Many women supporters of women's rights directed their political activism into the abolitionist

movement. Speaking out publicly against injustice, publishing and editing newspapers, and helping
slaves escape to freedom, these pioneers achieved successes unprecedented for women at the time.

During this time antebellum feminist were considered radical for a number of reasons. One-way feminist
of the antebellum period was considered radical was that they demanded equal respect as they were
not inferior to men, but of equal value to the society. They insisted that women were not some kinds of
inferior subspecies of human, but people with just as much to contribute as men. In those days most
people assumed that men and women had different, God-given roles in life and that it was unnatural for
women to try to cross their God-appointed boundaries. So, declaring that women and men were much
more similar than they were different was a radical thought at that time. Another way the antebellum
feminist was considered radical was that they demanded to be a part of the voting body and were
greatly concerned for girl’s education. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
in response to the French politician Talleyrand’s assertion that women should only receive a domestic
education—i.e., just enough to manage a household. Even as late as the 1960s there were still people
who assumed girls only went to college in order to find a husband—they rather snidely called it “getting
your MRS degree”.

Few of the antebellum feminists though went much farther than that. They remained traditional or, at
least, they did not demand non-traditional things yet) in various ways. Equal pay for equal work was far
in the future. Allowing women into the military on equal terms with men, and into combat roles, was
unthinkable.

Few of them were prepared to revolutionize society the way it has been today. They wanted equal legal
and political rights: to vote, to own their own property, to have an equal say in the raising of their
children, and to hold political office. They hadn’t quite yet arrived at the point of demanding to be
doctors and soldiers (although a brave few dressed as men and in fact did practice medicine and go to
war), nor to take equal responsibility for providing for a family. All that came later.