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Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869
In the two decades since Feminism and Suffrage was first published, the increased presence of women in politics and the gender gap in voting patterns have focused renewed attention on an issue generally perceived as nineteenth-century. For this new edition, Ellen Carol DuBois addresses the changing context for the history of woman suffrage at the millennium.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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About the author
Ellen Carol DuBois
93 books16 followersEllen Carol Dubois is a distinguished professor of history and gender studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her bachelor's degree at Wellesley in 1968 and her Ph.D. from Northwestern in 1975.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 20, 2021
During the antebellum era, women were prominent participants in the abolition movement that transformed America. For many of them, their activism underscored their own inferior status in America society, which they were increasingly determined to address. From this emerged the first movement in America dedicated to gaining equal rights for women, one that would ultimately focus on winning the right for women to vote. Ellen Carol DuBois’s book is about the birth of this movement in the middle decades of the 19th century. In it she chronicles the growing dedication of women activists to the cause, the different measures they pursued, and how these early results culminated in the founding of not just one but two national organizations committed to the cause of women’s suffrage.
To chart the course of this evolution, DuBois begins by detailing the growing discontent of women with their lack of rights in the years leading up to the Civil War. As she explains, the activism of many women in the antebellum reform movements of the era called into question the idea that women had a domestic “sphere” to which they should limit their activities. Often, public issues intruded upon the home, and many women perceived the need for public engagement in order to address them. For others, moral outrage over injustices such as slavery motivated women to participate in efforts to restrict or end slavery. Yet the limitations imposed by their domestic responsibilities and their lack of political power soon highlighted for many of them the need to expand their focus to demand their own equality as well.
While these demands were met sympathetically by many within the abolitionist movement, for the most part they remained subordinated to their original cause of ending slavery. The closer they got to that goal, however, the more the issue of women’s suffrage emerged as a source of division. The split took place in the aftermath of the Civil War, as anti-slavery leaders sought to crown their success with the enfranchisement of Blacks. Any hopes that women had that their own enfranchisement would be coupled with this, however, were dashed by the desire of proponents of Black suffrage to minimize any possible objections to their efforts.
This caused a split among the ranks of women activists. While some of them reluctantly conceded the postponement of women’s suffrage and remained committed to the Republican Party’s reform efforts, others – most notably Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton – explored other options for winning the vote. This included an ill-judged association in a Kansas state referenda campaign with Democrats eager to exploit the issue as a means of blunting Republican enfranchisement efforts, as well as efforts to forge an alliance with labor organizations before settling on what would prove to be the most enduring solution. This was the creation in 1869 of an independent organization, the National Women’s Suffrage Association, that would be controlled by women and campaign for women’s right to vote to the exclusion of any other goal.
The establishment of the NWSA began a new phase in the campaign for women’s suffrage, one that would culminate in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment over a half-century later. While the story of this larger effort lies outside of the scope of DuBois’s book, what she provides is a wonderfully lucid account of what led women to establish what was the first national feminist organization. To do so she delves into the details of local campaigns and organizational infighting, explaining the decisions they made and how their consequences ultimately led women to take what was an enormously radical and uncertain step. It’s a story that should be read by anyone interested in learning how women took charge of their fight for the vote, as well as the broader history of feminism and the political struggle for rights in mid-19th century America.
To chart the course of this evolution, DuBois begins by detailing the growing discontent of women with their lack of rights in the years leading up to the Civil War. As she explains, the activism of many women in the antebellum reform movements of the era called into question the idea that women had a domestic “sphere” to which they should limit their activities. Often, public issues intruded upon the home, and many women perceived the need for public engagement in order to address them. For others, moral outrage over injustices such as slavery motivated women to participate in efforts to restrict or end slavery. Yet the limitations imposed by their domestic responsibilities and their lack of political power soon highlighted for many of them the need to expand their focus to demand their own equality as well.
While these demands were met sympathetically by many within the abolitionist movement, for the most part they remained subordinated to their original cause of ending slavery. The closer they got to that goal, however, the more the issue of women’s suffrage emerged as a source of division. The split took place in the aftermath of the Civil War, as anti-slavery leaders sought to crown their success with the enfranchisement of Blacks. Any hopes that women had that their own enfranchisement would be coupled with this, however, were dashed by the desire of proponents of Black suffrage to minimize any possible objections to their efforts.
This caused a split among the ranks of women activists. While some of them reluctantly conceded the postponement of women’s suffrage and remained committed to the Republican Party’s reform efforts, others – most notably Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton – explored other options for winning the vote. This included an ill-judged association in a Kansas state referenda campaign with Democrats eager to exploit the issue as a means of blunting Republican enfranchisement efforts, as well as efforts to forge an alliance with labor organizations before settling on what would prove to be the most enduring solution. This was the creation in 1869 of an independent organization, the National Women’s Suffrage Association, that would be controlled by women and campaign for women’s right to vote to the exclusion of any other goal.
