No Votes for Women explores the complicated history of the suffrage movement in New York State by delving into the stories of women who opposed the expansion of voting rights to women. Susan Goodier finds that conservative women who fought against suffrage encouraged women to retain their distinctive feminine identities as protectors of their homes and families, a role they felt was threatened by the imposition of masculine political responsibilities. She details the victories and defeats on both sides of the movement from its start in the 1890s to its end in the 1930s, acknowledging the powerful activism of this often overlooked and misunderstood political force in the history of women's equality.
No Votes for Women explores the complicated history of the suffrage movement in New York State by delving into the stories of women who opposed the expansion of voting rights to women. Susan Goodier finds that conservative women who fought against suffrage encouraged women to retain their distinctive feminine identities as protectors of their homes and families, a role they felt was threatened by the imposition of masculine political responsibilities. She details the victories and defeats on both sides of the movement from its start in the 1890s to its end in the 1930s, acknowledging the powerful activism of this often overlooked and misunderstood political force in the history of women's equality.
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Overview
No Votes for Women explores the complicated history of the suffrage movement in New York State by delving into the stories of women who opposed the expansion of voting rights to women. Susan Goodier finds that conservative women who fought against suffrage encouraged women to retain their distinctive feminine identities as protectors of their homes and families, a role they felt was threatened by the imposition of masculine political responsibilities. She details the victories and defeats on both sides of the movement from its start in the 1890s to its end in the 1930s, acknowledging the powerful activism of this often overlooked and misunderstood political force in the history of women's equality.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252094675 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 03/15/2012 |
| Series: | Women, Gender, and Sexuality in American History |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Susan Goodier is a lecturer in history at SUNY Oneonta, an editor for the journal New York History, and a public scholar for Humanities New York.
Read an Excerpt
No Votes for Women
The New York State Anti-Suffrage MovementBy SUSAN GOODIER
University Of Illinois Press
Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-09467-5
Chapter One
Anti-Suffragists at the 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention
The New York World called it an "insurrection." In anticipation of the New York constitutional convention to be held in the summer of 1894, women all over the state responded to the call for the enfranchisement of women. For months, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt, Dr. Mary Walker, Anna Howard Shaw, Lillie Devereux Blake, Mariana W. Chapman, Harriet May Mills, and other prominent state and national suffrage leaders toured the state, urging support for their cause in parlors and public places. During an address given in Albany, someone asked Anthony if the women of New York actually desired the vote. She answered rather equivocally, "They do not oppose it." It was the truth as far as she knew. Certainly, no organization of women existed in the state to counter suffragist claims. Ida Husted Harper, Anthony's friend and biographer as well as one of the editors of the History of Woman Suffrage, admitted that suffragists had long struggled with the complete indifference of many of the women they were working so hard to enfranchise.
To suffragists' great surprise, then, committees of women suddenly "aroused all along the line" to publicly resist their enfranchisement. Until this time, it had been mostly men who had openly articulated opposition to woman suffrage, usually relying on the Bible for supportive evidence. As the convention date neared, New York State women opposed to enfranchisement realized that by remaining silent, they were in effect supporting woman suffrage. If they did not resist, it seemed that there was a real chance that the legislature of New York would "impose" the ballot upon them. To many of the women who had been silent up to that point, it was time to formally express their opposition. Like-minded women organized committees in Brooklyn, New York City, Albany, Utica, and elsewhere in the state to prevent members of the convention from changing the wording of the state constitution. Susan B. Anthony, like many other female suffragists, found it inconceivable that so many women were resistant to their enfranchisement, and she blamed husbands for influencing their wives to oppose the vote. Whether motivated by pressure from family members or for other reasons, the organized female anti-suffragists of New York would become the most challenging of the opponents the suffragists faced in their long campaign.
