​The antebellum period in America is an interesting one. The nation, still in its infancy, was navigating the choppy waters of new-found authority and legitimacy, and a hallmark of this challenge was trying to define where federal authority stopped and where that of the states began. This struggle can be seen in in events such as the Whiskey Rebellion, started in 1791 over new taxes, and in Supreme Court cases such as Gibbons v. Ogden​, which held that Congress had the right to regulate interstate commerce. It can additionally be seen in the debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists, whose differences by very definition were centered around their ideas of how strong the federal government should be. ​

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Furthermore there were cultural differences that would become increasingly divisive as the United States edged closer and closer to a civil war. The debate over slavery became central to this. The northern states, whose economies transitioned to industrial production much sooner than those in the South, no longer had a significant economic need for slavery, unlike the still agrarian South, which argued that slavery was not just important, but necessary for the cotton and rice powered economy. It is because of this that the abolition movement was successful in the North.  ​

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The differences in economies also accounted for the differences lives women had. White women in the North, for example, had job options before motherhood that southern women did not have. Girls could work in the textile mills for a few years to earn their own money before they married and had children. It was a respectable occupation until conditions became such that these women left and more "undesirable" groups of women (immigrants) took their places. Middle and upper-class women in the South were trained solely for marriage and running a household. There were no options, like mills, where women could earn their own money. ​

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Women of color in the North also eked out a marginally better existence in the North than their Southern sisters had. However, as Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson say in A Shining Thread of Hope, "Slavery oppressed every black person in America. In the antebellum years, tens of thousands of African Americans were free, but every one felt the sting of slavery." Whether they still had loved ones in bondage or remembered their time enslaved themselves. Furthermore, there was a distinct possibility of being kidnapped back into slavery, and even those who had been free for generations felt the stigma that their skin color engendered. 

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There was a more significant connection between free and enslaved women of color of the North and South than there was between their white counterparts. Mostly, this stems from an effort to purchase the freedom of enslaved family members or, if this was not possible, to aid in their escape. These actions bridged the geographically influenced cultural gap that existed between white women in the United States. However, it cannot be argued that each group of women was monolithic. Each woman's story cannot be applied to others. There may be similarities, but each group is diverse with a rich blend of differences that creates a a detailed mosaic of women's history. 

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