Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, the production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson. I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: Lately I've been thinking a lot about etiquette on the
Speaker 1: Internet and how sometimes there's sort of not any and
Speaker 1: how etiquette isn't something that just springs forth from people unprompted.
Speaker 1: The idea of what is and isn't polite or rude
Speaker 1: has to be kind of cultivated and created and reinforced intentionally,
Speaker 1: including through things like etiquette manuals and advice columns and magazines.
Speaker 1: And that whole line of thought led me to something
Speaker 1: that has been on my list for a long time
Speaker 1: and has also been requested by a lot of our listeners.
Speaker 1: That's Goadie's Ladies Book and its editor, Sarah Josepha Hale.
Speaker 1: I will say that I have heard historians and archivists
Speaker 1: say this as Goadie's and as Gotti's. I have also
Speaker 1: on occasion heard good days. I think that's just people
Speaker 1: trying to make a sound fancy that that does sound
Speaker 1: like an attempt for fanciness. A bunch of folks that
Speaker 1: I have listened to from Vassar, who she was associated with,
Speaker 1: all said, goatis, so that's the one that we're going
Speaker 1: to go with. This was the most popular magazine in
Speaker 1: the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and although it's mostly well known at this point for
Speaker 1: its hand tinted fashion plates, the content of the magazine
Speaker 1: was this collection of all kinds of material, including poetry
Speaker 1: and fiction and household tips and music and yes, etiquette,
Speaker 1: and it was incredibly influential in terms of both the
Speaker 1: actual magazine content and Hale's work outside of his pages,
Speaker 1: and a lot of ways that are still felt today.
Speaker 1: In Europe, the first magazines were launched in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: thanks to advances in printing technology and male distribution, as
Speaker 1: well as increased literacy rates. The word magazine is much
Speaker 1: older than that, but it was first used to describe
Speaker 1: a periodical filled with works by various writers, often on
Speaker 1: a range of subjects, aimed at a general audience, and
Speaker 1: that was in seventeen thirty one. That was when Edward
Speaker 1: Cave started publishing The Gentleman's Magazine. He called it a
Speaker 1: magazine because the words earlier meaning of storehouse. The Gentleman's
Speaker 1: magazine was meant to be a storehouse of knowledge. Magazines
Speaker 1: aimed specifically at women were part of this whole ecosystem.
Speaker 1: By seventeen fifty nine, that's when the Royal Female Magazine
Speaker 1: or the Lady's General Repository of Pleasure and Improvement was
Speaker 1: first published. In England and the United States, the first
Speaker 1: women's magazine was called Ladies Magazine and it was founded
Speaker 1: in seventeen nine. Two various women's magazines came and went
Speaker 1: on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, most
Speaker 1: of them folded within a year or two until Sarah
Speaker 1: Josepha Hale started publishing her Lady's Magazine, which was the
Speaker 1: first women's magazine in the US that lasted more than
Speaker 1: five years. That is, in fact, a different la E's
Speaker 1: magazine than the one that was founded in seventeen ninety two.
Speaker 1: And we're going to go back up for a minute
Speaker 1: and talk about how Hale got there. She was born
Speaker 1: Sarah Joseph A Bull in Newport, New Hampshire, on October
Speaker 1: Her parents were Captain Gordon Mule and Martha Whittlesey Bull,
Speaker 1: and her father had fought in the Revolutionary War. Sarah
Speaker 1: was the third of their four children. Sarah's parents thought
Speaker 1: that girls should have access to education, and for the
Speaker 1: Bull daughters that meant being tutored at home by their
Speaker 1: mother along with their brothers. It did not, however, mean
Speaker 1: that Sarah could go to college. Of all her siblings,
Speaker 1: Sarah was closest to her brother her ratio, and when
Speaker 1: he went to Dartmouth, he actively encouraged herself study, and
Speaker 1: he shared his books with her when he was home.
Speaker 1: In her words, quote, he seemed very unwilling that I
Speaker 1: should be deprived of all his collegiate advantages. Sarah became
Speaker 1: a teacher when she was eighteen, and in eighteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: when she was twenty five, she married David Hale, who
Speaker 1: was a lawyer. David encouraged her to continue educating herself again.
Speaker 1: In her words quote, we commenced soon after our marriage
Speaker 1: a system of study and reading, which we pursued while
Speaker 1: he lived. The hours allowed were from eight o'clock in
Speaker 1: the evening till ten two hours in the twenty four
Speaker 1: How I enjoyed those hours in all our mental pursuits.
Speaker 1: It seemed the aim of my husband to enlighten my reason,
Speaker 1: strengthen my judgment, and give me confidence in my own
Speaker 1: powers of mind, which he estimated much higher than I.
