“The Age of Iron” was published by the New York printing firm of Currier and Ives in 1869. It satirized the woman suffrage movement that was gaining widespread support in America during that time.
The woman suffrage movement took root in 1848 at the first women's rights convention, which was held in Seneca Falls, New York, with the participants calling for political equality and the right to vote. As the movement gained more support throughout the country, it also brought about a great deal of public scrutiny. Many people, including some women, questioned how women would be able to complete their domestic duties in the private sphere while also participating in activities outside the home in the public sphere. Since colonial times in America, women had been classified as a dependent class under the responsibility of their fathers or husbands. In Virginia, for example, married women had no right to manage property that they owned until 1877.
Political cartoons were often used as a medium for expressing opinions and concerns. The message of “The Age of Iron: Man as He Expects to Be” illustrates the fears of some people that society would suffer if women gained the right to vote and participated in politics—that their behavior would change and they would leave their domestic duties behind.
“The Age of Iron” depicts two men, one sewing and the other doing laundry. At the same time a woman is shown leaving the house and approaching a carriage driven by another woman, with a third woman in the back. Not only does this speak to the fear among men that they would have to take care of domestic duties while women left the home, it also shows the concern that male servants would be replaced by women. Many men feared that their own status could change dramatically if women successfully challenged the idea of private and public spheres and gained political equality.
Citation: “The Age of Iron: Man As He Expects to Be.” lithograph. [New York]: Currier & Ives, 1869. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
Preview Activity
Look at It: Look at the depiction of the men and women in this lithographic image. How are women represented? Why do you think that the women are shown in this way?
Post Activity
Analyze: Read the caption under the image. What does it suggest about the ideologies of those opposed to the suffrage movement? How might women who supported the suffrage movement feel about this description?
Current Connections: Think about your own home and those of older generations. Are some things still considered “women’s work” and “men’s work”? For example, who is responsible for the cooking/laundry/yard work? Who is called first when a child is injured? How might culture play a role in the roles of men and women?
Artistic Exploration: Draw a version of this lithograph for today. In your drawing, show men in what might be considered traditional women’s roles. Write a caption which describes how society may view your image.
"Agitate – Educate – Legislate” was the slogan of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which advocated the prohibition of alcohol. Established in 1874 in Ohio, the union became a national movement and Virginia women established a state chapter in 1883. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) placed a special emphasis on encouraging women and children to support prohibition. The WCTU saw alcohol abuse as especially harmful in the home, where its effects could lead to impoverishment and endanger the lives of children or women. At the time, women did not have many legal rights and their families were often at the mercy of their husbands or fathers. The stated goal of the WCTU was “protection of the home,” which appealed to many women. The WCTU first followed the path of other temperance societies, encouraging adults and children to sign pledges of “Capital T total" (or “teetotal”) abstention from consuming alcohol. Although the pledge campaigns were successful, the WCTU feared that voluntary pledges were not sufficient and members started to push for government intervention in the form of prohibition legislation.
In 1879, Frances Willard became president of the WCTU and expanded its scope, moving from moral persuasion to political action. Willard's personal motto was "Do Everything," which encouraged many women to become active in a variety of social issues that they believed could be solved with a woman’s perspective. By 1896, 25 of the 39 departments of the WCTU addressed non-alcohol-related issues, including women's voting rights, shelters for abused women and children, an eight-hour work day, equal pay for equal work, prison reform, promotion of nutrition and the Pure Food and Drug Act, and world peace. In order to achieve these goals, the WCTU was one of the first organizations to actively lobby Congress to promote its progressive agenda. In 1901, the WCTU was instrumental in securing passage of a law requiring temperance instruction in all public schools. The 18th Amendment outlawing the manufacture and sale of alcohol was ratified in 1919 and repealed in 1933.
