition was simpler and more interested in progress than in tradition. It was all hands on deck. Even was needed to do whatever needed doing, and people just didnt pay too much attention the these victorian ideas about womens work and mens work. In the west, as in most of america today, it took two industrious partners to support a family which increased the value of womens work. No man wanted to homestead without a wife to do all the Domestic Work and also, importantly, earn money from there her home production whether selling eggs or bread or taking in sewing or boarders. By the time the pioneers got to the west, they were often very cash poor. Even if they wanted to hire help, there was really no help to be had, so this gave women a lot of opportunities. And the cash that they made really for the first couple years often supported their families. Not surprisingly, agrarian women had their suitors. Not enough of women, too many men, women were able to be picky. In mining towns they used their domestic skills to market hot meals and clean laundry to the overwhelmingly male population. The pioneer woman of song and story may be the proper, bonn especiallied why have bonn innocented wife in her homestead, but women like [inaudible] have an equally valid claim to the title. In 1849 after barely surviving an especially taxing migration from missouri, she and her family arrived in the gold rush town of sacramento tattered and penniless. She was one of 3 women among 6,000 men. One morning a miner offered her 5 for a hot breakfast. Thats 5 for a hot breakfast. Thats about 168 today. And she noted that he would have paid her 10 if she had asked for it. He soon bought her first she soon bought her first boarding house and prospered in the Hospitality Industry at a time when few women ran businesses elsewhere. The final hotel that she called wilsons hotel, the previous one burned down, so she loaded her cook stove in the wagon and took her kids, and they stopped at a nice spot, and they got some hay bills and she hay bales, and she hung up a sign, and her first guest slept on the other side of the hay bales. She was a very good cook. The west Settlers Society was also free of an entrenched, highbrowed establishment determined to keep women in their place. Building new communities required every pair of hands, and the town mothers who organized many of the first schools, churches and charities greatly enhanced womens position in public life. One of the things that really annoyed me when i was doing research on the book was that because women didnt have the legal right to start an institution, to found corporations, the women would do all the work at the school or the hospital, and then their husbands would appear in the newspaper that it was his school, his hospital, and he got the credit for being the town father instead of the town mother. During sarah royces first years in gold rush california, she held Church Services in her familys tent. This went on for more than five years, i believe. When they finally settled in grants valley, california, in 1854, the teacher turned her modest onestory house into a school. Her only resources was a book she had found in an abandoned wagon, a bible, a volume of milton, some fables. Her home schooled son became a famous harvard philosoer. And her daughterinlaw, as her daughterinlaw later put it, quote, wherever she was, she made civilization even when it seemed that she add had very little, indeed, from which to make it. Kind of a great quote that applies to a lot of these women that were talking about tonight. When she a arrived in central city, colorado, myra rah brown, a black freed woman, worked as a washer woman until she could start her own laundry. As her business expanded, she. Ruledly invested shh rudely invested in mines and became a philanthropist. She helped the needy of all races and other freed people to my great to colorado to migrate to colorado. At the age of 82 after years of searching for the four children who had been sold away during slavery, she finally found her daughter eliza jane. The local paper marked to case, describing brown as still strong, vigorous, tall, her hair thickly streaked with gray, her face kind. Women like wilson, royce and brown were not considered equal to men, but they had narrowed that gap. Their record of hard work and dedication won respect and made them a political force; albeit not electoral to be reckoned with. During the civil war, small but influential groups of western women began to capitalize on two unique opportunities to get ahead. In the process, they would also be treated as equals by the federal government, a very important legal precedent. In 1862 as the civil war raged, president lincoln a his more genderegalitarian republicans passed two Ground Breaking laws that recognized womens importance to the greater reconstruction. We have far too narrow an idea of the reconstruction. It actually lasted from 18451877, and it was meant to create a coast to coast nation that actually never existed before. If you think about it, most of america was just sand on the east coast and the south, there was and gold was discovered in california, and there was a whole lott of nothing in the muddle there whole lot of nothing in the middle there. The greater reconstruction created this new transcontinental country by not just reunifying the south after the war, but by colonizing the west. So its actually kind of if you wanted to study an interesting period of American History, i think that the greater reconstruction from 4577 is really worth more attention than it gets. A whole lot of stuff is going on. Anyway, in 1862, Congress Passed the homestead act which enabled email as well as mail heads of households to claim 16e west. At a time when most women had few Economic Opportunity at all, the chance to own real estate to support an independent life but to sell later for a sizable profit was a stunning advance. Bear in mind that women of ample means are wealthier women, the only thing they were allowed to have was marriage. If no one would marry them they had to more or less live as an unpaid servant for