What Every Woman Should Know About the First Wave Fracture
February 2, 2009
by Anna Belle Pfau
|What Every Woman Should Know is a bi-weekly series on American Women’s History at The New Agenda.
One day every child in our nation will learn the unified history of America, including the acts of statesmen, the battles, the struggles and organizing, the treatment of people already here, as well as the plain ingenuity of surviving that is the whole honest truth about where we came from and how we got here, and what we did while we were here. That isn’t the history that American children learn today, but it is getting better because of observances such as Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March). History books continue to be more and more inclusive, and one day perhaps all the narratives of our past will be fully integrated into the history curriculum so there will be no need for a special time to focus on “alternative” histories. Until then, a treasure trove of stories are waiting to be pulled from the wreckage of time and told again to the living. One such story is of the first rift in American feminism, and the bittersweet triumph of expanded suffrage that finally endowed black males with the right to vote, and which introduced gender to the Constitution for the first time.
This particular story is difficult to tell, and for that reason, is not often told. Largely it is the province of history scholars, who seek to use it to test this or that thesis about who was or was not moral. The story features cultural heroes and heroines such as Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, among others. In this telling, you won’t find judgments about who was right or wrong, because the point is the heartbreak and fracture for everyone involved, and whether or not there is the echo of a similar heartache and fracture in our own time. After the events of this last election and the (so far) mixed results of the Obama administration, there certainly seems to be much we can learn from this particular story.
Whatever is written by those scholars of history, know that Frederick Douglass was a feminist and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony believed in universal suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton started her activist career as an abolitionist, even taking her honeymoon in London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention with her husband. Frederick Douglass had long believed that the abolitionist cause and the women’s rights cause were of the same cloth, and could only be strengthened by acting in tandem. He and Cady Stanton both became very active in the abolitionist movement in the great state of New York, and they worked on women’s rights together from the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 until they split over their differences regarding the 14th and 15th Amendment shortly after the Civil War. They fought bitterly, ultimately ending their friendship, as did many among their colleagues.
This rift led to the first division in the first wave of American feminism. Prior to this rift, women’s rights activists operated in a loose confederation of small groups working at the grassroots level. Most people knew each other and worked toward common goals, such as suffrage, equal protection, and property rights. Afterwards, two distinct schools of thought evolved, and were often at odds with each other. The National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) was led by Stanton and Anthony and was a women-only organization. The American Women’s Suffrage Association (AWSA) was led by Lucy Stone, a former colleague of Stanton and Anthony, and was open to men and women. The NWSA sought a Constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, while the AWSA worked on a state-by-state strategy. This dual focus divided the women’s rights movement right up until Alice Paul began using her militant tactics to pursue a Constitutional amendment in the 1910s. To understand better why this rift happened, one has to understand the 14th Amendment and the consequences it had for other groups looking for equal rights.
The 14th Amendment to our Constitution amended the three fifths clause, making every person born in the United States a full natural citizen, with rights to due process and equal protection, both of which had been previously denied to black Americans held in slavery. It also apportioned seats in the House accordingly, but specifically tied that apportionment to the unrestricted right to vote of the “male inhabitants” 21 years of age and older. The 15th Amendment is often lauded as the Amendment that gave black men the right to vote, but it is actually the 14th Amendment that effectively granted universal male suffrage. Article two of the 14th Amendment is the first and only time the word “male” is used in our national document. It was this use of the word “male,” specifically tied to suffrage, that created the rift. Here is the text of Article 2:
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.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony opposed the Amendment on the grounds that it would make it harder for women to gain voting rights. Considering it took another 52 years and three more amendments before the 19th Amendment was ratified, they may have assessed correctly. But they also argued that it would make it harder because it would make an amendment necessary before women could vote. In this, they were most certainly correct. Before, it was simply a matter of convincing the right power players that female suffrage wasn’t explicitly forbidden, which meant the language could be interpreted as permitting it. Enshrining apportionment based on universal male suffrage in the Constitution explicitly forbade the participation of women, and thus offered a legal obstacle to pursuing the matter through the courts. Of course some people were opposed; political compromises have consequences, and when they come at the expense of subjugating one group while elevating another, those consequences can be devastating to those whose short lives coincide with them.
