Postwar Disappointments

I. Major themes

  • Fragility of coalition politics
  • Alliance between abolitionists and woman’s rights advocates strained, then shattered
  • When everyone was far removed from the levers of power, it was easy to ally
    • Once the possibility of change became more plausible, people’s true interests and priorities became more clear
  • Women’s subordinate status reaffirmed–even reinforced—in postwar period
  • Legislative acts and court decisions

II. Question of woman’s rights during the Civil War

  • Recap:
    • Woman’s rights movement suspended activities during the war
    • Formation of Woman’s National Loyal League (1862), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
      • Promoted an amendment abolishing slavery
      • Collected 400,000 signatures
      • Organization disbanded at the war’s end
    • Women wanted recognition of the work their efforts on behalf of abolition

III. American Equal Rights Association (AERA)

  • Founded in 1866 to strive for universal suffrage
  • Most former abolitionists believed that black men’s rights should be prioritized
    • “Negro’s Hour”
  • But not everyone agreed

Sojourner Truth: “There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring, because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.”

IV. AERA campaign in Kansas

  • Referenda campaign in Kansas (1867)
    • Votes on both black suffrage and woman’s suffrage
  • State Republicans launch anti-feminist campaign
    • Former abolitionists decline to defend suffragists
      • Withdraw funding and support
    • Suffragists turn to racist Democrats for help
      • George Train
        • Eccentric & wealthy businessman; presidential candidate
    • Both measures defeated
  • Upshot: Coalition badly strained

V. 14th Amendment

  • 14th Amendment
    • Designed to give black men citizenship; proposed in 1866
  • Remains the single most important change to the Constitution since the Bill of Rights
    • Provides a broad definition of citizenship
    • Overturned the infamous Dred Scott case (1857), which declared that blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect”
    • BUT, introduced the word “male” into the U.S. Constitution for the first time

Section 1: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Sections 2: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.”

 VI. Conflict over the 14th Amendment

  • Most former abolitionists applauded its ratification
  • But Stanton and Anthony vigorously opposed it
    • Resorted to race- and class-based arguments
    • ECS: “If all men are to vote—black and white—lettered and unlettered, washed and unwashed, then the safety of the nation demands that we outweigh this incoming tide of ignorance, poverty and vice, with virtue, wealth and education of the women of the country.”
  • Ratified 1868

VII. 15th Amendment

  • Designed to enfranchise former male slaves: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
  • Does not include “sex” as a protected status
  • Ratified in 1870

VIII. Conflict over the 15th Amendment

  • Annual AERA meeting of 1869
  • Frederick Douglass: “When women because they are women, are dragged from their homes and hung upon lampposts…when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads…then they will have the urgency to obtain the ballot equal to the black man.”
  • Susan B. Anthony: “the old anti-slavery school say women must stand back and wait until the Negroes shall be recognized. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people, give it to most intelligent first.”
  • AERA votes to back the 15th Amendment
    • Anthony and Stanton resign

IX. Split in the movement

  • ECS and SBA establish the National Woman Suffrage Association (founded in 1869)
    • Only admitted women
    • Campaigned for a federal amendment
    • Addressed a range of issues
      • Divorce laws; employment discrimination
  • In response, Lucy Stone and others form a rival organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association (1869)
    • Admitted men and women
    • Believed in a gradual, state-by-state approach
    • Focused only on suffrage
  • Not until 1890 would the two factions be reunited

X. Turning to the Courts

  • In the 1870s, women’s rights advocates tested the meaning of the 14th Amendment in the courts
    • Was voting a “privilege” of citizenship that extended to all persons?
  • Anthony prosecuted for voting illegally in the 1872 presidential election

XI. Bradwell v. Illinois (1873)

  • Myra Bradwell passes the bar exam with high honors in 1869; state bar refused to admit her
    • Court rules her unable to practice law “by reason of the disability imposed by your married condition”
    • Appeals; case eventually goes to the Supreme Court
    • Bradwell loses
  • Justice Bradley: “The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.”
  • Upshot: 14th Amendment does not supercede the disabilities of coverture

XII. Minor v. Happersett (1875)

  • In 1872 Virginia Minor argued that, under the 14th Amendment, her civil rights were violated when she was barred from registering to vote in St. Louis
    • Missouri law: “Every male citizen…shall be entitled to vote.”
  • Supreme Court upheld the decision on the grounds that “citizen” does not mean “eligible voter;” voting not one of the “privileges or immunities” of citizenship
  • Suffragists give up on the courts; turn their attention to Congress and the states

XIII. Significance of postwar developments

  • Coalition could not survive
    • Allies who had worked together for decades turned on one another
  • In the end, neither freedmen and women, nor white women granted meaningful rights
  • Legacy for the suffrage movement
    • Decoupled from a broader, more progressive agenda
    • 50 more years before women get the vote
    • Only one woman from Seneca Falls convention lives to see it
  • BUT, 100 years later, the 14th Amendment will become the legal basis for critical rulings that establish new rights/protections for women