1. How did the environment of the West contribute to Cowles’s development as a social reformer?
2. Why and how did educational opportunities for women increase in the antebellum period?
3. How did Cowles’s choice to remain single affect her life?
4. Why did most Americans oppose antislavery, and how did abolitionist women like Cowles defuse this opposition?
5. How did Cowles’s college education at Oberlin contribute to her teaching career and social activism?
6. How did Cowles advocate Garrisonian abolitionism among moderate reformers in the West?
7. What is the relationship between the antislavery and women’s rights movements?
8. How did Cowles contribute to the women’s rights movement?
9. How did women participate as social reformers during the Civil War?