CIVIL RIGHTS & WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENTS, FROM 1860 TO 1870.   Term Paper ID:25321 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines evolution & major issues of two movements in U.S. Impact of Civil War, emancipation of slaves, politics, Reconstruction, leadership, laws, organizations, suffrage.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines evolution & major issues of two movements in U.S. Impact of Civil War, emancipation of slaves, politics, Reconstruction, leadership, laws, organizations, suffrage. Paper Introduction: CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT VS. WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1860-1870) This research paper discusses the nature and course of the movements for civil rights and women's rights in the United States during the 1860s and draws appropriate comparisons and contrasts between them. The principal struggle for civil rights related to improving the political, legal and, to a lesser extent, the economic status of blacks in the South, their emancipation from slavery and succor by the North during the Civil War (1860-1865) and their achievement of suffrage and other rights during the initial phases of Reconstruction (1865-1870). Emancipation only gradually became a central goal of Union policy during the war and its full parameters were far from settled by the time President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Reconstruction policy followed an even Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Particularly in the North, women wereactive in professions related to the war effort, such as nursing, whereleaders like Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix helped raise standards anddoctors like Dr. Mary Walker, a surgeon who was decorated for heroism as aresult of her suffering as a Confederate POW, and who did much to upgradethe quality of Union medical services despite the backwardness and malechauvinistic attitude of the War Department's Medical Bureau and organizedsoldier's care and relief through the United States Sanitary Commission.Leech described their contributions to the latter as follows: Everywhere the war was bringing women out of the seclusiondomestic life. B. bind up the nation's wounds."[9] A provisionalsouthern government had been elected in Louisiana under his proposed tenpercent rule under which a southern state would be admitted if ten per centof the electorate in 186 would take a loyalty oath to the Union and aconstitutional convention abolished slavery. Kenneth M. E. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1988), 36. Blacks were to be established on the abandoned lands of planters where they would work for regular wages and have an opportunity to purchase land. Stamp and Leon F. Norton, 1994), 2 . According to Perman, Johnson was "an embittered and obstinatepolitician determined to obstruct the will of Congress in its struggle toreconstruct the South."[21] Both the Army and the Freedmen's Bureau did thebest they could during this period to protect the freed slaves and tosafeguard their rights as well as to maintain order. . Wendell Philips in theabolitionist paper, The National Anti-Slavery Standard, told Stanton inreply to a letter from her that "causes have their crises; that of thenegro has come; that of the women's rights movement has not come."[59] Ineffect, women were being told to wait their turn. Litwack, 428- 47 . Ulysses S. Widespread agreement exists among historians of the periodthat very few incidents of violence instigated by blacks against whitesoccurred during Reconstruction.[15] The reverse was not true. It nowappears that much of the legislation passed by Congress was triggered bylocal ordinances called the Black Codes passed by all the states of the oldConfederacy in 1865-1866 which were intended to cow and intimidate blacksfrom exercising their new found rights and to keep them in their place.They were not allowed to be witnesses in court, slapped with fines if theywandered off their employer's property, subjected to rigorous pro-landlordsharecropping laws, barred from having access to liquor or firearms andpenalized harshly for committing minor offenses such as absenteeism fromwork or vagrancy. [37]Ibid., 24. A total of seventeen blacks served in Congress, two in the Senate,both from Mississippi, and fifteen in the House. The women's rights movement and the anti-slavery movement acted inunison and in parallel up through the end of the Civil War. ofoverthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions ofthe states."[5] This magnanimous spirit quickly, however, disappeared underthe pressures of the most sanguinary war in American history. NWSA became the focal point forwhat is generally regarded as a more militant stance by feminists.According to Hoff, this New Departure "ultimately transformed the FirstWoman's movement from a radical to a mainstream phenomenon as femalereformers began to act and talk like men in their political and litigiousactivities."[63] Anthony and Stanton formed in 1868 a newspaper calledRevolution, which only lasted for two years and which left Anthony liablefor $1 , in debts. Anthony (182 -19 6). It provided for the immediate emancipationwithout compensation of all slaves in territories occupied by the UnionArmy. What Randall and Donald call the"phenomenal postwar expansion" of the Great Plains continued after the war,as hundreds of thousands of whites pushed the indians off the landspromised them by treaties west of the Mississippi. The women's rights movement was largely frozen during the Civil Warduring which middle and upper class women made major contributions to thewar effort which improved their leverage to press broader demands after thewar. Women. Knopf, 1965.Hoff, Joan. His second inaugural address had stressedreconciliation between the sections, "with malice toward none, with charityfor all" . On September 22, 1862, after General George McClelland's successfuldefensive battle against General Robert Lee's army at Antietam Creek,Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation which was becamefinal on January 1, 1863. Strong efforts made by the Congress,the military, the Freedmen's Bureau and southern Republican governments todefine and enforce the civil rights ofblacks, but in the end, long after this story ends, the North lacked thestaying power to impose its will on the South at the tip of the sword. The Women and the Crisis: Women of the North in the Civil War. . Anthony excelled as anorganizer. After all, Stanton said "the same arguments made .. According to Sorin, in 1866 . [49]James M. Reveille in Washington 186 -1865. [6 ]Foner, 256. He genuinely found slavery to be abhorrent,yet Randall and Donald say that "no Garrison abolitionists, Lincoln sharedsome of the Southern attitudes toward the Negro."