The establishment of the NWSA began a new phase in the campaign for women’s suffrage, one that would culminate in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment over a half-century later. While the story of this larger effort lies outside of the scope of DuBois’s book, what she provides is a wonderfully lucid account of what led women to establish what was the first national feminist organization. To do so she delves into the details of local campaigns and organizational infighting, explaining the decisions they made and how their consequences ultimately led women to take what was an enormously radical and uncertain step. It’s a story that should be read by anyone interested in learning how women took charge of their fight for the vote, as well as the broader history of feminism and the political struggle for rights in mid-19th century America.
January 3, 2017
Short version: If you have any interest in the origins of the feminist movement, this is the most concise survey of it's early development. Heavy on the insights of Susan B. Anthony and early reform leaders.
Long version:
Upon its publication in 1978, Dubois’s first book proved less apt to solve a historical problem then to fill a historiographical hole in the study of the origins of American feminism. Her task to “uncover the process by which women’s discontent crystallized into the political demand for women’s emancipation” provided a useful chronology of the formation of an independent women’s movement in the late 19th century. More importantly, Dubois’ book entered uncharted territory in challenging the existing historiography of the time by not viewing the early suffragist organizations in terms of “isolated institutional reform” but instead as part of larger, multifaceted, and feminist social movement.
Dubois begins with the antebellum emergence of women’s rights, and how women’s rising discontent with their relegation to a separate and enclosed sphere began to take shape. Dubois’ insight goes further to note the key role of antislavery politics in providing an “organized constituency” and political platform for the growth of both women’s participation in the public sphere and the formulation of their suffragist aims. However, the Reconstruction Era was to fragment this unified agenda embodied in the Equal Rights Association. Dubois provocatively chronicles the postbellum politics and the rise of abolitionists to political power as central to the rift that developed between black and women suffrage. Dubois specifically cites the “wedge” created between those who favored black suffrage as a primary goal, versus a more generalized sense of suffrage including women. The tension ultimately destroyed the union of the ERA, and fragmented the suffragist movement into partisan organizations.
In this fissure erupted the radical encampments of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Dubois continues to chronicle how post-war feminism under the helm of these key radicalists led to racism and elitism, which undermined their egalitarian platform. The feminist engagement with labor politics, and their criticisms of the 15th amendment further exemplified not only Anthony’s tendency towards racism, but also colored their “middle class approach to working women’s problems”. Yet Dubois thoughtfully concludes that despite these initial handicaps, in breaking from their subservient role in other reform politics of the time, the movement ultimately became independent and capable of the mass organization that characterized later decades.
My sole criticism arises from Dubois’s concentration on primary source documentation, thus localizing the movement to handfuls of key actors. Focusing heavily on the diaries and letters of Anthony, Stanton, and other crucial feminist and reform leaders, her attempt to chronicle the “social movement” of feminism fell short. Key to the viability of these socio-political organizations was large-scale support, yet the reader is left unsure of the impact these organizations had on the larger American socio-political sphere. Dubois provides us with ample insight into both the organizational debacles and early ideological and political shifts that characterized the early feminist movement, without much statistical or even historiographical documentation of its impact on the average woman of the time. However, despite this critique, Dubois lays compelling groundwork for future analysis of the early women’s rights movement, while providing the reader with a concise and chronological account of its early crystallization. In citing the multifaceted demands of radical female reformers of the time despite their inherent flaws, Dubois is successful in characterizing suffragists less as one-issue reformers, and instead as feminists who sought to “advance the interests of women as a sex”.
Long version:
Upon its publication in 1978, Dubois’s first book proved less apt to solve a historical problem then to fill a historiographical hole in the study of the origins of American feminism. Her task to “uncover the process by which women’s discontent crystallized into the political demand for women’s emancipation” provided a useful chronology of the formation of an independent women’s movement in the late 19th century. More importantly, Dubois’ book entered uncharted territory in challenging the existing historiography of the time by not viewing the early suffragist organizations in terms of “isolated institutional reform” but instead as part of larger, multifaceted, and feminist social movement.
Dubois begins with the antebellum emergence of women’s rights, and how women’s rising discontent with their relegation to a separate and enclosed sphere began to take shape. Dubois’ insight goes further to note the key role of antislavery politics in providing an “organized constituency” and political platform for the growth of both women’s participation in the public sphere and the formulation of their suffragist aims. However, the Reconstruction Era was to fragment this unified agenda embodied in the Equal Rights Association. Dubois provocatively chronicles the postbellum politics and the rise of abolitionists to political power as central to the rift that developed between black and women suffrage. Dubois specifically cites the “wedge” created between those who favored black suffrage as a primary goal, versus a more generalized sense of suffrage including women. The tension ultimately destroyed the union of the ERA, and fragmented the suffragist movement into partisan organizations.
