Been the director, of the Huntington Library in san marino california. A former professor of history, and at the university of california riverside. She is a Frances Perkins scholar, and received her degree with distinction. Her dissertation, received the prize as the best dissertation of American History at yale. She began her teaching career at Simmons College and has been a fellow and a visiting professor professor at harvard university. In which the ladies of washington help build a city and government, when the first book price from the society for historians of the early american republic, and the northeast Popular Culture American Culture Association Annual book award. Political biography imperfect union, telemedicine and the creation of the american nation, was a finalist for the George Washington book price. In 2012, she published dolly medicine, the problem of National Unity and the queen of america. My fidelity madison. President obama appointed her to a president ial commission, the James Madison memorial fellowship foundation. Doctor allgor also serves on the board of directors on the National Womens history museum. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. I will turn things over to you. Hello, everyone. Good evening. Amelia, how am i . Can you hear and say me . Good, thank you. Its such an honor to be here today. Thank you for inviting me and thank you ashley and alvin make the magic of tech work. Before i begin, i just want to say that i want to give a content warning. I mentioned the word rate twice. So let us begin. Lets start with my title the word every american should know. It sounds a little bit like im on a crusade, and i sort of am. So let me tell you how it started. In 2012 i was invited to a Teacher Training Institute at mount vernon. The topic of the institute was, what was going to be the next area of research in studies on the revolutionary era . So, scholars who did particular subject areas were invited and i was invited because i am a historian of womens lives and gender and thats what i was there to speak to. Coverture, and thats the word i want every american to know, was part of my presentation. My audience was about a dozen very eminent historians and about 60 of the very best history teachers in the country. As i talked about coverture and its role or non role in the american revolution, i was dismayed that none of the teachers had ever heard the word. Now, the eminent historians had, but they just did not think it was very important, and that took me down a research path. And ironically, i realized, and sort of doing a deep dive into coverture, that i had not fully understood the implications of that topic even though i was well into my teaching career. So today, i would like to share with you what i found as i took this journey into history. I promise you, it will be a story with a twist. So, lets start with a definition. At the time of the american revolution, american women, along with their english counterparts, were legally bound under the institution of coverture. Coverture held that no female person had a legal identity. At birth, female baby was covered by her fathers identity and then, when she was married, by her husbands. Husband and wife became one and that one was the husband. As a symbol of this assumption of identity, women took the last name of their husbands. Because they could not legally exist, married women could not make contracts or be sued so they could not own or work. Married women owned nothing, not even the clothes on their backs. They had no rights to their children so, that if a woman divorced her left her husband, or vice versa, she would not see her children again. Married women had no rights to their bodies. That meant a husband could have a claim to any wages generated by his wifes labor and to the fruits of her body, that is to say her children. He also had apps who absolute right to sexual access. Within marriage, a womans consent is implied, so under the law, all six related activity, including rape, with legitimate. This total mastery of his fellow human being fell just short of death. Of course, a man was not allowed to beat his wife to death, but he could beat her. Now, that is the law. The law does not always reflect rely for. And in truth, equity practices in short that coverture on the ground was not as restricted as the law indicated. Though a woman could own nothing, men who wanted to pass their wealth through their daughters to their grandchildren devised legal ways to keep money and property out of the hands of sonsinlaws. And the demands of everyday life, and of commerce, played their own parts. Though a woman could not make a contract, plenty of women did business and trade, either on their own in a legal exception called femme sole. Women often ran businesses with their mates with the Community Acting as enforcers. Though the law said one thing, there was a lot more latitude in practice. There was also probably a great deal of negotiation around six. Now, coverture was wet Abigail Adams was talking about in her famous, remember the ladies letter to john. She referenced the longstanding nature of coverture when she bait him to be, quote, lord generous and favor favorable to them, the present date ladies, then your ancestors. Abigail adams understood the corruption of absolute power as in me as clearly as any revolutionary theorist. She said, do not put such Unlimited Power in the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. Abigail even obliquely referred to the shame of marital rape and physical abuse when she proposed, why then not put it out of the power of the vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity and with impunity . Men of all ages aboard those customs which treatise only as the vessels of your sex. And the reason we know shes talking about sexual orabuse ish century meaning of words such as vassals or vicious relate to depravity. The reason i made this my quest, my crusade for every american to know the word coverture and what it means, is that i think we, and by that i mean scholars, students, educated