- What do you see as the relationship between women’s movements and abolitionist movements?
Grimke, Stanton and Anthony directly quote the same portion of the constitution; We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Anthony speaks of an encounter with a senator who wrote arguments for the abolitionist movement, “And this principle every republican said amen, when applied to black men by Senator Sumner in his great speeches for “Equal rights to all,” from 1865 to 1869; and when, in 1871, I asked the Senator to declare the power of the United States Constitution to protect women in their right to vote, as he had done for black men, he handed me a copy of all his speeches during that reconstruction period, and said, Miss Anthony, put sex where I have “race or color,” and you have here the best and strongest argument I can make for woman.”
Both Pieces by Stanton and Anthony take arguments that were used in legal battles for abolitionism and used them so to apply to women, and made arguments against taxations without representation, being bound to laws and the social contract of a society that does not, in turn, recognize you as a full person, but of the property of another. Stanton expresses that women have been “fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.”
Grimke, in her much shorter piece, illuded to some of these themes. In Well’s piece, she examines the visible outpouring of rage felt once black men had gained the right to vote, and the many repercussions taking the form of voter suppression and barbaric violence, some of which carry on to this day, which highlights the deliberate intent of some to control the bodies and freedoms of others and use them as commodities for their personal and economic gain. Wells writes, “By an amendment to the Constitution the Negro was given the right of franchise, and, theoretically at least, his ballot became his invaluable emblem of citizenship. In a government “of the people, for the people, and by the
people,” the Negro’s vote became an important factor in all matters of state and national politics. But this did not last long. The southern white man would not consider that the Negro had any right which a white man was bound to respect, and the idea of a republican form of government in the southern states grew into general contempt. It was maintained that “This is a white man’s government,” and regardless of numbers the white man should rule.”. This struck a note of similarity to the way Anthony describes the commodification of women by men that, for all intents and purposes, owned their daughters and wives.
