Introduction

This chapter talks about the lives of American women. Betsy Mix Cowles's name is unfamiliar today, but her life deserves a wide audience. Though her modest personality and pragmatic approach to reform resulted in her absence from the history books, her career as a reform leader has much to teach us about women's lives in the antebellum North. The first half of the nineteenth century was a period of tremendous change, especially for those white northerners who experienced the market, transportation, and communication revolutions in their daily lives. Religious revivals were especially important in opening doors for women. In the 1840s and 1850s, national politics began to change with the erosion of the Second Party System, and this impacted women's reforming lives also. Cowles embraced many of these new reform movements because she too believed Christian evangelicals had a responsibility to improve their communities. Cowles played a vital role in the burgeoning women's rights movement.