Primary Sources on Transatlantic Feminisms
“And the war came.” Thank goodness for Abraham Lincoln, his short sentences, and even his passive voice. There is so much to teach even from this little bit in his Second Inaugural. In class, we’re pressing ever closer to the Civil War (or whatever we choose to call it). One of the factors, of course, that we’ve discussed is the rise of abolitionism and the role of women in the movement. 10 years ago, I had a clear historical argument about it: as abolitionists railed against slavery, a number of women started to see that they should have rights too, and hence abolitionism birthed feminism in America. I based this mostly on Kathryn Sklar’s wonderful Bedford series: Women’s Rights Emerges from Within the Anti-Slavery Movement.

But as all things historical, we know it’s more complicated, and a wonderful new book of primary sources from Lisa L. Moore, Joanna Brooks, and Caroline Wigginton titled Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutions has women from Anne Hutchinson to Katharine Tegakouita to Susanna Wright to Phillis Wheatley to Mary Wollstonecraft to Elizabeth Hart Thwaites discussing the rights of women throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Folks looking for primary sources to include regarding women and women’s rights in their survey classes can certainly use this book, and I could see it being crucial to any US women’s history course.

[on a side note, I’m curious about the cover image. If we had a drawing of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Gerrit Smith naked would we put that on a reader about manhood and abolitionism? Just curious. And no quiz updates; we’re not having one on Wednesday]