Outreach to children, the next generation, was central to the WCTU mission. In the 1890s, the WCTU started the Loyal Temperance Legion (LTL), an international club for boys and girls who pledged total abstinence from alcohol. Monthly meetings included such activities as plays, picnics, parades, and singing temperance songs. The first slogan of the Loyal Temperance League was “Tremble, King Alcohol, We Shall Grow Up!” In 1887, the WCTU began publishing an illustrated magazine, The Young Crusader, and it continued after Prohibition was repealed. In a 1934 story entitled “The Kittens Bring the Light,” Joan and Jimmy are crying because “Daddy went out with some of his friends to celebrate REPEAL.” The LTL mascot, Humpy the Camel, wrote a folksy monthly editorial encouraging children to stay focused on temperance even though alcohol had been legalized again. The featured story, “Good Times and Bob,” follows three boys on their way to school as they discuss how the end of Prohibition has impacted their families.
Preview Activities
Take a Look: Look at the cover art and title of the magazine. What might be the purpose of the image? Who might be The Young Crusader? What does the combined image and title suggest the purpose of the magazine might be?
Scan It: Read the titles of the articles. Guess what the articles may be about without reading the actual article? Look at the image at the bottom of the page, what clues does it give you about the purpose of the magazine?
Post Activities
Analyze: Why would the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union target children? Do you think it was effective? Why or why not?
Current Connections: How does "Good Times and Bob" from the Woman's Christian Temperance Union compare to the anti-drug and -alcohol programs in schools and society today? What is different? What is similar?
Taking a Side: Imagine that you represent the local chapter of the WCTU. How would you influence and promote the concept of alcohol abstinence? Create your own artwork and write a paragraph supporting your positon.
What is known as the Progressive Movement in the United States lasted from the late 19th century until the 1940s. While many positive social reforms occurred, there were also laws enacted in which people who were thought to be “inferior” in some way were subjected to medical tests and treatments. If an individual was found to be "unfit" they were sometimes institutionalized or forcibly sterilized so that certain traits that were believed to be hereditary would not be passed on to future generations. These traits included insanity, criminal tendencies, shiftlessness, promiscuity, and “feeble-mindedness." Virginia and other states added criteria to marriage applications requiring that applicants swear that they were not “a habitual criminal, idiot, imbecile, hereditary epileptic, or insane.” Virginia started its sterilization program in 1916, and it was codified into law in 1924 with the Virginia Sterilization Act. By 1940, twenty-eight states had authorized compulsory sterilization of inmates in mental institutions. The path to these laws was paved in 1927 when the United States Supreme Court upheld a state’s right to sterilize a person deemed unfit to have children in Buck v. Bell.
Born in Charlottesville, Carrie E. Buck (1906–1983) was raised by foster parents after her biological mother was diagnosed as being of low intelligence and committed to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded. Pregnant at age 18, Carrie Buck stated that she had been raped by her foster parents' nephew, but her foster parents claimed that her promiscuous behavior was the reason and was proof that she should also be committed to the Colony.
The colony's superintendent believed in the necessity of sterilization and selected Carrie Buck, who had been diagnosed as "feebleminded," or of less than average intelligence, to be the subject of a test case to ensure that Virginia's 1924 law was constitutional. This document is an excerpt from the testimony of Dr. Albert S. Priddy, superintendent until his death in 1925, after which he was replaced by Dr. John H. Bell. Priddy’s testimony comes from a brief prepared for the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. The case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which confirmed that the sterilization law was constitutional in 1927. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Carrie Buck was sterilized a few months later.
During the Nuremberg trials after World War II, several Nazis on trial based their defense of Germany's sterilization laws on the prevalence of such laws in the United States and the Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell. More than 60,000 Americans, including 8,300 Virginians, were sterilized by the time these laws were repealed in the 1970s. In 2002 the governor issued a formal apology to those Virginians who had been involuntarily sterilized.
Citation: Buck v. Bell, Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, Brief for Appellee, September Term 1925, Records of Western State Hospital, 1825-2000, Box 88, Folder 27, State Government Records Collection, Library of Virginia.
For more information on Carrie Buck, read her Dictionary of Virginia Biography entry.
