The influence of culture and gender on the creation of law in antebellum Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky

This dissertation examines the effect of cultural conceptions of appropriate male and female roles and rights on the creation of law in antebellum Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Americans experienced change in their lives at many levels: economic, political, and social. The law changed as well. Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio participated in an on-going reconstruction of societal definitions of male and female roles both in the re-writing of state constitutions and through legislation in the decades leading to these constitutional conventions. Simultaneously, citizens of these states, through the pursuit of private legislation and petitions, provided their own view of acceptable male and female roles.; Constitutional conventions provide an extraordinary arena for historians to observe the dynamics of a group of people making law outside of its normal boundaries. During conventions, delegates convene only for a set purpose and disband at the conclusion of their task. As extra-ordinary lawmakers, they are not constrained by the normal routine of the law or required to follow set precedents. Instead, everything is open for discussion. It is during this creation of the law, rather than its later application, that an interested observer can discover what issues most concern a group of people, and see how they dealt with their concerns. Analysis of the laws, public and private, enacted in the decades preceding the constitutional conventions and the debates in Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky's mid-century constitutional conventions on matters of gender, in the areas of property rights, voting rights, marriage, divorce, and dueling, reveal how each state incorporated changing societal ideas about male and female roles and rights into its law.