The ratification of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments paved the way for a great deal of conflict. Before these amendments were passed, slavery was legal, and slaves had absolutely no rights, while women’s rights were very limited. This paved the way for the Civil War, in which both black women, white women, and slaves began a fight for equality, which resulted in two amendments being passed. The fourteenth amendment states that the right to vote cannot be taken away from any male citizen of the United States. They granted rights to all black and white men, but women were not mentioned at all.The amendments did not fulfill the main goal that was stated in the Declaration of Sentiments; “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all …show more content…
It can be argued that black men were not more deserving of rights than women, and that black men gaining rights before women was disregarding women and their suffering as a whole. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton made this claim in a letter to The Revolution (June 18, 1868), when they wrote, “But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people, give it to the most intelligent first. If intelligence, justice, and morality are to have precedence in the government, let the question of the woman be brought up first and that of the negro last.” Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton believed that rights should be given to those who are of a higher moral status, that women deserved them more because of their intelligence. They also wrote, “How insulting to put every shade and type of manhood above our heads, to make laws for educated refined, wealthy women.” This is a very strong depiction of what Anthony and Stanton were arguing. They wanted to make it clear that in no way were men as a …show more content…
Frederick Douglass made this argument when he said, “With us, the matter is a question of life and death. It is a matter of existence, at least in fifteen states of the Union. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans..... then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own.” Douglas makes the claim that slaves suffered so much more than women, which is a reason to grant rights to slaves first. While he does make a strong point here, Douglass mentions nothing about black women, and how they too were still treated as if they weren’t real members of society. He is proving Sojourner Truth’s point by strengthening the idea that men’s needs and the discrimination they went through is more neccessary to focus on than womens. He failed to address the fact that men were put at a higher stance than women, even though black woman had suffered just as much as black men. J. Elizabeth Jones also argued for the justification of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments. She wrote that there is no point in fighting more strongly for women’s rights than for abolitionism. She wrote, “Some of them are educated, wealthy, living continually the lives of noble men, shall we say to them stand back, turn again into the
The Declaration of Independence includes the statement that all men are created equal. Not all people had the rights and freedoms of everyone else. Source B is a letter from Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams. She declares that the Continental Congress in Philadelphia should be generous and favorable to the women, by letting them have a say in government, and give them more rights. In Source C, the author of this slave petition to the House of Representatives expresses his feelings of not being able to have freedoms as an African American living in America.
Susan B. Anthony Susan B. Anthony was a suffragist who fought for the right to vote for women. Anthony had several reasons for why a woman should not be deny the right to vote. Some of them being that women are also humans and as humans the constitution secures their rights and those rights could not be taken away. First, when they denied women’s right to vote it implied that they were not humans like every other man.
However, when thought of, most people remember her contributions to the women’s rights movement. She, and other feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, began to realize that there were numerous similarities between slaves and women. Both were fighting to get away from the male-dominated culture and beliefs. In 1848, these women began a convention in Seneca Falls, regarding women’s rights(Brinkley 330). They believed that women should be able to vote, basing their argument on the clause “all men and women are created equal”.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a woman who was denied entry to the World Anti-Slavery Movement because she was a woman. After being denied entry, Stanton realised that women should have just as many rights as men, including women’s suffrage (History.com Staff). When men and women are compared, neither one is greater than the other. We are all equal. Stanton shared the same views stating that we are all equal.
It would be hard to think about a society in which human beings would bring down other human beings and prevent them from making progress. However, this was the reality in the United of States of America during slavery. For years and generations, slaves and people of color had to endure this harsh reality. Slaves owners and anti-abolitionists have denied education, voting rights, and used religion as a means to keep slaves and people of color oppressed.