After the Civil War, the temperance movement swept the nation. Starting with Maine in 1851, states and localities around the country held referendums to let its citizens vote whether or not to ban alcohol. In 1886, Virginia adopted the “Local Option,” which let each city or county vote to be “wet” (allowing alcohol) or “dry.” By the time this map was published in 1909, only nine cities and two counties remained “wet”. In 1914, Virginia held a referendum on state-wide prohibition. Campaigning was fierce on both sides. The Anti-Saloon League branch in Virginia was led by a fiery minister, Reverend James Cannon, whose stirring speeches at meetings and rallies throughout the state convinced the public that alcohol caused “pauperism and insanity and crime and shame and misery and broken hearts and ruined homes and shortened, wasted lives.”
Support for the “wet local option” came from breweries, bars, and their devoted patrons. Looking to establish an organization that opposed state-wide prohibition on other grounds, a group of Richmond professional men formed the Virginia Association for Local Self-Government. Its leaders included a judge, a surgeon, a lawyer, and several prominent businessmen. Careful to disassociate themselves from the bar scene, the Association for Local Self-Government distributed propaganda to counter the flood of literature of the Anti-Saloon League, declaring that the desire for local, not state control, was their reason to oppose prohibition.
The Virginia Association for Local Self-Government published this pamphlet in 1914, urging Confederate veterans and their sons to vote for home rule. Harkening back to the glory days of the Civil War, the brochure drew a direct parallel between the fight for the local option and the Confederate ideal of states’ rights. The organization stated that Confederate soldiers “fought for the principle of self-government fifty years ago and today these veterans should vote for the preservation of the right to each local community to regulate its own affairs in the manner best suited to the conditions, habits and customs of its people.” Deriding the Anti-Saloon League as an “Ohio institution” (Ohio being part of the North), the Virginia Association for Local Self-Government claimed that state-wide prohibition would “destroy a fundamental principle of government for which [the Confederates] fought.” Despite their often passionate appeal, the local option was defeated in the state-wide referendum held on September 22, 1914. Buoyed by a huge voter turnout (15 percent larger than the 1912 presidential election), state-wide prohibition won with almost 60 percent of the vote. Prohibition in Virginia went into effect on November 1, 1916. Just over three years later on January 16, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment mandated national prohibition.
Citations:
Home Rule and Local Self-Government, 1914, Box 3, Folder 9, Virginia Governor (1918-1922: Davis), Executive Papers, 1918-1922, Accession 21567a, State Government Records Collection, Library of Virginia, Richmond.
Virginia Association for Local Self-Government Papers, Online Index, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary.
Preview Activity
Look at It: Look at the image. What might be the purpose of this piece of propaganda art? Why might have it been created?
Post Activities
Analyze: The Virginia Association for Local Self Government compared the Local Option to the Civil War. Is this a valid argument? Do you think this idea convinced voters?
Another Perspective: The messaging and propaganda effort of The Virginia Association for Local Self Government did not work. Why do you think this was the case? How would you have approached the issue differently to get a better result?
The temperance movement was one of many reform efforts that built support in the decades before the Civil War. Temperance is defined as moderation in action, thought, or feeling, and is often used to describe the long campaign to decrease the consumption of alcohol by Americans that culminated in the national Prohibition Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the 20th century. Since the European settlement of North America, alcohol consumption had been common and by early in the 19th century, many Americans believed that alcohol was to blame for a variety of societal problems, including unemployment, crime, poverty, and domestic abuse.
Supporters of the temperance movement blamed alcohol for family and social problems like poverty, domestic violence, child abuse, unemployment, and disease. People of all social classes, race, gender, and religious affiliations joined anti-liquor organizations and sought to use moral persuasion to curb alcohol consumption. Many women were involved, even though they did not have the right to vote. Instead, they sponsored public events, established rooms stacked with prohibition literature, and canvassed for the prohibition vote. Virginians joined such organizations as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, and the Sons of Temperance, all of which carried the message of total abstinence from alcohol and encouraged political support for reform using pamphlets, novels, newspapers, music, sermons, lectures, and art.
