Lesson Plan: Day 1
Unit Name: WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
School District: Greater Lowell Technical High School
Date: July 2008
Class and Grade: United States History I - Grade 9
State Framework Standard: US1.33 Analyze the Goals and Effect of the Antebellum Women’s Suffrage Movement
a. The Seneca Falls Convention
b. Susan B. Anthony
c. Margaret Fuller
d. Lucretia Mott
e. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Seminal Primary Documents to Read: The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)
Historical Thinking Standard: 1A Distinguish between past, present and future time
2E Read historical narratives imaginatively
Leadership: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott
Enduring Understanding: The movement towards women’s suffrage and modern-day women’s rights began with the female leaders of the mid-1800s who gained much of their ideas from their work in earlier reform movements such as the abolitionist movement.
Essential Questions:
1) Why does the women’s rights movement develop in the antebellum period?
2) What challenges do the reformers face and how do they respond?
3) In what ways can conflict provide avenues for change?
4) What kind of argument did suffragists make for the vote in the nineteenth century? How did that change in the early twentieth century?
5) What were the main achievements of women's rights proponents in the twentieth century? What did they fail to achieve or accomplish in only a limited way?
Activities and Resources:
1) Pretest (Attach 1)
2) Begin instruction with student’s brainstorming answers to questions on board: “What traits do leaders have?”
”Think of a leader who has caused positive change to occur in this country or in the world. What actions did he or she take to cause the change to occur? Was it a long or short process? What obstacles (if any) did the leader face?”
3) Teacher gives overview of Women’s Movement using PowerPoint Presentation (Attach 2). Students will answer worksheet as presentation is given.
4) Teacher provides Elizabeth Cady Stanton handout to students with guided reading questions. Students begin reading it independently in class and then are given instructions to finish it for homework. (Attach 3).
Content: Leadership
Overview of Women’s Movement
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Assignment: Read Elizabeth Cady Stanton excerpts from her autobiography and answer ten guided reading questions. Due next class.
Cloze activity given for extra credit.
Attachment 1
Women’s Rights Unit
Pre and Post Test
Directions: Answer the following questions using complete sentences.
1. Describe three obstacles that women’s rights leaders faced in the mid-1800s.
2. What document was the Declaration of Sentiments modeled after?
3. List three grievances [complaints] the leaders at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention included in their Declaration of Sentiments.
4. There was only one part of the Declaration of Sentiments that the people in attendance did not agree upon. What was it?
5. What was the general public’s reaction to the Seneca Falls convention?
6. Name four leader’s of the nineteenth century (1800s) Women’s Rights Movement.
7. What is meant by the term universal suffrage?
8. How many years passed from the time of the First Women’s Rights Convention to the ratification of the Constitutional Amendment allowing women to vote? Circle the correct answer.
a. 5 years
b. 10 years
c. 42 years
d. 72 years
9. Which amendment gave women the right to vote (suffrage)?
10. What was the Equal Rights Amendment? Did it pass? Why or why not?
Attachment 2- the power point presentation
Questions to answer during power point presentation.
1. Why do you think the Declaration of Independence was shown on the first slide?
2. What occurred in 1848? 1920?
3. Who said, “Ain’t I a Woman”?
4. What needs to happen before an amendment is ratified?
5. In your own words, describe 3 obstacles women faced.
6. How many states were involved in ratifying the 19th amendment?
Attachment 3
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton didn't think it shocking to spend her honeymoon at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. But there, she was appalled that women weren't allowed to speak. What an outrage, she wrote, that abolitionists would defend the natural rights of slaves while denying "freedom of speech to one-half the people of their own race."
Stanton (1815–1902) wasn't the only one to think so. In the 1830s and 1840s, thousands of women joined the abolition movement. And as they became politically active for the first time, they began to discover their own oppression. "In striving to strike the slave's chains off," said one woman, "we found most surely, that we were chained ourselves."
In 1848, Stanton and another abolitionist, Quaker minister Lucretia Mott, held the first woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, to advocate the rights of women. Delegates drafted a Declaration of Sentiments that protested the "absolute tyranny" of men and called for access to higher education, employment, and the ministry. They also asserted women's right to vote and to own property.
Stanton would go on to devote her life to the fight for woman's rights. She also raised seven children. She died in 1902 at age 86, 18 years before women would win the vote. The following is taken from her 1898 autobiography, Eighty Years and More.
As my father's law office joined the house, I spent much of my time there, listening to the clients stating their cases, talking with the students, and reading the laws in regard to women. In our Scotch neighborhood, many men retained the old ideas of women and property. Fathers, at their death, would will their property to the eldest son, with the proviso that the mother was to have a home with him. It was not unusual for the mother, who had brought all the property into the family, to be made an unhappy dependent of an uncongenial [disagreeable] daughter-in-law and dissipated [unreasonable and uncontrollable] son.
The tears and complaints of the women who came to my father for legal advice touched my heart and drew my attention to the injustice and cruelty of the laws. I could not understand why my father could not alleviate [make easier] the sufferings of these women. So, in order to enlighten me, he would take down his books and show me statutes [laws].
The students, observing my interest, would amuse themselves by reading to me the worst laws they could find, over which I would laugh and cry by turns. One Christmas, I showed them my presents, a new coral necklace and bracelets. They all admired the jewelry and then began to tease me with hypothetical cases of future ownership. "Now," said one students, "if in due time you were my wife, those ornaments would be mine. I could take them and lock them up, and you could never wear them. I could even exchange them for cigars and you could watch them evaporate in smoke."