[4] He had seriouslyconsidered proposals to colonize blacks in west Africa; and would havepreferred to have been able to offer gradual compensation. The black historian W. According to his biographerTrefousse, "from the very first, he was disinclined to interfere withsuffrage requirements. [42]Sorin, 161. Johnson would not let the Confederate ringleaders nor,curiously, anyone with assets of more than $2 , to assume state office.Otherwise, he was liberal in granting clemency. Stanton and Anthony continued to work together. Despite widespread racialprejudice and discrimination in the North, which Perman called "a societywhere racial prejudice was an accepted norm," Randall and Donald say thatremarkably "a number" [of northern blacks] achieved prominence."[38] Black leaders were divided before the Civil War among those whoadvocated greater assertiveness such as Frederick Douglass, others whofavored colonization abroad and still others who counselled accommodationand acquiescence. Their rejection signalled theirrefusal to adhere to Congress' wishes that they bar former Confederatesfrom office and that they enfranchise all black adults in their midst whootherwise met electoral qualifications. The compromise Crittenden Resolution adopted byCongress in 1861 stated that the war was "not waged . all but monopolized statewidepositions."[29] Randall and Donald say that "the few Negroes who served inhigh offices were mostly men of ability and integrity."[3 ] There was,nevertheless, a great deal of corrupt vote buying and other forms ofcorruption in the post-bellum South, a time of easy money, which mirroredafter 1868 the peculations which transpired on an even larger scale in theadministration of President Ulysses Grant in Washington. G. This counter-trendoccurred despite vigorous efforts under the Grant administration to counterthe rising tide of white orchestrated violence and intimidation of blackswhich erupted with greater force after Johnson's Reconstruction planfailed. In 1865, Anthony and Stanton presented for the first time a petitionto Congress in favor of woman suffrage. . The Armyimplemented Congress' wishes more or less despite of Johnson. All, however, was not well for blacks in the North.According to Foner, "the bulk of the North's black population remainedtrapped in urban poverty and confined to inferior housing and menial andunskilled jobs . They established inDecember 1861 their Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War andcriticized the Union military effort which left a great deal to be desired,especially on the Eastern Front. [38]Ibid.; Perman, 11 . Although these measures were notplanned far in advance and largely came about as a result of political andmilitary exigencies of the war and post-war conditions, they neverthelessconstituted a considerable national effort to secure the rights of blacks.During that same period steady if imperfect progress was made towardimproving the civil rights of blacks in the North. Anthony:Correspondence, Writing, Speeches (New York: Schocker Books, 1981), 89;Schneir, 119. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Du Bois, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Susan B. In the end it would be the womens' rights movements which would havethe greatest chance of achieving success without generating furtherbloodshed and violence; but neither movement would be able to capitalizemuch for decades after 187 on the progress made before that date. [14]Hodding Carter, The Angry Scar: The Story of Reconstruction (GardenCity: Doubleday, 1959), 48. [6]Herman Belz, Emancipation and Equal Rights (New York: W. [8]Hodding Carter, The Angry Scar: The Story of Reconstruction (GardenCity: Doubleday, 1959), 57. W. On the other hand, Donald points out that "never beforehad any American president publicly announced that he was in favor of Negrosuffrage."[1 ] At that point, Congress, by passing the Wade-Davis bill inJuly 1864 which required an iron clad oath of no past rebel activity fromoffice holders, and the President was still far apart on reconstructionpolicy, but most historians believe that because of Lincoln's politicalacumen a way would have been found to bridge the gap between them. McPherson commented that "by 185 . [48]Miriam Schneir, ed., Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings(New York: Random House, 1972), 3. . [5]Patrick W. The wards of theFreedmen's Bureau were to be taught self-reliance.[7] The War Department and Treasury fought tooth and nail over whichagency was to have jurisdiction over freedmen until the Freedmen's Bureauwas set up in March 1865 under the War Department. Law Gender & Injustice: A Legal History of U. [24]Riddleberger, 57. [12]Geoffrey Perret, Ulysses S. Johnson Trashes Black Civil Rights, 1865-1867 From the time that President Andrew Johnson's policy towardReconstruction began to become clear in May 1865 until he left office inMarch 1868, the President and the Republican majority in Congress were atloggerheads over Reconstruction policy. The emphasis of the Congress was on securing the voting and otherpolitical and other legal rights of blacks, what Belz calls the "laissezfaire legal equality" approach.[26] The effect of this approach, enshrinedin the 13th and 14th Amendments, and, after 1869, in the 15th Amendment,barring any state from preventing anyone from voting due to color, race orcondition of previous servitude, was to nationalize the protection of blackcivil rights. [9]David H. He justified it on military grounds, to lower Confederate morale andstrength, provide new and needed (black) recruits for the Union army and torally public opinion in the North. [39]Roner, 28. Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1965), 7-8. In 1862it abolished slavery in the District of Columbia. Middlesex, ENG: Penguin Books, 1973.Carter, Hodding. More confrontational was Frances Wright,an advocate of free love and unrestrained female sexuality in the 182 s. In the absence of clearand uniform guidelines from Washington, military commanders on the spot hadto develop programs for handling the tens of thousands of former blackslaves who crowded into their lines as their forces advanced into theSouth. [41]Perman, 11 . . Certain high rebel officeholders had to be excluded. Cartersummarized their actual role in 1865-1866 as follows. [7]Riddleberger, 57. As aconsequence, the struggle for black suffrage and black equality before thelaw suffered greatly. Very little violence was actually committed byformer black slaves against whites in the first few years after the war.However, southern editor Carter said in the 195 s that the fear of bloodshed and economic disaster should the Negroes not be brought under control in the summer of 1865 was very real . Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.Trefousse, Hans L. In almost all southernstates, blacks were underrepresented in relation to their numbers andvoting power. Its doctrines and membership spread like wildfire acrossthe South in the late 6 s. However, Congress'brief experiment with black civil rights was extinguished by then, leavingonly the legal and constitutional framework it had enacted for theirprotection, Faced with the return of white supremacist-oriented state governmentsin the South and the eventual enactment of discriminatory Jim Crowlegislation aimed against southern blacks, many historians have sought tosalvage something from the wreckage left behind. discrimination by employers and unions alike."[44] The war had been a period of high taxes and deteriorating wages. Stanton began to voice a certain racism as, forexample, when she said that black woman would be better off as "the slaveof an educated white man, than of a degraded, ignorant black man."[62] NWSAcame out in opposition to the 14th and 15th Amendments, which did little tofurther their cause in the North. . 1866: The Critical Year Revisited. . Nevertheless, he had crossed theRubicon; emancipation had now become policy. . In theothers, their votes were important, because very large percentages of themwho were registered to vote, up to 9 percent, actually voted in manyelections after 1866.[28] Coalitions ruled almost all southern statesincorporated within the Republican Party and protected by the Union Army.Their chief components were white carpetbaggers or whites transplanted fromthe North in search of loot, office or for humanitarian or other reasons,blacks, free and former slaves, and scalawags, or white southerncollaborators. [54]Wendy H. Such progress as was achieved in securing politicalrights for the black freedmen was largely temporary but a framework fortheir future realization on a permanent basis was laid during this period.As an almost incidental byproduct of this process, the civil rights ofblacks in the North were substantially expanded, but patterns of racialprejudice and discrimination remained. According to Belz, "in the opinion of manyantislavery reformers the government's policies toward emancipated slavesin Louisiana and the Mississippi Valley were little better thanslavery."[6] In the Sea Islands off South Carolina, freedmen worked oncotton plantations for government wages under the supervision of northernreformers. Reprint, Alexandria: Time-Life Books, 198 .Leonard, Elizabeth D. [27]Riddleberger, 56. W. . . . New York: Macmillan, 1989.Foner, Eric. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.Evans, Sara M. New southerngovernments in order to gain admission to the Union would have to, amongother things, and almost all did by 1868, except for Georgia, Mississippi,Texas and Virginia which complied in 187 , grant universal manhoodsuffrage. Lincoln. This was particularly true duringthe period prior to the enactment of the first Reconstruction Act of March1867 during which Congress struggled to recover the initiative from thePresident and southern whites with whom he was largely in league. Shortlythereafter, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that separate schooling violatedthe 14th Amendment, antedating by its ruling the United States SupremeCourt by 9 years. Segregation in the publicschools was barred in the public schools in Massachusetts the same year.The first black student entered university there in 1868. . The Ku Klux Klan, whose first Grand Wizard was Nathan Forrest, oneof the South's most effective military commanders, was founded in Pulaski,Tennessee in 1866. [28]Foner, 291. As middle and upper class women became better educated, they foundtheir voice. Norton, 1978.Brock, William R. Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era. Pre-Civil War Emphases The cause of women's rights was largely put forward and kept alive inthe first half of the 19th century by the isolated actions of individualswhich hardly qualified as a movement. S. Gerteis, Morality and Utility in American AntislaveryReform (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), xii. A number of novel techniques for advancing the causeof woman suffrage were experimented with during this period, all to noavail, including sit-ins at polling places, attempts by women to vote eventhough they were not registered and the non-payment of taxes as a protestagainst the denial of their lack of representation. Along the southeastern South Carolina and Georgia coast, 4 , freedmen were given possessory titles to plots of abandoned land underGeneral William Sherman's Special Field Order Number 15. Andrew Johnson A Biography. Litwack. [47]Randall and Donald, 54 . New York: McDowell, Obolensky, 1959.----------------------- [1]William R. [44]Ibid., 472. [26]Ibid., 73. girls went toelementary school and achieved literacy in virtually the same proportion asboys."[49] In the 183 , Oberlin, Wesleyan and a number of other collegesopened their doors to women. [21]Perman, 6 . [31]Perret, 413. For more than a year, the initiative on emancipation was left toCongress and to some enterprising military commanders.Congress passed Confiscation Acts in 1861 and 1862, which freed slaves whopassed within the Union lines and authorized their use as laborers. [57]Ellen C. The Indians never had achance to organize a movement to claim, let alone protect, any civilrights. Timid ones grew as bold as lions. Women became involved in various reformmovements, at first ones close to the family such as the temperancemovement, but a few hardy souls such as the Quaker Grimke sisters in the184 s at Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio began to speak out againstslavery.This began the close alliance between the abolitionists and the leadershipof the women's movement which was to last until the late 186 s. [4 ]Randall and Donald, 28. Garden City: Doubleday, 1959.Donald, David H. [19]Michael Perman, Emancipation and Reconstruction 1862-1879(Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1987), 47. with its neglect of Negroes education bypublic authorities, was the rule."