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History of the United States I / Unit 16   USH1 2288 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds

Stanton's Argument

Captions available

The idea

The Fourteenth Amendment's section two put the word male into the Constitution, and hopes that the Fifteenth would include women were dashed. Frederick Douglass argued for a piecemeal approach, insisting his support for women's suffrage was sincere while holding that Black men's franchise was of the most urgent necessity, because the negro is loathed and needs suffrage to protect his life and property. Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell largely accepted this. Stanton and Anthony did not.

In practice

Stanton arguing that women's votes would counter the influence of uneducated freedmen in the South and of poor European immigrants in the East.

Where people slip

Record Stanton's argument as the anchor gives it. The women's suffrage case was made, by its most famous advocate, in racist and nativist terms, and an entry that omits this teaches a falsehood about how the movements divided. Unit 13 entry 1862 points here: the word male in section two is where they part.

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