Speaker 1: But this approbation which he bestowed on my talents has
Speaker 1: been of great encouragement to me and attempting the duties
Speaker 1: that have since become my portion. Sadly, David did not
Speaker 1: live long. He died of pneumonia in nine years into
Speaker 1: their marriage. By then, they had four children together. They
Speaker 1: were David, Horatio, Frances Anne, and Sarah Joseph the elder.
Speaker 1: Sarah was pregnant with their fifth child, William, who was
Speaker 1: born not long after his father's death. Sarah was understandably devastated,
Speaker 1: and she wore black for the rest of her life,
Speaker 1: although this was also influenced by the fact that she
Speaker 1: found black flattering on her and she also thought it
Speaker 1: made her look taller. Sarah knew that she was going
Speaker 1: to have to work to support her family, but that
Speaker 1: a teacher's salary was never going to be enough to
Speaker 1: support her in five children. Before her marriage, she hadn't
Speaker 1: even been supporting herself on teacher's pay. She had been
Speaker 1: living at home and using that salary to help cover
Speaker 1: her father's medical expenses. David had been a freemason, though,
Speaker 1: and his brothers at the Masonic Lodge helped get Sarah
Speaker 1: and her sister in law, Hannah, established with a millinary
Speaker 1: business that, along with dressmaking, was one of the very
Speaker 1: few business opportunities that was considered appropriate for middle class women.
Speaker 1: The Masonic Lodge also funded the publication of a book
Speaker 1: of poetry that Sarah had written that was called The
Speaker 1: Genius of Oblivion and Other Original Poems, and it was
Speaker 1: published under the byline A Lady of New Hampshire. Sarah
Speaker 1: earned enough money from this book that she was able
Speaker 1: to leave Hannah in charge of what actually seems to
Speaker 1: have become quite a thriving millinery business, and instead Sarah
Speaker 1: focused on writing. Sarah submitted poems and stories to magazines
Speaker 1: and journals, and in seven she published a novel called Northwood,
Speaker 1: a Tale of New England. Northwood contrasted a woman's life
Speaker 1: in New England to what she imagined to be a
Speaker 1: woman's life in the South. At this point, Hale was
Speaker 1: really concerned that the issue of slavery was going to
Speaker 1: lead to a civil war or otherwise just destroy the country,
Speaker 1: and Northwood reflects these fears as well as the eras
Speaker 1: prevailing racism and Hale's own biases. The book condemned the
Speaker 1: institution of slavery and the idea of a widening divide
Speaker 1: between the North and the South, while also treating white
Speaker 1: women of both the North and the South with a
Speaker 1: lot of sympathy. Northwood was very well received, and it
Speaker 1: caught the eye of the Reverend John Loris Blake, who
Speaker 1: approached Hale about starting a magazine for women. This was
Speaker 1: not an easy to see jan for her. If the
Speaker 1: magazine was successful, she would probably make enough money to
Speaker 1: send all five of her children to college, but taking
Speaker 1: the job was also going to mean leaving her older
Speaker 1: children with relatives while she moved to Boston to work.
Speaker 1: Her oldest child, David, was thirteen at this point and
Speaker 1: was getting ready to head to West Point, but the
Speaker 1: rest of her children were years away from leaving home,
Speaker 1: and her youngest child was only five. In the end,
Speaker 1: Hale did take this job. She spent a few months
Speaker 1: at home in New Hampshire preparing and planning out the
Speaker 1: magazine's first issues, before sending her middle three children to
Speaker 1: live with various aunts and uncles. She took William with
Speaker 1: her when she left for Boston in the spring of
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty eight, and we'll talk about that magazine after
Speaker 1: we first paused for a little sponsor break. The magazine
Speaker 1: that Sarah just at the Hale launched in eight was
Speaker 1: initially known as Ladies Magazine in in the Literary Gazette.
Speaker 1: It's believed to be the first magazine edited by a woman.
Speaker 1: After a while, its name was shortened to just Ladies
Speaker 1: Magazine and then expanded to American Ladies Magazine. This was
Speaker 1: supposed to distinguish it from a different Ladies magazine that
Speaker 1: was being published in Britain, and also to highlight what
Speaker 1: Haile saw as the magazine's American focus. At the time,
Speaker 1: most magazines being published in the United States were being
Speaker 1: created primarily through a practice called clipping that was just
Speaker 1: republishing material from other magazines without any kind of acknowledgement
Speaker 1: or attribution or payment to its original creators. Most of
Speaker 1: the time, the clipped content in the US was coming
Speaker 1: from British publications, and we have talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about the publications that worked in that style when we
Speaker 1: have talked about um pose Era and his rivals, and
Speaker 1: also also other other people that worked in in literary efforts, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Came up, I thinking in our Wins or Mackay episodes,
Speaker 1: possibly um. But Hale bless her did not approve of
Speaker 1: this practice of clipping, and she wanted this to be
Speaker 1: an American magazine by and for American women, meaning middle
Speaker 1: and upper class white women. She did the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the original writing herself in the magazine's pages included poetry,
Speaker 1: fiction essays, news articles, household tips, and editorials where she
Speaker 1: advocated things like property rights for married women. Some things
Speaker 1: that hal did not want this magazine to include were
Speaker 1: fashion plates. These were illustrations of people in fashionable clothing
Speaker 1: and appealing surroundings, usually done as etchings or engravings. She
Speaker 1: really wanted her magazine to be dedicated to the education
Speaker 1: and enrichment of women, and that did not, in her mind,
Speaker 1: include fashion. And her words quote, there is no part
Speaker 1: of our duty as editor of a lady's journal which
Speaker 1: we feel so reluctant to perform orm as to quote
Speaker 1: or exhibit the fashions of dress. This is where I
Speaker 1: retract my blessing upon her. But fashion plates were incredibly popular,
Speaker 1: and Hale started losing subscribers as competing magazine started publishing
Speaker 1: more of them. By late eighteen thirty, Hale realized that
Speaker 1: she really did have to include fashion plates if she
Speaker 1: wanted her magazine to stay afloat. So the first few
Speaker 1: issues that included fashion plates bemoaned the lack of original
Speaker 1: American fashions to feature, or offered commentary that criticized fashion,
Speaker 1: or printed an essay on the facing page that used
Speaker 1: the plate as some kind of moral lesson. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: Hale moved on to publishing plates without all of the
Speaker 1: judge commentary, and she was sort of like, if I
Speaker 1: have to do this, I'm just gonna be as foot
Speaker 1: draggy and complaining about it as I came. The irony is,
Speaker 1: though she wore black her whole life because she thought
Speaker 1: it made her look stunning, So she was into fashion,
Speaker 1: she just wouldn't acknowledge it. Yeah, and also the this
Speaker 1: magazine and then also Godi's Ladies book, which are going
Speaker 1: to talk about more in a bit. I mean, they
Speaker 1: became incredibly famous for all these fashion plants. So Ladies
Speaker 1: Magazine stopped publishing fashion plates towards the very end of
Speaker 1: its run, but it's not clear whether that contributed to
Speaker 1: the magazine's decline by eighteen thirty four, the magazine had
Speaker 1: started to struggle, in part due to the financial fallout
Speaker 1: from President Andrew Jackson's efforts to try to dismantle the
Speaker 1: Bank of the United States. Hale started appealing to her
Speaker 1: subscribers to try to support the magazine and for the
Speaker 1: ones whose subscriptions were in arrears to pay their bills.
Speaker 1: So during these lean years, a man named Lewis Antoine
Speaker 1: Godie approached Hale about moving to Philadelphia to edit his magazine.
Speaker 1: His name does appear French, but he was born in
Speaker 1: the U. S who are going with the Lewis pronunciation.
Speaker 1: Goadi was born in New York, as i said in
Speaker 1: the US on June six, eight o four, and like Hale,
Speaker 1: most of his education had come through self study. He
Speaker 1: had owned a small bookstore and news stand for a
Speaker 1: while before he became a scissors editor at the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: Daily Chronicle. In eighteen thirty he started publishing a magazine
Speaker 1: called Ladies Book, which was like so many other magazines
Speaker 1: created through clipping, and it also included fashion plates. But
Speaker 1: Goodie also didn't want this magazine to just be your
Speaker 1: standard clipping shop. He wanted it to be in his words,
Speaker 1: quote the guiding star of female education, the beacon light
Speaker 1: of refined taste, pure morals, and practical wisdom, and he
Speaker 1: hoped that if he hired Hale, she could take it
Speaker 1: in that direction. In spite of her own magazine struggles,
Speaker 1: Hale actually turned him down. This was largely because she
Speaker 1: didn't want to leave Boston. Her son, William was about
Speaker 1: to start college at Harvard and she didn't want to
Speaker 1: leave until he graduated. And she also wasn't quite ready
Speaker 1: to give up her own magazine. At this point she
Speaker 1: was its co owner. Hale had been very busy during
Speaker 1: her whole tenure as editor of American Ladies Magazine. She
Speaker 1: had written numerous books on top of all the writings
Speaker 1: she was doing for the magazine. This included publishing poems
Speaker 1: for our children, including Mary Had a Little Lamb, which
Speaker 1: was published in eighteen thirty. It's poems were quote written
Speaker 1: to inculcate moral truths and virtuous sentiments. She was also
Speaker 1: hugely active in fundraising efforts for the completion of the
Speaker 1: Bunker Hill Monument, and she helped found the Seamen's Aid
Speaker 1: Society and become its first president. She kept up this
Speaker 1: pace as her magazine struggled, but she really was not
Speaker 1: able to turn things around. In eighteen thirty six, Goadi
Speaker 1: made another proposal that he could buy American Ladies Magazine,
Speaker 1: merge it with his Lady's Book, and let Hale edit
Speaker 1: the combined magazine from Boston until her son William graduated
Speaker 1: from college in eighteen forty one. This time Hale agreed.
Speaker 1: As of its first issue in eighteen thirty seven, she
Speaker 1: was the editor of Goadie's Ladies Book, and she took
Speaker 1: it in a similar direction as she had taken American
Speaker 1: Ladies Magazine, which is what Godi had been hoping for,
Speaker 1: moving it away from clipping toward original Colm tent. Hale
Speaker 1: also focused on hiring women for as many roles as
Speaker 1: she could. Eventually this included a staff of a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty women to who hand color the fashion plates.
Speaker 1: That means hand coloring them for every copy of the magazine,
Speaker 1: which was a feat and also meant that sometimes different
Speaker 1: people's copies would be in different colors because they ran
Speaker 1: out of one. Obviously, that's one of the things we
Speaker 1: said before that this magazine became really famous for. Also,
Speaker 1: in keeping with her distaste for covering fashion and a
Speaker 1: ladies magazine at all. Fashion was the only section of
Speaker 1: Goadie's Ladies Book that Hale did not personally oversee. There
Speaker 1: was a lot in the magazine beyond the fashion plates
Speaker 1: and other fashion coverage. Hale still wanted to quote provide
Speaker 1: quality material to benefit and educate the female reader. So,
Speaker 1: like her earlier magazine, Goadie's Ladies Book began publishing poetry,
Speaker 1: fiction essays, biographical vignettes, news advice, and household tips. She
Speaker 1: introduced story reads and articles for children meant to be
Speaker 1: read to them by their mothers. Each issue included sheet music,
Speaker 1: and they were also sewing and embroidery patterns, also recipes,
Speaker 1: anything that Hale thought would be educational, edifying, and useful
Speaker 1: for American ladies. This meant that Goadie's Ladies Book also
Speaker 1: became a publishing outlet for some of the United States
Speaker 1: leading writers at the time. The magazine published work by
Speaker 1: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth,
Speaker 1: Longfellow in Washington, Irving Edgar Allan Poe was a contributor
Speaker 1: as well, publishing stories and poems, including the Cask of
Speaker 1: a Monteato. Under the leadership of Hale as editor and
Speaker 1: Goadie as publisher, Goadie's Ladies Book became incredibly successful. We
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that Hale's American Ladies Magazine was the first
Speaker 1: women's magazine in the US to last more than five years.
Speaker 1: Goadie's Ladies Book lasted for almost seventy from eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: to eight. It outlived both its editor and its publisher.
Speaker 1: It also became hugely popular. It had about ten thousand
Speaker 1: subscribers when Hale came on as editor. At its peak
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty, it had about a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand subscribers, which was the largest circulation of any magazine
Speaker 1: in the United States at all. This was in spite
Speaker 1: of an annual subscription cost of three dollars, which was
Speaker 1: considered expensive for the time. It's always tricky to make
Speaker 1: these comparisons, but this is usually cited as between eighty
Speaker 1: five and ninety dollars a year today. It's also tricky
Speaker 1: to compare that to current magazine subscription rates because there
Speaker 1: are so many bundles and deals and digital only subscriptions
Speaker 1: and whatnot. But the current bundle subscription rate for Vogue
Speaker 1: is twenty one dollars and ninety nine cents a year.
Speaker 1: The cover price for a year of Martha Stewart Living
Speaker 1: is forty nine dollars and ninety cents. That is, according
Speaker 1: to each of their websites. It was also read well
Speaker 1: beyond its subscriber base. It's intended audience was ladies in
Speaker 1: the mindset of the time time that meant white Protestant
Speaker 1: women who were mostly middle class or more affluent. But
Speaker 1: it was also read beyond that demographic, with women pooling
Speaker 1: their money to share a subscription, or boarding houses sharing
Speaker 1: one copy among all its residents, or patrons reading copies
Speaker 1: in libraries and reading rooms. So today Goadie's Ladies Book
Speaker 1: is a huge source of information about middle class white
Speaker 1: women in the nineteenth century, and it and Hale were
Speaker 1: also enormously influential, which we'll get to in a moment
Speaker 1: after a quick sponsor break. Like we've said a couple
Speaker 1: of times at this point, Sarah Josepha Hale and Goadie's
Speaker 1: Ladies Book were enormously influential. Under her leadership, the magazine
Speaker 1: reinforced several traditions that are a big part of life
Speaker 1: for many Americans today. Things like Christmas trees and white
Speaker 1: wedding dresses, which were being popularized in Britain thanks to
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria, were popularized in the United States thanks and
Speaker 1: part took Goadie's Ladies Book. The first picture of a
Speaker 1: Christmas tree in the magazines pages actually was copied from
Speaker 1: an engraving that had run in the Illustrated London News.
Speaker 1: Pat engraving depicted Queen Victoria and her family around a
Speaker 1: Christmas tree. The Goatie's version took out the Queen's crown
Speaker 1: and Albert's sash and mustache, and some German biscuits from
Speaker 1: under the tree. Otherwise, though it was the same picture
Speaker 1: supposed to be an American family. The biggest and most
Speaker 1: obvious example of Hale's influence in this regard is the
Speaker 1: American Thanksgiving holiday. In the United States, Thanksgiving was already
Speaker 1: celebrated in various parts of the country, especially in the Northeast,
Speaker 1: before she became an editor. Hale started publicly advocating for
Speaker 1: a Thanksgiving holiday to be celebrated nationwide, and she began
Speaker 1: that quest in eight seven. It was something that went
Speaker 1: on within and outside the pages of Goadie's Ladies Book,
Speaker 1: but her interest in Thanksgiving as a holiday went back
Speaker 1: for that she had written a lot about Thanksgiving before
Speaker 1: Goadie's Ladies Book was even founded. There's a whole stretch
Speaker 1: in her first novel, Northwood, that's focused on Thanksgiving, including
Speaker 1: a New England family explaining to a visitor from elsewhere
Speaker 1: that it's not celebrated in the whole country, but hopefully
Speaker 1: one day will be, with one character saying quote, Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: like the fourth of July, should be considered a national
Speaker 1: festival and observed by all our people. The Thanksgiving meal
Speaker 1: is described in her writing this way quote the roasted
Speaker 1: turkey took precedence on this occasion, being placed at the
Speaker 1: head of the table, and well did it become its
Speaker 1: lordly station, sending forth the rich odor of its savory stuffing,
Speaker 1: and finally covered with the froth of the basting. At
Speaker 1: the foot of the board, a sirloin of beef, flanked
Speaker 1: on either side by a leg of pork and loin
Speaker 1: of mutton, seemed placed as a bastion to defend innumerable
Speaker 1: bowls of gravy and plates of vegetables disposed in that quarter.
Speaker 1: A goose and pair of ducklings occupied side stations on
Speaker 1: the table, the middle being graced as it always is
Speaker 1: on such occasions by that rich burgomester of the provisions
Speaker 1: called a chicken pie. This pie, which is wholly formed
Speaker 1: of the choicest parts of fowls, enriched and seasoned with
Speaker 1: a profusion of butter and pepper, and covered with an
Speaker 1: excellent puff paste, is, like the celebrated pumpkin pie, an
Speaker 1: indispensable part of a good and true Yankee Thanksgiving, the
Speaker 1: size of the pie usually denoting the gratitude of the
Speaker 1: party who prepares the feast, and then it goes on
Speaker 1: to describe sideboards laden with a whole other course, plus
Speaker 1: a collection of desserts, including pumpkin pie. I have made
Speaker 1: some Thanksgiving meals, and thank goodness, I did not have
Speaker 1: to make all of those different fouls. This is simultaneously
Speaker 1: familiar sounding to a lot of people in terms of
Speaker 1: the turkey and the pie and the vast quantity of food,
Speaker 1: But it also seems even bigger than like the over
Speaker 1: the top thanksgivings that a lot of people have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by the time we got to Mutton, I was like,
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? This was also depicting a meal
Speaker 1: that was going to be for a whole lot of people,
Speaker 1: but still it's it's a lot. There are other references
Speaker 1: to Thanksgiving and Hale's work after that, and then in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty seven she wrote an editorial in Godie's Ladies
Speaker 1: Book that advocated a Thanksgiving holiday to be celebrated in
Speaker 1: every state on the last Thursday of November. She started
Speaker 1: contacting state governments with this proposal, along with contacting a
Speaker 1: series of US presidents, continuing on until President Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 1: gave his Thanksgiving Proclamation in eighteen sixty three. That proclamation said,
Speaker 1: in part quote, it has seemed to me fit and
Speaker 1: proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged,
Speaker 1: as with one heart and one voice, by the whole
Speaker 1: American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in
Speaker 1: every part of the United States, and also those who
Speaker 1: are at sea and those who are so earning in
Speaker 1: foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday
Speaker 1: of November next as a day of thanksgiving and prayer
Speaker 1: to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. At
Speaker 1: this point, the Thanksgiving holiday wasn't really associated with a
Speaker 1: romanticized first dinner involving the Pilgrims and the wampan dog.
Speaker 1: That association didn't really evolve until the late nineteenth and
Speaker 1: early twentieth centuries, so a few decades after Lincoln issued
Speaker 1: his proclamation, and it was decades after that before Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: officially became a national holiday. That romanticized First Thanksgiving story
Speaker 1: was reinforced in the early twentieth century through school lessons
Speaker 1: connecting it to ideas like freedom and good citizenship and
Speaker 1: construction paper pilgrim hats in my case yeah and problematic
Speaker 1: yeah head dresses quotation marks. So today, the First Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: story and consequently the holiday as a whole, has been
Speaker 1: really criticized for erasing centuries of exploitation and genocide of
Speaker 1: North America's native peoples at the hands of colonists in
Speaker 1: the government. But even without that connection to that romanticized story,
Speaker 1: Hale's Thanksgiving campaign has its own problems. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons she was so dedicated to a national Thanksgiving holiday
Speaker 1: goes back to her thought that slavery might tear the
Speaker 1: nation apart, so she thought a national Thanksgiving holiday might
Speaker 1: help unify the nation in the face of its division
Speaker 1: over the issue of slavery. So, in other words, she
Speaker 1: thought this holiday might help keep the country together without
Speaker 1: actually addressing the underlying issue of slavery. I have so
Speaker 1: many thoughts that I'm just going to keep in my head.
Speaker 1: Hail thought slavery was wrong, but she also didn't agree
Speaker 1: with radical opposition to it. She advocated the resettlement of
Speaker 1: enslaved Africans in Liberia where they would be free, rather
Speaker 1: than the abolition of slavery within the United States. This
Speaker 1: resettlement plan, we've talked about it on some episodes before,
Speaker 1: had a lot of advocates arguing from all kinds of perspectives,
Speaker 1: including people of African descent who thought that this was
Speaker 1: the only way that they might truly be free, and
Speaker 1: people who were shimply racist and wanted the enslaved population removed.
Speaker 1: For more detail, you can check out our previous episodes
Speaker 1: on Marcus Garvey and Thomas Morris Chester. So the same
Speaker 1: mindset also influenced the editorial direction of Goadie's Ladies Book.
Speaker 1: When Hale was editing American Ladies Magazine, she had written
Speaker 1: various editorials that clearly stated her political opinions but Goadi
Speaker 1: wanted the Ladies Book to appeal to women regardless of
Speaker 1: what their political views were. And of course this wasn't
Speaker 1: a distinction he was consciously making in his mind. But
Speaker 1: the default woman here was white and usually middle class.
Speaker 1: He was also interested in quote avoiding nationalism or any
Speaker 1: political entanglements within the pages of the journal, and he
Speaker 1: also said, quote I allow no man's religion to be
Speaker 1: attacked or sneered at, or the subject of politics to
Speaker 1: be mentioned in my magazine. So sometimes you'll see Godie's
Speaker 1: Ladies Book described as not being political, but it would
Speaker 1: be more accurate to say that the magazine avoided overt
Speaker 1: political controversy. Really it was incredibly political. It avoided direct
Speaker 1: discussion of the Civil War or the movement for abolition.
Speaker 1: That's an inherently political decision. Instead, in the years leading
Speaker 1: up to the U S Civil War, it published poetry, essays,
Speaker 1: and stories that highlighted the potential tragedies of war and
Speaker 1: also emphasized the idea of national unity. Although the hope
Speaker 1: was that this would avoid offending either side, in reality
Speaker 1: it meant that the magazine's readership peaked in eighteen sixty,
Speaker 1: just before the war. Afterwards, people started gravitating toward publications
Speaker 1: where they could get news about what was happening. On
Speaker 1: top of that, in a different political direction, Goadie's Ladies
Speaker 1: Book heavily reinforced a very specific idea of what a
Speaker 1: woman should be. Sarah Guseppa Hale believed that women were
Speaker 1: more moral and compassionate than men were, and Hale's words
Speaker 1: quote God has given to man authority to woman influence.
Speaker 1: She wanted women to influence men to be better so
Speaker 1: that men could put their authority to better use. The
Speaker 1: magazine focused on the idea that a woman's role given
Speaker 1: by God was to be a moral force in her
Speaker 1: sphere of influence, which was the home. Although the magazine
Speaker 1: never took a clear position one way or the other,
Speaker 1: Hale herself was against the idea of women's suffrage because
Speaker 1: it was outside of women's fhere of influence, and because
Speaker 1: women had fewer opportunities for education and political engagement, thus
Speaker 1: they were less likely to be informed voters. Instead, Godie's
Speaker 1: Ladies Book really enforced the idea that a true woman
Speaker 1: was pious, pure, submissive, and domestic, a collection of ideas
Speaker 1: known as the Cult of True Womanhood or the cult
Speaker 1: of domesticity. Yeah, that's come up in a few episodes lately,
Speaker 1: including Packard versus Packard. It was an incredibly common idea
Speaker 1: of what a woman was supposed to be at the time,
Speaker 1: and elements of it continue to today. Hale did advocate
Speaker 1: for better opportunities for women, but only within this framework.
Speaker 1: This included supporting Elizabeth Blackwell and her efforts to become
Speaker 1: the first woman in the United States to earn an
Speaker 1: m d. In Hale's mind, medicine could be within a
Speaker 1: woman's spear, and her words written in March of eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two quote, the study of medicine belongs to a
Speaker 1: woman's department of knowledge. Its practice is in harmony with
Speaker 1: the duties of mother and nurse, which she must fulfill.
Speaker 1: It is not going out of her sphere to prescribe
Speaker 1: for the sick. She must do this by the fireside,
Speaker 1: the bedside, in the inner chamber, where her true place is.
Speaker 1: It is man who is there out of his sphere.
Speaker 1: Hale also advocated for women to have better educational opportunities,
Speaker 1: especially when it came to an education in the liberal arts.
Speaker 1: She was a huge advocate for vass Or Female College
Speaker 1: after its founding in eight sixty one, as well as
Speaker 1: corresponding extensively with its founder, Matthew Vassar on everything from
Speaker 1: the student's dress to the number of female faculty to
Speaker 1: whether to keep the word female in the name. But
Speaker 1: there were also a lot of limits to Hale's advocacy
Speaker 1: for women's education, all connecting back to the idea of
Speaker 1: what a woman's sphere was. For example, she didn't seem
Speaker 1: to think that women should study the physical sciences for
Speaker 1: their own sake. Various articles and Godie's Ladies books suggest
Speaker 1: that science has a use in a woman's life, like
Speaker 1: how understanding scientific concepts can help her keep a better home,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really support the idea that a woman
Speaker 1: should just become a chemist or a physicist because she
Speaker 1: wants to. And there were also limits to which women
Speaker 1: she was writing for and depicting in the magazine. The
Speaker 1: women in the magazine's famous fashion plates, some of which
Speaker 1: were large enough that they were printed on fold out pages,
Speaker 1: were all white and all affluent, was similarly attractive features
Speaker 1: and the same slender body hype. They reinforced the ideas
Speaker 1: of heterosexual marriage and motherhood as unifying forces in women's lives. Really,
Speaker 1: for most of its existence, the the magazine didn't address
Speaker 1: the experience of native people, or enslaved people, or free
Speaker 1: black people or immigrants at all. In the words of
Speaker 1: a piece in the July issue, which was after Hale
Speaker 1: and Goadie had both died, quote, a little over a
Speaker 1: century ago, colored women had no social status, and indeed
Speaker 1: only thirty years ago, the term womanhood was not large
Speaker 1: enough in this Christian republic to include any woman of
Speaker 1: African descent. That's from a piece that was clearly written
Speaker 1: for white women to let them know that quote, the
Speaker 1: thousands of cultured and delightfully useful women of the colored
Speaker 1: race who are worth knowing and who are prepared to
Speaker 1: cooperate with white women in all good efforts, are simply
Speaker 1: up to date new women in the best sense of
Speaker 1: that much abused term. Even so, the magazine was widely
Speaker 1: read and widely respect did. In the words of the
Speaker 1: Philadelphia City Item in eighteen seventy quote, it has been
Speaker 1: well remarked that where Godi's is taken, there is domestic neatness, comfort, elegance, virtue,
Speaker 1: which we think is saying a good deal for the
Speaker 1: American woman. God bless Godie's and keep it with us
Speaker 1: many years. Goadi sold the publication to John Hill say
Speaker 1: Is Holland Beek in eighteen seventy seven, after he and
Speaker 1: Hale both retired. As of their retirement, she was eighty
Speaker 1: nine and he was seventy three, so they worked on
Speaker 1: this magazine almost until the end of their lives. Louis
Speaker 1: Antoine Godi died the following year, on November twenty nine,
Speaker 1: eight seventy eight. Sarah J. Hale, who called herself an editress,
Speaker 1: died on April thirty, eighteen seventy nine. She had continued
Speaker 1: to write for much of her life, publishing poems, fiction essays,
Speaker 1: recipe books, etiquette manuals, and a women's encyclopedia titled Woman's
Speaker 1: Record or Sketches of All Distinguished Women from the Creation
Speaker 1: to a the eighteen fifty four arranged in four eras
Speaker 1: with selections from female writers of every age. That was
Speaker 1: all the title. But in her day she was so
Speaker 1: associated with Goadie's Ladies Book that people called it Mrs
Speaker 1: Hale's magazine. Like it's pretty complicated. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to like her in some ways, but that whole
Speaker 1: like nose down at fashion thing is a problem, and
Speaker 1: then her it's the funny thing. Where just as as
Speaker 1: the magazine was um claiming that it did not take
Speaker 1: a political stance, but obviously did because of its refusal
Speaker 1: to acknowledge certain things, I feel like similarly, and obviously
Speaker 1: on a much more important level, that's also how she
Speaker 1: dealt with fashion, right, She's like, I don't want fashion,
Speaker 1: which is in itself a commentary on fashion, and she
Speaker 1: would consult on women's apparel at Vasser but didn't want
Speaker 1: fashion involved. It's a fascinating thing to me. You just
Speaker 1: got a lot of contradictions. You can there are scans
Speaker 1: of a lot of these uh, a lot of issues
Speaker 1: of this book that you can see online. Um, you
Speaker 1: can read through. I mean they're just they goes that
Speaker 1: goes on for years. There's pages and pages stuff you
Speaker 1: can dive into if you were interested in little glimpses
Speaker 1: of life for nineteenth century white women. Slash the kinds
Speaker 1: of standards the magazine was really heavily reinforcing. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: do you have some listener mail? I sure do you.
Speaker 1: This is from Helen, and Helen has so helpfully updated
Speaker 1: us on the amendment regarding the Port Chicago fifty that
Speaker 1: we talked about in a previous listener mail. Helen says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy, I just heard your listener mail about
Speaker 1: the Port Chicago amendment, and as someone who works a
Speaker 1: lot with congressional websites, I went ahead and pulled up
Speaker 1: the link for you. That's not actually an amendment, I believe,
Speaker 1: which is probably you had of finding it. It's section
Speaker 1: t HR National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal year twenty.
Speaker 1: Hopefully this link will take you directly to that section
Speaker 1: of the resolution. Love the show and always look forward
Speaker 1: to new episodes, Helen. Helen got a reply for me
Speaker 1: that started with the words thank you in all capital letters,
Speaker 1: because I had really kind of torn my hair out
Speaker 1: trying to find this text. Um having looked at the
Speaker 1: link that she sent, I think the core issue was
Speaker 1: that the engrossed in house version was not posted yet
Speaker 1: when I was doing all this looking, and that's where
Speaker 1: it is. I don't recall seeing that option in the
Speaker 1: dropdown when I was doing my search for it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: this uh here is the actual text of it. It
Speaker 1: is sense of Congress regarding the Port Chicago fifty. It
Speaker 1: is the sense of Congress that one the American people
Speaker 1: should recognize the role of racial bias in the prosecution
Speaker 1: and convictions of the Port Chicago of the following the
Speaker 1: deadliest home front disaster in World War two, to the
Speaker 1: military records of each of the Port Chicago fifty should
Speaker 1: reflect such exoneration of Annie and all charges brought against
Speaker 1: them in the aftermath of the explosion. And three, the
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Navy should upgrade the general and summary
Speaker 1: discharges of each of the Port Chicago fifty sailors to
Speaker 1: honorable discharges. So, as of right this minute, this is
Speaker 1: not something that has passed both Houses of Congress and
Speaker 1: been signed into law. Yet it is something that had
Speaker 1: had that made its way through the House back in July.
Speaker 1: So thank you again, Helen for sending that to me,
Speaker 1: because I probably would not have gone back to look
Speaker 1: for it again. Um, and thanks to everybody who sends
Speaker 1: us helpful, awesome emails or just says hi or sends
Speaker 1: pictures of cats if you would like to write to
Speaker 1: us about this or any other podcast where at History
Speaker 1: podcasts at how Stuff Works dot com, and then we're
Speaker 1: all over social media at MSS in History. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. You can
Speaker 1: come to our website, which is Missed in History dot com,
Speaker 1: where you will find show notes of all the episodes
Speaker 1: that Holly and I have worked on together and a
Speaker 1: searchable archive of every episode ever. And you can subscribe
Speaker 1: to our show on Apple Podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
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Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of I heart Radio's
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