Review

Textbooks, Readers, and References

This collection of papers ably edited by Ann Gordon follows the women's suffrage movement in the crucial, disheartening period following the Civil War. Initially, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others believed that Reconstruction offered an opportunity for universal suffrage with no restrictions based on race or gender. They were wrong and in their bitter disappointment at the country's failure to enfranchise women at the same time it extended the vote to black males, both Stanton and Anthony said and wrote a number of surprising things about former slaves and immigrants. In her introduction, Gordon refers to this tendency but prefers to concentrate on what the papers tell us about the tactics and strategies of the women's rights movements and the relationship between Stanton and Anthony, and their relations with other key figures such as Isabella Beecher Hooker, Lucy Stone, Victoria Woodhull and Lucretia Mott.	1
Reading through the papers, a number of themes emerge. The hostility toward African-American males is too prominent a one to ignore. For example, Lucy Stone writes, "These men ought not to be allowed to vote before we do, because they will be just so much dead weight to lift" (p. 57). Susan B. Anthony avers: "I would not trust him [the Black man] with all my rights; degraded, oppressed himself, he would be more despotic with the governing power than even our Saxon rulers are" (p. 63). Later she introduced a resolution declaring that: "a man's government is worse than a white man's government" because universal manhood suffrage creates an antagonism between "the black man and all women and will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the Southern states" (p. 215). Stanton, summarizing the view that white males of her own class are preferable as rulers to lesser forms of masculine life, argues: "If women are still to be represented by men, then I say let [it be] only the highest type of man.... But if all men are to vote, black and white, lettered and unlettered, washed and unwashed, the safety of the nation as well as the interests of women demand that we outweigh this incoming tide of poverty, ignorance and vice with the virtue, wealth and education of the woman of this country" (p. 65).	2
Another theme running through the papers, not surprisingly, is the difficulty of defining and sustaining a reform movement. At times Stanton, who has the luxury of reflection probably denied to the poorer, more active Anthony, describes herself as "filled with wonder at the apathy and indifference of our women" (p. 86). Stanton also often voices her extreme frustration with endless meetings. Anthony, for her part, worries about Stanton's tendency to blur the primacy of the suffrage issues by lecturing on marriage, divorce and free love. She also harshly criticizes Isabella Beecher Hooker's ascendancy to leadership of the movement, declaring: "I have no idea but each of the Apostles in turn as he came into the ranks, tho't [sic] he could improve on Christ's methods" (p. 401).	3
As a teaching tool, this volume has a number of uses. Obviously, it provides primary source material for students researching the women's rights movement, the fate of reform after the Civil War, and the ideas and activities of Anthony and Stanton. It would also be interesting for students to compare the editor's introduction and reactions to the material and their own readings of the same sources. In addition, the letters, articles, and diary entries provide a lot of material on middle class life in the nineteenth century incidentally illustrating such developments as the growing importance of professions, improvements in transportation and communications, and the increasing recognition that America might have to be shared with immigrants, workers, and freed slaves.	4
Barbara McGowan Ripon College

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