=The Stir among European Women.=—­Ferment in America, in the case of women as of men, was quickened by events in Europe.  In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft published in England the Vindication of the Rights of Women—­a book that was destined to serve the cause of liberty among women as the writings of Locke and Paine had served that of men.  The specific grievances which stirred English women were men’s invasion of women’s industries, such as spinning and weaving; the denial of equal educational opportunities; and political disabilities.  In France also the great Revolution raised questionings about the status of women.  The rights of “citizenesses” as well as the rights of “citizens” were examined by the boldest thinkers.  This in turn reacted upon women in the United States.

=Leadership in America.=—­The origins of the American woman movement are to be found in the writings of a few early intellectual leaders.  During the first decades of the nineteenth century, books, articles, and pamphlets about women came in increasing numbers from the press.  Lydia Maria Child wrote a history of women; Margaret Fuller made a critical examination of the status of women in her time; and Mrs. Elizabeth Ellet supplemented the older histories by showing what an important part women had played in the American Revolution.

=The Struggle for Education.=—­Along with criticism, there was carried on a constructive struggle for better educational facilities for women who had been from the beginning excluded from every college in the country.  In this long battle, Emma Willard and Mary Lyon led the way; the former founded a seminary at Troy, New York; and the latter made the beginnings of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.  Oberlin College in Ohio, established in 1833, opened its doors to girls and from it were graduated young students to lead in the woman movement.  Sarah J. Hale, who in 1827 became the editor of a “Ladies’ Magazine,” published in Boston, conducted a campaign for equal educational opportunities which helped to bear fruit in the founding of Vassar College shortly after the Civil War.

=The Desire to Effect Reforms.=—­As they came to study their own history and their own part in civilization, women naturally became deeply interested in all the controversies going on around them.  The temperance question made a special appeal to them and they organized to demand the right to be heard on it.  In 1846 the “Daughters of Temperance” formed a secret society favoring prohibition.  They dared to criticize the churches for their indifference and were so bold as to ask that drunkenness be made a ground for divorce.

The slavery issue even more than temperance called women into public life.  The Grimke sisters of South Carolina emancipated their bondmen, and one of these sisters, exiled from Charleston for her “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South,” went North to work against the slavery system.  In 1837 the National Women’s Anti-Slavery Convention met in New York; seventy-one women delegates represented eight states.  Three years later eight American women, five of them in Quaker costume, attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, much to the horror of the men, who promptly excluded them from the sessions on the ground that it was not fitting for women to take part in such meetings.