The convention had drawn attention from as early as 1887, when voters approved the need to revise the state constitution. Democrats prevented the election of delegates until 1893 in the hopes that their party would be in the majority, but of the 168 total delegates, only sixty-five were Democrats. At issue was the elimination of the word "male" from Article II, Section I of the state constitution. Governors David Hill in 1887 and Roswell Flower in 1892 agreed that women could be represented at the convention. Not surprisingly, however, no women were nominated. No one seriously considered nominating Susan B. Anthony, well known to the Republicans in her district, although she was widely respected for her familiarity with constitutional law. Ida Husted Harper denounced the spoils-dominated political culture, pointing out that the ten dollars the delegates drew each day for five months made the positions too precious to give to anyone who was outside of the electorate. In spite of their exclusion from official delegation, suffragists determined to educate the public, distribute petitions, and promote a strong "public sentiment" for woman suffrage before the convention.
Although woman suffrage did not see much progress during the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was not a period of "doldrums," as some historians have called it. The 1894 convention provided an opportunity for a reinvigorated, albeit more conservative, group of suffragists to work together for the cause. The two main suffrage organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association, had rejoined forces in February 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Fears of increased immigration caused a rethinking of the earlier natural rights arguments of woman suffrage, and suffragists "began to put less emphasis on the common humanity of men and women." This joining resulted in a focus on state campaigns rather than on the federal campaigns the National Woman Suffrage Association had long advocated. A shift occurred, too, in the arguments women used to advocate for the vote, a point first noted by scholar Aileen Kraditor. Suffragists contended that the vote would "enlarge women's interests and intellect" as they participated in running government. They would become better mothers who could teach their children about the experience of citizenship, and they would be better wives as they became their husbands' equals. The arguments that dominated to the end of the suffrage movement encompassed the idea that women's political equality would be as good for the government as it would be for women. The 1890s saw a gathering of momentum and energy in preparation for the intensity of the battle after 1900.
In the half-century of woman suffrage agitation, much of it taking place in the Empire State, advocates had faced either an apathetic (on the part of women) or a hostile (on the part of men) reception. Male commentators initially articulated the primary arguments, emerging from patriarchal and Christian ideologies, against women's enfranchisement. Apparently content to let men to speak for them, few anti-suffragist women published their views or expressed them publicly. By the late 1860s and early 1870s, when some women began to present their own anti-suffrage arguments in print, they often reflected arguments of male writers. Key ideas included a strict gender-based division of duties to the nation-state, a need for increased education for women, and the articulation of dutifulness to the patriarchal family and the mandates of institutionalized Christianity. Women who deviated from these norms by showing interest or participating in politics or by resisting domestic responsibilities were "manly" or "unsexed." One newspaper described the 1853 national woman suffrage convention, held in New York, as "a gathering of unsexed women, unsexed in mind, all of them publicly propounding the doctrine that they be allowed to step out of their appropriate sphere to the neglect of those duties which both human and divine law have assigned them." Ignoring the directives of true womanhood evoked hostility in the press and probably dissuaded some potential supporters of woman suffrage from joining the movement. Public attention to woman suffrage nevertheless increased, compelling some women to respond. Nineteenth-century women's arguments opposed to woman suffrage reached their fullest articulation in the writings of Catharine Esther Beecher and Susan Fenimore Cooper. Although neither woman ever married, thereby failing to live out the creed that women best served society as wives and mothers, both adamantly supported the ideology of separate spheres.
In 1870, Susan Fenimore Cooper, daughter and amanuensis of author James Fenimore Cooper, wrote "A Letter to the Christian Women of America" for Harper's New Monthly Magazine. She was widely acknowledged as a writer and naturalist, having published the popular Rural Hours, a book about the seasons in upstate New York, in 1868. According to Cooper, a devout Episcopalian, a woman was historically and logically subordinate to a man for three main reasons. First, she was his physical inferior, making her "entirely in his power, quite incapable of self-defense, trusting to his generosity for protection." Second, "though in a very much less degree," woman was "inferior to man in intellect," although Cooper acknowledged that intellectual inferiority probably resulted from physical inferiority. Finally, the directives of Christianity made it very clear that woman necessarily held a subordinate position relative to man. No woman could call herself a Christian if she denied her subordinate role. Her role, as decreed by God, was meant to be distinctly different from that of man.
