ABSTRACT
The image of the 1848 Seneca Falls convention has long dominated understanding of the emergence of an official women's rights movement in the United States. This chapter offers historical and historiographical coverage of women's rights after 1848. Against a backdrop of nineteenth-century gender ideology, antebellum and Civil War-era women's rights work culminated in debate over the Fifteenth Amendment. The Civil War was a watershed moment for women. For African Americans, it offered the opportunity for self-emancipation, and southern slaves fled to Union lines. For white women, the Civil War demanded new roles. Women in both North and South took part in voluntary associations. During the war itself, women's rights activists had been politically active, hoping to shape Union war aims. In recent decades historians have moved away from it, instead describing a multifaceted women's rights movement. By the time temperance adherents adopted the cause of woman suffrage, the Stanton/Anthony and Stone factions were nearly reconciled.