one of their male relatives, like they were nannies or they took care of grandpa in his old age. If you were a poor woman the only opportunity to have some real domestic service, so this idea that a woman could hold her own property and support herself on her own land was really a pretty phenomenal advance. Women especially didnt have the opportunity to accumulate capital. The idea that you could on this land and then sell it ended up with Something Like 30 30 or 40,000 in todays money was just an amazing resource. Importantly, women homesteaders also attain land owners status which since the days of the founders, washington, jefferson, had been tied to citizenship and social standing here at first in america the only mentor allowed to vote or white men who owned property men who were the women homesteaders name on tax rolls became an important argument for womens full citizenship few single women elsewhere could dream of a home of their own much less enough land for a farm but in 1873, pauline, a single 53 year old scandinavian immigrant, a lot of these women were middleaged, filed for a homestead on the remote minnesota frontier. It was she lived actually near where Laura Ingalls wilder said her fourth book in the little house series, on the banks of plum creek was the books of pauline live right near plum creek. Summers alternated with arctic winters and and periodic grass wiped out gardens in houses. Despite the challenges, five years later when pauline finalized her homestead she owned a 14 by 15foot cabin, cattle, a pig and chickens. She produced 400 bushels of wheat and 150 pounds of butter for sale. She lived off her land for 14 years and sold it for 1,280, 30,000 today. To make additional income for her retirement she carried the. Mortgage. A lot of the women homesteaders would hang on to the land and rent to a farmer and if they would have income for the rest of their lives were until they wanted to do something else. A very unusual thing for a woman to have her own money in that way. Fewri americans had access to college and the professional life it enabled but in july, just a few months after the homestead act, Congress Passed the moral landgrant act. Cit created nearly 100 tuition free public colleges and universities. The two thirds of the schools were in the rapidly developing quest which desperately needed expertise. Given access to careers that enabled them to support themselves, women graduates who chose to delay family life now had an alternative to marriage and i should point out these were some of the first coeducational schools in the world. Frowned upon in the east as you know. College girls back eastt at that time wento to girls schools but he went to college with men. Given access to careers that enabled them to support themselves, they could delay family life and many became teachers but almost 15 of these career oriented women entered a traditionally male fields like medicine, journalism and the law almost twice Womens National rate of 8 . Thats quite impressive in these towns and region where people are just kind of coming up out of them living in these ramshackle towns yet we have twice as many people going into professions back east. A classic western new woman, as good as any man had a dashing figure at the university of nebraska which was a landgrant school. It journalism major sometimes favored conventionally male haircuts, clothes and mannerisms she was a popular editor of the newspaper. Later as the poet she based her most beloved characters and in s copioneer on the women homesteaders often emigrants whom she met as a girl on her grandfathers homestead. The publicized adventures helped america come to terms with womens evolving society and now we can go back because it was a rather rapidly modernizing society. In eastern debutante who migrated with her husband who studiedhe mining at yale and thn went west. She decided she would from the unique perspectives of art, journalism and models. No cowboys on the prairie for pr her. She was determined to show women were just as important to men as to western development and that indeed you could tell from the demeanor of the man and woman in the picture that the men were by no means all swashbuckling heroes but few women she has a special place in my heart. She began as a reporter for the boston post. He likes into the reporter to do something crazy, drive to the wet suit in the boston harbor. Anyway, she went on an assignment and fell in love with cody wyoming. She published the local newspaper and propounded the famous still ongoing cody stampede an actual rodeo most celebrated for her westerns, and snovels that stereotyped good guys and bad guys, race and gender. Several became major movies including the fighting based on the life of Lucy Morrison the sheep queen of wyoming. Moviegoers loved the mastery of western speech. Since we are talking plain, i dont like the way you act, the way you talk. I dont like the way your face grows on you and if i never see you again it will be soon enough. The hard drinking, hard partying cowgirl never married but joined many. At the age of 54 she became a cattle queen in her own right on her 6,000acre ranch and lived to the age of 91. Just as they gave ambitious women unique opportunities to own land and attend college, it gave special advantages in their pursuit of more. Indeed just six years after the conference and one year after the washington territory was founded,d, is suffrage bill faid to pass in the Territories Legislature by a single vote. The movement may have been based in the east but when the cards reemerged after the hiatus by the civil war, suffrage first caught fire in the west. Tthe Suffrage Movement was a messy fragmented phenomenon that waxed and waned over decades. Internal squabbling and public debate. Many didnt consider people of color as they are equals. Some leaders wanted to first focus on womens right to vote in School Board Elections. You would think that why cant women vote in School Board Elections but it was a very contentious issue that was seen as the thin end of the wedge if you give them an inch they will take a mile. They