Page 34 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

C H APTER ONE

many people's plans. Women's rights leaders, for example, set aside their
campaigns in favor of supporting the war effort. People who hoped to
migrate to the West also put their dreams on hold. After the war period,
however, women's rights leaders resumed their crusade with a new
impetus, whereas westward migration not only increased, but now
included newly freed black Americans and a surge of immigrants from
eastern Europe.
Thousands of Anglo women believed it was time for changes for
themselves as well. For example, war widows and wives of disabled
veterans who had to support themselves and their children wanted fair
wages and reasonable working conditions. Other women found that in
the postwar economy they too had to work for wages to help support
their families. Even middle- and upper-class women, especially those
who had learned through volunteer work how to speak, conduct
meetings, raise money, handle finances, and serve as executive officers,
were unwilling to return to old ways. They were in the forefront of
women demanding better education, as well as the freedom to write
other than didactic literature, enter the professions, and become artists
and musicians. Some also wanted the ability to divorce shiftless or
abusive husbands.
Women's rights leaders supported all of these causes. W i th vigor,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton took up the last by renewing a campaign she
had begun in r860, then set aside during the war years: ease of divorce.
Stanton condemned the "slavery" of a bad marriage, saying that divorce
was to enslaved wives what the Underground Railroad had been to
slaves of African descent. On more than one occasion, Stanton shocked
her readers or listeners with her assertions that every "slave" who fled
"a discordant marriage" gave her satisfaction. She hoped that "the edu­
cation and elevation" of women would lead to "a mighty sundering of
the unholy ties that hold men and women together who loathe and
despise each other." Few women's r i ghts' advocates endorsed all of
Stanton's views, but they did agree that wives of alcoholics should be
freed from destructive marriages. As a result, by r87r thirty -four states,
two-thirds of which were in the South and the West, added drunken­
ness to lists of grounds for divorce. ss
Anglo women-whether in the East, South, or West-had a