But understand too Frederick Douglass’ point of view. Passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments meant that he could for the first time in his life wield any kind of political power. He could participate fully, just as the men who had once owned every part of him, and the men who had helped him fight for his freedom. While it is my experience that I would go to the mat for any oppressed group, denying the progress of my own group if it meant the subjugation of another, this is not the world that Frederick Douglass lived in. It is not the world that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, or Lucy Stone lived in. In that world, Douglass started his life literally as the property of another man. Anthony, Stanton, and Stone were the property of men until they married or achieved legal adulthood (in the case of the never-married Anthony). Upon marriage they became the property of other men. For any of these people to refuse the opportunity to transcend that existence is unthinkable to us today. We’ll never know if Anthony and Stanton would have refused given the chance. They said they would have, but I doubt if even they could have known for sure what they would have done if the tables had been turned.
The fight over these issues continued well beyond the ratification of the two amendments, and many regrettable things were said. Those quotes are for those history scholars and their theses about whether or not Anthony and Stanton were racists (sound familiar?) or whether or not Douglass was a misogynist (sound familiar?). I don’t believe either case is true, but I hear the echo of that distant time in the discourse of today. Douglass and other supporters of the 14th and 15th Amendments understandably embraced the compromise of an increasingly challenged white male patriarchy, which offered to share its power with the smaller group, thereby preserving their concentration of it. It was an “ends justify the means” deal, with the honest hope that incremental change (sound familiar?) would eventually come to fruition. Perhaps that led to a domino effect, and led some women’s rights activists to say some of the unfortunate things they did, employing any means in the pursuit of their progress.
With the benefit of distance I can see so clearly how those chain reactions erupted, and how the next 45 years of women’s progress reflected the fracture that occurred over what was a victory for some. Forced to choose sides, the once loosely unified women’s movement weakened and lost focus. Increasingly, its leaders became more and more strident as they struggled to deal with their frustration. The refrain of that distant song is clearly present today. The election of President Obama is analogous in so many ways to the bittersweet affects of the 14th and 15th Amendments. While some rightfully celebrate their inclusion in the power structure, there are those who protest the manner in which that inclusion was achieved, and what it cost another excluded group.
It is now as it was then a confusing, heartbreaking time for people who want progress for both groups. We can learn a lesson from that experience, however. Disengaging and pursuing a fractured agenda only serves to weaken us. Allowing the dominoes to fall on our agenda weakens us more. Rhetoric is so important in the public’s perception of a movement, and we should consider that as we build arguments. It does no good to constantly and stridently oppose every outrage within the collection of them we have from this past year, or every new outrage that comes along. We must begin the difficult work of quietly persuading our opponents as well as our allies. We must build the infrastructure of our own movement, and we should seek to build relationships with some of the people and organizations we have been rightfully criticizing recently.
I see from the lens of history so clearly that this is the way to keep this new momentum we’ve gained in the wake of all we suffered, which is what brought us together finally. Sometimes we look to our history in order to be inspired by it and to take ideas for how we can move our current agenda forward, but sometimes we must do the difficult work of looking at our history so that we can avoid the mistakes and pitfalls of the past. Let this be a cautionary tale, then, a reminder that we need to remain focused in the face of this current fracture. We need to be open to innovative approaches to achieving progress as well. Non-partisan approaches like The New Agenda are an excellent start to this process. The agenda of common goals is the right focus. Now we build the movement. Keep that in mind as you do your work.