Society, in Cooper's view, was soundest where "each sex conscientiously discharges its own duties, without intruding on those of the other," echoing a view similar to male anti-suffrage writers of the time and advocates of the doctrine of separate spheres. She methodically refuted every argument presented by what she termed the "emancipation movement of women." While Cooper acknowledged that there were areas of law where women suffered abuses, she believed that those laws could be changed without resorting to suffrage for women. As for women's right to the ballot, she was adamant that it was not "an absolutely inalienable right universal in its application." Enfranchising women would distract them from their more important duties at home, which would be injurious to themselves, their families, and the nation-state.
Cooper believed most women were not politically astute enough to make informed and beneficent decisions. As far as Cooper was concerned, enfranchising women would lead to the "perilous convulsions of a revolution more truly formidable than any yet attempted on earth." Gender roles must remain distinctly different for the nation to survive intact, for the home was equal in importance to the nation-state. Women should keep "aloof from all public personal action in the political field." No legislation could improve the moral civilization of the country nor eliminate the evils society faced; that was women's special and worthwhile work.
Anti-Suffragists at the State Constitutional Convention 19 Anti-suffragists and conservatives agreed that expanded education was far more important for women than enfranchisement. Catharine Esther Beecher, daughter of Lyman Beecher, the preacher and revivalist, feared that woman suffrage heralded an imminent national crisis challenging the "most sacred interests of woman and of the family state." Higher education for women, as articulated by Beecher, was an extension of women's domestic role and would allow a woman an independent living. To help meet her goals, in 1852 she founded the American Woman's Educational Association. It sought, according to its constitution, to establish permanent, endowed educational institutions in order to provide women a "liberal education, honorable position, and remunerative employment in their appropriate profession." The "distinctive profession" of women related to caring for and educating children and the "conservation of the family state." Beecher's particular goal was economic independence for women.
In 1869 Beecher argued that any "wrongs" involving women would be solved by promoting and supporting education for women on a par with men, fully negating any need for the ballot. According to Beecher's biographer, Kathryn Kish Sklar, the impetus for Beecher's life task stemmed from the need to contradict any possible influence by Angelina and Sarah Grimké, the Quaker abolitionists and women's rights activists, on women's collective consciousness. Beecher and the Grimkés were in agreement that women were important to the "forces shaping American life," but they vehemently disagreed about the ways "female influence should be exerted." Beecher accepted the idea that woman's sphere should be expanded, but only in ways compatible with the separate spheres ideology. To disseminate her views further, she delivered addresses in New York City, Hartford, and Boston to discuss women's position in society and woman suffrage.
In December 1870, in what may have been the first public debate between women on the topic, Beecher took the podium at the Boston Music Hall to argue against woman suffrage. Mary Livermore responded with arguments in support of votes for women. Livermore had not supported rights, public speaking, or activism for women until her transformative experience working with the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. Extremely successful at fundraising and charitable benevolence, she had struggled against men who subverted her contributions. It ultimately convinced her of the need for women's rights. Beecher asserted that no emergency existed that required the whole sex to take on the responsibilities of civil government demanded by the few women who wanted suffrage. An intelligent woman would refuse to be "dragged from her appropriate sphere to bear the burdens of the state." The ballot was, at best, an indirect method for solving problems. She pointed out that under New York State law women had more advantages than men had. A woman had unlimited and independent control of her property but regardless of how rich a wife was, the husband had to support her and the children. It had also become easier for a woman than for a man to obtain a divorce. She contended that further professionalization of women's work would only add to their advantages.
For Beecher, economic independence and equality of opportunity in education for the professions, not political equality, were vital needs for women. The nation-state needed women's education and training far more than it needed the votes of unwilling women. Professional education and training, through the formal schooling advocated by Beecher, should result in an extension of women's rights. She, like Cooper and a number of male writers, argued that the "doctrine of woman's subjection" posited by John Stuart Mill and his followers was both illogical and anti-Christian. She saw women's enfranchisement as an act of oppression; conscientious women would have to take on additional duties if the state granted them suffrage. Passionately and painstakingly arguing against suffrage in public forums and in several books, Beecher represented many of the professional, educated women who opposed their own enfranchisement into the twentieth century. She also predicted that if the woman suffrage party came closer to achieving its aim, anti-suffragists, with the support of "both the pulpit and the press" would create their own organizations.