claimed that women deserved full enfranchisement. Theyhe insisted they were mens equals but many more argued that women were mens superiors. They insisted that as municipal housekeepers, women would vote to protect and care for the homeland just as they protected and cared for their homes. It madewe up for over three generations. Inin the last, suffragists maximized the special advantages. Legislators in the sparsely populated territories were able to increase their electorates because thats how you got more power in washington, d. C. They also wanted to entice women because they needed them to help lend out the ratio and they also wanted to counterth the ballots. Legislators traded to rule women with liberalized law regarding property. Indeed by the 1850s, they made california the first of the west theres also a governor territory that the states encumbered as a legal precedent. Importantly the territories transitioning had to write constitutions which required the legislators to debate on issues including womens rights and status. Tu compared to the east, western men had an ongoing settlement and were receptive to their empowerment particularly if it was to demand political advantage. In 1869 the women of the wyoming territory who were outnumbered by men by a ratio of 91 to be fully. Appointed as the first woman judge despite the legal training, she was so capable of that and none of the 27 cases she tried were appealed were reversed. She was treated and infinite delight all peace into virtue. She acknowledged that her appointment was a tested womens ability to hold public office. In performing these duties i do not know if ive neglected by family anymore the ma in ordinary. In 1870 the women of the largely mormon utah territory were enfranchised. Such as the journalist who was one of her third husbands second wives insisted because sister wives shared domestic chores gave women more freedom. Inhe fact the whole enfranchisement of women in utah backfired and said the twin evils of that year were slavery and polygamy and they assumed if they gave mormon women the vote they would voteo to eliminate polygamy but they were just as religious as the mormon men and it was part of the religion so it backfired on the republicans. Both the wyoming and utah territories enfranchised women a halfcentury before the passage and its often said western women gave the vote but after those two, territorial and state governments responded only after women lobbied them to be defeated and tried and tried again. In the 1870s, activists such as Abigail Scott much later she is the Elizabeth Cady stanton of the west. Ghwomen such as abigail sat on e legislatures to improve the rights to own property in fact she became a suffragist when her husband trusted a friend of his and assigned a loan. The friend default on the loan and the home she shared with her five or six children the bank seized their home. She was so outraged that as a wife shed worked as a dog establishing the farm and getting things up and going that she became a suffragist and what she really wanted was womens Property Rights because women had no money, they had no power. So abigail was very busy in courtrooms trying to make the case but the others that have the political power by moving from Community Building to largescale in 19th century america. Many women and listed in the nationwide temperance union. It began against the vices that jeopardize the family particularly drunkenness and prostitution. Before long however they embraced in the do everything agenda that included sanitation, labor regulations, the rehabilitation of prostitutes, starting up kindergarten. This pragmatic shift was especially popular in the practical west. Contrary to its image, still one of the largest and most important political organizations in American History gave tens of thousands of women to pass from the home into the larger world of personal growth, social reform and politics by strongly influence before women could even vote, they strengthened their claim to the full citizenship. There were many religions in the Temperance Movement probably because it was dominated by women. The western suffragists had been stereotyped by the counterparts as white but a surprising number will women of color. For native americans, political activism first and foremost meant ensuring the familys survival amidst the systemic race. Many of the First Chinese women had been sold back in china by their indigent parents are kidnapped to become sex slaves in california. You see here escaped from sexual slavery. She married and became a beloved homesteader in fact trounced it is now on named National Historic landmark. Despite difficulties we can hardly imagine, she suffered and later emerged you. They wanted to speak up for native american women, asian women as well as they include elizabeth, a black teacher of the nonpartisan equal suffrage association. At the time when a lot of Suffrage Movement was segregated in many instances and. Alito, hispanic journalist and white activist from texas she showed in her printshop the Texas Rangers came to break up her Printing Press and she prevented them from getting in to do that. Native american activists will and sarah went numb a writer and orator invited them to join for the west original peoples. One arm, a century of dishonest, a blistering history of the government regulations shed sent a copy to every member of congress. I know it used to be on high school plating lists it prevented the governments treatment ofin native peoples ad unfortunately she died before she knew that it had really captured the publics attention and started some of the reforms that she wanted to see. Ty theyve also been stereotyped as traditional wives and mothers. Our very striking number of the is activists outstanding women in general . Like a homesteader into the forest service, first female fire lookout were divorced. A mother of five became the first female lawyer. Her brother became a senator. Of course she should have been the senator but she started the position of public defender which was considered a very radical thing. She transferred