Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Reforming Democracy for Women during Reconstruction
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2009
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Haverford College. Department of History
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
Most famous for demanding women's suffrage in Seneca Falls in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton emerged from that moment a political leader who spent the next fifty years fighting to accomplish her goal. As a young woman, she entered the brave world of social activism when her cousin, Gerrit Smith, introduced her to Garrisonian abolitionism. Among the abolitionists, she learned to equate gender-based discrimination with racial discrimination; this comparison formed the basis of her arguments for women's rights until the Reconstruction. Cady Stanton first opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, which sought to protect the citizenship of the liberated black men and women, on the grounds that it codified male privilege in the Constitution by inserting the word "male." When Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which formally instituted universal male suffrage, Cady Stanton campaigned against state ratification. Cady Stanton understood gender-based discrimination and racial discrimination as comparably unjust; therefore her opposition to ending race-based voting qualifications appears contradictory. In this paper, I attempt to explain why Cady Stanton opposed universal male suffrage and to demonstrate how her career reflected the limitations of social reform within the working realm of American political thought. Cady Stanton opposed universal male suffrage due to partisan politics, racism, and feminism. During the Civil War, she organized for the Union and agitated for abolition; these efforts consolidated her political alliance with abolitionists, who ascended to power during Reconstruction. Eager to benefit from the reform- minded Congress, Cady Stanton organized the American Equal Rights Association, which bound the cases for women's suffrage and black suffrage into the single case for universal suffrage. On this platform, she could employ the language of natural rights, which abolitionists had successfully used to rouse opposition to slavery. Natural rights, embedded in the Declaration of Independence, had cultural authority among most citizens. Despite her promotion of universal suffrage, abolitionists in Congress concentrated solely on male suffrage. In Kansas in 1867, Cady Stanton traveled to campaign for women's suffrage during a state referendum. While campaigning with a pro-slavery Democrat, she saw potential political power for women among pro-slavery society. This departure from universal suffrage shattered her alliance with abolitionists. She embraced her new racist position by publishing editorials against universal male suffrage that employed racist stereotypes. In her last attempt to revive the American Equal Rights Association in 1869, the group dissolved. Cady Stanton did not justify her opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment with only racism and partisan politics; she believed that universal male suffrage reaffirmed female subordination. Having exhausted the natural rights arguments for woman suffrage, she turned to scientific racism for new arguments for women's rights. The arguments available in American political thought limited Cady Stanton to divisionary tactics. Natural rights reduced everyone to a monolithic homogeneity. The illusion of universality allowed white feminists to speak for all women, black men to speak for all black people, and white men to speak for everybody. Difference interest groups continued to apply the language of universalism to exclusive groups. For example, when many abolitionists spoke of liberty and equality for all, they meant all men. Cady Stanton continued to employ the language of liberty and equality for all when she privileged white women above black women, who would benefit if their male relatives could vote. Eugenics, as well, divided people into groups by explicitly assigning value to different races. There were few alternatives to the languages of science and political philosophy besides religion. While a true commitment to natural rights was possible, more often than not, the philosophy was used to promote one group of people. This failure owed to prejudice and entitlement, both of which afflicted Cady Stanton.