In this fissure erupted the radical encampments of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Dubois continues to chronicle how post-war feminism under the helm of these key radicalists led to racism and elitism, which undermined their egalitarian platform. The feminist engagement with labor politics, and their criticisms of the 15th amendment further exemplified not only Anthony’s tendency towards racism, but also colored their “middle class approach to working women’s problems”. Yet Dubois thoughtfully concludes that despite these initial handicaps, in breaking from their subservient role in other reform politics of the time, the movement ultimately became independent and capable of the mass organization that characterized later decades.
My sole criticism arises from Dubois’s concentration on primary source documentation, thus localizing the movement to handfuls of key actors. Focusing heavily on the diaries and letters of Anthony, Stanton, and other crucial feminist and reform leaders, her attempt to chronicle the “social movement” of feminism fell short. Key to the viability of these socio-political organizations was large-scale support, yet the reader is left unsure of the impact these organizations had on the larger American socio-political sphere. Dubois provides us with ample insight into both the organizational debacles and early ideological and political shifts that characterized the early feminist movement, without much statistical or even historiographical documentation of its impact on the average woman of the time. However, despite this critique, Dubois lays compelling groundwork for future analysis of the early women’s rights movement, while providing the reader with a concise and chronological account of its early crystallization. In citing the multifaceted demands of radical female reformers of the time despite their inherent flaws, Dubois is successful in characterizing suffragists less as one-issue reformers, and instead as feminists who sought to “advance the interests of women as a sex”.
June 22, 2020
In Feminism & Suffrage, Dubois focuses on what she deems the radical feminists of the era and how they shaped the women's movement in the United States during a time when feminism was a transnational story. She argues that up “until the development of women's rights and woman suffrage politics, the major approach to improving women's status came from domestic reformers, such as Catherine Beecher” because the place of women was within the domestic sphere, while men lived within the public sphere. (16) By focusing on how “women's discontent crystallized in the political demand for women's emancipation”, Dubois work shows us that women during this era “laid the groundwork for a feminist movement by articulating a set of demand for women's rights and by acquiring the skills and self-confidence necessary to offer political leadership for other women.” (19)
This work is essential in the study of women in American history because it covers the early years of first-wave feminism, beginning just after the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and stopping at the creation of the National Woman Suffrage Association and American Women Suffrage Association. This book is important to the study of history in general because woman suffrage is one of the three great reforms in American history, next to labour movements and black liberation, and all three movements are interconnected. “Women in the Garrisonian abolitionist movement not only absorbed its anticlericalism, but also drew on its principle of the absolute moral equality of all human beings.” (35) Once blacks suffrage became the central issue of Reconstruction politics, the women's rights movement began to call themselves the women's suffrage movement to align themselves closer to that movement, hoping to capitalise off its success, (54) until the Kansas campaign of 1867 saw the Equal Rights Association split and feminist abandoned it. (78) It was just after this that they began to establish connections with the National Labor Union, declaring in an April 1868 issue of Revolution, “The Principles of the National Labor Union are our principles. We see on the surface of this great movement the dawn of brighter days,” (110) when they realised the NLU was willing to create their own political framework and establish a third party. Though history shows they never gained mutual support from the NLU, and the Working Women's Association lasted just a year, the connections it created were essential to the women's suffrage movement's progression and eventual success, as the WWA was the first time suffragist focused on oraganisation rather than agitation and this led to an independent women's movement. This book clearly portrays these events and their effects. After reading this book I can easily recognise its value to women's history, particularly in the fact that she was able to discuss Stanton and Anthony blatant racism without whitewashing history, I just wish there was a bit more about the Seneca Fall Convention and the politics of that.
This work is essential in the study of women in American history because it covers the early years of first-wave feminism, beginning just after the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and stopping at the creation of the National Woman Suffrage Association and American Women Suffrage Association. This book is important to the study of history in general because woman suffrage is one of the three great reforms in American history, next to labour movements and black liberation, and all three movements are interconnected. “Women in the Garrisonian abolitionist movement not only absorbed its anticlericalism, but also drew on its principle of the absolute moral equality of all human beings.” (35) Once blacks suffrage became the central issue of Reconstruction politics, the women's rights movement began to call themselves the women's suffrage movement to align themselves closer to that movement, hoping to capitalise off its success, (54) until the Kansas campaign of 1867 saw the Equal Rights Association split and feminist abandoned it. (78) It was just after this that they began to establish connections with the National Labor Union, declaring in an April 1868 issue of Revolution, “The Principles of the National Labor Union are our principles. We see on the surface of this great movement the dawn of brighter days,” (110) when they realised the NLU was willing to create their own political framework and establish a third party. Though history shows they never gained mutual support from the NLU, and the Working Women's Association lasted just a year, the connections it created were essential to the women's suffrage movement's progression and eventual success, as the WWA was the first time suffragist focused on oraganisation rather than agitation and this led to an independent women's movement. This book clearly portrays these events and their effects. After reading this book I can easily recognise its value to women's history, particularly in the fact that she was able to discuss Stanton and Anthony blatant racism without whitewashing history, I just wish there was a bit more about the Seneca Fall Convention and the politics of that.
