Women's Movements Trivia
Conditions in the Occuquan Workhouse, where arrested suffragettes were imprisoned in 1917, were poor. The food was particularly unsanitary. On one occasion, women sent a spoonful of worms drawn from their soup to the warden.55
During the twentieth-century battle for women's suffrage, Alice Durer Miller explained why men should be denied the right to vote:
- Because man's place is in the army.
- Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it.
- Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.
- Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms, and drums.
- Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them unfit for government.56
Some nineteenth-century women reformers used their weddings and wedding vows to make philosophical statements. Angelina Grimké invited several African Americans, including former slaves owned by her family.57 Elizabeth Cady Stanton omitted the traditional promise to obey from her vows.58 Radical marriage reformer Mary Gove Nichols refused to pledge fidelity. She promised to be faithful only to "the deepest love of my heart"; and should that lead her to another, "I must go."59
Abolitionist and feminist Angelina Grimké was swept up in the millenarian prophecies of William Miller. She was so convinced by his calculations projecting the return of Jesus and the end of the world in 1843 that she announced her readiness to give up all earthly responsibilities.60
Believing that Wikipedia had a liberal and anti-Christian bias, Phyllis Schlafly's son Andrew founded Conservapedia in 2006.61
