PRIMARY SOURCES
The Betsy Mix Cowles Papers at the Kent State University Special Collections includes a rich variety of letters and documents on Cowles. For an index, see speccoll.library.kent.edu/reghist/cowles.html.
Other collections at archives that include material on Cowles are Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio; Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society Letterbook, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts; Celestia Rice Colby Papers, Illinois State University Special Collections, Bloomington, Illinois; Daniel Hise Diary, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio; Robert S. Fletcher Papers, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio; Weston Sisters Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
The following newspapers also proved useful: Anti-Slavery Bugle (Salem, Ohio); Free Labor Advocate and Anti-Slavery Chronicle (New Garden, Indiana); Oberlin Evangelist (Oberlin, Ohio); Philanthropist (Cincinnati, Ohio); Western Citizen (Chicago, Illinois).
Other printed primary documents include Robert W. Audretsch, ed., The Salem, Ohio 1850 Women’s Rights Convention Proceedings (Salem, OH: Salem Public Library, 1976); Marcia J. Heringa Mason, ed., Remember the Distance That Divides Us: The Family Letters of Philadelphia Quaker Abolitionist and Michigan Pioneer Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, 1830–1842 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004); Julia Ann Warner Moss, Jottings of Travel (unpublished manuscript, Jubilee College, Peoria, Illinois); Benjamin Rush, Thoughts upon Female Education, Accommodated to the Present State of Society, Manners, and Government, in the United States of America. Addressed to the Visitors of the Young Ladies’ Academy in Philadelphia, 28 July, 1787, at the Close of the Quarterly Examination (Philadelphia: Prichard & Hall, 1787).
SECONDARY SOURCES
Two biographical studies of Cowles influenced this book: Donna Marie DeBlasio, “Her Own Society: The Life and Times of Betsy Mix Cowles, 1810–1876” (PhD diss., Kent State University, 1980); Linda L. Geary, Balanced in the Wind: A Biography of Betsey Mix Cowles (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1989).
Chapter 1: On the history of the Western Reserve and Ohio, the book relies on Harlan Hatcher, The Western Reserve: The Story of New Connecticut in Ohio (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949); R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720–1830 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996); William S. Kennedy, A Plan of Union: Or, a History of the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of the Western Reserve, with Biographical Sketches of the Early Missionaries (Hudson, OH: Pentagon Steam Press, 1856); Christopher Dean Padgett, “Abolitionists of All Classes: Political Culture and Antislavery Community in Ashtabula County, Ohio, 1800–1850” (PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 1993); William Williams, History of Ashtabula County, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men (Philadelphia: Williams Brothers, 1878). For a discussion of Indian tribes in the region, see James Joseph Buss, Winning the West with Words: Language and Conquest in the Lower Great Lakes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011). Republican motherhood is covered in Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980). For two perspectives on alcohol consumption, see W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Sharon V. Salinger, Taverns and Drinking in the Early Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). The best book on the relationship between religion and reform remains Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Chapter 2: The central work on single women in the early American Republic is Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, a Better Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780–1840 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). See also Zsuzsa Berend, “‘The Best or None!’ Spinsterhood in Nineteenth-Century New England,” Journal of Social History 33, no. 4 (Summer 2000): 935–57. On courtship and marriage, see Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Karen Lystra, Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Ellen K. Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). The best work on women and education in the nineteenth century is Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). For more on Western Reserve College, see Mae Pelster, Abolitionists, Copperheads and Colonizers in Hudson and the Western Reserve (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011), and parts of Lawrence B. Goodheart, Abolitionist, Actuary, Atheist: Elizur Wright and the Reform Impulse (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990). On infant schools, see Dorothy G. Becker, “Isabella Graham and Joanna Bethune: Trailblazers of Organized Women’s Benevolence,” Social Service Review 61, no. 2 (June 1987): 319–36. The classic book on women and work in the antebellum period is Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).
Chapter 3: For a thorough discussion of slavery and the West, see Eugene H. Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967); Paul Finkelman, “Evading the Ordinance: The Persistence of Bondage in Indiana and Illinois,” Journal of the Early Republic 9 (Spring 1989): 21–51. On the American Colonization Society, see Eric Burin, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005). See the following on petitioning: Patrick H. Breen, “The Female Antislavery Petition Campaign of 1831–32,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 110, no. 3 (2002): 377–98; Robert P. Ludlum, “The Antislavery ‘Gag-Rule’: History and Argument,” Journal of Negro History 26, no. 2 (April 1941): 203–43; James M. McPherson, “The Fight Against the Gag Rule: Joshua Leavitt and Antislavery Insurgency in the Whig Party, 1839–1842,” Journal of Negro History 48, no. 3 (July 1963): 177–95. The most recent biography of William Lloyd Garrison is Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: Norton, 2008). On Margaret Chandler, see her collection of letters noted above: Mason, Remember the Distance. The following all discuss women’s abolitionism: Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Debra Gold Hansen, Strained Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Boston Anti-Slavery Society (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993); Stacey M. Robertson, Hearts Beating for Liberty: Women Abolitionists in the Old Northwest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Beth A. Salerno, Sister Societies: Women’s Antislavery Organizations in Antebellum America (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005); Shirley J. Yee, Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828–1860 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992); Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne, eds., The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
Chapter 4: On the Lane debates, see Lawrence Thomas Lesick, The Lane Rebels: Evangelicalism and Antislavery in Antebellum America (New York: Scarecrow Press, 1980). On Oberlin College, see J. H. Fairchild, Oberlin: Its Origin, Progress and Results (Oberlin, OH: Shankland and Harmon, 1860); Samuel J. Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College from Its Foundation Through the Civil War, vols. 1–2 (Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College, 1943); Lori D. Ginzberg, “Women in an Evangelical Community: Oberlin 1835–1850,” Ohio History 89 (Winter 1980): 78–88.