[37] rule. Anthony: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson.Randall, Clarence, and David Donald. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War. . New York: Random House, 1972.Sorin, Gerald. . Garrison protestedAnthony's turning the May 1863 meeting of the Loyal League "into a Woman'sRights Convention."[54] Women on both sides of the lines helped pick up the slack left behindby the departure of so many men. [62]Ibid., 256. . In the 181 s and182 s a number of women writers became popular, some of whom such asCatherine Beecher argued that women could best improve their lot in life byimproving their domestic skills. This guardianship was to be temporary. Congress had little choice but to refuse to readmit of anumber of southern states after they rejected the Fourteenth Amendmentafter Johnson counselled them to do so. . . [29]Ibid., 351. [58]Foner, 255. [18]Ibid., 23 . [4]J. Riddleberger suggests that there was a good deal of room for Johnsonto maneuver because although "there was a vast gulf between Johnson and theradicals on the question of Negro suffrage," even as late as December 1865,"men close to the president who still sought party harmony and thecontinuing Republican ascendancy advised their radical friends not to beprecipitate in pushing Negro suffrage."[2 ] Johnson, however, repeatedlythrew the gauntlet down to the Congress, which had the effect of pushingmoderate Republicans into the lap of the Radicals. At the outset ofthe war, he was concerned lest any emancipation program induce waveringborder states to join the Confederacy. The decade of the 186 s was the timein which the black civil rights movement and the women's rights movementparted company amidst an atmosphere of bitterness, betrayal andrecrimination. As passions between North and South intensified in the 185 sover the Underground Railway which spirited runaway slaves to freedom andattempts by slaveowners and slave catchers to require northern states toreturn them under the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 185 , the fighting inBloody Kansas and John Brown's provocative raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859,many abolitionists turned to incandescent rhetoric and some financedpolitical violence. Final Comparisons and Assessment During the 186 s, the movement to secure the rights of blackAmericans moved swiftly from agitation for an end to slavery toemancipation and then through a series of steps to define and enforce theirvoting and other legal civil rights. let us . Radical Republicanism, which hadbeen the moving force in support of many reforms in American society,including women's rights, as discussed below, before and during the CivilWar and in the first five years after the Civil War, was beginning to runout of revolutionary steam. . For several years, theSouth Carolina legislature was dominated by blacks. Johnson was a strict constitutionalist and he did not have a highopinion of the political capacity of blacks. New England had been atthe forefront of efforts to ameliorate the condition of blacks in theNorth, largely as the result of efforts of abolitionists such as Garrisonand Wendell Philips and evangelical Christians, especially the Quakers.However, not all Radical Republicans and abolitionists had any greatfondness for blacks. E.DuBois probably came closest to the truth when he said "the attempt to makeblack men American citizens was in a certain sense all a failure, but asplendid failure."[33] The movement to ensure the civil rights of blacks in the Southachieved its initial objective, emancipation, but failed to secure itsultimate objectives, their full legal and political rights and equality asAmerican citizens were several reasons. . [5 ]Sara M. Randall and Donald acknowledge, however, that "under the pressure ofemancipation, black military service, and Northern black protest, racialprejudice bent, but did not break."[4 ] A particularly vicious riot againstconscription which erupted in New York City in July 1863 turned into amassacre of hapless blacks in the city at the time. for the last century for the extension of the suffrage to all white men. In his inaugural address, he assuredthe South he had no desire to tamper with slavery in those states in whichit already existed. Forgotten Minority: Native Americans The dynamic, relentless movement of white settlers westward wastemporarily interrupted by the war. In general, their taskwas extraordinarily difficult because due to the conflict within thefederal government, "the South suffered continual turmoil anduncertainty."[22] On one point, almost all observers agree: the Freedmen'sBureau with the help of many private charities and individuals, black andwhite, did an outstanding job in launching the freed slaves on the path toacquiring a free public education. Theultimate irony is that two movements with much in common should have fallenout of sorts over what was essentially an argument over timing when theyshould have remained in harness because the forces arrayed against themwere delighted to take advantage of their disarray. The Constitution clearly left voting qualificationsto the states, and, convinced that the seceded commonwealths were stillpart of the Union, he considered interference on his part a violation ofhis firmly held belief in states' rights."[11] He was quoted as saying onblacks that "the subjugation of the states to Negro domination . Heath, 1961.Riddleberger, Patrick W. Middle and upper class women were becoming better educated duringthis period. Riddleberger commented that Congress never undid Johnson'sreturn to Southern white owners in 1865-1866 of the possessory titlesobtained by freedmen from Sherman's Army, which was "a landmark in thehistory of the abandonment of the Negro at that crucial time."[27] Once blacks were enfranchised in the South, they became for arelatively brief period of time a significant political force. Emboldened by thecontributions of more than a hundred thousands blacks to the Union Army, aconclave of 145 black leaders held in Syracuse, New York in October 1964established a National Equal Rights League. The final wording of the due process and equalprotection clauses (clause 1) of the Amendment refer to the denial of thoserights to "any person" but the sanctions against states contained in clause2 refer to their denial to "any of the male inhabitants of such State."Anthony and Stanton took exception to such language and requestedassistance from their radical and abolitionist friends and allies inobtaining its excision. Norton,1978), 53. Grant Soldier & President (New York:Random House, 1997), 369. The Civil War and Reconstruction. [56]Elizabeth D. Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. In rapid succession, in1866 he opposed black suffrage in the District of Columbia, vetoed theCivil Rights Act which gave the Army and the Freedmen's Bureau legalauthority to enforce the 13th Amendment and to enforce the legal rights ofblacks in the Freedmen's Bureau's tribunals, in June, 1866, began toorganize opposition to the ratification of the 14th Amendment which ensuredthat blacks had all the rights and privileges and immunities of othercitizens and gave the government further enforcement powers to enforcethose rights and in July 1866 vetoed the extension of the Freedmen's Actfor two years. It never had behind it anything remotely resembling the tremendoushead of steam and national military and political power which lay behindthe movement for black civil rights which, after all, was the subject ofthe bloodiest war in American history. W. By the summer of 1865Radical Republican leaders such as Senator Ben Wade of Ohio andRepresentative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania were outraged at theflaccidness of Johnson's policies toward the South. Evolution, Frustration and New Departure of the Women's Movement The fundamental difference between the movement or struggle for theattainment of civil rights for blacks (in the South) and the companionstruggle for women's right is that the nation at least in part fought a warover the former which therefore became a central cause whereas women'srights never became a centrist political issue during the 186 s. [46]Eric F. the white Southern majority was emotionally unready to incorporate in the restoration of normal political life a race it considered in multitude to be not only unready for suffrage which it was, but innately inferior.[14] Slave insurrections had occurred, most recently the Nat Tyler revoltof 183 , but they had been quickly and ruthlessly suppressed by theauthorities. New York: New York University Press, 1991.Leech, Margaret. To the astonishmentof men, they were able to draft constitutions and by laws, to serve on committees and preside at meetings, even toraise and handle money.[55]According to Leonard, "women in the Civil War, by virtue of their owndetermination and courage, brought forth positive changes in popularcharacterizations of middle class womanhood that, in time, opened new doorsfor women in the professions and in public life."[56] As a result of these contributions and the general atmosphere at theend of the war, which tended to favor egalitarian philosophical notions andnatural rights theories, the women's rights movement emerged from the warwith its prestige enhanced. Unwilling to accept any further extension of slaveryto the territories, the Republican Party was anti-Slavery, but since it andits presidential candidate in 186 only won with 4 per cent of the vote,it could hardly be said that they had an overwhelming mandate to emancipatethe slaves in the South after the war began. Douglass called for the end of all discrimination,equality before the law and black enfranchisement. . According to Gerteis, for the abolitionists, "the fightagainst slavery pitted right against wrong, civilization against barbarism,liberty against despotism."[3] There was a much larger group of anti-slavery people in the North,whose numbers grew as what William Seward called in 1858 the "IrrepressibleConflict" grew near. The interests of black suffrage and women's rights advocates ranparallel until 1866 when the vast majority of men in the former Movementand in the dominant Republican Party refused to give woman's suffrageanything remotely resembling the priority they gave black suffrage. . Do not put such undisputed power in the hands ofhusbands. Emergence of Emancipation as a War Aim During the first half of the 19th century, by which time all of thenorthern states had abolished slavery, Brock says that in the North, "largenumbers of Americans were deeply moved by the injustice done to the slaves"in the South.[1] However, successive compromises in the 185 s over theextensions of slavery into new territories had prevented the intensesectional rivalry between North and South from spilling over into war. . [53]Agatha Young, The Women and the Crisis: Women of the North in theCivil War (New York: McDowell, Obolensky, 1959), 24. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877. [3 ]Randall and Donald, 623. Forwhites, including three million new immigrants, the decade after the CivilWar was a time of rising wages and rising industrial production, whichincreased 75 percent above 1865 levels.[45] As Goldman expresses the gistof the matter, "the whole concept of how far a man could go and how swiftlyhe could move was taking on a bold new scope. . New York: Harper & Row, 1988.Gerteis, Louis S. By 187 , Democratic, white supremacist dominated state governmentshad returned to power or were well on their way to doing so in Tennessee,North Carolina and Georgia. Perman makes another telling point. wouldbe worse than the military despotism under which they are now suffering"and that he was opposed "to the Africanization of half of our country."[12]"He had never changed his conviction of the inferiority of blacks, norwould he ever do so."[13] Conditions in the South in the spring and summer of 1865, which wasunder martial law, with four million freed slaves milling about, manyaimlessly, a great deal of destruction, poverty, chaos and confusion, wasunsettled, to say the least. New York: W. Arelatively small number of Northerners, the abolitionists, who Sorin saysnever exceeded one per cent of the population, were (after the early 183 s)in favor of immediate abolition of slavery in the South.