Women's "Revolution"

A short plug: There is a very powerful movie about women's rights called Ironed Jawed Angels, which accurately portrays the brutalities that these women faced like Susan B. Anthony. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone interested in learning more about the situation during that day.

Susan B. Anthony wrote the address that I read in 1873, three years after the 15th amendment was ratified, giving blacks, but not women, the right to vote. This caused a lot of turmoil among women's rights activists because they felt that sex, almost over race, should not be a reason to disfranchise a major portion of the population.

I particularly think it is interesting that women's rights during the 19th century were very reminiscent of the Revolutionary War rhetoric. Both written and verbal arguments followed similar patterns from the Revolutionary War except that instead of being repressed by the King, they were being repressed by men. For instance, during the Seneca Falls convention these women put forth the Declaration of Sentiments where they borrowed the wording of the Declaration of Independence to show that women were endowed with the same unalienable rights as men: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." Thus, we see that not only are is a similar wording and voice used, but these women are extremely passionate about the cause.

I feel like the two speeches I read follow this same pattern of drawing on the passion and the rhetoric of earlier revolutionary writing. For instance, Susan B. Anthony quoted the Preamble to the Constitution in her address and uses the actual words from the document to develop her point. She is using the legitimacy and authority of the historical documents to show that women's right to vote should never have been an issue because they should have always had the right to vote.

Overall, I would definitely place these speeches in the same category as some of the other revolutionary pieces that we have read. They are written and given because there is passion and there is change that needs to take place. 

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens…” – Susan B. Anthony

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens…” – Susan B. Anthony

Two women came together to form a powerful team. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These two lived in a time when women were seen as the inferior sex and they had enough. The founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, they gave speeches, they marched and protested in order to be heard. They were opposed the 15^th amendment, which would give African American men the right to vote, unless they added women’s rights to vote.

In 1872, Susan B. Anthony decided to lead a group of women in a march to the polls in order to vote in the presidential election. “This march set the pattern for the use of civil disobedience and subsequent court action and to attract attention and adherents.” These women were not about to back down and they proved that through their actions and their words.

Anthony and Stanton both gave powerful speeches that would have given other women the courage to stand up and fight for their rights. They both addressed the gentle power that women could bring as opposed to the blind dominance that men fought for. Some examples from Stanton’s speech are:

“The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike discord, disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal!”

“There is a striking analogy between matter and mind, and the present disorganization of society warns us that in the dethronement of woman we have let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the power to curb.”

“Whatever is done to lift woman to her true position will help to usher in a new day of peace and perfection for the race.”

Susan B. Anthony addressed how the “oligarchy of sex” would negatively impact the home.

“this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household— which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord , and rebellion into every home of the nation.”

They were reaching out to the women to call them to join the cause. They inspired many women who stood up to fight as suffragettes but it would be a long battle. The National Woman Suffrage Association was founded in 1869 but women would not gain the right to vote until the ratification of the 19^th amendment on August 18^th 1920.