With this constant bantering from students and the sad complaints of the women, my mind was perplexed. So, when my attention was called to these odious [horrible] laws, I would mark them with a pencil, and I resolved to cut every one of them out of the books. However, this mutilation of my father's volumes was never accomplished, for the housekeeper warned him of what I proposed to do.
Without letting me know that he had discovered my secret, he explained to me that even if his library should burn up, it would make no difference in woman's condition. "When you are grown up, and able to prepare a speech," said he, "you must go down to Albany and talk to the legislators. Tell them all you have seen in this office — the sufferings of these Scotchwomen, robbed of their inheritance and left dependent on their unworthy sons, and, if you can persuade them to pass new laws, the old ones will be a dead letter."
Burned Out
In 1840, Elizabeth Cady married abolitionist Henry Stanton. They moved to Seneca Falls, New York.
In Seneca Falls, my life was comparatively solitary. I had poor servants, and an increasing number of children. To keep a house and grounds in order, keep the wardrobes of a dozen humans in proper trim, take the children to dentists, shoemakers, and schools, made sufficient work to keep one brain busy.
But I suffered with mental hunger, which, like an empty stomach, is very depressing. I had books, but no stimulating companionship. I now fully understood the practical difficulties most women had to contend with in the isolated household, and the impossibility of woman's best development if in contact, the chief part of her life, with servants and children. The general discontent I felt with woman's portion as wife, mother, housekeeper, physical, and spiritual guide, the chaotic conditions into which everything fell without her supervision, and the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women impressed me with a strong feeling that some measures should be taken to remedy [make right] the wrongs of society in general and of women in particular.
In this tempest-tossed condition of mind I received an invitation to spend the day with Lucretia Mott. At her house I poured out the torrent of my long-accumulating discontent. We decided, then and there, to call a "Woman's Rights Convention."
These were the hasty initiative steps of the most momentous reform that had yet been launched on the world — the first organized protest against the injustice which had brooded for ages over the destiny of one-half the race."
Gentlemen, Now It's Our Turn
Within a few years, Stanton was, as her father had half-seriously advised, preparing to argue for women's rights before state lawmakers.
In 1854, I prepared my first speech for the New York Legislature. I felt very nervous. My father felt equally nervous and asked me to read my speech to him.
Accordingly, late one evening, I entered his office and took my seat. I knew he condemned the whole movement, and was deeply grieved at the active part I had taken. However, I began with a dogged determination not to be discouraged. I threw all the pathos I could into my voice and language, and, to my satisfaction, I saw tears filling my father's eyes. I cannot express the exultation [happiness] I felt thinking that now he would see the injustice women suffered under the laws he understood so well.
Feeling that I had touched his heart, I went on with renewed confidence and, when I had finished, I saw he was thoroughly magnetized. I waited for him to speak.
At last he said: "Surely you have a happy; comfortable life. How can a young woman, tenderly brought up, who has had no bitter personal experiences, feel so keenly the wrongs of her sex? Where did you learn this lesson?"
"I learned it here," I replied, "in your office, when a child, listening to the complaints women made to you. They who can make the sorrows of others their own, can learn all the hard lessons of life from others."
Adapted from Scholastic Search, July 2008
Guided Reading Questions for Elizabeth Cady Stanton Autobiography Excerpts:
1. Where did Elizabeth Cady Stanton spend her honeymoon? ______.
2. What upset her while she was there? ______.
3. Put the following quote in your own words: “In striving to strike the slave’s chains off, we found most surely that we were chained ourselves.” ______.
4. What important event did Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott plan in 1848 and what made the event significant? ______.
5. According to her autobiography, where did Elizabeth Cady Stanton first become aware of the cruelty and injustices toward women? ______.
6. What did her father’s law students say would become of her jewelry once she married? ______.
7. After she moved to Seneca Falls with her husband, Stanton described herself as suffering from “mental hunger.” What did she mean by that and why else did she feel discontented [unhappy] in her home? ______.
8. How did this discontent lead to the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls? ______.
9. In 1854 as Stanton was preparing her first speech for the New York Legislature, what was her father’s reaction (how did he feel about what she was about to do)? ______.
10. At first, what did Stanton think the tears in her father’s eyes meant? ______.Extra credit
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Cloze Activity
Fill in the blanks in the text below.
Word Bank:
abolitionist
friends
newspaper
vote / New York
rights
vote
beat
causes / opposition
wrote
1920
life
1848 / Anthony
History
women
drinks
property
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815- October 26, 1902) was a writer, a proponent for women's ______and an anti-slavery crusader. One of Stanton's major ______suffrage, the right of ______to vote. Elizabeth Cady was born in Johnstown, ______. In 1840, Elizabeth married Henry Brewster Stanton, a lawyer and ______(anti-slavery activist). They eventually had seven ______. At the time, women were not allowed to ______, married women were not allowed to own property (all their ______belonged solely to their husband), and women were not given the same educational opportunities and legal rights as men. Men were even legally allowed to ______their wives. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others organized the first national women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in July, ______. After meeting Susan B. ______in 1851, the two women became close ______and collaborated in working for social and legal equality for women, and other causes, including temperance (the outlawing of alcoholic ______). In 1868, Stanton started publishing the women's rights ______called "Revolution." Stanton, Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage later ______the "______of Woman Suffrage" (1881-1885). Although Stanton faced ______from many people throughout her life, especially on her radical proposal that women should be allowed to ______, she worked her entire ______trying to obtain rights for women. In ______, long after Stanton's death, Congress adopted the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, giving women the right to vote.