Whose Humanity First?: Re-examining the Fractured Alliance of Suffrage and Emancipation



Introduction: The Fracturing of a Common Cause



The Antebellum Alliance: A Shared Struggle for Human Rights


In the decades preceding the Civil War, the movements for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights were not merely parallel causes; they were deeply intertwined, drawing from the same wellspring of radical thought and often propelled by the same individuals.1 This symbiotic relationship was forged in the crucible of the anti-slavery movement, which served as a critical training ground for a generation of female activists. Within abolitionist circles, women like Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony gained invaluable experience as organizers, writers, and public speakers, roles largely denied to them in other spheres of public life.3

However, this experience was a double-edged sword. While fighting for the rights of enslaved people, these women frequently confronted discrimination within their own ranks, with many male abolitionists viewing their participation in public, political action as inappropriate.2 The seminal moment of this realization occurred at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where elected female delegates, including Mott and Stanton, were barred from being seated.5 This public rebuke catalyzed their resolve to hold a women's rights convention in the United States, directly linking the struggle for racial justice to the nascent movement for gender equality. By the time of the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850, the alliance was explicit. The attendance of prominent abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sojourner Truth signaled a powerful, unified front dedicated to a broader vision of universal human rights grounded in Enlightenment ideals.1


The Civil War and the Promise of Reconstruction


The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 brought an abrupt, though temporary, halt to the organized women's rights movement. Activists channeled their formidable energies toward the Union war effort and the singular goal of abolishing slavery.5 Through organizations like the Women's Loyal National League, founded in 1863 by Stanton and Anthony, they collected hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions urging Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to end slavery.9

The Union victory and the subsequent passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, which formally abolished slavery, represented the partial fulfillment of this shared crusade.12 The post-war era ushered in a period of radical constitutional possibility known as Reconstruction. For activists in both movements, the "time had come to push for voting rights" as the nation grappled with the fundamental questions of citizenship and freedom in a reordered republic.8 This optimism culminated in the 1866 formation of the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), an organization co-founded by Stanton, Anthony, and Douglass. Its mission was unambiguous and audacious: to secure suffrage for all citizens, "regardless of gender or race".5 The AERA represented the apex of the antebellum alliance, a hopeful moment of unified purpose before its swift and bitter collapse.


The Constitutional Crisis: The 14th and 15th Amendments


The catalyst for the alliance's disintegration was the drafting and promotion of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, was intended to secure the civil rights of the formerly enslaved. However, in Section 2, which dealt with representation in Congress, it introduced the word "male" into the Constitution for the first time when referring to inhabitants of a state who have the right to vote.17 This created an explicit constitutional barrier to women's suffrage where none had existed at the federal level before. Elizabeth Cady Stanton grimly predicted the consequences of this wording: "If that word 'male' be inserted, it will take us a century at least to get it out".18

Close on its heels came the proposal for the 15th Amendment, which declared that the right to vote could not be denied "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude".12 The amendment's conspicuous omission of "sex" from its protections brought the simmering tensions within the AERA to a boil. The debate over whether to support these amendments—granting suffrage to Black men while constitutionally solidifying the exclusion of all women—"wrecked" the AERA and triggered an irreparable "schism" in the universal suffrage movement.5 The conflict was not a sudden development but rather the eruption of latent philosophical and strategic disagreements that had been papered over by the unifying cause of abolition. Once that singular goal was achieved, the question of "what next?" forced these tensions into an open and irreconcilable conflict.


Thesis Statement


The proposition that women's suffrage should have preceded Black emancipation is rooted in a legitimate grievance against political betrayal and the codification of gender discrimination into the U.S. Constitution. However, a comprehensive historical analysis reveals its political and strategic impossibility in the specific context of Reconstruction. The fierce urgency of protecting Black lives from racial terror, coupled with the political calculus of the Republican Party, created an inexorable momentum for Black male suffrage that the women's movement could not overcome. The debate itself, far from being a simple question of priority, exposed the deep-seated racial and class hierarchies embedded within the reform movements, ultimately fracturing the cause of universal rights and creating a legacy of division that would shape American civil rights struggles for generations.


The Argument for Female Primacy: Principle, Intellect, and Betrayal



The Betrayal of an Alliance


For suffrage leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the Republican Party's push for the 15th Amendment felt like a profound betrayal. They had dedicated years to the abolitionist cause, agreeing to set aside their own demands during the Civil War with the expectation that their loyalty would be repaid.11 They believed their Republican and abolitionist allies would champion universal suffrage as the logical and just outcome of the war. Instead, they were told to wait, that this was "the Negro's hour".2

This prioritization of Black men was not perceived as a strategic necessity but as a deliberate and insulting abandonment of their long-standing partnership. The frustration was palpable. Anthony and Stanton felt they were "being told to wait even longer for the rights that they had spent decades fighting for".16 This sense of injustice was captured in Anthony's fiery 1866 declaration to Frederick Douglass: "I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman".22 For them, supporting the 15th Amendment as written was to be complicit in their own political erasure.