March 11, 2009
What I wrote for class:
Ellen DuBois illustrates the early development of the feminist movement. As she shows, feminist women had clear and well-articulated grievances regarding their unequal status before the law and their abuse by men. The abolitionist movement provided an ideology – Garrisonianism – and a sympathetic structure and constituency for feminist women to carry out agitation on behalf of women’s rights. While states responded more favorably to women’s economic and property concerns, the notion of women entering the political sphere via the franchise was unpalatable. Feminists’ efforts were further hindered by the split between those who favored prioritizing black men’s suffrage before women’s suffrage and those who urged an all-or-nothing approach to universal suffrage.
As the universal suffragists lost the support of the abolitionists, they attempted to find it elsewhere, first from the Democrats, who did not find it politically expedient, and then from labor. The middle-class feminists did not share the class consciousness of the working-class women they tried to organize, and their alliance was short lived. Finally, in creating the National Woman Suffrage Association with fellow members of the middle-class, Stanton and Anthony produced the first independent national feminist organization. What DuBois touches on briefly is that the move from Garrisonian agitation to organizing a movement had a radicalizing influence on the feminism of Anthony and Stanton, “especially with respect to sexual and economic issues.”
Ellen DuBois illustrates the early development of the feminist movement. As she shows, feminist women had clear and well-articulated grievances regarding their unequal status before the law and their abuse by men. The abolitionist movement provided an ideology – Garrisonianism – and a sympathetic structure and constituency for feminist women to carry out agitation on behalf of women’s rights. While states responded more favorably to women’s economic and property concerns, the notion of women entering the political sphere via the franchise was unpalatable. Feminists’ efforts were further hindered by the split between those who favored prioritizing black men’s suffrage before women’s suffrage and those who urged an all-or-nothing approach to universal suffrage.
As the universal suffragists lost the support of the abolitionists, they attempted to find it elsewhere, first from the Democrats, who did not find it politically expedient, and then from labor. The middle-class feminists did not share the class consciousness of the working-class women they tried to organize, and their alliance was short lived. Finally, in creating the National Woman Suffrage Association with fellow members of the middle-class, Stanton and Anthony produced the first independent national feminist organization. What DuBois touches on briefly is that the move from Garrisonian agitation to organizing a movement had a radicalizing influence on the feminism of Anthony and Stanton, “especially with respect to sexual and economic issues.”
November 23, 2024
I really enjoyed this! I haven’t been able to read much at all for several weeks, as I’ve been so busy with school, but I finally had some free time after finishing most of my homework for the week, and instead of settling down with phone in hand, I decided to pick up a book. Why not? I used to read a lot, I thought to myself. And soon enough I had sped through the book! So quickly I’d forgotten how refreshing reading is, in comparison to watching mind numbing videos on a computer screen. This book specifically had a lot of fascinating information that built on what I knew before. I actually know comparatively little about the American suffragists in contrast to the English suffragettes, who I’ve researched a lot about, but reading this short, but well-researched and well-laid-out book gave me some interesting insights. It had a very good analysis of the influence of abolitionism, the civil war, and black civil rights had on American suffragists. Also, its explanation of some of the racism Stanton and Anthony displayed was interesting and even-handed. I would heartily recommend this.
August 24, 2009
I haven't read this whole book, but am citing it in an entry for the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Motherhood essay I am writing. The few bits of this book I have read have been eye-opening and brilliant. I hope to figure out a way to incorporate this into my future (not-yet-scheduled) PhD on feminist organizations. It has also been cited in other books I'm reading for the essay. A wonderful examination of the racism that divided the suffrage movement and why two veteran abolitionists (E.Cady Stanton & S.B. Anthony) would resort to racism to win women's suffrage.
April 19, 2008
DuBois argues that the female suffrage movement was the first independent feminist movement. She contends that the split in the movement in 1869 allowed women to focus on their own liberation (as opposed to working for the liberation of others) for the first time.
December 8, 2011
Fairly pedantic and bland, despite its subject matter--Du Bois has no sense of the drama which links language to the conveyance of story and facts.
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