Elizabeth Cady Stanton's opposition to the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments

U.S. History - E.C. Stanton

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

The 14th and 15th Amendment Issue:

Despite her history as an activist on behalf of the abolitionist movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton absolutely opposed the ratification of the 14th and 15th amendment that granted suffrage to the former slaves recently freed by the previous constitutional amendment. Ethically and philosophically, Stanton supported universal suffrage, but she opposed the 14th and 15th amendments specifically because their proposed wording failed to address female suffrage in the overall spirit of the Civil Rights concept (Baker, 2005).

In that regard, Stanton's primary concern was that granting suffrage to African-American males without doing the same for all women would only further postpone the goal of achieving female suffrage because it would instantly add to the prevailing voting majority (of males) who were likely to vote against future female suffrage proposals (Baker, 2005).

Ethically, Stanton never opposed universal suffrage and the treatment of former slaves as equals in American society. She argued that the 14th and 15th amendments should have been worded to include rather than to exclude women and that the principals and long-term goals of civil rights sometimes required short-term losses, such as in connection with the hard-line position against narrowly worded legislation against advances for different segments of the disenfranchised (Baker, 2005).

Furthermore, Stanton believed that 13th amendment already granted to African males all of the legal rights and privileges of white males except for voting rights, and that there was no justification for granting suffrage to African-American males before redressing the issue of female suffrage. Therefore, Stanton also strongly opposed the position that by granting voting rights to African-American males, African-American women would benefit by enjoying the same vicarious voting rights by virtue of their ability to influence their husbands' votes (Baker, 2005). Finally, the fact that Stanton completely supported interracial marriage only further demonstrates that her opposition to the 14th and 15th amendments was not a rejection of her ethical stance on civil rights for African-Americans or racial equality.

Criticisms of Religion and the Women's Bible:

Stanton was strongly ethically opposed to the subservient position of women in the way they were represented in the Bible and, therefore, she also opposed the manner in which women were relegated to second-class status throughout the modern institution of Christianity (Kern, 2001). Toward the end of inspiring religious reform that rectified the situation, Stanton authored and promoted a revisionist edition of the New Testament that provided alternate biblical interpretations more consistent with equality in general and feminism in particular.