the voice and now they are everywhere but the first one is the california amazing woman. Her, she was married to a nerdy whale and left. She went on to become a crackerjack lawyer. Montanas rankin the first woman elected to congress. Or bisexual like the new mexican educator and politician. By the 1890s, huge numbers of women and the Nebraska Farm like grandmother of 11 helped make the west the National Capital of the new progressive politics. She wrote a very loud ballot called stand up for nebraska that brought everybody to their feet. E opposing the monopolies of the era where the 1 , thereve been certainly rich people in america but they until they started after the civil war there were these enormous inequities like separated the superrich from everyoness else. The cofounder of the new Peoples Party before she could even vote. The elector playing orator helps people. Many progressive women also quietly helped to shape midwestern states. Coloradowo and idaho in 1893 and 1896. The national hotspot because of wyoming and utah became a global epicenter sharing the spotlight with the other Settlers Society of australia and new zealand. Ason immigration surged in the century, the public debated the question of whon is the real american. We wouldnt want to know how. A suffragist pointed to one of the long records of service and demanded to citizenship. They built successful coalitions with other forwardlooking Nonpartisan Group government groups, progressive clubs, labor unions, republicans, certain churches. It needed womens votes to promote their own agenda. Its always been a bit of a middleclass upperclass thing. To win in the holdouts stated they had to break through the barriers of race and class under the banner of unity and diversity. They also created from different ethnic groups and a poor working women, waitresses. This was the time that women were starting to work in factories. They lived away from home and it was like a whole new working class had to be integrated then. They were enlisted to join the unofficial labor union of hardworking citizens whetheriz they were unpaid mothers at home or of course seamstresses and waitresses who were entitled to vote. In oregon, doctor paul lovejoy is so beautiful. Made house calls in the last gold rush then founded. Offering opportunities, so she worked as a janitor at the u. S. District court but she was also the president of portlands equal suffrage association. They also mounted new kinds of splashy campaigns that changed the politics forever with marches, publicity stunts and even electric signs. In seattle coauthored the National Cookbook votes for women, good things to eat and she was also an accomplished i think there are six peaks. She led the party of men and women. They had to wear. She led the party on a camping trip to carry the banner to the summer of mount revere here she is in washington. By 1914 theyd gone to california, oregon, arizona, kansas, nevada and montana. Most could now move. Before in a single state back east. The west demography synchronized with the rest of the country. Women no longer benefited from the settlement euros unprecedented opportunities. As world war i looms the societies aggravated by the economic and political games created the predictable backlash given the rugged cowgirls who recently competed with men with rodeo queens. Like the history of the general the record isnt a famous project. The history had the trajectory. Progress for samanta declines on others theress no way to balae with a terrible cost to the original c people including the Suffrage Movement. To move forward however the work of the shared past and also take her to the triumphs including the ongoing empowerment. They changed countless times during y the 14,000 years its f its history. It continues to shift today. The firing legacy who helped define an independent and active American Woman personified is an important part of that record. The journey to equality didnt begin or has it ended with suffrage. Despite the formidable obstacles, change is possible even for rules seemingly in stone. That was great. Weve been keeping track of questions from the audience. Please note we welcome your questions so please post them in the q and a. I understand that the land the s status was huge but why did Congress Pass it with that particular language . Who was the instigator and who was responsible for everyone going along with it . Good question. Part of it is the west desperately needed when. It was overwhelmingly male and they wanted me to get women into the west. It wasnt so much there was a terrible genocide about the colonization occurred through settlement like people serving farms and villages and towns. So the settlementwo conquered te west and you can do that with wives and mothers. Lincoln and the republicans, his branch of liberal minded republican were more generally egalitarian. The republicans were much more inclined to give them a legal empowerment. In the Suffrage Movement they wouldnt enfranchised women when they meant it would be too much and they wouldnt be able to get black men enfranchised so there were a lot of factors that work but the fact that i dont recall the name of the women but they lived openly as lesbians. Unlike certain men they would get arrested for doing something that was illegal and a town but there was nothing attached it was considered perfectly fine for women to be best friends, they hugged and kissed each other and slept iner the same beds, they move together as in a boston marriage is that there were no attacks to women living and having partnerships with other women but the number about 4 lived with another. I was struck by a member in the book. The president of the w ctu shes described as the Eleanor Roosevelt of her day and she had relationships with men and women. What was the background and incentive, who championed . There were a number of good guys in the west demonstrably more, not to so many suffragist movements. One man said it was wrong. He was smart as any man theres just a sense. It was not practical and pragmatic culture why would you say she couldnt vote. I thinkke i