Suffrage reconstructed : gender, race, and voting rights in the Civil War era / Laura E. Free.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Free, Laura E., 1971- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Suffrage--United States--History--19th century.

Women.

African Americans--Suffrage--History--19th century.

African Americans.

Suffrage--United States--History--19th century.

Suffrage.

Women's rights--United States--History--19th century.

Women's rights.

United States--Politics and government--19th century.

United States.

United States. Constitution--14th Amendment.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (246 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, New York ; London, [England] : Cornell University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, identified all legitimate voters as "male." In so doing, it added gender-specific language to the U.S. Constitution for the first time. Suffrage Reconstructed is the first book to consider how and why the amendment's authors made this decision. Vividly detailing congressional floor bickering and activist campaigning, Laura E. Free takes readers into the pre- and postwar fights over precisely who should have the right to vote. Free demonstrates that all men, black and white, were the ultimate victors of these fights, as gender became the single most important marker of voting rights during Reconstruction. Free argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's language was shaped by three key groups: African American activists who used ideas about manhood to claim black men's right to the ballot, postwar congressmen who sought to justify enfranchising southern black men, and women's rights advocates who began to petition Congress for the ballot for the first time as the Amendment was being drafted. To prevent women's inadvertent enfranchisement, and to incorporate formerly disfranchised black men into the voting polity, the Fourteenth Amendment's congressional authors turned to gender to define the new American voter. Faced with this exclusion some woman suffragists, most notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton, turned to rhetorical racism in order to mount a campaign against sex as a determinant of one's capacity to vote. Stanton's actions caused a rift with Frederick Douglass and a schism in the fledgling woman suffrage movement. By integrating gender analysis and political history, Suffrage Reconstructed offers a new interpretation of the Civil War-era remaking of American democracy, placing African American activists and women's rights advocates at the heart of nineteenth-century American conversations about public policy, civil rights, and the franchise.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction: We, the People

1. The White Man's Government

2. Manhood and Citizenship

3. The Family Politic

4. The Rights of Men

5. That Word "Male"

6. White Women's Rights

Conclusion: By Reason of Race

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781501701085

1501701088

9781501701092

1501701096

OCLC:

1080551700