Civil
War:
1863 Stanton &
Anthony - National Women’s Loyal League (NY);
Stanton: “woman is
vitally interested and responsible with men for the final settlement of this
problem of self-government.”
Openly political
– criticized Pres. Lincoln
for not acting boldly enough;
Jan 1, 1863 Lincoln -
Emancipation Proclamation – freed only slaves in states under
Confederate rule – not “border states” like Maryland;
women urged passage of
13th Amendment to Constitution to abolish slavery
completely;
NWLL 5,000 members, met
weekly. Speaking tours, collected
almost 400,000 names on petition for 13th Amendment.
Anthony called for
League to demand women’s suffrage as their “birth right of
freedom” - resolution
passed, but scared away many members;
1866 Anthony spoke about
“a human rights platform” linking rights of women &
blacks. “As women, we can no
longer claim for ourselves what we do not for others, nor can we work in two
separate movements to get the ballot for the two disenfranchised classes,
Negroes and women.”
Stanton: neither
“sex nor complexion should be any ground for civil or political
degradation.”
Can’t get both at
once – too radical;
Frederick Douglass,
“this hour belongs to the Negro [man]” - “the Negro [man] is
mobbed, beaten, shot, stabbed, hanged, burnt…. woman is the victim of
abuses, to be sure, but it cannot be pretended… that her cause is as
urgent as ours.”
Lucy Stone agreed
– afraid introducing tricky issue of women's vote might derail vote for
blacks.
Anthony: "cut off
this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the
Negro & not the woman."
pits white women vs.
black men;
Stanton, “Shall
American statesmen… make their wives and mothers the political inferiors
of unlettered and unwashed ditch-diggers and bootblacks… fresh from the
slave plantations of the South?
Think of Patrick and Sambo… who do not know the difference between
a monarchy and a republic, who cannot read the Declaration of Independence,
making laws for Lucretia Mott [and] Ernestine Rose.”
1868 14th amendment -
voting rights to “male” citizens twenty-one years old;
Stanton, “If that
word ‘male’ be inserted now, it will take us a century at least to
get it out again.”
Sojourner Truth,
“There is a great stir about coloured men getting their rights, but not a
word about coloured women; and if coloured men get their rights and not
coloured women theirs, you see, coloured men will be masters over the woman. I
wish woman to have her voice.”
Stanton & Anthony
suffrage newspaper The Revolution; slogan: “Men, Their Rights and
Nothing More; Women, Their Rights and Nothing Less”
May, 1869, Stanton &
Anthony organize the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) NY
City;
118 women join
immediately, including Lucretia Mott;
Stanton first president
NWSA;
female leadership;
Cause - constitutional
amendment giving women right to vote;
Strategy – wanted
all-inclusive nat’l suffrage amendment – didn’t want to work
state by state, too slow & hard;
Publicity-hungry -
lecture tours & rallies, chapters in cities across East & Midwest;
Tone – take no
prisoners;
Also interest in equal
pay & reform of marriage & divorce laws;
November 1869, Lucy
Stone started American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) Cleveland;
first president, Henry
Ward Beecher;
Cause - put off
women’s suffrage to make sure black men got vote;
Strategy – fight
in each state through legislatures & referendum;
Tone –
genteel;
the Woman’s
Journal;
focus only on suffrage,
no controversial “side issues” such as marriage
reform;
Women movement split in
half, bitterness;
movement in trouble
– standstill, out of money;
Mocked by press - refers
to “hen conventions”
1870, 15th amendment:
"The right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the US
or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude."
Stanton: “open,
deliberate insult to American womanhood”;
Georgia newspaper
Colored
American: all people should have vote except for three classes - children,
foreigners & women, "whose sphere is anywhere but in the arena of
politics & government."
Victoria Woodhull
(1838-1927);
First woman to run for
president,
first woman to address
committee of US Congress,
first woman stockbroker,
one of first women to
live public life of personal & sexual freedom,
published one of
NY’s most provocative newspapers,
nationally famous
lecturer;
Victoria Claflin born
Ohio;
age 14, married Canning
Woodhull;
sister Tennessee (Tennie
C.);
clairvoyant &
spiritualist healers;
1850s age of
spiritualism;
1868 Victoria &
Tennie meet 73-year-old rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, richest in US;
1869 Victoria attended
first national convention of women’s suffrage movement;
1869 made fortune in
Wall Street speculating in gold market;
set up banking office,
“Woodhull, Claflin & Company”;
Victoria felt a
“female invasion of the masculine precincts of finance” would
attract attention, good for women;
Tennie:
“I think a woman is just as capable of making a living as a man,”
wanted “to know the secrets of money that had heretofore been a male
preserve.”
“Queens of
Finance,” “Bewitching Brokers”;
1870 letter to New
York Herald speaking for “the only unrepresented class in the
republic…. While others of my sex… devoted themselves to a crusade
against the laws that shackle the women of the country, I asserted my
individual independence; while others argued the equality of woman with man, I
proved it by successfully engaging in business….. I therefore claim the
right to speak for the unenfranchised women of the country, and… announce
myself as a candidate for the Presidency.”
1870 publish Woodhull
and Claflin’s Weekly - supported Woodhull’s self-defined image
as leader, advocated “suffrage without distinction of sex!”
serialized novel by
George Sand, called for women’s education & fair pay, published first
US edition of Communist Manifesto.
Investigative journalism.
1870 Woodhull moved to
Washington; self-appointed lobbyist for suffrage.
presented arguments to
House Judiciary Committee.
