ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION The nineteenth century was a time of dramatic change for the United States. This was a time when the nation made the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy, and from a society based on slave labor to one based on wage labor. This was also the time when a political system based on deference to the elites gave way to democratic party politics, and when Americans turned from communal values to values based on individualism and the ideal of the “self-made” man. During this century, the nation expanded from a collection of states clustered along the Eastern seaboard to a transcontinental nation that extended to the Pacific and beyond. This was also the time when the country dissolved into a destructive Civil War, only to reunite and solidify national bonds. In sum, the nineteenth century was the period when the United States made the transition to a modern nation. Looking at women can illuminate the causes and effects of this transformation, for women both influenced and were influenced by all of the major developments of the nineteenth century.