americans alike, have not come to terms with the idea that our founding happened with coverture in place. Coverture is the ghost an hour machine. Im of course referring to the noiseless machine James Madison intended the constitution, and indeed the whole structure of the government, to be. But just as there always seemed to be remnants in our most expensive cars and computers, our machine of government is haunted by the exclusion of women. And i say that anyone, well, anyone whos interested in the study of the american revolution, has to learn certain terms like republicanism and liberty and what they meant to the people of the time. And my argument is simply that coverture should be part of that historical lexicon as well. The revolution did not change coverage or at all, nor did the constitution, though new rights for men met something rights for women. Just by extension, thanks to the beloved rights, women partook in many of the rights that men enjoy. Law protected the law protected the property of windows and single women. With their husbands position permission, women could assemble freely and exercise free speech. They also had the right to petition and a trial by jury, although the jury of their peers would be made up of men. Its important to understand that enslaved people enjoyed none of these second hand rights. So wives did have legal rights in extremists. So in extreme case, a wife could divorce her husband or swear out a warrant against him if he committed a crime against her. And of course, slaves could not divorce their masters. And the law provided no refuge against excessive physical force for slaves. But when it came to the rights as specifically women, wives, legally the only difference between in an slaved person and a married woman was that a husband could not sell his wife. Or prostitute her out. But even these distinctions were shaky. Some of the first persons sold in north america were white women from england sold to virginia colonists as wives. The comparison between the legal status of enslaved people and white wives is less a face to face contrast and more of a side by side assessment. The status of both folks overlapped. There was no legal treatment for enslaved people that did not apply to wives. Marriage under coverture was an impressive system. And we have a hard time comprehending the scope and depth of that. So one of the great discussions in American History, generally, is how colonial america instituted slavery so quickly. And how it became so all encompassing fairly quickly. By the lead 1600s clung in my colonial america had one of the most total systems slavery systems in the world. It was lifelong, immutable, inheritable. And we talk about it slavery as an institution has been around, since biblical times. We know that. But who is slave was, and whether a slave would status labor change into Something Else, and how long their terms of servitude was different all over the place. But the colonial the had they wanted to make this something that lasted their entire life and could not change unless they were freed by a master. Or by the someone who is free, and it was inheritable. The and it gets didnt last year lifetime, you passed it onto your descendants. So how did this happen . Theres a lot of great books about American Freedom American History and american slavery, and many theories about why we end up with this type of slavery. But they had one important factor, its not a coincident that the early slave coats, started with sex and marriage. But the slavery marriage connection, was it goes beyond that. In short it was easy for colonial men, to instruct a system, of almost total control out of african and black bodies, because they had a system in place already. It was marriage. And it proved a highly workable model for slavery. Even supplying slavery with a justification based in nature. So marriage legal and otherwise, used what they perceive to be the natural inferiority of women, to rationalize the subordination. And the same with the institution of slavery, would go on and develop a based biology that compromise slavery. Its indeed interesting when you look at the 19th century where there are enslaved black people and freed blacks. But even free blacks, living in the north did not enjoy the same full citizenship, or the range of citizenship that white men did. And free black man in the 19th century, its a when we get to do, this and get to that and get to vote. And the law pointed towards women and said women are citizens and they dont vote and they still enjoy citizenry. But it was a justification for keeping black men in a subordinate position. Lake later other amendments would remedy that, at least in theory by saying to black men but women were giving it to black men but women would remain behind as partial citizens. So id like to get back to the fact that women enjoyed ancillary rights, but only in the case of married women, if their husbands let them. And sometimes we use the phrase second class citizenship but really its a contrast in liberties with men and married women it was so great, it was more a case of citizenship. And this goes to the question and i think at the revolutionary moment, and really Nothing Happened to cover during the revolution, but look at the men have done about coverage or. Is it fair still . We are not amending the law, . Lets see what the founders had to say for themselves. At first glance, they seem silent. The words coverture in the newspaper, youre not going to get much of return. So we feminist historians, in the past have let the founders off the hook, around the issue of womens full citizenship. We used to say they didnt know any better, and they couldnt imagine other options. But that is of course, what we used to say about the issues of the founders and slavery. But just as new reach search on slavery, has complicated that assumption, that they just didnt know, we now understand that this was a moment for many moments, when the framers couldve allowed women of property to vote, they couldve allowed married women to retain