The Eighteen-Hundreds, women making slow but steady gains
in education, suffrage, abolitionist campaigns.
No property, no voting rights,
no college; just the wife's delights
of rearing children, keeping house,
attending church, and tending spouse.
The middle nineteenth century
brought jobs (a textile factory
or grammar school) and progress in
the quest for college: Oberlin
was first to offer a degree
to women (blacks would also be
admitted). Woman activists
would prosper, and as feminists -
Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone -
the seeds of suffrage would be sown
on U.S. soil, with deference
to men no more. As "temperance"
became their watchword and began
to grip America, a man
named Mr. Lincoln would become
a voice against the "Demon Rum."
In church the wives could coexist
with men, and abolitionist
campaigns were often woman-led,
as former slaves aspired to spread
the word: Sojourner Truth, for one;
Ms. Tubman, also, on the run
herself when slaves went underground
to ride her "railroad," freedom-bound.