Slowly slicing off pieces of our rights had become their normal harvest over the 150 years since they immigrated here from Germany.
Those original errors by the men who thought the Constitution was a swell idea had borne some nasty fruit.
Failing to affirm rights for everyone made the Civil War and the many generations who necessarily struggled for individual autonomy unavoidable. Government did not have the right to barter rights that are inherent in each of us.
Since you cannot have a free market without each individual exercising their right to decide for themselves how they will drive their small part of the whole the world has never had a free market. Since you cannot be free until you give freedom to everyone we were all slaves, and vulnerable to the government that mercantilist greed had spawned.
Women kept trying to change things through persuasion.
In 1848 the first Women's Convention would nearly replicate the Declaration of Independence with the Declaration of Sentiments, which simply demands their inherent rights be recognized. Those women understood the intention and truth of the idea that rights are inherent. Generations of women have lived and died without achieving simple equality. Instead, frustrated, they began to ask for simulations of equality, which used legislation that dictated to private choices instead of limiting itself to government. They were following the model they had seen not working for over a century. It took them 150 years to give up and settle for less, but they did.
Simulated freedom is not freedom. Freedom is getting the State, all states, out of your life so you are the one to decide how you will live your life. You may be foolish or wise but it is your choice, your life, the gift of God to you as an individual.
At the failure to affirm rights for women and blacks in the aftermath of the ratification of the Constitution State legislatures began passing 'laws' that prevented women from having any control of their own persons and property. Women became de facto property. This was not what they expected.
The women of the Revolution Generation who capitalized the War, providing the needed goods and services to keep their households and the economy going, expected that at the close of that war they would be free. For a while some states, for instance New Jersey, gave women the right to vote. This was withdrawn. Very soon women began organizing and began to open Dame schools and seek educational opportunities that included both their sons and daughters. They recognized they would need these tools to achieve their independence.
They hungered mightily to control their own lives. Some of you may understand how they felt.
Generations struggled for an education so they could get jobs at 1/3 - 1/2 the wage granted to men. They did not ask for anything but the opportunity although they were excluded from schools that were supported by taxes they were forced to pay.
They started their own privately funded colleges.
In comparison the Revolution was a cake walk.
In my family line seven generations of women have worked for freedom, not just for themselves but for all women and for blacks during the Abolitionist period. Their husbands shared those goals and signed marriage contracts that refuted the right of the state to determine the terms of their relationship.
My great-grandmother graduated from medical school in 1880 and went on to run women's clinics, educating women on matters that gave them control of their lives. It was not legal but it was right. We all have a right to the truth if we can find someone willing to tell us.
Those Pimply PR agents were prospering in their careers but they wanted more.
