Preview

Matilda Gage And The Women's Suffrage Movement

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
753 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Matilda Gage And The Women's Suffrage Movement
Matilda Gage was a strong supporter of freedom. She was one of the leading figures in the women’s rights and suffrage movement during the mid-1800s. Gage was born on March 24, 1826 in Cicero, New York and was raised in a house dedicated to antislavery. ("Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation") The activist and free thinker Matilda Joslyn Gage is relevant in today's American culture because of her work in the abolitionist movement which led to the emancipation of slaves; her pioneering work to start the woman's suffrage movement with Susan B. Anthony that sought equal rights for woman; and her views on religion and how it influenced the women’s suffrage movement.
She was exposed as a young child to the abolitionist movement and her childhood home was
…show more content…
She was considered a radical on her view of the separation of church and state because many of her suffragist sisters felt the church was an important part of their beliefs. Gage felt that religion and the church actively repressed women while reinforcing the belief that men were superior. Her relevance to American culture today was her staunch support for separation of church and state which would lead to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the first amendment to the constitution. In the years ahead the contours of religious liberty will continue to shift as compromises are made and cultures are integrated; this dynamism comprises the essential strength of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” ("Separation of Church and State" …show more content…
Every level in the economic, political, and cultural life of this country has expanded to include the participation of blacks as well as women thanks in part to Gages work on these efforts. Separation of church and state has been part of the nation’s legal and cultural nomenclature since the early 1800s. Although organized religion is not as strong as in the past, today’s culture of America encompasses many Christian

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    She was born in 1823. She and her family were free, but they didn’t have the rights and freedoms of a white American. When Mary Ann was little her father ran a show-making business. They helped slaves traveling through the underground railroads. They gave slaves food and shoes that came from the company. Her early life wasn’t very good, because she always saw runaway slaves and wondered if they would be captured and beat to death.…

    • 598 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    against African Americans as a child. Later she would see first hand the struggles of…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Firstly let us examine the parade in the movie, which is known today as the Women's Suffrage Parade of 1913. In the movie, Inez Milholland is depicted as leading the parade by wearing a crown and and, riding on a white horse. According to the biography “The Life and Times of Inez Milholland,” on Monday, March 3, 1913, clad in a white cape astride a white horse named "Gray Dawn.", lawyer Inez Milholland led the great woman suffrage parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital. Behind her extended a long line of more than five thousand marchers, marching for women's suffrage. However, compared to the image of Milholland from the march illustrated on the cover of the book “The Life and Times of Inez Milholland, the actress in the movie is wearing a black…

    • 503 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Women used many different methods to earn the right to vote in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Alice Paul the leader of the NWP and she lead the Women’s Suffrage Act. She was willing to die in order for the women to get the vote. The women used many methods to try to win the fight, they picketed in front of the white house at one point. Every day they would go out with flags and banners and stand at the gate. One day the police showed up accused them for obstructing traffic and arrested them. In the parade they had floats and banners, lines upon lines of women walking and protesting against the law. When the parade was almost over the crowd had come into the middle of it and attacked the women. This showed that they would rather die than live…

    • 148 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    2000 Dbq Essay

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages

    During the 1750’s through the 1780’s American society was becoming increasingly less democratic in terms of property distribution and more democratic when it came to social structure as well as politics and religion. The tolerance of religion may have sparked from the Great Awakening during this time period. The evidence shown from society in Wethersfield, Connecticut, is a great paradigm of the changes in American society.…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Figure 1: Women's suffrage picket demonstrating for the freedom of Alice Paul, 1917. Assumed English; source unknown.…

    • 1293 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Born in 1775, in New Orleans, she was a wealthy socialite, had a great reputation and was well known throughout New Orleans as a kind and giving woman. Little did people know what was going on behind this mask, a hidden psychopath that fed off the misery of her black slaves. After the fire in her mansion, people discovered dozens of mutilated bodies of her slaves chained to the walls and floors of her attic. Her body was never found. Once again having complete and utter power over a group of people she killed and tortured without any consequences. Living a society where slavery was a part of culture, she experienced revulsion against the African American slaves, thus exterminating them in the worse manner…

    • 1167 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Antebellum Era Dbq

    • 1737 Words
    • 7 Pages

    For many women, and as shown in Document C, the two causes were intertwined because they work for their own liberty as well. The role of women in the household had begun to change with the ongoing Industrial Revolution. A group of young single women known as Lowell girls worked in factories. In the middle and upper classes, women became the moral and spiritual leaders of their households, known as the Cult of Domesticity. Along with speaking on temperance and abolition, some women began speaking on women's rights at conventions. One such woman was Lucretia Mott. She was focused mostly on women's rights, publishing her influential Discourse on Woman and founding Swarthmore College. She became a Quaker minister, and was noted for her speaking ability. She advocated the boycotting the products of slave labor. She was an early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society. She worked with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the two women organized the first women's rights convention which was held in Seneca Falls, New York. At the convention, Stanton stated that they were assembled to “declare our right to be free as man is free” (Document I) and presented the Declaration of Sentiments, a document written by Stanton and based on the form of the Declaration of Independence. It declared that men and women were equal and that women had no representation since they couldn't vote. Frederick Douglass, who was in attendance at the convention and helped pass the resolutions in the Declaration of Sentiments called the document the “grand basis for attaining the civil, social, political, and religious rights of women”. The Grimke sisters, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth were also suffragists. The Women's Rights Movement expanded democratic ideals because it pushed for equality and the right to vote for…

