Preservation of political authority
S.A.M. said:
Just found out that black men had the right to vote, by law, in the US [1870] before women [1920]
Whats with that? American men are more scared of giving rights to women than to blacks?
"Remember the ladies" is a legendary slogan of the early history of the United States. Abigail Adams, wife of future President John Adams, thus beseeched her husband as he and other luminaries of Revolution-era lore pondered the nation these forlorn colonies sought to be. The plea fell on deaf ears, however. In the social conscience of our newfound nation, women were not people.
The
Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that,
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
One would think this provision would guarantee women the right to vote, although even for blacks that right demanded a separate constitutional amendment, the
Fifteenth.
And yet, as noted, it took until 1920 for Congress and the several States to get around to the
Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.
However, the Nineteenth Amendment was not so pioneering. Utah, of all places, was among the early states that granted women the right to vote. The first period of women's suffrage in Utah opened in 1870, but was revoked by Congress in 1887. In 1895, Utah restored the right of women to vote. Strangely, both the granting and revocation of suffrage to women played around issues of polygamy.
Jean Bickmore White explains,
Women's Suffrage--the right of women to vote--was won twice in Utah. It was granted first in 1870 by the territorial legislature but revoked by Congress in 1887 as part of a national effort to rid the territory of polygamy. It was restored in 1895, when the right to vote and hold office was written into the constitution of the new state.
In sharp contrast to the long fight for women's suffrage nationally, the vote came to Utah women in 1870 without any effort on their part. It had been promoted by a group of men who had left the Mormon church, the Godbeites, in their Utah Magazine, but to no immediate effect. At the same time, an unsuccessful effort to gain the vote for women in Utah territory had been launched in the East by antipolygamy forces; they were convinced that Utah women would vote to end plural marriage if given the chance. Brigham Young and others realized that giving Utah women the vote would not mean the end of polygamy, but it could change the predominant national image of Utah women as downtrodden and oppressed and could help to stem a tide of antipolygamy legislation by Congress. With no dissenting votes, the territorial legislature passed an act giving the vote (but not the right to hold office) to women on 10 February 1869. The act was signed two days later by the acting governor, S. A. Mann, and on 14 February, the first woman voter in the municipal election reportedly was Sarah Young, grandniece of Brigham Young. Utah thus became the second territory to give the vote to women; Wyoming had passed a women's suffrage act in 1869. No states permitted women to vote at the time.
Despite efforts of national suffrage leaders to protect the vote for Utah women from congressional action, it was taken away by the Edmunds-Tucker antipolygamy act in 1887. It was clear that a strong organizing effort would be needed to restore it.
(
White)
The historical record suggests that it was not fear of women,
per se, that motivated anti-suffrage arguments. Rather, it had to do with fears about political power and the state of society. Indeed, Grace Saxon Mills, writing of the British situation, included in her argument against women's suffrage that women were not capable of the responsibilities of full citizenship, women had no interest in the vote, women were "perfectly safe in the hands of men", and the equality of the sexes would "destroy chivalrous consideration". John Ray, writing retrospectively in 1971, pointed out that, "In 1900, few women were householders or lodgers. If the vote were given to them, then it would have to be given also to men who were not householders or lodgers." (Qtd. in
Clare.) In 1911,
Sen. J. B. Sanford, the Chairman of the Democratic Caucus in Texas, wrote that "Suffrage is not a right." Women could do no good," Sanford wrote, "gadding the streets and neglecting her children"; women could not "unsex" themselves or alter their social spheres—"Let her be content with her lot and perform those high duties intended for her by the Great Creator, and she will accomplish far more in governmental affairs that she can ever accomplish by mixing up in the dirty pool of politics."
Calling on Abraham, one
Lyman Abbot wrote in 1903 that the vote was part of a man's business: "These families find it for their mutual advantage to engage in separate industries, and exchange the product of their labor". The differences between men and women rendered talk of equality "but idle words, without a meaning".
Which is superior, a soldier or a carpenter? It depends upon whether we want a battle fought or a house built. Which is superior, Darwin's Origin of Species or Browning's Saul? This is like asking which is larger, -- half an hour or half a yard. Gallantry will bow to woman and say, "You are superior." Egotism will look with lordly air on woman and say, "You are inferior." But neither gallantry nor egotism will be rational. These twain are not identical. They do not duplicate each other. Man is not an inferior woman. Woman is not an inferior man. They are different in nature, in temperament, in function. We cannot destroy this difference if we would; we would not if we could. In preserving it lies the joy of the family; the peace, prosperity, and well-being of society. If man attempts woman's function , he will prove himself but an inferior woman. If woman attempts man's function, she will prove herself but an inferior man. Some masculine women there are; some feminine men there are. These are the monstrosities of Nature.
(
Abbott)
Compared to Abbott, Sanford's sentiments of "courageous, chivalrous, and manly men and the womanly women" seem almost benign.
The underlying fear was that in granting women the right to vote, the neat social order in which sociopolitical power was vested in as few hands as possible would be upended, and society thrown into chaos as a result. Abbott saw a form of equality between men and women, but that equality did not extend to representation under the law. It is a curiously convenient definition:
You are my equal as long as I am superior to you.
And that, for over a century, was good enough for Americans. It is part of our heritage, a cultural meme that persists in subtle forms even today. As we run out of domestic groups against which to apply this perverse equality—we're down to homosexuals and the transgendered at present—we are focusing outward against other cultures in foreign lands. At present, the Bush administration effectively holds Muslims as subhuman, for the same equality that should have protected women has been denied those suspected, even dubiously, of participating in international terrorism. This is a pattern we will repeat over and over, perhaps
never learning the lesson, until we run out of people to dehumanize. Even then, though, one must wonder what we'll come up with.
____________________
Notes:
United States Constitution. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/index.html
White, Jean Bickmore. "Women's Suffrage in Utah". Utah History to Go. Accessed November 6, 2008. http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_ch...the_progressive_era/womenssuffrageinutah.html
Clare, John D. "Arguments against Women's Suffrage". Accessed November 6, 2008. http://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm
Sanford, Sen. J. B. "Argument Against Women's Suffrage, 1911". 1911. LearnCalifornia.org. Accessed November 6, 2008. http://www.learncalifornia.org/doc.asp?id=1646
Abbott, Lyman. "Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage". 1903. About.com. Accessed November 6, 2008. http://womenshistory.about.com/gi/d...theatlantic.com/issues/03sep/0309suffrage.htm
