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How Women Got the Vote

 

Despite education being a key component in gaining the respect for the abolitionist cause, an illiterate emancipated slave named Isabella had made a huge impact through her speeches on Abolition. Once freed, Isabella chose the name Sojourner Truth to signify a new chapter in her life. Sojourner was a very charismatic speaker had an excellent variety of Biblical passages and other literary references within her ambitious speeches. Her expressions captivated audiences and in 1840, she was recruited by the Abolitionists and would later go on to join speeches with a famous runaway slave known as Fredrick Douglas. Through her efforts towards the Abolitionist cause, she inadvertently became a passionate spokeswoman for the Women's Movement and delivered her famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman?" .
             Another connection between Abolitionism and the Women's movement can be seen with Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. The women organizers: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, were members of the First Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. All of these women were self-identified Abolitionists, of Seneca Falls, and had privileged knowledge of the Underground Railroad. In 1849, Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery and over the next ten years she risked her life, and led many slaves to freedom by the Underground Railroad. With women actively helping disenfranchised groups who affected by the social changes in the early 19th century, their involvement in the Abolition Movement led to the development and awareness of their own neglected social status. Women began to truly realize their unjust "inferiority" to men, their discontent led to the irrepressible crusade for Women's Rights known as the Women's Movement. .
             Emerging from the Abolition cause was the Women's Rights Movement which dominated women's political and social activism throughout the 19th century.


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