The Bottle is a series of eight illustrated panels about the potential dangers of alcohol consumption. Originally published in England in 1847 by George Cruikshank, The Bottle became wildly popular, selling more than 100,000 copies in its first few days and inspiring plays in eight London theaters at the same time. The Bottle was exported to the United States, where, lacking a copyright, it was reproduced by several publishers. Plates 1 and 6 are shown here. The first plate shows a prosperous and happy family where “The Bottle is brought out for the first time: the husband induces his wife ‘Just to take a drop." The following plates show the deleterious effects of alcohol: the father loses his job, they sell their belongings, the baby dies, the children beg in the street. In plate 6 the same family is featured. They are in the same room as the first panel, but the drunken father is attacking his wife and his children try to restrain him as a concerned neighbor bursts into the room.
Inspired by images such as these and encouraged by the rise of anti-alcohol tracts and lectures, Americans jumped on the temperance bandwagon. The Civil War swept these concerns to the side, but by the 1880s the temperance movement had spread widely. Voters in many counties and states across the nation to vote to ban alcohol, including in Virginia, which enacted a statewide ban on alcohol in 1916, four years before national Prohibition was implemented.
RELATED DOCUMENTS: To see all eight panels, visit the Library of Virginia's UncommonWealth blog post on The Temperance Movement and the Road to Prohibition.
Citations:History: VS.8, VS.9, USI.8, USII.4, USII.6, CE.6, CE.10, VUS.8, VUS.10, GOVT.7, GOVT.9
Art: 4.1, 5.1
Preview Activity
Look at it: Look at the images. What do you think is the subject of the images?
Post Activities
Current Connections: How would you change or update these drawings to show the dangers of opiates or other potentially addictive substances?
Think About it: If you were a member of this family, what would, or could you have done to stop this chain of events?
Social Media Spin: Create a post in which you promote temperance for the 21st Century. Include information which might sway a person to seek treatment for alcohol or drug addiction.
Virginia's Fifth Revolutionary Convention met at the Capitol in Williamsburg from May 6 to July 5, 1776, and declared independence from Great Britain. The delegates also voted to prepare a constitution for Virginia as well as a statement of rights. Fairfax County delegate George Mason led the effort and drafted a document that outlined such rights as the ability to confront one's accusers in court, to present evidence in court, protection from self-incrimination, the right to a speedy trial, the right to a trial by jury, and the extension of religious tolerance. Other delegates suggested additional individual rights and the draft was debated for several weeks. The final version of the Virginia Declaration of Rights was adopted unanimously on June 12, 1776. It consisted of sixteen sections with additional rights including protections for the press, striking down of ex post facto laws (retroactively criminalizing an action that had previously been legal), banning excessive bail, and disallowing cruel and unusual punishment of the incarcerated.
The language in the Declaration of Rights changed as several drafts were written. For example, one such revision included prohibitions placed on enslaved people. In this draft written by George Mason, he stated “That all Men are created equally free & independent, & have certain inherent natural Rights, of which they cannot by any Compact, deprive or divest their Posterity….” However, the final version was changed to read “That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights, of which when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity….” This statement by definition excluded enslaved people who were not considered in "a state of society" by most white Virginians.
Virginia’s Declaration of Rights was the first state declaration establishing the fundamental human liberties that government was created to protect, and it had a profound impact on America’s founding documents. Thomas Jefferson drew upon it when writing the Declaration of Independence and James Madison expanded on Mason’s ideas of guaranteed rights when he wrote the amendments to the United States Constitution that became known as the Bill of Rights.
In 1778, George Mason prepared this copy of his first draft of the Declaration of Rights from memory to indicate what he had initially proposed.
Citation: George Mason, Declaration of Rights, 1776, Accession 51818, Personal Papers Collection, Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.
Related Document: Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution
VS.6, VUS.5, USI.6, CE.2, CE.7, GOVT.2, GOVT.3
Preview Activity
Scan it: Scan the document. What words or phrases stand out to you?
Post Activities
Analyze: Why would George Mason consider these rights vital to free society? Why were these rights considered by some to be revolutionary?
State your Case: You are an attorney representing Black Virginians. Write a brief argument in which you defend your client explaining how the language of the final draft of the document limits the expectation of Black Virginians to protections as written under the Declaration of Rights.
Virginia Validation: The Virginia Declaration of Rights was an influential document. How are the ideas found in the document relevant today?
