ABSTRACT
It is important to set any study of gender and politics in the context of the long history of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century women's rights movement because the second wave of feminism is in many ways cousin to the first. Three campaigns spawned the women's rights movement in the nineteenth century: temperance, antislavery, and social reform. Those who populated the first generation of women activists were not always in agreement as to what should be the scope or the dominant strategy of a women's rights campaign. When civil war broke out in 1861, nearly all women's rights activity stopped for the five years' duration of the conflict. The women in the preceding description were mainly white, educated, and middle class. In 1865, Congress debated three amendments that were intended to make the freeing of the slaves a permanent part of the Constitution.