property. They couldve modified divorce laws, or set aside the rule of coverture altogether and started from scratch. As with the issue of slavery, it turns out that the silence around the status of women, wasnt exactly a vacuum. When it came to examining the nature of women, and their role based on equality. This was one of those uncomfortable silences, which had sometimes odd outbursts. The which is a difference between not seeing something, and ignoring it. So lets go back to this for an example of an uneasy silence. You may wonder how john adams replied, when we talk about remembering ladies, and he said as to your extremely votive laws i just cannot help but laugh. One of the ways to dismiss female concerns, was to be playfully, if you said to say john adams was guilty of that in his letter. He characterize women as quote, a tribe more numerous and powerful than other groups of disenfranchised people. They had special power. John adams had his variation that the law gave women little power because nature gave them so much. They are in full force in law. And you know they are little more than theory, we men theyre not exert our power in the full latitude. We have to go fair and softly, and in practice you know we are the subjects. When he is talking about, and whats make some difference from other disenfranchised group, these talk about the sexual power that women have over men. A power unfortunately they dont have week has has the gave husbands control over sexuality. But apparently women were so powerful according to john adams, that the only thing that men cling to, was the name of master. He even talked about the physical and sexual abuse of women, he said how women whipped men into subjects shun. As dismissive as he seems to have been, john adams understood the deep contradictions and the theories and the columnist refused to launch a revolution. So the writing this in 1776, and its like were heading towards the declaration of independence, so really its just a month or two, or couple months after that, and on the eve of declaring independence, john adams started worrying about the core of the issues that abigail had raised. And he did so in a letter not to her but to james sullivan. Who is an intellect in congress. In his letter to sullivan, john seesawed back and forth in a rhetorical dialog, as he tried to work out his sinking. She has paragraphs like in theory, government is the consent of the people. So to what extent shall we carry the principal . Shall we say every individual of the community, old and young, male and female, as well as richard for must consent expressly to every active legislation. No he will say this is impossible. How then does the right arise in the majority to govern the minority against their will. And what about the right of men to govern women without their consent. This is a long and complicated letter and mostly because john adams, was struggling with this to form a coherent argument. At some point he seems to be arguing with himself, and losing. So he says, do i exclude women . You will save because they are a delicacy, random unfit for practice and experience in the great business of life, and the Hardy Enterprises of war. As well as the care of state. Besides their attention, is for the nature of the children, that nature has made them fit for domestic care. So he goes on to point out though, that reasoning could apply to the general body of men, who are destitute of property, too little acquainted with Public Affairs to form a right judgment, and to depend upon other men, to have a will of their own. So if women are busy with childcare, men might have to have allegiance to say. At this point in the letter it seems johns got a little too close to a line of logic, that was a bit too scary to follow. And he spends the rest of the letter focusing on the issue, talking about white men of little property if they should vote. Somehow the end of the letter, he talks about property less men, with women and children which who are on able for an unfit for suffrage. At the end he throws in the towel, women cannot be giving quality because they just cant. To be fatally verbose john adams, which should give testimony to the thorniest of what they call the woman problem and the contested nature of the seaming silence. Heres another good example where theyre having a good conversation where you cannot just believe they are having it. After the war, there was the problem of the loyalist properties. On the face of it, the rules were simple. If a loyalist man left his home in the 13 colonies and fled to england, his property could be seized by the state as punishment for treason. Obviously, not only would demand and family be deprived of his property, but so would his heirs. But what if, as was in several prominent cases, that it came through his wife, that is that his wifes father entailed to pass land to her children by bypassing the husband. Yes, in the cases that came before the court, the wives had fled the country along with their husbands, but could that be interpreted as a political statement . A Political Action on par with a mans desertion . After all, they argued that a good wife obeyed her husband and followed him. Some such a woman might have been a patriot at heart, but her political allegiance matter not as women had little or no political existence. Coverture. A womans primary responsibility and allegiance was to her husband, not the state. Thats coverture. So her descendants that wanted that property coming from their mothers argued that the wife desertion did not mean anything. States want to keep the confiscated property and they found themselves in the novel position of arguing that women could be citizens with a responsibility to the state, that they were in fact capable of treason. In martin versus massachusetts, council for the state argued that went and martin, the mother of the plaintiffs, chose to accompany her husband back to england, that she acted in a political capacity, thats abandoning her massachusetts property. Pretty interesting. In the end, these cases were decided