Sources:
Notes on the Amendments
The Long Road to Suffrage
Excerpts from The House: The History of the House of Representatives
Wow, Anna Belle. This piece is an excellent and a much appreciated history lesson. Thank you for taking the time to pull together all of that research into a coherent piece that can be read in a few minutes, but which presents background and perspective that will resonate for a long long time beyond the time it took to read the piece. Thank you for all of what you have presented here.
Wow! This was so educational.
I’ve been a life long Democrat, protested in front of Nixon’s house when I was 5 with my Dad, I have three 1/2 brothers who are the same shade of brown as Obama (their mother is Haitian) and yet (oddly) I felt left out in this whole Obamania. All my liberal friends just assumed I would jump on the Obama band wagon and couldn’t relate (or didn’t want to) to my hesitation. Some actually accused me of being racist! This article and this site has, at least, validated some of my feelings.
Thanks!
You have eloquently stated, what I hold to be true, that we need to build an “agenda of common goals,” in order to succeed. We need to pick our battles wisely, prudently, to move our cause forward. If we do not, we risk being just a temporary aberration.
It is not that we don’t have reason to be outraged, it is not that we don’t have reason to beat our breasts, and it is not that we don’t have reason to call to account those we thought knew better, but we cannot afford to indulge in such luxuries, not if we want an equal seat at the table. We need to build the wave, the tidal wave that will be a force of nature that will help us reach what is rightullly ours, true representation in all facets of our lives.
It is a history that makes me want to cry. Every time I read it.
Thank you for explaining it so clearly, and well.
Well I am glad someone from this movement, which I can identify with, feels like they can work with the old feminists at MS, NOW etc. I just look at them and shake my head.
By the way this is a history of the East Coast women’s movement. In the West women were always much closer to equal with men. Too bad the backward thinking on the East Coast still infects the entire Federal political process. That goes for the “White Guilt” too. We never had slavery out here. So since our relatives never participated in that institution I am pretty sick of having my needs backseated due to the “White Guilt” from your part of the country.
Constance – You often post about your east coast vs west coast observations and I think you pain with an awfully broad brush. So many in this country are very mobile. We move about from place to place, often landing far from where we were born. And, even if that were not the case, this is a big old country in size and population with so much diversity I truly think the east and west coast ideas you’ve established are overstated. In any case, even if every bit of what you stated were true, I’m not sure what the point is re: “I am pretty sick of having my needs backseated due to the “White Guilt” from your part of the country.” Could you spell out how you feel an org like TNA is missing something due to this point of view and how they might broaden their goals or strategies?
Anna Belle,
thank you for such a well written and educational article. I am sending this to all kinds of people, it is worth reading.
Anna Belle,
Terrific piece of work yet again.
We ain’t waiting 50 years this time!
We must stick together, be brave and bold, and fight, fight, fight. Now is the time.
Constance,
I’m just skimming here, but without getting into the contentions, it’s interesting to look for East/West coast differences in current conduct. In the West we have several governors iirc, and at least two states with two women Senators. I didn’t know the East was so different. Palin is very strong, bless her, self-made.
I wonder if that difference in cultural attitudes between the coasts is something we could leverage somehow. Perhaps the first question is, do more women run for office in the West, and if so , why do East coast women not run?
Anna Belle or any other historian.
I am wondering so many of the first wave feminists were strong abolishionists. was there outspoken support from African Americans males during the 50 years after the 15 amendment? anybody know?
In July 1890, the Territory of Wyoming, which allowed women to vote, was admitted as a state. Wyoming became the first state with women suffrage. By 1900, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho joined Wyoming in allowing women to vote.
That is from here:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/facult.....entham.htm
Western states were quicker to grant women suffrage, but the reasons were complicated, and I don’t think in 2009 many people would think of any of those states as particularly progressive, especially not Utah, Idaho or Wyoming.
IMO – Every state had, and continues to have, its own unique political culture.
