This document provides an overview of American women's shifting boundaries from the 1840s to the 1860s, covering expansion, reform movements, and the Civil War era. It discusses how American expansion displaced Native American women and impoverished them, while some white women found new opportunities on the frontier and in the Gold Rush. It also summarizes several major reform movements of the antebellum period led by women to expand their sphere and address issues like slavery, health, and women's rights. Finally, it outlines women's involvement on both sides of the conflict during the Civil War and their role in bringing about emancipation.

1. American Women’s Shifting Boundaries:
Expansion, Reform and Civil War
Professor Chee

2. I. An Expanding Nation, 1843–1861
A. Overland by Trail
B. The Underside of Expansion: Native Women and
Californianas

3. Manifest Destiny
“to overspread the
continent alloted by
Providence for the free
development of our
yearly multiplying
millions.”
“Race…the key …to the
history of nations…”
Journalist John L. O’Sullivan, 1845

4. John Gast. Manifest Destiny, 1872

5. Go West, Young Man!
Illinois Central Railroad
advertisement, NYC, 1853
Probably directed at
immigrants

6. Go West, Young Man!
John L.B. Soule,
Terre Haute Express
1.4 million go
1845-69

7. Settlement of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840s
1840s – 350K men,
women and children
went West
10% died along the
way

8. Women Join the Overland Trail
Some with eagerness,
Others reluctantly, sometimes
experiencing domestic tension
• Women kept house in
cramped wagons, rustic
conditions
• Sometimes forced to add on
men’s labor, driving
wagons, tending to animals
• Raised children, gave birth
during long journeys
• Buried others along the way

9. The Underside of Expansion: Native Women and
Californianas
American expansion set
women against each other
along the lines of race, culture
and ethnicity

10. Indigenous American Women and
Californians
Fear of Indian “attacks” -
Indians demanding toll
payment to cross their
lands, or request to
alleviate poverty, hunger &
illness
Abandoned Native women,
became laborers or
prostitutes, “black dirty
squaws.”

11. The Impoverishment of Native Americans
First autobiography of a Native American woman,
Sarah Winnemucca. Life Among the Piutes. 1883
o Paiutes heard rumors that white people “killing
everybody and eating them”
o Her community’s winter supplies were burned by
a group of white men, beginning their
impoverishment
o As settlers poured in, Native American
agriculture and sources of food destroyed
o Settlement violence/conquest
o Rape/sexual coercion, disease
o Californian Indian population from 150K to 30K
from 1850-1860
Sarah Winnemucca (~1844-1891)

13. Mexico Gained Independence from Spain 1820-21
(Guanajuato, Mexico)
Geographically as large as the U.S. with a population size 2/3 that of
the U.S., of 6.5 million

14. Spanish &
gold/silver mines
in Mexico
Cathedral in
Guanajuato

15. Americans Move West: Annexing Texas by 1845

16. Virginian Stephen Austin start colonizing in
Mexican province of Coahuila-Texas ~1820s
o Post-independent Mexico in 1821,
invited Americans to settle
o Texas had 5K Tejanos, Comanche &
Kiowa Indians
o southerners start settling Texas, ~15K
Americans with 1K slaves, calling
them, “permanent indentured
servitude” because Mexico outlawed
slavery in 1829
o American settlers quickly start
outnumbering Tejanos 10 to 1

17. 1830s – Tejanos, or Spanish
speaking residents,
Comanche, Kiowa Indians
lose territories to American
settlers - under a new Mexican
government, General Antonio
Lopez de Santa Anna, starts to
drive Americans out
1835 – Battle of Alamo - Mexican
troops under General Santa
Ana attack the Alamo, an
abandoned mission near San
Antonio, and killed 187
Americans, for refusing to
surrender
1836 – Houston attacked santa
Ana, killed 630 Mexicans
treaty grants Texas
independence from Mexico.
Tejas Becomes the Republic of Texas 1836

18. 1845
James Polk (Tennessee Governor)
elected president as the Texas
Manifest Destiny candidate
His election seen as a mandate for
expansion
Democrats, especially Jackson loved
him
Outgoing President John Tyler
pushed for the annexation of
Texas, throwing off the balance
of free versus slave states
1845 – U.S. Annexes Texas
James Polk elected president

19. The U.S. Expands Further West:
War against Mexico, 1846–1848
“Inspired by the expansionist
fervor of manifest destiny…”
but really an attempt to
acquire new territories for
slavery (Foner)
This war was ‘one of the most
unjust ever waged by a
stronger nation against a
weaker nation…’
General Ulysses S. Grant

20. War Atrocities in the U.S. War against Mexico
US Army General in Chief, on
American atrocities:
“make Heaven weep and every
American of Christian morals
blush for his country…”
some American soldiers moved
over to the Mexican side

21. Photograph of American Troops - 1847
Brigadier General John E. Wool & mounted troops in Saltillo’s Calle Real
Daguerreotype, c. 1847

22. U.S. Cuts Mexico Cut in Half:
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848
Henry Robinson (after a drawing by Edward W.
Clay) 1846, lithograph – NY Historical Society
o US gained ½ of Mexican territory:
New Mexico, AZ, Utah, Nevada &
California (Mexico gave up all
claims to Texas)
o US compensated Mexico – only
$15 million
o Mexican citizens to be guaranteed
civil, political, and property rights
o American opinions on war mixed:
o abolitionists – blood-drenched
gift from American taxpayers
to slaveholders
o others – Polk could have taken
all of Mexico!