in a variety of ways. In the case of james martin, he got his mothers property. But he was able to do so because the justices decided his case proceeded from a very conservative point of view. They decided that married women were not autonomous actors. As i said, other cases went the other way. In moments like this, whats demonstrated is that the failure to ameliorate women status, that the man who constructed a new nation could also have imagined new ideas a female citizenship. People will often ask me why i studied womens history or why we should study it. I say its because we learn things from womens lives, words and work that we would not otherwise know. Their sources provide us with new information, New Historical questions, new topics and new insights. For instance, asking the question, which i think we are at this point, why the founders left coverture wholly intact as they crafted a new nation and new governing documents. I think asking that question offers a deep insight into their hearts and minds. Heres my theory about why the coach or. Not during the Constitutional Convention in the 1780s and not when these states were framing and reframing new bodies of laws throughout the late 18th and early 19th century. So here it is. During the constitutional era, the late 18th century, the framers were obsessed with an issue, one that was vital to the existence of the republican experiment. Historian joseph ellis frame this as the viability of the nation. In short, no one, former columnist or the republican experiment would work if the United States, that the union would hold. It was precisely this uncertainty to lead men such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to create the constitution in order to consolidate and shore up power in the union. This need for legitimacy, to prove to themselves and others, but the United States was a real political enterprise, gave rise to much anxiety and fear, and i think its this anxiety and viability that prevented the primers from addressing the glaring contradiction of the category of citizenship in their shiny new machine of government. As i said before, they couldve done many things to have brought women into the political fold, but they chose not to. I am postulate ink that this anxiety over legitimacy made the framers and founding men sensitive to anything that would seem to diminish or challenge their 30, and in age that equated masculinity with authority, that made anything that made them feel or seen less than men, ceding the power over wives that coverture gave them would be such an act, notte world. One could see this time in American History as a crisis of masculinity, with masculinity equaling authority and viability. The last thing the now revolutionaries would do were to call their masculinity into question by giving their wives freedom. I also would say that looking at this legal position of married white women deepens our understanding of the constitution, especially in the issue about citizenship, which is alive today. I think it offers insights about how americans get exercise and lose it. Women are not mentioning the constitution. Interestingly, the language of the constitution is surprisingly gender neutral. The framers use words like persons, inhabitants and citizens, employing male pronouns to refer to only officeholders. Its also true that women, along with children, were counted in apportioning quotas, but nevertheless women are not part of the constitution. And that omission, while perhaps not totally conscious, was in its way deliberate, resting upon assumptions of whether women could be in fact citizens or even on some level persons. And this partial presence of women in the constitution, and i do use the language of being the ghost in the constitution, the ghost in the machine, but it means that there is a very different idea of citizenship present in the founding document. For the most part, we understand the white male citizenship model. As well, we understand the status of the stateless. The language about enslaved people in the constitution reminds us what it means to be a person with no rights. But married white women present a third model. One that is more akin to slavery than citizens, or if it is a kind of citizenship, it is one that is covered, partial and contingent. I promise to twist on the story. That may lead up to it. I mention how, even though i was the professor of coverture, taking this more indepth look really affected my teaching. So as a historian of womens lives and gender, one of my bread and butter courses, one that i taught four years at that point, was the survey course of americans history. In that course, i discuss coverture three times. The first mention is in week two when i talk about colonial women, that is when i introduced the definition. Week four is when we would talk about Abigail Adams and the remember the ladies letter. Until 2012, my point about the remember the ladies letter was not that Abigail Adams was asking for the vote. People read that and think shes asking for the vote. I would point out that this was a historical, that calling for womens suffrage in 1776 would have been seen as radical to the point of derangement. No, i pointed out, Abigail Adams was asking for something more measured and modest for the abolition or amendment of coverture. In postulate evoked as the most radical political request abigail can make, i was unconsciously reflecting a 19th century prejudice. Yes, by 1848, female suffrage was regarded as an extreme position by most americans. It was so extreme that Elizabeth Cady stanton almost did not include it in the declaration that was presented at the nine 1848 seneca falls convention. But i was wrong, and 1776 it was not crazy that white women with property could have been given the vote. In fact, in the first decade of the 1800s in new jersey, women of property did vote until that wright was taken away from them by the jeffersonian democrats. Abigails request about coverture on the other hand, was the most revolutionary suggestion she could make. That women could be hole