1876 Woman's Duties and Rights. The Woman's Congress. An Address to the Women of America; also, Women in Charitable and Religious Societies

Item Details

PHELPS, Mrs. Lincoln [Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps]. Woman's Duties and Rights. The Woman's Congress. An Address to the Women of America; also, Women in Charitable and Religious Societies. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1876.

8vo. [__] pp. Printed front wrapper on blue-flecked granite paper, with a border rule and the title in mixed display types; lacking the rear wrapper. Removed from a bound volume, with old stab-sewing remaining and a loose length of thread at the spine. The spine edge shows residue and small chips where the volume was separated.  

The pamphlet was published for the benefit of the Woman's Aid Society of St. Bartholomew's Church, Baltimore. Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps (1793–1884) was the sister of Emma Willard. She was a pioneering educator and the author of the widely used Familiar Lectures on Botany, and she ran the Patapsco Female Institute in Maryland before settling in Baltimore. She was also a prominent conservative voice against woman suffrage. Her title answers the "Woman's Congress" of the Association for the Advancement of Women, whose 1876 meeting was held in Philadelphia during the Centennial year. Her address offers a counter-program to the suffrage movement, centered on women's duties and on their work through church and charitable societies, and it is a scarce document of organized anti-suffrage thought among educated women in the 1870s.