mentioned in the speech the territory in 1854 they were men voting so i think we have to give them credit. Without those, none of the suffrage bills would have been passed. Was the western womans inclination to be more inclusive or expensive in their effort when several different backgrounds . I think the suffragists were doing so poorly. It was like. That is the pictures of elizabeth they consider themselves and address like ladies. You have to reach out beyond the glass borders and would certainly there again i was part of this we dont have any walls and r moves of regulation. What about the suffrage for native american women . Some didnt get the vote. And members of native american men and women did get the vote. The people that voted. In the tribalio reservations thy gave to different people and if you claim you also. It was more to be a suffragist, it was a more complicated thing bent to be a wide suffragist getting the food for her sex. Its a complicated stories. Going back to the earlier question about. She said im probably naive but how do we get the information about. Theyve gone through diggings of records and that is occasionally a woman either suffering an illness or somebody else. The census figures if you see a woman that only lived by herself for a certain period of time. The other way you could tell he was sometimes. As you get later the president. They left correspondence will will. Even academics resist we cant actually say she was even though all her relationships were. You may have covered this already and i apologize if i missed it. Passed in the various states did the right include any minority women . Did minority women have the right toed vote when the suffrae was passed . Including minority women. Different states have different ideas. Some are progressive and somee are. Not. Even after past, some women still are not enfranchised. Its difficult to say and i would have to look at each state to see but generally if you can prove that you are a c citizen i would say yes you can vote. Were there women who worked against womens progressive politicsre as there were in our day for instance who helped defeat the era. There was George Pattons mother led the troops, he grew up in california and they said if women got the vote they would grow mustaches that men would have to stay home and change the diapers and of the woman would be injury boxes for some reason they have this idea that they would be converting with men injury boxes. There was a unique movement in both places more virulent in the east. How did you balance all of this . When you have women like Abigail Scott this was a homestead daughter her parents went west in a covered wagon she grew up on a home study and married a homesteader when she was 14 or 15 and had her five or six children. They developed one homestead, they sold it, he lost it all in a legal maneuver. Then he got hurt in a wagon accident and could never work againil so she moved the whole family to portland, start today pewomans newspaper, started campaigning for suffrage and started supporting everybody. I cant even imagine what they must have been could men and women equally qualify for the 160 acres and for a couple what that double . It depends on where you were. In oregon in the 50s its seen as a sign of womens empowerment because a stable guy can only get 160 acres but a married man and his wife she couldnt get it on her own but as a couple, 320. The homestead laws did not allow, and if any way they were against. A wife couldnt flail her own claim separately from her husband though in a way it privileged. This is a question for you. Was there ever a point in your research that you felt gratitude being born in this time period . Do you feel like you were born in the wrong century . These days be free in a pandemic and the polarization if ever there was a good time to be a woman it is now. Harriet beecher stowe, the author of Uncle Toms Cabin famously said a married woman has the same, no less. They are basically their husbands property and the way they built their evolution taking it out to the communities by starting the organizations broadening up to social it was amazing and i think of my own mother didnt have the opportunities that her brother had if you were going out with a boy and worked hard youve got to wear flat shoes and dont act too smart. I think we have a great deal to be thankful for. We are just about out of time so im going to leave you with a last question that circles back to your book who was your favorite woman from the book . Its a hard question but to doctor lovejoy the one we saw washing clothes in the tub. She was born in a camp, huge big family lotsig of children almost no schooling but she was impressed by the doctor that delivered one of her baby sisters and she said when i grow up im going to be a doctor. By the time she was a teenager her parents worked at a hotel and a professor started tutoring her. She was pretty bright and by the time she could apply to medical school she clerked in the First Department stores in the west to make money to go to the university. She was one of three women in her class she married a surgeon and they said at this is an excitingng enough so they took f to alaska gold rush, did house calls, stir to the hospital, prevented some terrible epidemics. She came back to portland and only visited for summers, had her baby, got her mother to watch the baby, carried on her medical practice, started the suffrage campaign, broke all kinds of class and race barriers but to spend the rest of her life working for womens associations. Everybody should look her up just so you can see the pretty pictures. What a fascinating evening. We wish you all the best and i do want to remind the audience that the book new women in the old west from settlers to suffragists the untold story is available for sale from our partner booksellers. If you follow you can get a 10 discount on the book and a special thank you to the viewers who joined us tonight and for your great questions. We believe here or in the middle of anywhere you should have access to past reliable internet if youre enjoying will