A Principled Stand Against a "Male" Constitution


Beyond the emotional sense of betrayal, the opposition from Stanton and Anthony was grounded in a fundamental constitutional principle. The insertion of the word "male" into the 14th Amendment was a novel and alarming development; it was the first time the Constitution explicitly defined voters as male, thereby creating a formidable new federal obstacle to women's enfranchisement.17 Previously, voting qualifications had been left to the states.

To then ratify the 15th Amendment, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting but left gender discrimination untouched, would, in their view, lend legitimacy to the exclusionary language of the 14th. Stanton argued that it would establish an "aristocracy of sex," elevating all men, regardless of their background, over all women.23 Their decision to form the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869 was a direct consequence of this belief. The NWSA's primary goal was to secure a 16th Amendment that would enfranchise women and counteract what they saw as the cementing of female inferiority in the nation's founding document.5 Theirs was a stand against being constitutionally defined as a subordinate class of citizens.


The Argument from "Educated Suffrage": Elitism and Racial Hierarchy


The most controversial and damaging aspect of the Stanton-Anthony argument was its descent into elitist, racist, and nativist rhetoric. Frustrated by the refusal of their former allies to support universal suffrage, they pivoted to a new and morally compromised political strategy. They began to argue that "educated" and "refined" white women were more qualified to vote than formerly enslaved Black men and immigrant men, whom they deemed ignorant and unfit for the franchise.9

This was not merely an expression of personal prejudice but a calculated political tactic. During the 1867 Kansas referendum campaign, Stanton and Anthony "struck an alliance with openly racist leaders of the Kansas Democratic Party who opposed black enfranchisement".23 Their newspaper,

The Revolution, became a platform for these views. In one infamous editorial, Stanton asked her readers to "Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic... making laws for Lydia Maria Childs, Lucretia Mott, or Fanny Kemble".25 She argued that enfranchising such "lower orders of men" would only make the political condition of women "more hopeless and degraded".26 This rhetoric was a deliberate attempt to build a new coalition for women's suffrage by appealing to the racial and nativist anxieties of white men in power, effectively sacrificing the principle of universal rights on the altar of political expediency.8


The Argument for Black Male Enfranchisement: Pragmatism, Protection, and Political Reality



"A Question of Life and Death": The Urgency of the Ballot


In stark contrast to the principled, and at times elitist, arguments of the NWSA, the case for prioritizing Black male suffrage was rooted in the brutal realities of the post-war South. For Frederick Douglass, who had been a steadfast "woman's rights man" since attending the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, the ballot for Black men was not an abstract ideal but a necessary tool of self-preservation.15

Across the former Confederacy, newly enacted "Black Codes" were systematically stripping freedmen of their rights, while paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan were waging a campaign of terror and violence.13 In this context, the vote was a shield. It was the only means by which Black men could elect officials who would protect them, serve on juries, and use the power of the state to defend their lives and property. Douglass articulated this with chilling clarity during a heated debate at the 1869 AERA meeting: "With us, the matter is a question of life and death".24 He challenged his female colleagues, stating that "when women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans... when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads... then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own".8 This was not a dismissal of women's suffering but a stark assessment of the different levels of immediate, existential threat.


The Political Calculus of the Republican Party


The Republican Party's position was dictated by a similar pragmatism. To secure their political power and enforce the policies of Reconstruction against a resurgent and hostile Democratic Party in the South, they needed a loyal voting bloc. The millions of newly freed Black men were that bloc.2 Enfranchising them was essential to the entire Reconstruction project.

Conversely, women's suffrage was seen as a political liability. State-level referenda on the issue had been consistently defeated, indicating widespread public opposition.8 Republican leaders, and even supporters like Douglass, believed that tying the deeply unpopular cause of women's suffrage to the already contentious issue of Black male suffrage would ensure the failure of both. Douglass feared that linking the two "would doom both causes".15 The political window of opportunity for any federal expansion of the franchise was perceived as narrow and fleeting. In the cold calculus of politics, Republicans were unwilling to risk the entire platform of Reconstruction for a measure that lacked the necessary political support.


