Rightfully Hers Part 2

 

Record of the Month!

For the month of September we are featuring the third exhibit panel from the National Archives pop-up exhibit Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote. In addition to creating and distributing the exhibit panels displayed here, the National Archives created a digital exhibit with more resources and teaching tools available through the following link: (https://museum.archives.gov/rightfully-hers).

In 1866, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony came together to form the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color, or sex.” The AERA was successful in organizing national woman’s rights conventions, but hit several significant bumps only a year after its founding. The worst of these bumps was Congress’ rejection of a Federal Women’s Suffrage Amendment, introduced by Senator Pomeroy of Kansas. After Congress’ rejection, the AERA founders had a falling out with AERA president Lucretia Mott and other members over the issues of race, general strategy, and tactics.

The growing rift in the AERA came to a head with the passage of the 15^th Amendment in 1870, which enfranchised African American men while continuing to deny women of all ethnic and racial backgrounds the right to vote. The 15^th Amendment specifically guaranteed voting rights to citizens regardless of their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Stanton and Anthony were enraged and insisted that African American men should not have suffrage before white women. These remarks alienated longstanding allies, including Fredrick Douglas, and infuriated African American suffragettes, many of whom counted the 15^th Amendment’s passage as an important component of their fight for equality. The suffrage movement splintered into the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), led by Stanton and Anthony, and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), led by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe. The AWSA’s sole purpose was securing women’s suffrage through amending individual state constitutions by any means necessary, while NWSA fought for a range of causes aimed at making women equal members of society on the national level.

Victoria Claflin Woodhull was invited to join the NWSA by Anthony due to her skill as a public speaker and her steadfast commitment to equality. Woodhull was born in 1838 in Homer, Ohio, and would become a prominent player in the suffrage movement. Her efforts to bring about equality earned her considerable respect among some suffragists. However, her belief in free love between men and women regardless of marital status, and involvement in publicizing the scandalous extramarital affair of her loudest critic, a prominent male religious figure, made her several enemies who christened her “Mrs. Satan.”

In 1871 Woodhull addressed the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, arguing that women were citizens per the 14^th Amendment, which specified that “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.” Woodhull further argued that as citizens, women had the right to vote per the 15^th Amendment. Her arguments were rejected by the committee on the basis that women were not citizens, carrying on the widely held social belief that women were not human, only extensions of their husbands. The Anti-Suffrage Party was formed to beat back women’s suffrage, using the argument that families would be destroyed if women were considered equal to men. The Anti-Suffrage Party found support from men and some women including Ellen Sherman, wife of General William Tecumseh Sherman.

The following year Woodhull would win the Equal Rights Party’s nomination and run for President of the United States, despite being barred from voting. She was the first women to run for national office. Her running mate was Fredrick Douglas, though he never publicly acknowledged the nomination. During the 1872 Presidential Election, Anthony and 14 other women were arrested for voting while being female. Anthony was the only one tried for a crime. Throughout the trial, Anthony was not permitted to speak in her defense, instead presiding Judge Ward Hunt directed the jurors to find her guilty without deliberations. Although Anthony’s attorney attempted to use Woodhull’s argument invoking the 14^th Amendment, it was quickly thrown out. Just before sentencing, Judge Hunt asked Anthony if she had anything to say. Anthony stood up and delivered one of the most famous speeches in the history of the Women’s Movement, declaring that the guilty verdict had “trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government” and that it had “doomed [all women] to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.” Anthony was then ordered to pay a $100 fine, to which she declared “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.”

The question of women’s citizenship and thus their right to vote was devastatingly clarified in the 1874 Supreme Court Minor V. Happersett decision, which ruled that citizenship does not give women voting rights and that a woman’s political rights are under individual state’s jurisdiction. Despite being beaten back by the Supreme Court, suffragists from both national and local organizations continued to fight for their right to vote. Anthony and fellow suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage disrupted the official U.S. Centennial Program at Independence Hall to present the Declaration of Rights for Women. The following year, California Senator Aaron A. Sargeant unsuccessfully introduced a Woman’s Suffrage Amendment, drafted by Anthony, into Congress.

Check back in October for the next chapter of the story of the fight for equal suffrage. If this information interests you, please feel free to call us at 740-670-5121 or email us at archives@lcounty.com.