persons, full citizens and legal entities in the new government. That they could be given control over their own labor, their own bodies their own children. That was a radical suggestion. Okay, so the third time i lectured about coverture came about halfway through this mister, when i talked about in 1848 the passage of the womens property act in new york. And that was not really about women, but by allowing married women, in particular cases to own property apart from their husband, this was the first legal crack in the law of coverture. And that was it that was the last time i mentioned thing coverture. And i have to wonder what happened after that . What happened to coverture think . And here comes the twist. We never got rid of it. Legally. And this is where i cant possibly judge the founders. They did not abolish coverture but neither did we. So what did americans do . Well we chipped coverture over the last 300 years, but never getting rid of it completely. And knowing that explains several puzzling phenomenal from the 20th century. So we get native born american women, who lose their citizenship up to the 1950. So you could be an american born woman, but if you marry foreign or you lose your citizenship. In many places women were not permitted to serve on juries until the mid 20th centuries. Marital rape, was not recognized, until the 1970s. And this is all because of coverture is still there. The central idea of coverture is that all women were wives, and keeping that affected all women in all cases. And i think banks would not lend money to single women. A woman was actually seeking a mortgage from a bank where she was a bank loan officer. Even today, if you bought property as a married woman you are forced to come up against coverture. Most of the cases are funny, but the question remains what we just get rid of it . American law chips away at coverture because there was a reluctance to declare women to be equal under the law. And when i realized that i started thinking about what would that look like equal under the law . And of course i went right back to slavery, and we dont pass laws against slavery, because laws could be overturned or changed, and it can differ from state to state. But to get rid of slavery at least in theory, what was needed was a constitutional amendment. So i started thinking about a constitutional amendment, and something about that seem familiar. And then i remembered, the haze of my teenage years, where i wasnt paying too much attention to what was happening in the world. There was this thing called the er a. It was a constitutional amendment. And it declared women to be equal under the law. Imagine my stylish meant to go back and say hey the er a, thats we needed all the way all along. And as i remembered that i began this Research Journey at that symposium as to what was going to be the next big thing, the most fruitful topic around the american revolution, and you wont be surprised i ended my presentation talking about coverture. And i hope this presentation has persuaded you as well. Thank you so much. And im turning it back over to 1 million. That was incredible island so much it was amazing. But you know that is still something that is with us today and still affecting us in 2020. So if you want if you have any questions actually i will be happy to share those with catherine. While we are waiting for questions, i want to show you my latest uncover. Just recently we are doing something, we are getting something notarized, and you have to put up your idea in your paper and sign it and send it. So were doing this, and he asks two questions. He has both of us, whether we were here of our own free will. Which is really hot right ought question . And then asked if there was anyone else in the room with us. And these are all vestiges of coverture. They used to be that the law worried about a woman having no power, legal power, and being made by her husband to sign of or anything like that her father gave to her. Lets say her father gave the woman, morey built her a field, and the idea was that she was forced to keep that field. But the husband pressured her to give it to him. So what theyre asking, is it with the issue is you take a woman into the room and say are you doing this of your freewill . Is he not enough because hes not going to beach or something. So because your modern, we dont talk about women in that way, they have to make this phony moment, or my husband and i are sitting there saying, is there anyone else in the room with you . And i thought wow this is coverture. Thats kind of amazing, and i have a question, and i guess this is hopefully within your purview, so its interesting youre talking about how women could not hold or they could hold property, and it would pastor from the father to the children, but this brings up in my mind martha washington. We heard about how george freed his enslaved people when he died, but the women who are the people held in bondage by martha were not freed. So how does that fit into women who can own property . When George Washington, married martha, her slaves became his. Im not so familiar with the washington, i have to be checked this, but i think he could not legally free them, because they were going to be passed down to marthas children. Okay so that does make sense. But i have to tell you explaining entail mint has become so much easier after adult and abby. People get this now more. I guess it so one of the concepts you mentioned, so i was wondering if you could tell us about. What is interesting, there is this legal exception, that you could get this and you could open up your business, so we were not even thinking about culture in 1972, we are looking at women who had careers or jobs. An easy thing to do was to look for how many women in a town had applied for this thing. And actually is quite rare. And we kept looking around, and its just not did not seem to make sense, because it was so rare and we knew you know women had stores and ran taverns and were printers, and what it turned out to be is is that, this is where every day life