Battle Cry of Freedom 1

My niece has described books in one of two categories; those you can “gobble up” and those you have to slowly digest. BCOF is definitely one that has to be slowly digested.
I enjoyed reading about the economy and how it changed the role of women. Because of the increase in the population women were able to access and purchase goods, which before they were required to make by hand. This gave them more time to educate themselves and their children. Additionally, because of the increase in the population there as a greater need for a governing body which required men to participate politically in the communities in which they resided.
Women begin to write about cooking, child rearing and homemaking but finally move onto more interesting topics of the day including temperance and abolition. I find Nathaniel Hawthorne’s comment about women on page 36 amusing, “that damn mob of scribbling women.” This describes well what others thought about women giving their opinion and sharing it with the public in the form of a book, newspaper, magazine or pamphlet. Regardless of resistance, women continued to share their opinion and were credited with changing history. Harriet B Stowe’s famous work “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was one such publication and upon meeting her, Abraham Lincoln allegedly remarked, “So you are the little lady that started the Civil War”.