Suffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era
()
About this ebook
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, identified all legitimate voters as "male." In so doing, it added gender-specific language to the U.S. Constitution for the first time. Suffrage Reconstructed considers how and why the amendment's authors made this decision. Vividly detailing congressional floor bickering and activist campaigning, Laura E. Free takes readers into the pre- and postwar fights over precisely who should have the right to vote. Free demonstrates that all men, black and white, were the ultimate victors of these fights, as gender became the single most important marker of voting rights during Reconstruction.
Free argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's language was shaped by three key groups: African American activists who used ideas about manhood to claim black men's right to the ballot, postwar congressmen who sought to justify enfranchising southern black men, and women's rights advocates who began to petition Congress for the ballot for the first time as the Amendment was being drafted. To prevent women's inadvertent enfranchisement, and to incorporate formerly disfranchised black men into the voting polity, the Fourteenth Amendment's congressional authors turned to gender to define the new American voter. Faced with this exclusion some woman suffragists, most notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton, turned to rhetorical racism in order to mount a campaign against sex as a determinant of one's capacity to vote. Stanton's actions caused a rift with Frederick Douglass and a schism in the fledgling woman suffrage movement. By integrating gender analysis and political history, Suffrage Reconstructed offers a new interpretation of the Civil War–era remaking of American democracy, placing African American activists and women's rights advocates at the heart of nineteenth-century American conversations about public policy, civil rights, and the franchise.
Laura E. Free
Ann Roberts has held senior management roles in the Utilities sector and the NHS. She obtained a BA(Hons) in Historical Studies by part time study from the University of Exeter in 2008. After taking early retirement she obtained a MRes with Distinction from Plymouth University in 2014. She has served on the Council of the Devon History Society and set up and chaired a local history society which has carried out a number of research projects over the last nine years. Her personal research interests include the development of social housing, and women’s history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Read more from Laura E. Free
Devon Women in Public and Professional Life, 1900–1950: Votes, Voices and Vocations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSuffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Suffrage Reconstructed
Related ebooks
Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Rights in the Reconstruction Era Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReconstruction beyond 150: Reassessing the New Birth of Freedom Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Civil War to Civil Rights, Alabama 1860–1960: An Anthology from The Alabama Review Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5May Day at Yale, 1970: Recollections: The Trial of Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOur Southern Home: Scottsboro to Montgomery to Birmingham - The Transformation of the South in the Twentieth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter War Times: An African American Childhood in Reconstruction-Era Florida Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohn Brown's Body: Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Phillis Wheatley Peters: Biography of a Genius in Bondage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America, 1776-1865 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Riot of 1942: Prelude to the Race Riot of 1943 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Freedom Bought with Blood: African American War Literature from the Civil War to World War II Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Negro Problem Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmancipation's Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Conservation of Races Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSearching for Freedom after the Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawag, and Freedman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: African Americans in Reconstruction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLincoln's Herndon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDaybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965-1968 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeft of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism, and Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAntebellum Era: A Brief History from Beginning to the End Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Color of the Third Degree: Racism, Police Torture, and Civil Rights in the American South, 1930–1955 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSarah Johnson's Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5African Americans in Pittsburgh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Who am I?: Memoirs of a transformative Black Studies program Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKeepin' It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
United States History For You
A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer: An Edgar Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twelve Years a Slave (Illustrated) (Two Pence books) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The White Album: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Suffrage Reconstructed
0 ratings0 reviews