Page 27 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

FRONTIER PH ILOSOPHY: AMERICAN D I SCOURSE

have had about seizing others' land; they would trade their help to Native
Americans for land, which whites considered open to development.2 6
Even Anglo women who went west to advance themselves in some way
came to believe that their presence would help, if just by being living
examples of white civilization. Thus, what one scholar has termed " con­
quest through benevolence"2 7 attracted not only Beecher's female edu­
cators, but numerous other women who believed that their ability to
give to the poor, ill, and non-Christian indicated the high moral tone
of American society, especially of its women.
Of course, such inflated rhetoric, and the prominence it extended
to women's roles, strongly attracted many Anglo women during the
mid-nineteenth century. Blocked from exercising the right of suffrage
and holding pubic office, unable to own property or control their wages,
and certain to lose their children in a divorce action, these women
understandably adopted many aspects of domestic philosophy. Through
the arguments of domesticity, women's subordination and imputed infe­
riority served lofty purposes, including the redemption of all
humankind. Moreover, its tenets even implied superiority for women,
at least in the realm of morality. If women were the moral guardians of
American society, the argument went, then the " other sex" must be lack­
ing in this area.
Some women quickly understood that their moral powers might
be the springboard that would considerably widen women's sphere,
whereas they acted innocent of entertaining thoughts of enlarging or
even leaving their sphere.2 8 One of the most articulate of these women
was Sarah Josepha Hale, who in r837 became editor of Codey's Lady's
Book. A decade earlier, Hale had made it clear in her first novel,
Northwood, that she believed that '''constitutions' and 'compromises'"
were "the appropriate work of men." In Hale's eyes, women were to
be "conservators of moral power, which, eventually . . . preserves or
destroys the work of the warrior, the statesman, and the patriot."2 9
Having said this, Hale spent subsequent years enlarging women's activ­
ities. For example, in novels, articles, editorial comments, and personal
crusades, Hale demanded that, to fully exercise their morality, women
needed "improved" education.3 0 Hale expanded women's spheres on
other levels as well. She maintained that morally uplifting novels should

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