“Women constitute
a majority of this country – they hold vast portions of the
nation’s wealth and pay a proportionate share of the taxes. They are entrusted with the most vital
responsibilities of society; they bear, rear and educate men… yet they
are debarred from uttering any opinion by public vote…. The American
nation in its march onward… cannot publicly choke the intellectual and
political activity of half of its citizens.”
Said language of
Constitution meant women really had right to vote already - 15th
Amendment said, “the right of citizens to vote shall not be
denied,” and 14th Amendment said, “All persons born or
naturalized in the US are citizens” – just ignored word
“male”.
Pledged $10,000 to
women’s rights movement;
met President Grant at
White House;
Nov 7, 1871, Victoria,
Tennie & other women in NY go to polls;
Woodhull created new
independent Equal Rights Party against corruption, for women’s
suffrage;
“If women today
would rise en masse and demand their emancipation, the men would be compelled
to grant it. The women of the country have the power in their own hands, in
spite of the law and the government being altogether of the male order. Let women issue a declaration of
independence sexually, and absolutely refuse to cohabit with men until they are
acknowledged as equals in everything, and the victory would be won in a single
week.”
1872 Equal Rights Party
nominated Woodhull for president;
New York Times:
“The career of Victoria Woodhull cannot but be entertaining as she gains
public attention by hook or by crook…. Mrs. Woodhull, with an ambition worthy of a female Napoleon,
goes for the presidency and strikes immediately at the White House.”
free love - sex should
come from mutual attraction, not forced obligation;
condemned law which gave
man ownership of wife’s body, property & children;
Insisted women had right
to say no;
Condemned double
standard of “sporting gentlemen” - “Who ever heard of even a
single instance of a man being thrown out of society because he contributed
to… houses of ill fame?… Why should a man be… recognized as
undefiled, even when his whole body is corrupted by the damnable virus of the
lowest and most hellish debauchery, when at the same time a woman is utterly
proscribed on even the wretchedly flimsy evidence of hearsay?”
Believed crime, poverty,
alcoholism, & disease direct result of bad marriages;
“I have an
inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as
long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please,
and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to
interfere.”
cartoonist - “Mrs.
Satan”;
financial crisis –
market collapse;
critics – Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Catharine Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher;
Gossip linking Beecher
to congregation member Elizabeth Tilton;
(Victoria affair with
Theodore Tilton)
1872 dragged scandal out
in public
“I propose…
aggressive moral warfare on the social question…. I intend that this
article shall burst like a bombshell.”
Victoria & Tennie
arrested, sending obscene material through mail (Comstock law);
Victoria & Tennie
move to London - married into wealth;
Anthony: “There
was never such a foolish muddle… Our movement… is so
demoralized.”
Wyoming territory 1868 -
legislature gave women voting rights 1869;
cleaned up 1870
election;
allow women to file
lawsuits, sign contracts & equal pay;
woman justice of peace,
women on juries;
1872 election - 150
women test law (NWSA);
Anthony, Rochester, NY
-“gone and done it!”
arrested three weeks
later
for casting illegal vote;
Anthony: “In your
ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle
of our government. My natural
rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike
ignored. Robbed of the fundamental
privilege of citizenship, I and all my sex are degraded from the status of a
citizen to that of a subject…. I shall earnestly and persistently
continue to urge all women to… the old Revolutionary maxim,
‘Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.’”
NWSA officer Virginia
Minor suing St Louis voter-registrar Reese Happersett;
1874 Supreme Court Minor
v. Happersett: unanimously affirmed that women were citizens, but didn’t
automatically get right to vote;
Ended hope of getting
suffrage through courts;
Anthony trying to get
constitutional amendment through Congress;
Arlen Sargent of
California sponsor
vote 1887 - 16 for
suffrage, 34 against, 25 abstentions.
Texas senator:
"equal suffrage is a repudiation of manhood."
thousands of women
opposed to suffrage -
1871 Godey’s
Lady’s Book petition from 19 women (wives of senators, generals &
governor; Catharine Beecher) to Congress against suffrage;
“When women ask
for a distinct political life, a separate vote, they forget or ignore the
higher
law [of Christian society in which] marriage is a sacred unit [and] each family
is represented through its head…. Holy Scripture inculcates for women a
sphere higher than and apart from that of public life.”
“Women find a full
measure of duties, cares and responsibilities and are unwilling to bear
additional burdens unsuited to their physical
organization.”
Stanton eight months a
year lecture circuit;
1876 Philadelphia
Centennial Exposition:
“women’s
building” displaying artwork, writings & inventions;
July 4th,
Stanton & Anthony read “Woman’s Declaration of
Independence”:
“We protest
against this government of the US as an oligarchy of sex and not a true
republic…. Woman has shown equal devotion with man to the cause of
freedom and has stood firmly by his side in its defense… We ask… no
special privileges… We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all
civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the US be guaranteed
to us and to our daughters forever.”
1888 Stanton, Anthony -
First International Council of Women in Washington DC - Britain, France,
Germany, etc.
late 1870s many states
(Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado, Mass., NY) law allowing women to vote in school
district elections;
Women’s Christian
Temperance Union:
Hillsboro, Ohio
1874;
1879 Frances Willard
president;
membership 44,000 in
1880; 150,000 by 1890 - largest women’s organization in country.
marching
songs:
(to tune of Battle Hymn
of Republic):
They have rallied
forth to conquer, and will never beat retreat
While the banner of
the rum-fiend is still flaunted on the street,
And his hellish snares are waiting for the all unwary
feet,
For God will lead
them on.
slogan, “home
protection” – suffrage so that “mothers and daughters of
America” could help decide whether “the door of the rum shop is
opened or shut beside their homes.”
Willard: “the home
going forth into the world.”
1872 new Prohibition
Party, women participating in party caucuses.
Liquor industry opposed
to suffrage;