The struggle for the ratification of the United States Constitution convinced some political leaders that amendments were needed to protect individual liberties from the strengthened national government created by the Constitution. During the First Congress, Federalist James Madison, who had supported ratification, proposed several amendments modeled on the Virginia Declaration of Rights that had been written by George Mason in 1776. Congress approved twelve amendments that were sent to the states for ratification or rejection in 1789. This document is the actual copy sent by Congress to the Virginia General Assembly and therefore includes the twelve amendments. The General Assembly ratified amendments three through twelve on December 15, 1791. Virginia was the eleventh state needed for ratification, and these ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights specifies the rights of Americans in relation to their government. It guarantees individual civil rights and liberties, including the freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, and the press; the right to petition the government for redress of grievances; the right to keep and bear arms; the right of the people not to have troops quartered in their homes; the right to protection against unreasonable government searches and seizures; the right to jury trials in civil and criminal cases and of a grand jury in criminal cases; a prohibition on government taking private property without just compensation; a prohibition on excessive bail and fines and on cruel and unusual punishments. The Fifth Amendment states that no one shall be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The Ninth and Tenth Amendments state that powers not specifically granted to the federal government remained with the people and state governments and that the enumeration of specific rights in the Constitution did not limit what rights were protected so that non-enumerated rights also remained with the people and the states.
The Bill of Rights is one of the most important living history documents in the United States. For example, one of Madison's proposed amendments considered in 1789 concerning the salary increases of congressmen, was revived during the 1980s and was ratified as the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992. The Bill of Rights continues to be a model for other countries around the world.
Citation: Records of the General Assembly, Executive Communications, Record Group 78, Library of Virginia.
Related entries
Virginia Declaration of Rights
Portrait of James Madison
Preview Activity
Scan it: Scan the document. What word or phrases stand out to you? List 3 things you know about the Bill of Rights just by scanning the document.
Post Activities
Think about it: Select three amendments from the Bill of Rights and describe rights included in the amendment. Keep in mind some amendments may include more than one right.
Another Perspective: Often people find the amendments difficult to understand as they include complex ideas. Select two amendments and rewrite them to be more user friendly and easily understood. Be sure to include all the rights included in the amendments.
Virginia Validation: The Bill of Rights reflected the difficulties in creating a federal government. How did Virginia governance and politicians influence the shaping of the Bill of Rights?
When the first English settlers arrived in 1607, the Church of England served as the official church of the Virginia Colony. Under the 1689 English Act of Toleration, Protestants who were not members of the Church of England were still required to pay taxes and support the clergymen of the Church of England. Marriage ceremonies were also required to be performed by ministers of the Church of England to be considered legal. During the 18th century, Baptists, Presbyterians, and other dissenters campaigned for the recognition of their denominations and for the freedom of all Virginians to practice their faith as they chose.
Following American Independence, key political leaders in Virginia pursued the disestablishment of the Church of England as the formal church denomination of the young state. Initially introduced in 1776 by George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, religious tolerance came to fruition in the Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, which is commonly known as the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. First drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777, it was passed by the Virginia General Assembly on January 16, 1786. Virginians were no longer "compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever" and were "free to profess . . . their opinions in matters of Religion . . . ."
The act is one of the most important laws adopted by the assembly. It opens with an eloquent vindication of religious and intellectual freedom and closes with specific guarantees of religious liberty and belief. The Virginia law was one of the sources that Congress drew on when drafting the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution in 1789 in which free exercise of religion was granted and Congress was prohibited from abridging the freedom of religion. The guarantees established in the Act for Establishing Religious Freedom became part of the second Virginia Constitution which was adopted in 1830.
Citation: An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1786, Special Collections, Library of Virginia.
Preview Activity
Scan it: Scan the document, original and transcribed version, identify how many acts are contained in the document, and list two or three phrases which stand out to you in each act.
Post Activities
Analyze: What can you infer about the power of the Church of England in Virginia prior to 1786?
Virginia Validation: Which amendment to the United States Constitution contains language similar to the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom? How are the rights described in the U.S. Constitution different from the rights guaranteed by the Virginia act?
Current Connection: Does the Act for Establishing Religious Freedom still have relevance today? Why or why not?