    • 1737 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    It was the Quaker women who were the early organizers of these movements. They would organize secret women’s meetings which at the time could be very dangerous. This was just a small step. Women wanted to have equal rights in courts of law, in property matters and in civil rights. Women felt they should have the same rights as men to make decisions on their own and they didn’t want to be thought of as a man’s property ("Seneca falls convention," 2011) .…

    • 804 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the strongest advocates and leaders in the early women’s rights movement. She attended numerous conventions and meetings in attempts to speak her mind and promote equality. She relentlessly fought for the equality of all people, and drew backup from both the Declaration of Independence and from the Bible to make her points. She is often credited with starting the women’s rights movement with her presentation at Seneca Falls in 1848. While she was able to gather support from a vast amount of Americans, she also found many that would oppose her and her ideas. Two main areas that Stanton was deeply intertwined with were the antislavery movement in the years around 1840 and the critiques of the Bible that…

    • 2475 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Susan B Anthony

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages

    On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony, a well-known leader in the women’s rights movement, along with several other women, entered the West End News Depot and cast their ballot. The women had all registered in the previous days; Anthony had registered to vote November 1, 1872 at a local barbershop, along with her three sisters. Even though the inspectors refused her initial demand to register, Anthony used her power of persuasive speaking and her relationship with well-respected persons of authority, such as Judge Henry R. Selden, to obtain her registration, informing the inspectors that if they did not register the women, they would press charges through the criminal court and sue for damages. When she was arrested for her illegal actions two weeks later, she went willingly with the officer, demanding that they treated her equal to male criminals (Linder, “Trial”). Before and after her illegal vote, Susan B. Anthony used her eloquence and strength as a speaker to deliver various thought-provoking speeches on why women legally have the right to vote and her 1873 speech, “On Women’s Right to Vote,” is no exception.…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the 1980s and 1990s, political scientists and journalists have reported an increased political activity on the part of religious Americans. The period has seen the rise of the Moral Majority, the creation of the Christian Coalition, and the presidential campaigns of the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Pat Robertson.” (Religion and Politics). Jesse Jackson and Pat Robertson are very influential men who have fought for religious freedom and moral values in this country for years. Some others, who have been influential Christians, are Gary Wilkerson, Franklin Graham and Billy Graham. These men need to be thanked and applauded because they took a stand against a tyrant called the Federal…

    • 1227 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the speech “And Ain’t I a Woman” Sojourner Truth speaks on why women should have rights at the Woman’s Rights Convention in 1851. There were women, men, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Universalist ministers in the church who didn’t want Sojourner Truth to speak from when she walked in the door because she was a woman. The writer Frances Gage said “Again and again, timorous and trembling ones came to me and said, with earnestness,” “Don’t let her speak, Mrs. Gage, it will ruin us. Every newspaper in the land will have our cause mixed up with abolition and niggers, and we shall be utterly denounced.” (Truth 875) In those days there were very few women who dared to “speak in meeting.” (Truth 875) “Don’t let her speak” “gasped half a dozen in my ear”. (Truth 875) Out of all of the people in the Convention that did not want Sojourner Truth to speak they never deterred her.…

    • 1106 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Sojourner Truth Thesis

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages

    But those who saw her powerful form, her strong and truthful tones, were left mesmerized. Moments after, there was much debate about what she said and how she said it. Frances Dana Gage, who was present at the 1851 Convention, published a longer version of the speech. It was printed in the Anti-Slavery Standard May 2, 1863 and in The History of Woman Suffrage, volume 1. Even though Truth wasn’t raised to read and write, she quickly became more well-known and much respected. Truth gained fame for movingly and powerfully influence women’s rights issues, her Akron speech brought many converts to the Christian Faith. She got to work among the poor and was briefly ensnarled in a religious cult. During all the years of her life, Truth continued honoring her speaking skills and spiritual…

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    From religious groups who specialize in crafting silver spoons, to those who examine fecal matter in order to determine how healthy one’s body temple is, religion has played an important role in the formation of America as we see it today. Christianity has become the most practiced religion in America, but certainly not without struggle. As more and more people immigrated to America from Europe, bringing with them different cultures and beliefs, it became a matter of trying to figure out America’s identity while holding onto that Christian backbone. At the same time, black Americans were fighting for a voice after a long history of enslavement and violation of basic human rights. This idea of speaking out and taking action against an oppressive society is something that is common amongst many Christian groups and is the…

    • 1428 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays