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Women had roles in society that were far more inferior to that of the male population. The Woodcut of a Patriot Woman (Document A) shows that women had an increasingly larger role in the society. Before the Revolution, women were the “behind the scenes” member of the family, but with the dawn of the revolution at hand, women stepped up to more prominent and political roles in their family. In particular, women like Abigail Adams and Lucy Knox were the driving force for women’s rights progression, to project her ideals to the general public. According to Molly Wallace, in her valedictory speech (Document J), women should not be denied the most general rights that people have just because they are women, and that woman can contribute to society just as much as a man can. It is because of the Revolution’s “punch” on society, that women could become constructive members of society educating their children in order to become the next great leaders of America. Although women’s rights were dramatically changing, slavery was also in the spotlight for social change. The 1787 Ordinance (Document H) explains it very clearly, by explaining that there would be no slavery in the Northwest Territory. The ordinance is very similar to the ideals of the Quakers, in 1681, when they organized Pennsylvania as an antislavery state, but its later opponent, the three-fifths compromise, in 1787, was a
