levo

Y319: Civil Rights in the USA 1865–1992

Women: position in 1865, temperance and the suffrage campaign

  • 1 thing to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on women’s position in 1865, the split of 1869, Minor v Happersett, western suffrage, temperance and prohibition, the Winning Plan and National Woman’s Party, the Nineteenth Amendment and its effects, and the Equal Rights Amendment.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Key term

Describe the legal position of American women in 1865.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Describe the legal and social position of American women in 1865.

    Model answer

    Married women were still largely subject to coverture, under which a husband controlled his wife's earnings, property and children, no state allowed women to vote in national elections, divorce was difficult, the professions and most higher education were closed to them, and respectable opinion confined them to a domestic sphere.

  2. 2

    Why did the campaign for women's rights split in 1869?

    Model answer

    Reformers divided over whether to support the Fifteenth Amendment when it enfranchised Black men but not women: Stanton and Anthony's National Woman Suffrage Association opposed it and pursued a federal amendment, while Lucy Stone's American Woman Suffrage Association backed it and worked state by state; the two only reunited as NAWSA in 1890.

  3. 3

    What did the Supreme Court decide in Minor v Happersett in 1875?

    Model answer

    It ruled that citizenship did not carry the right to vote and that the Fourteenth Amendment therefore gave women no claim to the franchise, closing off the courts and forcing suffragists back to the slow work of amending state and federal constitutions.

  4. 4

    Why did western territories and states enfranchise women first?

    Model answer

    Wyoming in 1869 and Utah in 1870, followed by Colorado in 1893 and Idaho in 1896, acted from a mixture of motives: attracting female settlers to male-dominated territories, publicity in the drive for statehood, the value placed on women's labour in frontier households, and in Utah the wish to strengthen Mormon voting power.

  5. 5

    How did the temperance campaign advance women's rights?

    Model answer

    The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874 and led from 1879 by Frances Willard, grew into the largest women's organisation in the country and justified political activity as home protection against drunken husbands, which trained thousands of women in petitioning, lobbying and public speaking and drew them towards suffrage.

  6. 6

    Explain the double-edged relationship between prohibition and women's rights.

    Model answer

    Temperance work legitimised women's entry into politics and helped carry the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, but it also made the brewing and distilling industry a wealthy and determined opponent of votes for women; and when prohibition failed, Pauline Sabin's organisation of women against it showed that women could not be assumed to vote as a bloc.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

1Closed book
2Open book
3Closed book

See a huge jump in your memorisation

Answer cold, learn it, then prove it stuck. Levo tracks the jump between your first attempt and your last.

Y101: Alfred and the Making of England 871–1016
Y102: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest 1035–1107
Y103: England 1199–1272
Y104: England 1377–1455

Cram a whole paper in one sitting

Sort every topic into what you know and what you do not, then drill only the weak ones.

Franz Ferdinand was shot at in June.
SarajevoBelgradeVienna

Blank Blitz consolidates the facts

Rapid timed gap-fills on the terms and numbers you need to recall without thinking.

AA republic replaced the sultanate.
BThe caliphate was abolished in 1924.
CThe Latin alphabet was adopted.

Build It trains answer structure

Assemble a full-mark answer from its marking points, in the order an examiner wants them.

Simony means the buying and selling of Church office.
TrueFalse

Test It catches misconceptions

Spot the fault in a statement. The traps are the mistakes students actually make.

721941163128510

Brain Breaks between sessions

Short focus games to reset attention, so the next set lands better than the last.

Every question in Y319: Civil Rights in the USA 1865–1992, on a schedule.

Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.

Or £46 a year, about £3.83 a month. Cancel anytime.