Women\'s Rights After the Civil

Women's Rights After The Civil War

Given the overlap between the abolitionist and women's rights movements, one might have expected to see a significant change in women's rights at the end of the Civil War, following the end of slavery. After all, the two movements had been so closely intertwined, with advocates in both movements comparing their plights to one another's, that an increase in rights for those who had previously been slaves would have seemed to be naturally linked to an increase in rights for those who were treated as subordinate because of their gender. However, the reality was that abolition did not lead to an increase in women's rights. On the contrary, the women's rights movement seemed to lose some steam after the Civil War, so that it was almost another half a century before women actually got the right to vote.

In order to understand why the women's rights movement lost steam after the Civil War, one has to understand that the people who advocated most strongly for an increase in women's rights were also those most likely to speak out against slavery and for equal rights for African-Americans. With the abolition that came as the result of the Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, it soon became clear that there had been a victory on one front. In fact, there had historically been stronger public support for abolition and for civil rights for blacks than there had been for women's rights, particularly the right to vote. Therefore, because of the momentum that existed in favor of pushing greater rights for African-Americans, many people in both the abolitionist and the women's rights movements advocated shelving the issue of women's suffrage and concentrating on getting the franchise for African-American males. In fact, they felt that it was "unfair to endanger black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis" (a&E Television).

It is critical to understand that this approach was not universally supported by those in the women's suffrage movement. "Some woman-suffrage advocates, among them [Elizabeth Cady] Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage" (a&E Television). Therefore, they did not support the 15th Amendment. On the contrary, they "even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women's votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African-Americans" (a&E Television). In 1869, this group of women created the National Woman Suffrage Association, and its goal was a universal suffrage amendment to the federal Constitution, which would ensure that women had the right to vote.

Of course, the right to vote is only one of the civil rights that impact women, and the Civil War had very little impact on the right enjoyed or denied to women on a daily basis in the United States. The period just before the Civil War was one marked by increasing restrictions on the lives of women. For example, while abortion is seen as a modern political issue, it was not really an issue in early America. Instead, opposition to abortion seemed to follow in the wake of the development of the women's rights movement; a movement which began less than 15 years before the beginning of the Civil War. It was only in 1859 that the American Medical Association, composed solely of men, announced an opposition to abortion (the Prism). By 1960, a state already prohibited all abortions, and this trend continued well past the Civil War. By 1900, most abortions in the United States had been outlawed and by 1965 every state banned abortion, though some made exceptions to those laws. Therefore, one could argue that the conservative backlash that followed Reconstruction helped usher in greater restrictions on women's rights in regard to abortion, than had existed prior to the Civil War.

However, it was around the same time that reliable birth control first became a real possibility. Condoms became widely available around the same time as the Civil War and most states did not initially restrict their sale or use. However, just a few years after the Civil War, right of access to birth control changed dramatically. In 1873 Congress passed an anti-obscenity law that deemed birth control obscene and outlawed its dissemination (Time). This made the United States the only Western nation to criminalize contraception at that time (Time). While women (and men) continued to illegally access birth control, often using devices labeled differently for contraceptive purposes, it would be decades before birth control could be openly used within the United States. In 1916, Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in the United States, but it is shut down in 10 days (Time). It was not until 1938 that the federal ban against birth control was lifted by a federal judge (Time).

While women did not enjoy an abrupt increase in civil rights following the Civil War, it is important to realize that there was a gradual increase in attention towards civil rights and support for women's rights after the Civil War. In 1868, the National Labor Union supported equal pay for equal work, which was the first real call for women to be paid the same rate as men for the same work (the Prism). In 1870, in the Wyoming Territory, women served on juries, which was a first in the history of jurisprudence (the Prism). In 1870, Iowa admitted the first woman to a state's bar association (the Prism). However, for every victory, there was a similar defeat. While some states were opening up professions to women, others were restricting women from professions, a practice the Supreme Court affirmed in 1873 (the Prism).

However, women were seeing some positive changes in their personal lives. Divorce laws in the United States had historically favored males. However, by 1900 two-thirds of divorce cases in the United States were initiated by wives (the Prism). This marked a significant difference, as women had historically lacked the right to even bring such suits. Women might still be unable to retain custody of their children at a divorce and often faced a tremendous financial burden when divorcing, a condition that persists in modern America, but they were actually able to attain divorces.