23. 1830s – settler men married elite Mexican
women landholders
Mexican law gave married women control
over their property – Californiana ranchera
1850s-1860s – California lands transferred
from Mexican to American ownership, as
Mexican women joined Native Americans
into landlessness, domestic service and
poverty
Californios:

24. I. An Expanding Nation, 1843–1861
The Gold Rush
1. New Wave of Immigration
2. Women in Gold Rush

26. Gold, Gold, Gold, 1848
California
80K people go by 1849
$½ billion in gold

27. The Gold Rush Changed California
California’s Population ~1821
o 150K Native Americans in the
interior?
o 20K Native Americans in missions
o 3.2K missionaries, soldiers &
settlers including Mexican cattle
ranchers the Californios aka gente
de razon

28. Who went to California?
80K people go in 1849
o Mostly young men!
o 2/3 from New
England, some
slaves, Cherokees
o 1/3 from other
parts of the world,
including the
Chinese

29. Chinese Forty-Niners
1852 – 25K
Chinese
immigrants
or
¼ of the
workforce in
California

30. Chinese Mostly Single Men Working as Gold Miners

31. Some Women in California Found Opportunities
Gold Rush Era Prostitutes
Women worked as
o Prostitutes
o Laundresses
o Cooks
o Business owners – shops,
boardinghouses, restaurants
Laundry, cooking, domestic
chores – other houses

32. Pioneer Women’s Work and Rights
o Remarriage easy!
o Borrowed Mexican women’s legal
rights – control property, custody of
children, right to sue in court without
husband/father’s consent
o Physically grueling farmwork -
Gathering fuel, hauling water, milking
cows, keeping chickens, churning
butter, making clothes, feeding the
family, cleaning house
o Took on men’s roles of driving
wagons, caring for horses, burying the
dead
Women were so rare called
“petticoated astonishments!”

33. Work and Race in California
o African Americans – free but could
NOT
o vote,
o claim a homestead,
o Hold public office,
o serve on jury
o attend school with white children
o Or ride streetcars in San Francisco
o Blacks, Mulattos or Indians could
not testify against whites in court -
Asians (Chinese) are Indians -
People v. George Hall
o Native Americans killed, or sold as
slaves. 150K to 30K after the
Mexican War

34. Southern Whites Move Westward and Demand
Rights as Slave Owners
“The Indians of California make as obedient
and humble slaves as the Negroes in the
south…for a mere trifle, you can secure
their services for life.”
Pierson B. Reading, a former New Orleans cotton broker who settles in
California

35. A Gold Rush Fashion Invention: Jeans
Levi Strauss & Jacob
Davis invent jeans-
durable cotton pants
with rivets

36. Chinese Gold Rush Prostitutes
2000 Chinese girls kidnapped
into sexual prostitution
Sexual labor hierarchies:
White American/French – highest
Mexican
South American
African American
Chinese American – bottom, and
prohibited from marrying white men

37. A Gold Rush Fashion Invention: Jeans
Levi Strauss & Jacob
Davis invent jeans-
durable cotton pants
with rivets

38. Early Persecutions to One of the Most Powerful Churches in
America:
Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COSUTZk0W7o&list=RDCOSUTZk0W7o#t=17
o Joseph Smith founded in the 1820s in
Upstate New York (claimed that ancient
Hebrews emigrated to America and became
the American Indians
o Persecuted often for polygamy – men with
multiple wives
o moved headquarters from New York, to
Nauvoo, Illinois
o 1944 – Smith murdered in prison
Joseph Smith
1805-1844

39. Mormons Trek West to Utah
o Under the leadership of Brigham
Young, 10K Mormons migrated
West and settled in Salt Lake
City, a desert city, by 1852
o violent massacre - September 11,
1857 Mountain Meadow
Massacre on a Baker-Fancher
wagon train,
o Mormons (with Paiute Indian
assistance & on orders from Brigham
Young) of 120 men, women and
children, over the age of 7
Brigham Young
1801-1877

40. Mormons Massacre 120 Men, Women, Children
on a Baker-Fancher Wagon Train
the 1857 Mountain
Meadow Massacre
September 11, 1857
Mormons (with Paiute
Indian assistance & on
orders from Brigham
Young) of 120 men,
women and children, over
the age of 7, headed to
California on the Baker-
Fancher Wagon Train

41. II. Antebellum Reform
A. Expanding Woman’s Sphere: Maternal, Moral,
and Temperance Reform
1. Missionary and Evangelical Work
2. Moral Reform Organizations
3. Temperance Movement
B. Exploring New Territory: Radical Reform in
Family and Sexual Life
1. Women’s Health Reform
2. Communitarian Experiments

42. II. Antebellum Reform
C. Crossing Political Boundaries: Abolitionism
1. Slavery as Sin
2. Free Blacks and Abolitionism
3. Female Abolitionists
D. Entering New Territory: Women’s Rights
1. Challenge to “True Womanhood”
2. Seeking Married Women’s Rights
3. Seneca Falls Convention
4. Growth of Movement

45. III. Civil War, 1861–1865
A. Women and the Impending Crisis
1. Women and Conflict over Slavery
2. Election of Abraham Lincoln
3. Secession of South
B. Women’s Involvement in the War
1. Women’s Service
2. Women on Home Front
3. Growing Discontent

48. III. Civil War, 1861–1865
C. Emancipation
1. Self-Emancipation
2. Emancipation Proclamation
3. Petitions to Lincoln by Women
4. African Americans in Union Army
5. War Ends

57. “Cult of Womanhood”