Women’s Rights in Early America

The short comment on the title is that women had none. Although I would expect that wives had some input in their married lives and the lives of their children, legally they had none.

Women could not vote. The only people who could were white men, and white men with property at that. Women could not inherit from their husbands unless specifically mentioned in a husband’s will. If he did not mention her, she became the responsibility of her son. If the relationship was poor, he could, and frequently did, turn her own to starve on the road.

Women owned nothing. Although a woman might bring a dowry to a marriage, property of such, as soon as the marriage took place, the property became her husband’s. He could spend it as he wished, including on other women. If he chose to gamble it away, she had no legal recourse. (This, by the way, is a common trope in Regency and romance fiction.) One of the sources I read described a case of divorce. When the woman wished to remarry, she had to do so in her petticoat. Even the clothing on her back belonged to her husband and he refused to give her any of it. (This is why the farm Lydia owns becomes Rees’s after their marriage.)

Even her children belonged to her husband. In a dispute, he might remove them and forbid her to see them again. He usually chose his children’s spouses and determined where and when they were apprenticed.

Domestic abuse was not a crime. Although it was expected a husband would not beat his wife to death, English common law gave him the right to beat her with a stick no bigger than his thumb.

This is not a world I would ever wish to return to and it is certainly unfortunate that some people seem to think this is still the way the world should work.

One of the wonderfully progressive facts about the Shakers is that they believed in equality between the sexes. Although their work was divided by gender, and followed along traditional gender roles, women bore a equal share in the governance of the community. Education as well was offered to both boys and girls, a rarity at that time.

More about voting -elections 1796-1800

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, a quote ascribed to writer and philosopher George Santayana. Variations have been popularized by different speakers.

Well, whoever created this saying was right.

I thought of this as I did research for my next book (after Death in the Great Dismal) which is tentatively titled Murder on Principle. I happened to come across a number of interesting factoids about the election in 1800; a contest between John Quincy Adams and Thomas Jefferson. (This was the fourth election but since George Washington basically ran unopposed in the first two, in actual fact it was the second contest.) 

When George Washington had opted not to run again for a third term, both 

Adams and Jefferson ran to replace him. Adams won, narrowly, in this third election. Since there were no parties, the candidate with the next highest number of votes became the vice president. So, while Adams became the President, Thomas Jefferson became his vice-president. (The chasm between the beliefs of these two men was deep; Think Trump as President and Hillary Clinton as his vice-president.) The two men faced off in the following election cycle -1800 – causing a constitutional crisis. To solve it, Adams ran as a Federalist and Jefferson as a Republican.

The Federalists were more akin to our current Republican party while Jefferson was like our modern day Democrats. (Just to illustrate the difference between them, Jefferson worried that without term limits the President could serve for a lifetime. Adams thought that was a fine idea.) 

The Electoral College had been already formed. (I leave the discussion to whether it is still needed now to another day.) Jefferson and Adams won an equal number of votes, a result that threw the election into the hands of the House.

For people who believe our current politics are nasty, here are a few examples of what was happening then.

Alexander Hamilton claimed that if Adams was reelected, Virginians (like Jefferson) would resort to physical force to keep the Federalists out of office. Further, he tried to persuade John Jay to change the rules so that the legislature would not be able to choose the Jefferson electoral delegates, saying that it would ‘prevent an atheist in Religion and a fanatic in politics from getting possession of the helm of state.” Jay refused.

Adams, furthermore, as one of his last acts, chose John Marshall as Chief Justice, thereby giving control of the courts to the Federalists.

Jefferson, meanwhile, believed that Adams and the Federalists would seek to change the laws so that a President could serve for life.

Sound familiar?

Voting -in 1800

Some fun facts about 1800 election

The voters did not elect the president. They chose instead their representatives for the House. This caused a problem (more than one IMHO). If Congress chose the President, that violated the principle of separation of powers. So how to do it?

The Electoral College was set up to address this; the voters elected the delegates who chose the President. (Sounds unnecessarily complicated to me.) Each delegate had two votes, one for President, and one for VP. (In the previous election, Adams won the Presidency and Jefferson the vice-presidency so the top officials were of different parties. (And the men disliked each other and disagreed on almost every point. Imagine if this were Trump and Hillary Clinton?) If the delegates had chosen to use their votes for Burr, instead of becoming Jefferson’s VP he would have become president. He was pressured to remove his name in the event he received more votes; he declined to do so.

The candidates themselves did not campaign. The supporters did the campaigning, and the newspapers were every bit as passionate in declaring for their favored candidate as they are now.

Fun fact: the meeting they held to decide this was called a caucus. This is an Algonquian word meaning advisor.

The polls that our current candidates live and die on had a totally different meaning back then.

Since poll meant the top of a head, polling meant counting heads.

Maryland was the first state to require voting on paper (in 1799).

Ballots meant tossing a ball into a box, usually a pea, a pebble, or commonly, a bullet. It was not secret at all.

Out of a total U.S. population of 5.23 million, only 600,000 were eligible to vote. Only in Maryland could a black man vote and then only until 1802 when the law was changed. Only in New Jersey could a white woman vote, and that was changed in 1807. Generally speaking, the only citizens who could vote were white landowning males.

Finally, the House was set up in such a way that the number of representatives is based on population. (That is one reason why a census is taken every ten years.) But the southern states had large populations of slaves, which skewed the number, especially since the enslaved people could not vote. So it was decided that each enslaved person should count as three fifths of a white person. (The law caused a lot of resentment in the North since a state like Virginia, that had a lot of slaves, had much more political power based on a non-voting population.)

It just boggles the imagination.

