The book proposal

[Eva Elisabeth]

Rob, I agree on what Gene, Kate, and especially Mike said. Sounds well-founded to me.

[Rob Wick]

Thank you, Eva.

Best
Rob

[My Name Is Kate]

"Women against women" may be what it seems like on the surface, but I think there is much more to it. Anyway, I'm glad Abe had more sense than Ida on that issue.

[Gene C]

I've been procrastinating since 1986(!!) on a reference book (nothing to do with history or Lincoln) that I put together and is nearly finished, and has been for quite some time now. But after reading your book proposal, I feel more motivated to write mine, since it doesn't sound as hard to do as I thought.

Go for it. Do it! Strike while the iron is hot

[Joe Di Cola]

Rob,

I am well into "The Bully Pulpit" and find it hard to set aside. However, I agree with you that the stuff on "Teedie" and "Will" is not as interesting as the chapters on McClure and his writers. Reading about TR and Taft is old hat after reading other tomes on them. I am utterly fascinated about the McClure's writers. I had known about them, but am learning more. I had even read Lincoln Steffens' autobiography when I was in college.

So...I can hardly wait to read your book on Ida Tarbell. I am glad you chose to do this. Keep at it!

All the best,

Joe

[Rob Wick]

Joe,

I read Pringle's two-volume biography of Taft on a lark, and it was one of the most interesting presidential biographies I've read. Plus, if I could write half as well as Edmund Morris......

Anyone interested to see the firepower that S.S. McClure had on his staff should go to the Internet Archive and browse the copies available of McClure's Magazine. Not only did he have Tarbell, Ray Baker and Lincoln Steffans, but he was one of the first to recognize the talent of Kipling and O. Henry. One of the unsung heroes of McClure's Magazine was a woman named Viola Roseboro, who had a knack for discovering writers. It's a fascinating story.

Best
Rob

[Liz Rosenthal]

Rob:
I've had printer trouble, so I haven't read your proposal yet, but I've skimmed it, and it looks really thorough!
Regarding Abe and women's suffrage, I think (not sure) the source is a campaign tract in the 1830s in which he was discussing expanding the vote and he tacked on this clause at the end: "by no means excluding women."

Kate,

It's hard to boil down her reasoning (even in a 12-page letter to her friend John S. Phillips, she couldn't do it very easily), but simplistically, Tarbell didn't think women having the vote would better their situations, nor did she think women could do any better in picking leaders then men could. It wasn't just in suffrage that Tarbell was contradictory. She thought a woman's first priority should be marriage, a home and raising children, yet she prayed at the age of 14 that she never have to marry. There's a book called Women Against Women: American Anti-Suffragism, 1880-1920 by Jane Camhi in which she devotes a whole chapter to Tarbell's case.

I have to admit I don't recall ever hearing Lincoln talk about the subject of women and suffrage, but there are websites which claim he made a speech as a state legislator that supported the concept. Looking through the collected works, I don't find it. Maybe someone else can.

Thanks for your kind words on my proposal. As for your project, go for it!

Best
Rob

[Rob Wick]

Thanks, Liz. I'm still going over your edit of my sample chapter. You've given me a great deal to think about and saved me from a number of errors. It will definitely be better for your efforts.

Thanks also for the Lincoln reference. I need to see if Tarbell ever wrote about it in her letters or anything she published.

Best
Rob

[Eva Elisabeth]

Just an aside (maybe someone knows more, don't remember the details), long ago I learned that in New York widows who owned poperty had indeed the right to vote in the beginning, but this was abolished in the course of the war in 1812.

[brtmchl]

I have never heard that Eva, but that is very interesting. I had always believed that the right to vote post Revolution was reserved for only white male landowners. Landowners were mostly Protestant. I think that in addition to Blacks, Women, and Whites who did not own a qualifying amount of land and property, Jews and Catholics were also not allowed voting rights.

[L Verge]

Back in the 1670s, Margaret Brent of Maryland sued for the right to vote as a single woman who was both a substantial landowner as well as the executor for Leonard Calvert, lord proprietor of the colony. She was refused.

[Liz Rosenthal]

Thanks, Liz. I'm still going over your edit of my sample chapter. You've given me a great deal to think about and saved me from a number of errors. It will definitely be better for your efforts.

Thanks also for the Lincoln reference. I need to see if Tarbell ever wrote about it in her letters or anything she published.

Best
Rob

You're welcome, Rob. I'm just sorry I took so long!

[My Name Is Kate]

It sounds like women were no more citizens of this country than slaves. They didn't have the right to vote, rarely if ever held office, were employed only in the lowest occupations if at all, and were basically the property of their husbands, producing on average a dozen children each, about half of whom died in infancy. And children had no rights at all. Sure glad I didn't live in those days.

OTOH, I doubt that anyone in the old days had to worry about some pre-teen, AK-47-toting terrorist who might blow off someone's head for looking wrong at him.

[Eva Elisabeth]

It sounds like women were no more citizens of this country than slaves. They didn't have the right to vote, rarely if ever held office, were employed only in the lowest occupations if at all, and were basically the property of their husbands, producing on average about a dozen children each, about half of whom often died in infancy. And children had no rights at all. Sure glad I didn't live in those days.

Well, Kate, just one more aside (referring to your last sentence): The fist time women were allowed to study law at Harvard was in 1950 (although the first woman applied in 1870!) and at Washington and Lee University in 1972, just two examples. Sometimes, those days seem not too far away.

[My Name Is Kate]

Now I'm beginning to see why slavery was considered an accepted practice. Half the population was without citizenship and (almost) no one gave it a thought. Probably even most women thought it was just the way it is and should not be changed. Even today, there still exist some forms of slavery, and in this country, such as human trafficking...