Women have had to go through many hardships and for most of time they have been treated without respect and as an inferior to man. In March of 1776, wife of John adams, Abigail Adams, wrote a letter to John urging him to contemplate the role of women in their society, saying,“If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation” (Adams 111). In the quote she is trying to make sure that John doesn’t forget the importance of paying attention to women. She proceeds to warn him that if women are not given a voice they could be upset and form a rebellion. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a pioneer in women’s rights, wrote in her constitution about the inequalities women have, stating, “He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns” (Stanton 113).
The authors had the same rationale, to make their objective for equality of both genders and regulate their demands. During Stanton’s speech, she encouraged women to stand up for the rights that they were denied to them and get to a place where they actually want to be, without feeling as if they are
Truth was an influential woman whose legacy of feminism and racial equality still resonates today. Three significant themes represent Sojourner Truth's life: abolition, evangelism, and women’s rights activist. Sojourner Truth was born approximately 1797 in Ulster County, New York. The daughter of James and Betsey, her name was initially “Isabella.” She spent the first thirty years of her life as a slave owned by Colonel Ardinbirgh.
The Reconstruction Era occurred in 1865, it was was a period after the Civil War in which America was focused on rebuilding the broken South. In 1867, the Radical reconstruction gave former slaves a voice in government. During this era, formers slaves gained a platform in the government, with some blacks as Congressmen. However, not everyone supported the idea of Reconstruction. Less than a decade after the Reconstruction period, a small group composed of democratic ex-confederate veterans, white farmers and white southerners sympathetic to white supremacy joined forces together to form the Ku Klux Klan.
Numerous women expressed their disapproval towards how they were denied their rights based on their gender, thus causing women to take a stand for their suffrage and rights. In a letter to her husband, Abigail Adams told him to “be more generous and favourable to [women] than [his]
For a very long time, the voting rights of the citizens have been a problem in the US. It started out with only men with land being able to vote, and then expanded to white men, and then to all men. However, women were never in the situation, they were disregarded and believed to not be worthy enough to have the same rights as men. They were essentially being treated as property, therefore having no rights. But, in Susan B. Anthony’s speech, she hits upon the point that women are just as righteous as men.
Women’s Suffrage Reaction Paper The declaration of independence states that all men and women are created equal. This document, along with the constitution, is what the administration of the United States was founded on. The men who created these documents were citizens striving for equal rights and representation in government. Ironically, these rights the founding fathers worked so hard to create for themselves were not granted to women in their newly established nation.
While Stanton and Brady do disagree with how women are viewed and treated, Stanton’s priority was fairness in politics and education, not so much on the injustices that occurred within the home Elizabeth Cady Stanton was pushing for women’s right to vote and to participate fully in the running of the country. She shadows the Declaration of Independence to gain credibility and patriotism, particularly from the phrase, “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men, and women, are created equal” (Patterns,557). The Declaration of Independance and the Declaration of Sentiments are purposefully compared. For example, the colonists wrote the Declaration of Independence in order to inform the King of the unfairness and to take action and to make change. The Declaration of Sentiments does the exact same thing, only instead of the problems bing taxation without representation and the quartering acts, the issues were freedoms to vote, have property and own oneself apart from a spouse, followed by the promise to take action against the injustice.
In 1848 Black women made their first bid for equality in meetings with black men. “At one meeting of the National Convention of Colored Freedmen in Cleveland, Ohio a black woman proposed that women delegates be allowed to speak and vote as equals, eventually, they reclassified eligible voters as “persons” instead of men and women were allowed to participate equally”. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton changed the 15th Amendment by supporting that it should voting rights to former slaves, and that it should also include women. The northern part of the country often gave more rights to black women, the southern part of the country was sadly more close minded and still saw women as incapable and not as good as men. During the Civil War white and free black women in the North established soldiers’ aid societies.
Susan B. Anthony FCS 2831 Biography of a Woman Allyson Pierce March 1, 2016 The Life of a Woman Imagine what the lives of women would be like if our world never evolved. Women would be staying home, not being able to seek what a professional job is, not being able to own property and much more. This would be truly discouraging, wouldn’t it? If this were the case for our society today, there would be a lot of uproar.