An Incremental Victory, Not a Final Goal


This pragmatic position was formalized by the creation of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in 1869, founded by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe.5 Unlike the NWSA, the AWSA chose to support the 15th Amendment, viewing it as a necessary, if imperfect, incremental victory. Theirs was a philosophy of sequencing, a belief that it was "the Negro's hour" and that securing the vote for Black men was the most urgent and achievable goal of the moment.2

The AWSA's approach was fundamentally one of political realism. They opted to pursue women's suffrage through a more patient, state-by-state strategy rather than the NWSA's all-or-nothing demand for a federal amendment.19 Frederick Douglass's alignment with the AWSA is telling; his support for the 15th Amendment was not a betrayal of his commitment to women's rights, a cause for which he continued to agitate for the rest of his life.15 For this faction of the movement, the debate was not over the ultimate goal of universal suffrage, but over the strategic, politically viable path to get there. It was a painful concession to the reality that in the hostile political environment of Reconstruction, securing one victory was preferable to guaranteeing two defeats.


The View from the Intersection: The Unique Struggle of Black Women



The "Two-Fold" Struggle: Race and Gender


The schism between the NWSA and the AWSA created a political no-man's-land for Black women, who found themselves marginalized by both factions. Their unique position, facing oppression on the basis of both their race and their gender, was largely unaddressed by the white leadership of the fractured movement.30 They endured the explicit racism of Stanton and Anthony, who positioned educated white women as superior to Black men, and the implicit sexism of a constitutional amendment that would enfranchise their fathers, husbands, and sons, but not them.

This dual burden was eloquently articulated by Black women activists of the era. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a writer and suffragist, supported the 15th Amendment but acknowledged the distinct plight of her community, stating, "much as white women need the ballot, colored women need it more".30 Sojourner Truth, in her characteristically direct manner, highlighted the hypocrisy of the debate, arguing that "There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women".8 As educator and activist Mary B. Talbert would later write, the struggle for Black women was "two-fold, first, because we are women and second, because we are colored women".30 They were caught between a white women's movement that was often hostile to their race and a Black men's movement that was largely indifferent to their sex.


Critiquing the False Dichotomy


Because of their lived experience of intersecting oppressions, Black women activists fundamentally rejected the "either/or" framing of the debate. The question of "whose humanity should be recognized first?" was, from their perspective, an absurdity.16 They understood that their race and gender were inseparable components of their identity and their oppression. Their political focus was therefore not on a single issue but on a broader vision of "human rights and universal suffrage".31

This more holistic perspective exposed the conceptual limitations of the arguments on both sides of the white-led debate. When Frederick Douglass argued that Black women suffered primarily because they were Black, not because they were women, he was reportedly challenged by a Black woman in the audience who pointed out that they were also victims of gendered violence and sexual assault, injustices that enfranchising Black men alone would not solve.25 This exchange reveals a failure, even among the most progressive allies, to fully grasp the concept of intersectionality. The core of the schism, then, can be seen as a failure of imagination by the white leadership of both factions, neither of which was able to fully conceive of or politically center an identity that was simultaneously Black and female.


Building Their Own Movement


In response to this systemic marginalization, Black women did not remain passive victims of the movement's infighting. Instead, they became active agents in their own liberation, building their own institutions to fight for their rights. They organized at local churches, attended political conventions, and formed their own suffrage associations.31

The most significant of these was the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), founded in 1896. With its motto, "Lifting as we climb," the NACW embodied a strategy of racial uplift that centered the empowerment of Black women as essential to the progress of the entire race.31 Later, in 1913, the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, the nation's first Black women's club focused specifically on suffrage.31 These organizations demonstrate that Black women forged their own path, one that recognized the indivisibility of their rights as both women and African Americans. It was a struggle that would continue long after the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which did little to enfranchise Black women in the Jim Crow South, and would only find its culmination in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.30


The Anatomy of Opposition: A Comparative Analysis of Anti-Franchise Rhetoric



The Common Enemy: Arguments Against Any Expansion of Suffrage


To fully grasp the strategic dilemmas faced by the fractured suffrage movement, it is essential to analyze the powerful and coherent ideological opposition they faced. The arguments deployed against granting the vote to women and to Black men were not distinct; rather, they were drawn from the same philosophical well, defending a specific vision of the American republic against what was perceived as a radical and dangerous democratization. Both movements were fighting the same ideological enemy, one that viewed any expansion of the franchise beyond propertied white men as a fundamental threat to the natural social order.


A Typology of Anti-Franchise Arguments


The rhetoric of the anti-franchise movement rested on several key pillars, which were applied with remarkable consistency to both women and African Americans. These arguments reveal a worldview rooted in hierarchy, paternalism, and a deep-seated fear of social change.

Table 5.1: A Comparative Typology of Anti-Franchise Arguments in the Reconstruction Era


Argument Type

As Applied to Women's Suffrage

As Applied to Black Male Suffrage

Natural Law / Separate Spheres

"The duties and life of men and women are divinely ordered to be different".33 Women belong in the domestic sphere; politics would corrupt them and destroy the family.34

Argued that a "natural" racial hierarchy existed, making Black men unsuited for the responsibilities of governance. White supremacy was presented as the "natural social order."