American Politics

The recent election was acrimonious and ugly. People have unfriended erstwhile friends or just simply stopped talking with them.  While there may be unusual facets to this election, those in the past were not nice or gentle. I am including a section from my new book: The Devil’s Cold Dish, where I describe some of the unfortunate aftereffects of politics. Now this was in 1797 and I wrote this in 2014, so the emotional tenor is based solely on my research.

Turning her gaze to Rees, Jerusha said, “Your cheek is bleeding.”

“Yes, it is,” Rees agreed.

“Fetch me a bowl, Abby,” Lydia said. “And put some warm water in it, please.” She urged Rees into the side room and into a chair, despite his protests. “What happened?”

“Oh, Tom McIntyre had another customer. Mr. Drummond, a gentleman from Virginia by his accent. One of those land speculators. He was holding forth on George Washington and why he should have been impeached. I don’t know why people can’t leave the man alone.” With last fall’s election, John Adams had won the presidency and Thomas Jefferson the vice presidency. Washington had gone into retirement, a battered, aging lion.

“Was Mr. Drummond the one who did this?” She gestured to the cut upon his cheek.

“No,” Rees said. Drummond had already left when the argument exploded.

“I suppose you had to speak up,” Lydia said, her voice dropping with disappointment. “I love your sense of justice but I do wish you didn’t feel the need to fight every battle.” A former Shaker, she abhorred violence. Besides, she worried about the consequences, especially now after the serious injury to Sam.

Rees knew how she felt. He was trying to curb his temper, mostly because he wanted Lydia and his adopted children to be happy in Dugard. But so far he’d broken every promise to do better that he’d made to himself.

“We wouldn’t have a country without the president’s leadership during the War for Independence,” Rees said, hearing the defensiveness in his voice. After fighting under General Washington during the War for Independence, Rees would hear no criticism of the man who’d become the first president. Those who hadn’t fought, or who had only belonged to the Continental Army between planting and harvest, could not possibly understand what Washington had achieved.

Rees hesitated, fighting the urge to justify himself, but finally bursting into speech. “Mac and that Drummond fellow both favor Jefferson and the French. Drummond said that President Washington’s actions during the Jay affair smacked of treason. And when I said that the president had done his very best and that if anyone was guilty of treason it was John Jay, Mac said that the problem was that General Washington was a tired, senile old man.” He stopped talking.

When McIntyre had called Washington senile, Rees’s temper had risen and he had pushed the smaller man with all his strength. Since Mac probably weighed barely more than nine stone, he flew backward into the side of the mill. Flour from his clothing rose up at the impact, filling the air with a fine dust. That was when Zadoc Ward, Mac’s cousin, jumped on Rees and began pummeling him. Rees had already had a previous fight with the belligerent black-haired fellow who was usually found in the center of every brawl. Rees had caught Ward bullying Sam in the tavern and would have knocked him down if Constable Caldwell hadn’t broken up the fight and sent Rees on his way.

Rees permitted himself a small smile of satisfaction. At the mill, he’d put down Ward like the mad dog he was. But by then Mac’s eldest son, Elijah, and some of the other mill employees had arrived. They’d grabbed Rees. In the ensuing altercation, Ward, who was looking for revenge, had hit Rees in the face and sent him crashing to the ground in his turn. But Rees had bloodied a few noses before that. He didn’t want to admit to Lydia that he had participated in the brawl just like a schoolboy, but he suspected she already knew. She frowned anxiously.

“Well, you can hardly blame Mr. McIntyre for his unhappiness,” she said, turning Rees’s face up to the light. “The British have continued capturing American ships. Wasn’t his brother impressed by the British into their navy? Anyway, it’s not only the French who were, and still are, angry about Mr. Jay’s treaty. You were the one who told me he was burned in effigy all up and down the coast. And that the cry was ‘Damn John Jay. Damn everyone who won’t damn John Jay and damn everyone who won’t stay up all night damning John Jay.’”

“Yes,” Rees admitted with some reluctance.

“And now, with the Bank of England withholding payments to American vendors, Mr. McIntyre might go broke and lose his mill.”

“But none of this was President Washington’s fault,” Rees argued. “He has always striven for fairness. To be neutral in all things. Personally, I blame Mr. Hamilton.”

“I’m certain Mr. Jefferson bears some of the responsibility,” Lydia said in an acerbic tone. “He is so pro-French.” Rees wished he didn’t agree. Although he concurred with many of Jefferson’s Republican ideals, the vice president was pro-French and a slaveholder besides. And Rees could not forgive Jefferson for turning on Washington and criticizing him. “Discussing politics is never wise,” Lydia continued. “You know better. Passions run so high. And I see your argument resulted in fisticuffs.”

“Mr. McIntyre struck me first,” Rees said as Lydia dabbed at the cut above his eyebrow. The hot water stung and he grunted involuntarily. “You know how emotional he is.” Mac had spent his life quivering in outrage over something or other, and for all his small size he had been embroiled in as many battles as Rees. But now, with the wisdom of hindsight, Rees was beginning to wonder why Mac had been so eager to quarrel with him. They’d always been friends. Yet Mac had been, well, almost hostile.

“He can’t weigh much more than one hundred twenty or so pounds soaking wet,” Lydia added in a reproachful tone.

“I know. This,” he gestured to the cut, “came from his cousin, Zadoc Ward.” In fact Ward would have continued the fight, but Elijah had held him back. “I knocked him down, though,” Rees said in some satisfaction. Lydia did not speak for several seconds, although she gave his wound an extra hard wipe.

My Mother always said never discuss politics or religion. Failing a neutral topic, fall back on the weather. I find that advice hard to take – I’m sure it was just as difficult to follow it in the past as well.