One short-lived anti-suffrage organization of prominent women had been founded following the 1869 introduction of an amendment to enfranchise women. Under the leadership of Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, widow of the Civil War admiral, the Anti-Sixteenth Amendment Society prepared a petition to send to Congress. The society included Mrs. William Tecumseh Sherman, wife of the Civil War general, Catharine Beecher, and Almira Lincoln Phelps, the sister of Emma Willard, founder of the female seminary in Troy, New York. To encourage broad support for their views, they reprinted the petition in Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine. Although the popular periodical generally excluded politics from its pages, the editor encouraged readers to copy the petition and collect signatures. At least five thousand signatures supported the petition by the time the society presented it to Congress in February 1871.
"The Protest," as the women titled their petition, claimed that "a higher sphere, apart from public life" demanded the "full measure of duties and responsibilities" of women and declared their unwillingness to "bear other and heavier burdens." It further argued that woman suffrage would harm children by increasing the potential for "discord" in marriages and families, increasing the "already alarming prevalence" of divorce in the country. They believed that "no general law, affecting the condition of all women, should be framed to meet exceptional discontent." Women all over the country signed the petitions. In response, New Yorker Matilda Joslyn Gage, chair of the committee on arrangements for the National Woman Suffrage Association, invited Dahlgren and other anti-suffragists to attend the association's convention in 1872. According to the Syracuse Journal, Dahlgren declined the invitation by writing "that by even asking them to debate, Gage had entirely ignored the principle which they sought to defend: 'the preservation of female modesty.'" Dahlgren nevertheless remained ready to confront the suffrage issue if it made it to the floor of Congress.
Not until January of 1878 did Dahlgren have a chance to present her views to a committee of Congress. Early that month, the Committee on Privileges and Elections heard arguments on both sides for the proposed sixteenth amendment. Suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and ten other National Woman Suffrage Association members all spoke. Dahlgren, on "behalf of silent women"—those reluctant to present their views in public—kept her "female modesty" intact and did not herself appear. Instead, she submitted to the committee a written statement, the "Protest against Woman Suffrage." Invoking the so-called immutable laws of Christianity, she argued that women already had distinct duties and that enfranchisement would endanger women's special privileges. Women, in her view, were already well represented by the heads of their families. Although Dahlgren herself no longer had any representative male family members, she believed it was her patriotic duty to trust to the intelligence of the masculine electorate as the "greatest good for the greatest number." No record exists of how Congressmen responded to her plea not to open "a Pandora's Box by way of experiment" with universal suffrage, but the discussion of a woman suffrage amendment did not make it to the debate floor that year.
Nascent efforts on the part of women who opposed woman suffrage to publicly present their views did not immediately lead to the development of viable political organizations, although, like many nineteenth-century women, they belonged to benevolent and church-related clubs and organizations. Membership in these reform organizations had long been touted as a logical extension of women's role as guardians of morality. In fact, many of the women who would come out as anti-suffragists had a long history of involvement in public reform activities, particularly those most compatible with the ideology of true womanhood and separate spheres. Kate Gannett Wells, a wealthy Bostonian who opposed woman suffrage, wrote in 1880 that organizations served as the ideal way for women who were seeking "concerted action" to work together without the "cooperation of men." Specific areas of proper women's work—domestic, educational, charitable, and religious and moral—did not include politics. Their organizational activity was touted as the ideal way for the "true woman" to achieve political or social change; the more closely their reform work resembled the work women did in the home, the more readily women and society accepted it. The success of women's clubs in reform efforts provided plenty of evidence for the view that women could solve societal problems without political enfranchisement. To anti-suffragists, the woman suffrage movement was the "antithesis of the glorification of separate spheres," and implied that there was nothing particularly special about either gender. Not only would woman's enfranchisement weaken women's distinctive reforming power, it endangered the clear division between male political rituals and female charitable work.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from No Votes for Women by SUSAN GOODIER Copyright © 2013 by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of University Of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Anti-Suffragists at the 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention
2. Establishing New York State Anti-Suffrage Organizations, 1895–1911
3. Antis Win the New York State Campaign, 1912–1915
4. Suffragists Win the New York State Campaign, 1915–1917
5. Using Enfranchisement to Fight Woman Suffrage, 1917–1932
6. Antis Adjust to Enfranchisement, 1917–1932
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index