THE FEMALE COLLEGE was a new phenomenon which developed after the Civil War. Those who planned these infant colleges were aware of their institutional antecedents—academies and seminaries which generally steeped females in the domestic arts along with cultural and moral refinements. In antebellum America, female education and domesticity were inexorably related as educators sought to insure the endurance of the domestic occupation for women by elevating it from drudgery to a noble profession. The pious homemaker would uplift American civilization by providing order, stability, and self-restraint in an otherwise chaotic society. After the Civil War, however, molders of female colleges struggled with these traditions as they tried to determine whether such colleges would continue to protect domestic values from decay or whether higher education for women would represent a break from the perpetuation in educational institutions of feminine passivity and dependence.