Chapter 5: The Black Laws are discussed in Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws: Race and Legal Process in Early Ohio (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005). On Prudence Crandall, see Susan Strane, A Whole-Souled Woman: Prudence Crandall and the Education of Black Women (New York: Norton, 1990). Sabbath schools are covered in Anne M. Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790–1880 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). For more on African American education, see Hilary J. Moss, School Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). An excellent biography of Abby Kelley is Dorothy Sterling, Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and The Politics of Antislavery (New York: Norton, 1991). The best discussion of the divide among American abolitionists remains Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834–1850 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967). See also Lawrence B. Friedman, Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism, 1830–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). The most thorough work on antislavery politics is Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860 (New York: Norton, 1980). On the Liberty Party, see Vernon L. Volpe, Forlorn Hope of Freedom: The Liberty Party in the Old Northwest, 1838–1848 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990); Reinhard O. Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840–1848: Antislavery Third-Party Politics in the United States (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009). There are many excellent scholarly discussions of antislavery fairs: Beverly Gordon, “Playing at Being Powerless: New England Ladies Fairs, 1830–1930,” Massachusetts Review 26 (September 1986): 144–60; Julie Roy Jeffrey, “‘Stranger, Buy . . . Lest Our Mission Fail’: The Complex Culture of Women’s Abolitionist Fairs,” American Nineteenth Century History 4, no. 1 (2003): 1–24; Alice Taylor, “Selling Abolitionism: The Commercial, Material, and Social World of the Boston Antislavery Fair, 1834–58” (PhD diss., Western Ontario University, 2007); Deborah B. VanBroekhoven, “‘Better Than a Clay Club’: The Organization of Anti-Slavery Fairs, 1835–60,” Slavery and Abolition 19 (April 1998): 24–45.
Chapter 6: On various aspects of the Seneca Falls convention, see Carol Faulkner, Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Lori D. Ginzberg, Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman’s Rights in Antebellum New York (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Sally G. McMillen, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Kathryn Kish Sklar, “‘Women Who Speak for an Entire Nation’: American and British Women at the World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840,” in Yellin and Van Horne, The Abolitionist Sisterhood, 303–334; Judith Wellman, The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman’s Rights Convention (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004). For an excellent discussion on the relationship between women’s rights and abolition, see Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978). On spiritualism, see Anne Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989); Robert S. Cox, Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003).
Chapter 7: The best discussion of abolitionists and the Civil War remains James McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967). On the election of Lincoln, see Douglas R. Egerton, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010). There are several excellent works on women in politics in the antebellum period: Jayne Crumpler DeFiore, “COME, and Bring the Ladies: Tennessee Women and the Politics of Opportunity During the Presidential Campaigns of 1840 and 1844,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1992): 197–212; Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Melanie Susan Gustafson, Women and the Republican Party, 1854–1924 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001); Nancy A. Hewitt, “The Social Origins of Women Antislavery Politics in Western New York,” in Crusaders and Compromisers: Essays on the Relationship of the Antislavery Struggle to the Antebellum Party System, ed. Alan Kraut (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 205–33; Michael D. Pierson, Free Hearts and Free Homes: Gender and American Antislavery Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Mary Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Elizabeth R. Varon, “Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too: White Women and Party Politics in Antebellum Virginia,” Journal of American History 82 (September 1995): 494–521; Ronald J. and Mary Saracino Zboray, “Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of 1840: Three Perspectives from Massachusetts,” Journal of the Early Republic 17 (Summer 1997): 277–315. An excellent biography of Anna Dickinson is J. Matthew Gallman, America’s Joan of Arc: The Life of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). On the Women’s National Loyal League, see Wendy Hamand Venet, Neither Ballots nor Bullets: Women Abolitionists and the Civil War (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991). On the Sanitary Commission, see Judith Giesberg, Army at Home: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Elizabeth Cazden, Antoinette Brown Blackwell: A Life (New York: Feminist Press at City University of New York, 1993). On Freedmen’s Aid, see Carol Faulkner, Women’s Radical Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Aid Movement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). For a discussion of the water cure, see Susan E. Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women’s Health (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). On health reform in general, see Stephen Nissenbaum, Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham and Health Reform (New York: Praeger, 1980).