{"id":52,"date":"2020-02-05T16:01:14","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T21:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/votes-for-delaware-women\/?page_id=52"},"modified":"2020-05-07T09:20:33","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T14:20:33","slug":"1-citizenship-and-voting-rights","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/votes-for-delaware-women\/home\/1-citizenship-and-voting-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"1 – Citizenship and voting rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before the Civil War, suffrage\u2014the right to vote\u2014was one among many demands of a vibrant American women\u2019s rights movement. It was a demand made at the 1848 Seneca Falls and Rochester Women\u2019s Rights Conventions and in 1840s petitions to state constitutional conventions. But the original U.S. Constitution (1787) was silent on the question of voting rights. The states, not the federal government, established qualifications for voting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fourteenth (1868) and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments to the Constitution changed that by defining national citizenship, outlining citizens\u2019 fundamental rights (Fourteenth) and stating that citizens could not be denied the right to vote \u201con account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude\u201d (Fifteenth).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting\u2019s importance to the broader rights of citizens increased immeasurably as a result. Once all men\u2014in theory at least\u2014possessed the right to vote, then women\u2019s lack of access to voting became the most visible and obvious way in which women were disadvantaged as citizens. An independent women\u2019s suffrage movement came into being during the 1860s, focusing on voting as a key women\u2019s right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As suffrage became increasingly important to discussions of women\u2019s citizenship rights, supporters took to print and to the courts to state their positions. Some, such as Delaware-born Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893) voted or attempted to vote. Historians have documented hundreds of such efforts by both African American and white suffragists between 1869 and 1874. Most famously, Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and fourteen others were arrested in 1872 in Rochester, New York, for illegal voting. In 1875, in the case of Minor v. Happersett<\/em>, the Supreme Court affirmed that states were the primary arbiters of who had the right to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WOMEN\u2019S RIGHTS \u2013 WOMEN\u2019S SUFFRAGE<\/strong> – The titles of John Todd\u2019s and Gail Hamilton\u2019s works provide a shorthand introduction to post-Civil War debates about the rights women should have. Todd, a Congregationalist minister, took the position that the demand for \u201cwoman\u2019s rights\u201d was unnatural and ungodly. \u201cGod never designed that woman should occupy the same sphere as man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American writer and essayist Mary Abigail Dodge was an early champion of pay equity for women authors. Writing under the pseudonym of Gail Hamilton, she composed a direct response to Todd, wielding her knowledge and experience to denounce his views as being opposed to Scripture. \u201cChrist made no distinction, but opened the door wide to woman as to man.\u201d At the same time, she challenged those who envisioned suffrage as the solution to \u201cwoman\u2019s wrongs.\u201d \u201cGive (women) the ballot, that they may see for themselves how little it can do.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n