Incapacity Argument

Women are too emotional, irrational, and lack the mental capacity for politics.36 Their brains evolve "emotion rather than intellect".38

Black men were deemed ignorant, uneducated, and incapable of understanding the political system. Stanton's own rhetoric echoed this argument.25

Social Disruption / Slippery Slope

Granting women the vote would lead to competition with men, increased divorce, the end of the family, and the "human race would die out".34

Enfranchising Black men would lead to "Negro domination," social chaos, the overthrow of white rule, and endanger white women.

Virtual Representation

"The household, not the individual, is the unit of the State, and the vast majority of women are represented by household suffrage" via their husbands and fathers.33

The paternalistic view that benevolent white landowners or former masters represented the best interests of freedmen.

No "Natural Right" to Vote

Suffrage is a privilege, not a right. Anti-suffragists compared women to "idiots, lunatics, and adult boys" who did not vote to prove it wasn't a natural right.40

The Dred Scott decision had already established that Black people had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," denying a foundation of natural rights.12

This comparative analysis demonstrates that the opposition was not a collection of disparate prejudices but a unified defense of the existing power structure. The core philosophy of the anti-suffrage movement was a rejection of the Enlightenment ideal of individual citizenship. They argued for a model of republican government based not on the individual, but on the patriarchal family as the core political unit.40 In this worldview, the male head of household cast a vote that represented the interests of his entire family. Granting the vote to women or Black men was therefore seen as a radical doctrine that would introduce "discord" into the family and the state, supplanting a "natural" hierarchy with an unnatural and chaotic individualism.40


Logical Fallacies and Cognitive Biases


This worldview was defended with a battery of logical fallacies. Opponents frequently resorted to ad hominem attacks, dismissing suffragists as "mannish female politicians" whose "bold, obtrusive" conduct cheapened their sex.33 They employed slippery slope arguments, claiming that women voting would inevitably lead to the collapse of marriage and the end of the human race.36 They presented a false dilemma, forcing a choice between domestic duty and political participation, as if the two were mutually exclusive.39 And they constructed straw man arguments, misrepresenting the demand for political equality as a desire for women to become men, thus ignoring the core argument for representation.33 This combination of a coherent, albeit hierarchical, political philosophy and fallacious rhetoric created a formidable barrier to any and all efforts to expand the franchise.


Conclusion: Re-evaluating a Historical Counterfactual



Synthesizing the Arguments: Why Women's Suffrage First Was Politically Untenable


The proposition that women's suffrage should have preceded Black male enfranchisement, while born of a valid sense of betrayal, is ultimately a historical counterfactual that was politically untenable in the Reconstruction era. The argument for female primacy, articulated by the NWSA, was based on principles of constitutional integrity and a long history of activism. However, it fatally underestimated the political forces arrayed against it and tragically resorted to racist and elitist arguments that undermined its moral authority.

In contrast, the argument for prioritizing Black male suffrage was grounded in two inescapable realities. First was the "life and death" urgency of providing Black men in the South with a means of political self-defense against systemic violence and oppression. Second was the strategic imperative of the Republican Party, which required the votes of freedmen to maintain its power and carry out the project of Reconstruction. Given the widespread public opposition to women's suffrage, any attempt to link it to the 15th Amendment would have almost certainly doomed both causes. The political momentum, driven by the immediate consequences of the Civil War, was exclusively behind enfranchising Black men. The AWSA's pragmatic decision to support this as an incremental step reflects a clear-eyed assessment of this political reality.


The Cost of Schism


The schism that resulted from this debate had profound and lasting consequences. The decision to pit the rights of one oppressed group against another, and the NWSA's deployment of racist rhetoric, shattered the powerful antebellum alliance between abolitionists and feminists. This created a legacy of distrust and division that would haunt civil rights movements for decades. The split alienated Black women, who were forced to create their own organizations to fight a two-front war against both racism and sexism. It arguably weakened both movements, forcing them to fight separate battles against a common ideological opponent who sought to deny rights to all but a privileged few. The conflict set a damaging precedent for single-issue activism, one that consistently failed to account for the intersectional realities of oppression.


Final Reflection: The Unanswered Question of Universal Rights


Ultimately, the debate over the 15th Amendment represents a tragic failure to answer one of the most fundamental questions in a democracy: how can universal rights be achieved in a society structured by multiple, overlapping systems of hierarchy and oppression? The collapse of the American Equal Rights Association was the collapse of the ideal of a unified front for human liberation. The proposition that women should have come first is a product of this failure—a counterfactual born from a moment when the grand, inclusive vision of "suffrage for all" was sacrificed for what was deemed politically possible. This sacrifice left a fractured legacy, a series of sequential and often competing struggles for rights that continues to shape and complicate the pursuit of a more perfect and equitable union.

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