Jacksonian Women: Equality, Liberty, and Legal Rights

Introduction: Women's Legal Standing in the Jacksonian Era

American women living during the Jacksonian period had a number of very specific complaints about their lives, most of which were rooted in their legal standing — or lack thereof. Even women whose complaints did not appear to be directly based on legal status held concerns that were, in essence, derived from their position as secondary citizens. As a result, the grievances of Jacksonian-era women were fundamentally focused on gaining a greater measure of equality.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton on Suffrage and Political Representation

In her address before the New York legislature, Elizabeth Cady Stanton focused on socio-political rights, foremost among them the right to vote. Her arguments regarding suffrage addressed the principle of taxation without representation. She pointed out that women had a limited right to own property and contributed in meaningful ways to society, yet were still not permitted to vote. She then contrasted the plight of women against that of idiots, lunatics, and free Negroes. Furthermore, she contrasted the position of American women with the role of women under the English monarchy, noting that in England women could hold office, which afforded them a substantial level of political representation entirely absent in America.

Cady Stanton's focus on legal rights extended beyond the right to vote. She pointed out that women were not permitted to sit on juries, and, given that men were afforded a higher political status than women, this fact denied women a jury of their peers.

While many women may not have been personally concerned with gaining the franchise, rights in the personal sphere are largely dictated by rights in the socio-political sphere. Cady Stanton made this point clear by outlining her reasons that women should be entitled to a jury of their peers: "Having seen that man fails to do justice to woman in her best estate, to the virtuous, the noble, the true of our sex, should we trust to his tender mercies, the weak, the ignorant, the morally insane?" (Cady Stanton). Essentially, Cady Stanton anticipated the argument later advanced by separatist feminists — that the differences between male and female were so immense, and the power divide so integral to society, that even the most judicious of men could not simply pretend those differences did not exist.

Likewise, her belief that women were entitled to vote was grounded in the fact that, without being accountable to women voters, representatives had no incentive to represent women's interests: "The nobleman cannot make just laws for the peasant; the slaveholder for the slave; neither can man make and execute just laws for woman; because in each case, the one in power fails to apply the immutable principles of right to any grade but his own." (Cady Stanton).

Private Sphere: Marriage, Property, and Motherhood

Cady Stanton's most significant arguments regarding the legal status of women did not, in fact, revolve around women's role in the public sphere, but around their role in the private sphere. She had a profound objection to the legal position of women as wives. Once a Jacksonian woman wed, she lost her individual identity: married women could not own property, testify against their husbands, sue in their own names, or even be held accountable for crimes committed in their husbands' presence (Cady Stanton). Most significantly, women had no legal rights regarding their children, despite bearing primary responsibility for rearing and raising them.

Conclusion: A Common Demand for Liberty

The most striking aspect of Truth's statements is that they do not differ substantially from the complaints raised by Cady Stanton. At the heart of both women's speeches was the fact that women were deprived of their liberty. That deprivation was, of course, far more overt in Truth's case: as a slave, she had been the literal legal property of a man, and the image of her children being sold away from her laid bare the extremity of that condition.

Yet Truth's statements made clear that, as a woman, she was not seeking to be elevated onto a pedestal by white men, nor was she asking them to recognize her as an equal in some abstract sense. On the contrary, she was asking only that they recognize her right, as a human being, to govern herself. In this, her demand converged entirely with those of Cady Stanton and, in practical terms, with the daily struggles of women like Mary Paul. Across differences of race, class, and rhetorical register, the women of the Jacksonian era spoke with one voice on a single fundamental principle: the right to liberty and self-determination.