takes over. Women did not just bother. Very few women, took the steps to actually get legally sanctioned. Most women in their families, just did not bother. If youre living in a small town, and you have a store and technically you cant make a contract, but if you dont pay your supplier as a woman, they are not going to come back. So it was kind of policed by the community, and once we understood that the formal exception, you know they werent doing doing it, then we discovered lots and lots of women and boston wants cases. Great thank you, weve had a question come in and theyre asking how much of coverture was carried over from british rule. At some point there was three forms of coverture. The british because we were british, but the people who were british colonists, there was the spanish form of coverture that came from spain. That was mostly in the southwest. And then there was the french one, and everyone who remembers a streetcar named desire, and stanley kowalski, talking about the napoleon it code, and about the property, bell belong to him as well. And in fact louisiana, there exception to a lot of things still, but there are vestiges of that coverture. But because the british form of coverture actually became the default one. And it was wholesale. So i should have maybe contextualized this a bit more, you know that coverture had been practiced for centuries. But it was very lightly codified. It was black letter law, i wrote about it, you know this couple lines, basically a husband and a wife or one, and that one is the husband. What happened in the 18 century, is that i dont sure i think blackwell, i may have just thought that but i think its it. But he really started to begin to codify the law. He tried to streamline things, and codify things, and heat built on this. So coverture get three invented, oddly enough right before the revolutionary era. So in the 17 forties, 17 fifties. At the time when you talk about freedom and individual liberties, blackwell is actually basically tying this down. So it was enlarged upon. And it just got lifted, right from british law, and plug right into the american system. And if there is a lawyer out there, please correct me if i was wrong with blackwell. So we have a comment, and theres a could you give us a bit more information of the common law exceptions to coverture. For example in pennsylvania, they permitted married women under certain circumstances, to protect their businesses. Yes i think we talked a bit about that, you know because it came from british law, there was always an exception to that. So you could legally do it, there had to be a man somewhere there to guarantee it. But what was most interesting, is that not that exception existed, but that it was honored in the breach. So when it came to everyday life, every day practice, you know men and women a running business is side by side together, but there is the deputy husband, which meant if the man was out at sea, or traveling in some ways, that a woman could make contracts on his behalf. To buy goods, or buy goods for the store. Or to sell. Whatever you need for business. So there is that exception. I think what is so much more interesting, is almost like the power of the every day took over. Simone that is really interesting. Oh and i want to add this, i talked to have about how we chipped away coverture. But it may look elegant, that women had no legal existence, but as a country we needed women to do stuff. And as we needed more women to do stuff, we would make it ok. That we could hold jobs, and get paid, and be held to account and testify in crimes. And when we needed women to step up, you know we removed some of the coverture but it was definitely in and as needed capacity. Yes thats really interesting, especially in nantucket, because thats a maritime community, where many husbands were etsy. So there were women on the island, not just in pennsylvania, as the person asked for, and give us an example, but there were women conducting business on the island as well. Let me put you on the spot for a second, what would you say is the ratio, or you dont between women, doing things, running businesses, making contracts, selling and people or women who applied for the exception . I think it changed over time, i am not lying trying to give it statistics here, but i think it i think we had a great presentation over the summer, from local harrison, who did some research about petticoat row. And if youre not familiar, it was a street on the island, that had a lot of women who are running the businesses. Theres a concept theres idea that while husbands were at sea, that this was a Flourishing Center of commerce, run exclusively by women. Hence petticoat row. But it was more after, the end of whaling on the island, that men were kind of coming for the gold rush, or older man on the island anne want to children and, it was i think theres an area for more research to be done for sure, two separate that miss from whats actually happened. Thats why think this is such a timely conversation. And may also thank, mary hed for blacks down. Thank you mary i appreciate it. I knew i made a mistake, when i saw the books behind me were black, well its blackstone. We have another question, what other country if any, still maintain the law of a male dominated society . I think that, you know many. Thats all i can say. And i think what is interesting, is not the extreme ones that you might imagine. Where women cannot drive, and they have to be excluded by a male. But how royal cut of crops up in more first world places. And there is somebody who is just mentioning a comment, that in 1971, i was only allowed to have a credit card if my husband signed on to. I was fully employed. But thats exactly it. I collect these stories of coverture and when you think about it 1971 was not that far away. And its easy to say well its sexism. Its just men dominating women. But i think there it really is important to see this as coverture. We cant outlaw sexism, but we can outlaw other things. And law matters. And so if coverture had gone that would