Anyway, nice post, Anna Belle. Here’s another interesting historical site:
http://www.autrynationalcenter.....ge_ca.html
The East Coast/West Coast thing is overstated, IMO. Butte, Montana was the prostitution capital of the US in the 19th century, and Nevada was in the 20th century (and remains so now), so I don’t really see how women have been “closer to equal with men” in the west. I could fill your ears full of stories of what westward women faced at the hands of an absolutely brutal patriarchy in the Wild West. California isn’t exactly a feminist paradise, considering it’s the home the porn industry and Schwarzenegger is the Governator.
It is true that female suffrage did start in the west and some of our earliest female gains in office come from the west. And it is true that misogyny, like racism, is expressed differently in the north, south, east and west. But western women are not any more enlightened than eastern women, nor have they been; they’ve just faced different obstacles, leading them to the occasional different solution.
I will be getting into western stars like Jeanette Rankin in this series soon, but this is only the third essay, and some important frames need to be laid down regarding the early work of our foremothers, and most of that stuff does happen in the east because of the time and the proximity to power.
That said, regarding marille’s excellent question: Frederick Douglass continued to work for women’s rights with Lucy Stone for the rest of his public life. To my knowledge, he is the only high-profile African American male to do so. Interestingly, though, some black women participated in the women’s rights movement prior to the 14th and 15th Amendment, but many more saw the importance of the movement and joined the cause afterward.
Thanks Anna Belle. I so hope your predictions and dreams of how history will eventually be taught come true. My younger son, the history major, is taking both African-American Studies AND Women’s Studies this quarter at Ohio State. It would be so beautiful if these stories could be woven effortlessly into the way we tell our history.
And thanks for shedding some light on the struggles of the 19th century suffragettes. It is a powerful thing to be able to learn from the past. Somehow we were able to get to where we are today, not in any way ideal, but better. But in the echoes we hear from the past, history is repeating itself. It hurts. However it happens this time, like Amy says—we’re not waiting another 50 years!!!!
Also, thank you for all the wonderful comments regarding the essay. I’m delighted that people are interested!
Oh, I wanted to add that it was also western women that sorely miscalculated the temperance issue. Western women were able to get that amendment passed even before women got the universal right to vote in our country, and it’s still the only amendment to be repealed (off the top of my head). It also was used against suffragists during the push for the 19th amendment, when many male opponents used it as an example of the kinds of laws women would promote if they got that kind of political power.
It’s also an example of the differences women faced. Alcoholism has always been rampant, especially among males, but it made for a particularly brutal existence for western women. Domestic violence and abandonment were what drove the temperance issue for western women, because those were the most common problems, aside from rape/forced prostitution, that western women faced.
Just tweak the frame a little…
Anna Belle,
As a westerner, I don’t think we can write off five female senators (WA, CA, AK and at least one female governor) against Hollywood or prostitution. It’s two different levels: government and private/criminal. Of 17 US senators, at least five come from Ecotopia.
As Violet would say, fsteele, it’s all the water..
FTR, I’m not writing them off. I’m simply offering a different point of view. I don’t see how it’s helpful to say this group or that group is more progressive than another, considering we’re all subject to the same patriarchy in the end. I’m a midwestern woman myself, and I’m not on here claiming that midwestern women are so much better than women from another region. This is not sports. We’re not going up against each other. And we all want out of that damned water. Why sow more division with overwrought comparisons?
Anna Belle,
Hm? Better, or better off? Who is saying that some women are better than others?
Fsteel, that was the implication of Constance’s comment, which was the comment I was originally responding to.
Alaska, 1 female Senator (legacy), female Governor
WA, 2 female Senators, female Governor
OR, female governor (when?)
CA, 2 female Senators
Minn, 1 female Senator
MI, 1 female Senator
Arkansas, 1 female Senator
LA, 1 female Senator
Maine, 2 female Senators
Maryland, 1 female Senator
Missouri, 1 female Senator
New Hampshire, 1 female Senator
New York, 1 female Senator
NC, 1 female Senator
TX, 1 female Senator
Here’s a map of female governors, past and present, which shows them pretty scattered out across the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....ted_States
Counting both Governors and Senators, Ecotopia has a pretty solid block, and Survivalistan is close too. So NW states must be doing something right. Now if we can isolate it and patent it and put it in the reservoir….
