Spanning all time periods, classes, races, and occupations, the
Library's sources for the study of women's history are among the
finest and most comprehensive anywhere. Contained in nearly
every collection are materials of interest to women's historians
reflecting the full range of women's experiences, from Abigail
Adams's declaration to her sister in 1799 that she would "never
consent to have our sex considered in an inferior point of
light" 1 to the remarks of cabinet secretary Patricia Roberts
Harris, who, nearly two hundred years later, told a skeptical
senator at her 1977 confirmation hearing, "If my life has any
meaning at all, it is that those who start out as outcasts can
wind up being part of the system." 2 The Manuscript Division's
collections document Harris's and other women's struggle not
only to join "the system" but also to reform and transcend it.
These women, in the words of pioneer physician Elizabeth
Blackwell, "did not wish to give them[selves] a first place,
still less a second one--but t