not have happened. So it can still get because theyll get sexually harassed, but if we got coverture you know so many things like this wouldve defeat disappeared we got rid of it. And some of it is funny, but some of it is serious. Especially if you file your taxes, as a married couple, with separate names. There is a case in california, that took years for husband to switch his name to his wife, for no reason except that it was not this thing. So im more interested in how these things kind of crop up. And then we recognize it a little bit like you know im not sure or im sure we have a lot of gardeners, and you know something grows under the ground, and it pops up in your garden, and then it goes up and pops up in someone else is garden, and that really is what coverture is and if youre negotiating, and all the sudden its affected by coverture. And it could be employment discrimination, discrimination of all kinds. Thank you yes, so what would you say is the status of the erie today. So once i discovered the era or rediscovered it the way that columbus biscuit rediscovered america, there is still a movement to pasty era. And when i read the websites, there was always a limitation, the think it stopped at three. Then they extended, and then that deadline passed. And now they are trying to resurrect. They basically want to revitalize the movement. They want to extend the deadline. I think virginia, where just down by two. So there is definitely, movement. And i think you know the patient is still alive. And theres Something Else i want to say about was not all the good support you know like we need the support for era. And obviously theres still a lot of juice around this idea, and the only real argument against it, is we have all these laws. And this is just not a strong argument because laws change all the time, and this is why you have to enshrine in the constitution. So i think its still alive . And if anybody else out there knows more than i do about it than please let me know. So we have time for a few more questions so do we see coverture holding up in states that had more longer slavery. Can you comment on that . You know coverture is interesting, the louisiana which is a former french coverture had been has been argued by scholars both ways. In some ways it has been looked at as more restrictive than british coverture. And in some ways its talks about giving women more freedom. I dont know enough about both of those arguments, to really navigate my way in their. So if i continue along this path i should learn a lot more about the louisiana coverture. And i would definitely say that, that was such a smart remark, because one of the traits of Slave Society. Theres a difference between society and slaves and slave societies. And we will always characterize a society with slaves. And versus a Slave Society. So it is true, that real slave societies, have much more stringent gender restrictions. And women are definitely secondclass, but centers of masculinity and femininity are much more stringent, im much more hardwired. Because the tension in Slave Society is about keeping this other group of people oppressed and working right. And you do that through physical force, and fear. And the world has to be much more rigid, and orderly. So if you are a woman who wanted to, have a job but you know if you are a man, first son of the family, and you had no interest in running the plantation, or you want to oversee that, so coverture issues, do linger on much more. An example would be women on juries. Women started sitting on juries in the 19 forties and fifties in the north and the west, rather than the south. So the south is much more conservative. So, i think the last question im seeing here are where there are instances where husband was prevented from allowing his wife to run his business, or inherit his property . That you are aware of . Yeah, so the property if he didnt want wife to run his businesses just wouldnt happen. He just wouldnt permit it to happen. It had to be agreed to buy him theres no way you could do it she could do without him. I want to say windows and single women how their property protected by law. But it was always seen as an exception right . Because, coverage or presumes all women are wives. But what you dont want in a society in a town, you dont want a man to die and then the woman has nothing right . Because now she is on the public charge. There was something called windows thirds. But the idea was if a man dies, is poppy will go to the eldest son or someone else, she would get a third her dowry they called it. It would be some combination of material things like her own clothes, pots and pans, maybe some lined, maybe the house. It would be enough to keep the body and soul together. It was not out of any sense of fairness. It was purely practical. They recognize that if a guy dies, takes everything away she has nothing. Some men were kind of mean, they would actually try to deny the windows thirds thats on the equity courts would come in and be equitable and counteract that. This is been fascinating, i certainly learned a lot this evening, i want to say thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us tonight and to share this. It was my pleasure. I think this is a wonderful series, im glancing at some of the questions i am so happy to bring this to such a well educated and engaged audience. Thank you all weeknights this month, we are featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight we look at the apollo space program. Less than one year after the nearly disastrous apollo 13 mission that failed to land on the moon and barely made it back to earth, apollo 14 astronauts allen shepard, Andrew Mitchell and stewart rousseau blasted off on january 31st 1971. Apollo 14, mission to from all row it is the name of a large crater where they touched down and spent nine hours exploring the surface and collecting specimens. University in North Carolina and chapel hill professor kathleen do all teaches a class about the end of the american
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