[2]The abolitionists drew their leadership from editors like William Garrison,founder of the militant newspaper, The Liberator, and the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 183 s, members of the evangelical Protestant clergy,in which Quakers in particular were prominent, and various assortedreformers. Giving Meaning to Emancipation, 1862-1865. and,led by the Ku Klux Klan, reached crisis proportions in 187 -1871. Thisproduced a deep split in the women's rights movement with the more militantfeminist leadership pursuing its political and economic goals separatelyfrom the black suffrage movement and the established political parties forapproximately two decades after 187 . [51]McPherson, 36. In an attempt to develop a more uniform approach to emancipationpolicy, Congress appointed in 1863 an American Freedmen's InquiryCommission which recommended in June of that year the establishment of abureau within the War Department to act: as a friend and counsellor to freedmen to protect in legal matters and with the aid of benevolent agencies to provide for their education. Native Americans (Indians) were notrecognized as having any civil rights and moved closer to extermination aspeoples as the westward frontier expanded after the end of the war. They "acted asemployment agencies and relief centers for distributing food and medicineto the needy, as supervisors of labor contracts between former masters andslaves, and as disciplinarians of Negroes unwilling to work."[8] As therole of the federal government in enforcing the legal and later votingrights of blacks expanded after 1866, so did the role of the Freedmen'sBureaus. Boston: D. . The Angry Scar: The Story of Reconstruction. Kenneth M. New York: Alfred A. Nevertheless, Foner says that "the decade following the Civil Warwitnessed astonishing advances in the political, civil, and social rightsof Northern blacks."[43] A law outlawing discrimination in publicstreetcars was passed in Pennsylvania in 1867. WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT (186 -187 ) This research paper discusses the nature and course of the movementsfor civil rights and women's rights in the United States during the 186 sand draws appropriate comparisons and contrasts between them. According to Foner, Radicals such as Stevens and Senator CharlesSumner of Massachusetts had "for decades, long before any conceivablepolitical benefit derived from its advocacy, . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.Goldman, Eric F. According to Perret, it was "an organizationthat made bedsheets into garments, crosses into burning brands, and murderinto something respectable people committed after the sun went down."[31]He says that its primary goal "was not to bring back slavery but tomaintain white supremacy."[32] The 15th Amendment and the various Civil Rights Acts adopted in 187 and subsequent years were designed primarily by Congress to counter thegrowing influence of the Klan and its efforts to cow and intimidate blacks.According to Belz, "violent white opposition to black civil and politicalequality appeared with the advent of Negro suffrage in the South . New York: W. N.p.: N.p., 1941. [23]Carter, 58. [59]Riddleberger, 169. . [35]Ibid., 121. [32]Ibid., 413. Congress was also stirred to act bytwo anti-black riots, in Memphis in May 1866 and in New Orleans on July 3 1866. Venet, Neither Ballots Nor Bullets: Women Abolitionistsand the Civil War (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991),1 8. Certain professions, such as nursing teaching, which hadformerly been dominated by men, became 'feminized.' A number of bestselling novelists, including Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852, the author ofUncle Tom's Cabin, were women. In the North, Randall and Donald says that a"'caste [segregated] system,'. Reconstruction: An Anthology of Revisionist Writings. [55]Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington (N.p.: N.p., 1941; reprint,Alexandria, VA: Time Life Books, 198 ), 265. Emancipation and Reconstruction 1862-1879. Du Bois, "Black Reconstruction," in Reconstruction: AnAnthology of Revisionist Writings, eds. At one time, American history textbooks tended to portray Johnson asa benevolent President who was prevented from magnanimously extending theolive branch to a defeated, prostrate South by a vengeful Congress. [36]Randall and Donald, 24 . in any spirit ofoppression, or for any purpose of conquest, or subjugation, or . According to Carter, by 187 , it hadsupplied 3,3 teachers which had educated 149,581 former slaves.[23] Italso was largely instrumental in establishing with funds partially suppliedby the federal government and mostly by private charity, including well offfree blacks, 11 colleges and universities and 61 normal schools in theReconstruction South by 1871.[24] Black Reconstruction, 1867-187 According to Belz, "by 1867, moderates [in Congress] were convincedthat negro suffrage was necessary to secure freedmen's civil rights."[25]From the time Congress adopted the Reconstruction Act in March 1867 andwhile Johnson's impeachment trial was pending (or until May 1868), itbecame clear to southern white leaders that they had no choice but tocomply with the wishes of Congress as to Reconstruction policy. are all the arguments we have to make for women and negroes" and "theprejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than thatagainst sex."[57] "Should not," Foner says they argued, "sex, like race, bedeemed an unacceptable basis for legal distinctions among citizens?[58] One can readily imagine how crestfallen Anthony, Stanton and otherleaders of the women's movement must have been when they were told by theirold allies in the abolitionist movement like Sumner that the 'negro's hour'had arrived and that they should do nothing which might jeopardize hischances of obtaining the right of suffrage. . "Black Reconstruction." In Reconstruction: An Anthology of Revisionist Writings, ed. Norton, 1989.Venet, Wendy H. In fivesouthern states, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and SouthCarolina, blacks accounted for a majority of the registered voters. New York: Random House, 1997.Perman, Michael. More conservative prominent women such as MaryLivermore and Julia Howe (who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic) nowcame out in favor of woman suffrage. Brock, Conflict and Transformation (Middlesex, ENG:Penguin Books, 1973), 1 2. [22]Ibid., 4 . They were given a respectfulhearing, but otherwise ignored. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991.Young, Agatha. Randall, and David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction(Boston: D. The above charter isbasically what the Bureau did during the rest of the decade. According to Randall andDonald, "with the expansion of agriculture and the extension of railroads,the process of 'eliminating' the Indians was notably quickened."