Hey, look at you! You did women’s history research! That’s awesome. You should write a post. Seriously. Maybe you can isolate some common factor(s) and develop a strategy based on it.
I was conflicted over whether or not Hillary Clinton could actually pull it off electorally speaking. On the one hand, she had the profile: highly educated, charismatic, and married to a powerful politician. women’s first in politics have traditionally been wives of popular politicians, and highly educated in their own right. But she also had Clinton Derangement Syndrome and a hostile press to contend with. I wasn’t sure what factors would win out, so I never was able to call the primary, a first for me in 20 years of voting.
PS: Kentucky has had a female governor. Martha Lane Collins.
not to forget the Mi governor
Sorry to not answer sooner I was between work and home and still have kids needing attention in the evening. My point is that the history of East Coast women is not the History of American Women. Also East Coast people have it in their heads that they are the most progressive people and that the less evolved folks in the South, Midwest, and West are what is holding the country back. Well not so much actually. I am not saying team West is beating team East I am saying you East coast folks do not need to reinvent the wheel regarding equal participation by women in politics, you could analyze East/West differences in attitude and see what you could learn and apply. But you are correct that I am sick of East culture dominating or being considered the norm. Of the 70+ channels I get most originate from the East and I can tell you they in no way reflect the culture I live in. The profound sexism displayed in this last election by Eastern media is something I have never seen anything like. And of course completely backward broadcasts like Howard Stern originate in NY and pollute the entire country with their backward views of women. Of course Hollywood is off the chart in backward thinking also but they are part of 5 large corporations who control all media and they are not reflecting Western values. GTG I can not think clearly with someone shouting MOM! MOM! every 5 seconds.
Just finished blogging about this…..
Anna Belle, you win my “Best Groundhog Day Essay” award:
http://syd4.blogspot.com/2009/.....-this.html
lessons from past to present in one extraordinary post. Well done, Anna Belle.
[...] February 2, 2009 · No Comments Anna Belle: What Every Woman Should Know About the First Wave Fracture [...]
Link to the National Park Service’s website for the Women’s Rights National Historic Landmark in Seneca Falls, NY. As well as the Wesleyan Chapel where the first Women’s Rights Convention was held, the park also includes Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s home.
http://www.nps.gov/wori/
Worth a visit, if you haven’t been.
Thanks for this history lesson Anna Belle. I think it’s really interesting and enlightening in view of this election. It’s also a very American story as well – I do think one difference we see now is the effect of globalization and our multicultural society.
I can say that as a younger person involved in this movement, much of my feminist outrage is from a global perspective and that is why I found the dynamics of this election year so perplexing. In my worldview, gender oppression is so obvious, so severe, and so pandemic – and it was hard for me to comprehend the way the American national dialogue centered around race oppression as it related to the rise of Obama, and also as it related to the misogyny aimed at Clinton. In my view the misogyny aimed at Senator Clinton and all of this country’s women was so clearly the nation’s most urgent social problem, and it also seemed plainly obvious that no candidate but Clinton would do the job of fighting for women’s rights and safety as president. I couldn’t understand the feminst rallying around Obama and then again the oppression olympics played against women who supported Clinton and tried to defend the misogyny. Again, from a modern, global perspective (think sex slavery and the Congo, and that’s the tip of the iceberg), it all seemed so outdated and out of proportion, and I was baffled by the perception that racism was the more important national scorn this day in age.
In any case, it is good to get an American history lesson on this, though – that helps me to understand things a little more. I do think that the suffragists and abolitionists had a lot more in common at that time, though (and more in proportion). And I can tell you that your foreign sisters hope you definitely do not have to wait 50 more years – we need you to have power and influence, asap!
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