CK_4_TH_HG_P087_242.QXD 10/6/05 9:03 AM Page 232 IV. Reformers two-year investigation and won support to have the state-run mental hospital expanded. Dix then took her crusade to other states and found similar conditions. For 40 years, Dix worked to help the mentally ill. She persuaded legislators in 15 U.S. states and in Canada to build or upgrade state-operated hospitals for the mental- ly ill. 46 Teaching Idea Horace Mann and Public Schools While studying Horace Mann you may wish to try to give students a sense of Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first colony to establish public-supported how schools in the 19th century dif- education. In 1642, the General Court of Massachusetts passed an education law fered from schools today. Share pic- to ensure that everyone was able to read the Bible. According to the law, parents tures, and possibly also selections from had to teach their children to read. Five years later, the General Court passed a old school books, such as McGuffey’s law ordering every town of 50 families or more to support a school. Eclectic Readers (see More Resources). Horace Mann built on this foundation when he served as the first secretary of the Massachusetts state board of education from 1837 to 1848. During that time, he did much to promote public education by establishing state-supported colleges to train teachers and by setting up school districts under a statewide sys- Teaching Idea tem of public education. Mann also lobbied for better pay for teachers. He want- As a writing exercise, tell students to ed to standardize the age for compulsory school attendance, place students in respond in 5-paragraph essay form to graded classrooms, and use the same grade-level textbooks across the state. the following prompt: To which move- But most importantly, Mann and his supporters advocated public education ment would you have volunteered your as the “great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance wheel of the social time to help? Why? machinery.” They saw public education as a means to create a harmonious and homogeneous society of hardworking citizens, who would support the values, beliefs, and loyalties of America. Mann’s philosophy appealed to the middle class Cross-curricular in the north, and interest in public education soon spread from Massachusetts to other northern states. The midwest, which had been settled under the Northwest Teaching Idea Ordinance requiring the establishment of schools, already supported education. You may wish to teach the science Public education in the south did not take hold until the 1850s because of the biography of Elizabeth Blackwell in scarcity of towns. conjunction with this discussion of women’s rights. See “Science Women’s Rights, Seneca Falls, Stanton, and Mott Biographies” (pp. 519–520). In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Many advocates of the women’s rights movement were inspired by their efforts in the antislavery move- ment. At that time, women had very limited public roles. They usually could attend meetings but were not allowed to speak in public. In fact, a major catalyst for the women’s rights movement occurred in 1840, when Lucretia Mott and other female delegates were refused as delegates at the World’s Antislavery Convention in London due to their gender. In general, women were not allowed to enter the professions, such as medi- cine and law. Few girls were educated past eighth grade because education was not considered important for girls. People were concerned that education would weaken women’s minds. In addition, married women could not own property; if they had property in their names before they were married, they had to turn it over to their husbands after marriage. In the 1800s, women could not vote and Elizabeth Cady Stanton they could not hold public office. 232 Grade 4 Handbook CK_4_TH_HG_P087_242.QXD 10/6/05 9:03 AM Page 233 Women like Stanton and Mott, who were educated and were not intimidated by the rules of society, set out to do something about their circumstances. Stanton was the daughter of a lawyer and the wife of a prominent abolitionist. Among her accomplishments was the passage of laws in New York State giving married women the right to own property, to keep their wages, and to have equal guardianship with the father of their children. Mott was a Quaker and an aboli- tionist who organized the Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society and worked for more than 50 years for abolition, women’s rights, and peace. The convention that Stanton and Mott called at Seneca Falls was a first step toward gaining women’s rights. The delegates to the convention passed the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the nation’s Declaration of Independence. The document began: Lucretia Mott “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness . .” It ended with the statement, “We insist that they [women] have immediate admission to the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the Teaching Idea United States.” 45 Read parts of the Declaration of During the 1850s, many women activists like Stanton and Mott put aside Sentiments to students (see More their own struggle for equal rights to support the cause of abolition. Once the Resources). Ask them if the opening Civil War was over and slavery was abolished, they expected support for their reminds them of any other documents cause. However, few male abolitionists returned the favor, and the two groups did they have studied. It is, of course, a not always agree with one another. In 1869, when the Fifteenth Amendment was careful imitation of the Declaration of proposed to give African-American males the vote, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Independence. Just as Benjamin founded the National Woman Suffrage Association to protest the amendment Banneker used that document to state because it did not include women. The amendment was ratified nonetheless. It the case for African-American rights, was not until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, that women so the authors of the Declaration were allowed to vote. invoked it to make the case for women’s rights. In fact, the entire Women’s Rights: Sojourner Truth Declaration of Sentiments was close- Another woman active in both abolition and women’s rights was Sojourner ly patterned on the Declaration of Truth. Born to a slave family in New York State and given the name Isabella, she Independence. Students who are was freed in 1827 as a result of passage of the New York Emancipation Act, which familiar with the Declaration of granted freedom to all enslaved African Americans in the state. She later changed Independence will be able to see her name to Sojourner Truth, reflecting her quest for truth and justice, and many similarities. became an itinerant preacher. Adopting first abolition and later women’s rights, Truth took to the lecture circuit. Her fame spread with the publication of The Narrative of Sojourner Truth in 1850. During the Civil War, Truth worked to gain Cross-curricular admission of black units into the Northern army. After the war, she worked for a Teaching Idea time with former slaves to help them make the transition to freedom, and she You may wish to teach Sojourner continued to advocate for women’s rights. Truth’s speech “Ain’t I a woman?” An eloquent speaker who created great emotion in her audiences, she is often discussed in the Language Arts sec- credited with the speech “Ain’t I a woman?” However, it is possible that she never tion (on pp. 71–72) and found in the actually spoke the words as they were written. There were no recordings at that Text Resources in conjunction with time, of course, and it is possible that another woman, Frances Dana Gage, this unit. You may also wish to share embroidered Truth’s speech for publication. Regardless, those words became selections from Truth’s Narrative. almost an anthem for women’s rights’ advocates. History and Geography: American 233 CK_4_TH_HG_P087_242.QXD 10/6/05 9:03 AM Page 234 IV. Reformers Name Date Women’s Rights: Amelia Bloomer People Who Made a Difference Fill in the blanks to complete each sentence. Amelia Jenks Bloomer worked for women’s rights and the temperance move- abolitionist Amelia Bloomer Dorothea Dix ment. She edited a newspaper called The Lily: A Ladies Journal Devoted to Frederick Douglass Horace Mann Lucretia Mott reformer Seneca Falls, N.Y. Elizabeth Cady Stanton Temperance and Literature, which printed articles of interest to both women’s Sojourner Truth rights activists and temperance reformers. It is possibly the first newspaper run abolitionist 1. Someone who worked to end slavery was a(n) . by a woman. 2. A person who worked for reform was a(n) reformer . Dorothea Dix 3. was a crusader for the mentally ill. Bloomer is better known, however, for her adoption of full-legged pants, 4. A former slave, Sojourner Truth became a preacher and abolitionist. “Turkish trousers,” which she wore under a short skirt. She championed the idea 5. An advocate of public education,Horace Mann was from Massachusetts. that the full-skirted, many-crinolined outfits that women wore at the time ham- 6. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Seneca Falls, N.Y. organized the first women’s rights convention at . pered their freedom of movement and, therefore, their freedom.