Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Her Views of Race as Evidenced in Her Writings

Summary

From an early age, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was deeply affected by the inequality between men and women. When she married Henry B. Stanton, an abolitionist, she attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, where, rather than feeling inspired by the anti-slavery movement, Stanton was horrified by the exclusion of women from the proceedings. She was surprised that abolitionists recognized the injustice of slavery, but didn't see the injustice of a society that put women in a similar position. With Lucretia Mott, another attendee, Stanton resolved to organize a society that would advocate for women's rights. In supporting the movement for women's suffrage, Stanton occasionally used racist tactics and language. This paper examines the source of Stanton's racism, the role it played in her struggle to obtain women's suffrage, and the effect these beliefs had on the suffrage movement.

In her early speeches and letters advocating women's suffrage, Stanton would sometimes relate the position of slaves to that of women. At times the comparison was unfavorable, attempting to show that women were more deserving of enfranchisement. At other times she presented women and slaves in equal positions, equally deserving of a political voice. When the Civil War began, Stanton suspended her campaign for women's suffrage and gave her support to the emancipation of the slaves. Even after the Thirteenth Amendment freed the slaves, many believed that slaves would not truly be freed until they were politically enfranchised, thus began the movement for an amendment that would establish their legal status. Stanton believed that by aligning the women's cause with this movement, women's suffrage could be achieved sooner. The abolitionists and Republicans wished to keep the two movements separate, however, believing that combining them would hinder the enfranchisement for the free slaves.

Stanton opposed ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment if it only applied to men, causing the abolitionist movement to reject her. Persevering in support of extending enfranchisement to include women, Stanton made several claims: that no class of citizen should be underprivileged, that black men would be as hesitant as white men to extend the vote to women, that women who were educated and white were more deserving of the vote than former slaves, that women would better ensure the nation's safety, and that women needed to protect themselves from the brutality of black men. Stanton 's racist positions may have resulted from the abolitionist's betrayal and abandonment of Stanton 's cause. Because the abolitionists would not help her pursue women's suffrage, Stanton found it necessary to compete with them by denigrating black men and asserting that white women were more worthy of suffrage. Unfortunately for Stanton, these tactics did not convince the abolitionists that the women's cause was justified at that time.Instead, it distanced her further from those who might have supported her. She might have had a better chance of obtaining suffrage for women if she had used language that was less antagonistic.