From Ladies to Women: The Organized Struggle for Women's Rights in the Reconstruction Era [Hardcover]

Unlike most leading works that focus on a broad spectrum of the woman's rights movement, Israel Kugler's volume provides an in-depth analysis of the drive for equalty for women during a specific, influential era in American history: the pioneering efforts of woman's rights organizations in the post-Civil War period. With the war against slavery at an end, the Reconstruction Era was hailed by women leaders, who had been active in the Union cause, as the time for the establishment of equal rights for all humanity--men and women alike. It was this historic period that saw the creation of permanent woman's rights organizations dedicated to a specific goal--that of woman suffrage.ISRAEL KUGLER is Professor Emeritus of Social Science at the City University of New York.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Part One. Setting the Stage--Through the Civil War
Precursors
Changes in Woman's Status
Part Two. Reconstruction--The Dawn of a New Day?
The Political and Economic Stakes in the War's Aftermath
Toward Organizing--The Woman's Rights Convention of 1866
The Broadest Platform--The American Equal Rights Association--1866-1867
Fissures over Priorities--New York Constitutional Convention and the Kansas Suffrage Campaigns, 1867
The Struggle for Control, 1868
The Rivals--The National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association
Unity--The Attempt and Failure--1870
The Side Issues of Contention--Suffrage, Marriage, Divorce, and Sex
Political Action
Organized Labor and Woman's Rights--The Positive Phase
The Labor-Woman's Rights Coalition Breaks Apart
The Woman's Rights Press
Part Three. Epiloque
From theSuffrage Victory to the Future of Woman's Rights
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index