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Background Information:
Twenty years before Tennessee became a state, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, who was then in Philadelphia as a member of the Continental Congress and admonished him to, as she put it, "Remember the Ladies."
She wrote, ".. in the new code of laws... I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them then your ancestor. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."
Women who crossed the mountains with their families and settled Tennessee did not enjoy the same rights and freedoms that the men enjoyed when Tennessee became a state in 1796. They did not have that which Abigail Adams demanded: a voice in the making of the laws they were obliged to obey. Although the Declaration of Independence stated that "All men are created equal", women had no guaranteed political rights. One of the chief rights denied to women was the right to vote. Only white adult men who owned property could vote after the American Revolution.
After the American Revolution, the Constitution gave the states the right to decide who could vote. The states gradually abolished the requirement that men must own property to vote, but still did not give women the right to vote. Abigail Adams’ husband, John, became the second President of the United States, but she could not vote for her husband when he ran for the office of President. Neither did Tennesseans Rachel Jackson, Sarah Childress Polk, nor Eliza McCardle Johnson.
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Abigail Adams
by Benjamin Blythe 1766
Rachel Donelson Jackson
Sarah Childress Polk
Eliza McCardle Johnston |
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