[47] By1871, when the treaty system was finally abrogated once and for all by thefederal government, only 271, indians remained. New York: W. According toFoner, "in some areas, violence against blacks reached staggeringproportions in the immediate aftermath of the war."[16] White southerners were surprised and delighted to learn that all theyhad to do to rejoin the Union was to ratify the 13th Amendment whichoutlawed slavery, jettison the ordinances of secession and repudiate theConfederate debt. New York: Praeger, 1972.Stamp, Kenneth M., and Leon F. [45]Ibid., 413. War and pell-mellindustrialization seemed to have shaken up the society weakening if notshattering any crust of caste."[46] Blacks, North and South, still,however, remained in the grip of a caste system, but at least they hadtaken the first tentative steps toward gaining full political and legal, ifnot economic and social, liberty. Rendezvous with Destiny. [63]Joan Hoff, Law Gender & Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Between then and the middle of the 187 s whenReconstruction ended, Republican rule would end. . defended the unpopularcause of black suffrage."[17] He says that, "rather than vengeance, thedriving force of Radical ideology was the utopian vision of a nation whosecitizens enjoyed equality of civil and political rights, secured by apowerful and beneficent national state."[18] Perman says the radicalswanted to replace the antebellum southern social system with "free labor,universal education, and equal rights."[19] Now, after the Union hadacquired the power to enforce this vision on the wayward South at atremendous cost in Union blood and treasure, its President was about tothrow away its advantage for no apparent reason other than to satisfy hisignorant backwoods nostrums or worse. [2]Gerald Sorin, Abolitionism A New Perspective (New York: Praeger,1972), 17. Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 567. [15]Ibid., 51. [3]Louis S. . Morality & Utility in American Antislavery Reform. the North was not ready to givethe suffrage to the black man. [1 ]Ibid., 585. Abolitionism A New Perspective. [52]Foner, 255. There werea few black female abolitionists, such as Sojourner Truth, who reportedlytold male hecklers at a women's convention in Akron in 1851: "Well,children. [34]Perman, 62. Many fewer blacks, only about 24 , ,according to the census of 186 lived in the northern states.[36]On the eve of the Civil War, only the New England states and New Yorkpermitted blacks to vote. W. In fact, as late as 1868, only four statesoutside of New England and New York allowed blacks to vote."[42] A numberof northern states, fearful of a tidal wave of northern emigration of freedslaves from the South to the North, closed their borders during and afterthe war to blacks. Conflict and Transformation. [33] W. Stanton and a small group of founders set forth the initial aims ofthe women's movement at their first convention in Seneca Falls, New York in1848 in a Declaration of Sentiments modelled on the Declaration ofIndependence which proclaimed that "all men and women are created equal"and deserved to enjoy their "inalienable rights" which included the rightto vote.[51] In 1854, Anthony and Stanton delivered a petition to the NewYork legislature containing 1 , signatures they had gathered in favor ofliberalization of the property laws and woman suffrage. Moreover, Lincoln had serious qualms at that point about the wisdomand legality of such an action. W. In the late 185 s both of them were heavily engaged with theactivities of Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, but, nonetheless,experienced friction with Garrison himself who was concerned that womenabolitionists would take over the agenda of the Society. Stanton, however,felt less constrained to talk about her ideas on family and social issues,such as freer divorce and sexual equality, which were considerably ahead ofher time, and were not necessarily shared by spinster Anthony. E. General Nathaniel Banks put thousands of slaves in Louisiana back towork on plantations under a contract labor wage system. Stantonwas a charismatic speaker and prolific writer. However, the civil rights of the freed slaves were far from settledat the time Lincoln died. First, as Perman points out, "blackvoting gave the Republicans as well as Reconstruction itself an aura ofradicalism, even illegitimacy, right from the start" in the eyes of whitesoutherners.[34] Inconsistencies and conflicts in federal policy,especially the battle royal between Johnson and the Congress, may havedoomed the black civil rights effort. [43]Foner, 471. According to Perman, "by about 187 , radicalismwas in eclipse and the Republican party was assuming a more conservative,less energetic temper."[35] Black Civil Rights Movement in the North During the 185 s, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the efforts offree black leaders in the North such as Frederick Douglass and the whiteabolitionists had been primarily directed toward easing the plight ofslaves in the South, destroying slavery, emancipating the slaves andfinally assisting the freed slaves to achieve legal, political and othergoals in the aftermath of victory. No organized effort topromote the interests of Indians or to protect them against the ravages ofa technologically more advanced civilization ever existed, just the wellmeaning efforts of various benefactors, which included several presidents,including both Johnson and Grant, who envisaged their education andassimilation through reservation life into mainstream American society, anidyllic and naive hope which never materialized. Theleaders of the women's movement felt their claim for priority was at leastas compelling as that of southern black men and split from their previousmale supporters over that issue. The principal struggle for civil rights related to improving thepolitical, legal and, to a lesser extent, the economic status of blacks inthe South, their emancipation from slavery and succor by the North duringthe Civil War (186 -1865) and their achievement of suffrage and otherrights during the initial phases of Reconstruction (1865-187 ).Emancipation only gradually became a central goal of Union policy duringthe war and its full parameters were far from settled by the time PresidentAbraham Lincoln was assassinated. Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. [17]Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 (Harper & Row, 1988), 23 . The 183 s and 184 s saw the emergence of movements, often led by malereformers, to ease the rigors of real property law, which gave husbandstotal control over the property and earnings of their wives, and to thepassage by mid-century and later of Married Women's Property Acts whichrestored a measure of control over their property and income to marriedwomen and basic reforms to state divorce laws, which were changed to permitwives to divorce their husbands for repeated wife beating and other formsof extreme cruelty, habitual intoxication or failure to support theirfamilies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.Perret, Geoffrey. Riddleberger, 1866: The Critical Year Revisited(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1978), 54. . Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (NewYork: Macmillan, 1989), 1 4. . Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.[48] In the179 s the writings of Englishwoman Mary Wollstonecraft, who argued thatwoman's essential nature was the same as men and therefore her civil rightsshould be equal to men's, circulated in the colonies. A serious schism between Anthony andStanton on the one hand and male abolitionists in and out of Congress beganto develop in June of 1866 when the final wording of the 14th Amendment wasbeing debated in Congress. Foner says that "whites . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.Du Bois, Ellen C., ed., Elizabeth Cady Stanton Susan B. Abigail Adams in a letter to JohnAdams of March 31, 1776 chided him: "in the new code of laws which Isuppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would rememberthe ladies . C. New York: Schocken Books, 1981.Du Bois, W. The abolitionmovement in particular gave the women's movement the first real opportunityto discover its political voice and to discover its skills as advocates ofchange. Reconstruction policy followed an evenmore tortured course. Indiana Congressman and abolitionist George Julian ofIndiana reportedly said: "the trouble is that we hate the negro!"[41] There was something incongruous about northern Republicans urgingblack suffrage on the defeated South while being reluctant to introduce itat home. Just before he was shot, Lincoln suggested tobut did not instruct the newly elected governor of Louisiana that blackswho had served in the Union Army or who were intelligent should bepermitted to vote. Leonard, Yankee Woman: Gender Battles in the Civil War(New York: W. The same group which had before the warinsisted on the ultimate extinction of slavery now called for itsimmediately destruction through emancipation. Sumner called womansuffrage "the great question of the future."[6 ] Foner says the debate over the 14th Amendment and ultimately overwhether Congress would support woman suffrage in the 186 s left many"feminist leaders with a deep sense of betrayal, it convinced them, asStanton put it, that women 'must not put their trust in men' in seekingtheir own rights."[61] The immediate result of this disagreement was thatin 1869 the women's movement split into a more militant faction headed byAnthony and Stanton, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and theAmerican Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which did not rejoin forcesuntil 189 (although they worked together on some issues). Norton, 1994.McPherson, James M. The previous emphasis during the latter stages of the war insecuring their economic rights, beyond immediate relief, was de-emphasized.In particular, the hunger of blacks for land in the South was notsatisfied. [61]Ibid., 255. [16]Foner, 119. Neither Ballots Nor Bullets: Women Abolitionists and the Civil War. According to Foner, it"galvanized a black assault upon the Northern color line that, in the war'sfinal months, won some modest but impressive victories."[39] These includedthe admission by California (1863) of testimony from blacks in criminalcases; Illinois' admission of testimony from blacks and their participationon juries (1865); the passage by Massachusetts of the first non-discrimination public accommodations law (1865); and the admission thatyear of the first black lawyer before the United States Supreme Court. Grant: Soldier & President. According to Foner, "during the war, the women's movement had putaside the suffrage movement to join in the crusade for Union andemancipation."[52] Stone confirms that "the war brought these [all theundertakings launched by the movement after Seneca Falls] to a halt."[53]Anthony and Stanton supported the emancipation efforts of the Women'sNational Loyal League which they formed in 1862. I think that twixt the niggers of the South and the women of theNorth, all talking about rights, all white men will be in a fix prettysoon.[5 ] In the late 184 s and 185 s, the acknowledged leader of the women'smovement was Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-19 2), who in after the early185 s made a very effective team with Susan B. B. . Stamp and Leon F.Litwack (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 47 . [25]Belz, 1 2. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979.Schneir, Miriam, ed. In meantime, GeneralBenjamin Butler began calling such runaways 'contraband of war.' WhileLincoln contemplated issuing his Emancipation Proclamation, the power inCongress of what came to be known as the Republican Radicals or BlackRepublicans, as the rebels referred to them, grew. . W.Norton, 1989), 215). Heath, 1961), 118. A similar systemwas set up in Mississippi. Logically, they were correct; politically,they could not have made a more grievous miscalculation in overestimatingthe strength of their cause at that time. CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT VS. [13]Trefousse, 225. Women(New York: New York University Press, 1991), 15 .----------------------- 1 In financialterms, the largest scandals related to the expansion of railroads and thefloating of bonds to construct them which left many state governments withheavy debt burdens after Reconstruction administrations left office. . Anthonybegan to spend more of her time on bread and butter economic issues ofinterest to working women. As thedecade ended, Grant had sent punitive expeditions against the Klan in theCarolinas which he succeeded in crushing by the mid-7 s. BibliographyBelz, Herman. C. [11]Hans J. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson A Biography (New York: W. [2 ]Riddleberger, 1 6. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.