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Women’s Politics

Although women could not vote before the Civil War, many women nevertheless participated in public political activity. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s searing indictment of slavery, galvanized women’s support for the Republican Party’s campaign against the extension of slavery. Their struggle on behalf of slaves led many to also join the fight for woman’s rights.

DOCUMENT 1

Jessie Benton Frémont’s Letter to Elizabeth Blair Lee, 1856

Throughout her life, Jessie Benton Frémont worked to fulfill her domestic roles as wife and mother, even though she found them constraining. She also sought unabashedly to influence politics. During the 1850s, she became one of the principal political analysts and advisers to her husband, John C. Frémont, who ran for president on the Republican ticket. On October 20, 1856, Jessie Frémont wrote to her dear friend Elizabeth Blair Lee, offering a clear-eyed interpretation of the significance of the Republican Party’s paper-thin but devastating loss in the October 14 Pennsylvania state election.

I heartily regret the defeat we have met and do not look for things to change for the better. The Democrats will follow up their advantage with the courage of success & our forces are unorganized and just now surprised and inactive. I wish the cause had triumphed. I do wish Mr. Frémont had been the one to administer the bitter dose of subjection to the South for he has the coolness and nerve to do it just as it needs to be done—without passion & without sympathy—as coldly as a surgeon over a hospital patient would he have cut off their right hand Kansas from the old unhealthy southern body. . . . Tell your Father he must come to us for example & comfort in November for I don’t think we will wear any but black feathers this year.

Source: Frémont, Jessie Benton (1824–1902), Mrs. John C. Frémont (undated); Blair and Lee Family Papers; Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

DOCUMENT 2

Harriot K. Hunt’s Letter “to . . . [the] Treasurer, and the Assessors, and other Authorities of the city of Boston, and the Citizens generally,” 1852

Harriot K. Hunt, a rare female physician who had practiced medicine in Boston since 1835, here protests having to pay taxes when she was prohibited from voting. Women fought for suffrage for principle’s sake but also because they wanted a say in matters that were important to them.

Harriot K. Hunt, physician, a native and permanent resident of the city of Boston, and for many years a taxpayer therein, in making payment of her city taxes for the coming year, begs leave to protest against the injustice and inequality of levying taxes upon women, and at the same time refusing them any voice or vote in the imposition and expenditure of the same. The only classes of male persons required to pay taxes, and not at the same time allowed the privilege of voting, are aliens and minors. The objection in the case of aliens is their supposed want of interest in our institutions and knowledge of them. The objection in the case of minors is the want of sufficient understanding. These objections can not apply to women, natives of the city, all of whose property interests are here, and who have accumulated, by their own sagacity and industry, the very property on which they are taxed. But this is not all; the alien, by going through the forms of naturalization, the minor on coming of age, obtain the right of voting; . . . though so ignorant as not to be able to sign their names, or read the very votes they put into the ballot-boxes. Even drunkards, felons, idiots, and lunatics, if men, may still enjoy that right of voting to which no woman, however large the amount of the taxes she pays, however respectable her character, or useful her life, can ever attain. Wherein, your remonstrant would inquire, is the justice, equality, or wisdom of this?

Source: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1 (New York: Folwer & Wells, 1881), 259.

DOCUMENT 3

Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Letter on Women’s Fashions, 1855

Stymied by male politicians who ignored pleas like Hunt’s, woman’s rights activists pondered how to promote equality in areas of life more directly under their personal control. In a letter to a friend, suffragist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton explained how women’s fashions could be tailored to promote equality.

I fully agree with you that woman is terribly cramped and crippled in her present style of dress . . . it seems that if she would enjoy entire freedom, she should dress just like a man. Why proclaim our sex on the house-tops, seeing that it is a badge of degradation, and deprives us of so many rights and privileges wherever we go? . . . In male attire, we could travel by land or sea; go through all the streets and lanes of our cities and towns by night and day, without a protector; get seven hundred dollars a year for teaching, instead of three, and ten dollars for making a coat, instead of two or three, as we now do. All this we could do without fear of insult, or the least sacrifice of decency or virtue. If nature has not made the sex so clearly defined as to be seen through any disguise, why should we make the difference so striking?

Source: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1 (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1881), 841.

Questions for Analysis

Consider the Context: Jessie Frémont did not interpret the Republican defeat in Pennsylvania in 1856 as a “glorious defeat,” as did many other Republicans. Can you suggest possible reasons why she did not? Why might a woman’s rights activist have been tougher minded and more realistic?

Summarize the Argument: On what grounds, according to Harriot Hunt, should women be accorded the vote? Do you agree with her argument? Why or why not?

Recognize Viewpoints: What does Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s early version of “dressing for success” reveal about how she viewed the challenges faced by women? Do you think other women would have agreed with her suggestions? Why or why not?