U.S. Women's History: From Colonial America to the Civil War

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key historical figures, legal doctrines, social movements, and concepts in early American and 19th-century women's history.

Separate Spheres Ideology

An ideology holding that men belonged in the public sphere of politics, business, and work, while women belonged in the private/domestic sphere of the home and family.

Deputy husbands

A role taken on by elite women who ran households in the absence of men, which was difficult but empowering.

Indentured servants

People who traveled to the American colonies and agreed to work for a specified period of time, usually 7 years.

Tituba

An enslaved woman who was the first woman to be accused of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials.

Martha Ballard

A colonial midwife whose life and work illustrated how older, married women delivered babies and served communities as counselors, healers, pharmacists, and nurses.

Partus sequitur ventrem

A 1662 colonial law meaning 'that which is born follows the womb,' stipulating that a newborn child inherits the free or enslaved status of the mother.

Coverture

A legal doctrine under which a married woman became a 'feme covert' and held no independent legal existence of her own.

The First Great Awakening

An evangelical revival, rebellion, and religious awakening across the British colonies in which women were prominent participants, challenging church hierarchy and religious authority.

Republican Motherhood

An ideology asserting that women played an essential role in educating their children to become virtuous citizens of the new republic.

Liberty’s Daughters

Women who supported resistance to British taxation without representation by producing homespun cloth and organizing boycotts of British goods.

Homespun

Materials produced at home by women as a form of boycott and political resistance against British taxation and imported goods.

Camp-followers

Women who assisted soldiers during the Revolutionary War by working as sutlers, cooks, nurses, and laundresses.

Abigail Adams

Historical figure who famously urged her husband John Adams to 'remember the ladies' when drafting laws for the new nation.

Womans Christian Temperance Union

An organization founded by women aimed at convincing men to stop drinking alcohol.

Ideology of "True" womanhood

A cultural ideal promoted by Catherine Beecher that defined proper womanhood and reinforced social hierarchies of race and gender.

The Second Great Awakening

A religious revival during which women embraced the idea that they did not need a man to have a relationship with God, gaining an unprecedented public voice in society.

Lowell Offering

A publication containing primary source writings by female factory workers ('Mill Girls') that reflected personal autonomy and new ideas about politics.

Harriot Jacobs

Author of 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,' which documented the trauma of family separation, sexual vulnerability, and the plight of enslaved women.

Temperance

The practice of refraining from drinking alcohol or consuming it with strict moderation.

The Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

The first organized public meeting convened by women to discuss women's rights and advocate for systemic social change.

Declaration of Sentiments

The founding 1848 document drafted at the Seneca Falls Convention outlining the rights, grievances, and political goals of women.

Ain’t I a Woman?

A famous speech delivered by Sojourner Truth that simultaneously challenged the racism of the white women's movement and the sexism of the abolitionist movement.

Fugitive Slave Act

A federal law requiring that enslaved individuals who escaped to free northern states be captured and returned to their Southern owners.

Dress Reform

A movement spearheaded primarily by middle-class women to make female clothing more rational, comfortable, and healthful.

Harriet Tubman

An abolitionist who served the Union Army during the Civil War as a spy and scout, utilizing perceptions of her gender and race for intelligence gathering.