Happy Birthday, Grover Cleveland - 186 years on the 18th!
Now, its time to talk about my other protagonist - Matilda Joslyn Gage, who incidentally died on March 18th. Karma?
Rather than try the impossible – to address all that made Matilda a monumental force in the 19th century in a single blog – I will focus on Matilda’s participation in the movement for women’s vote. Matilda formally entered into the women’s movement in 1852 when she spoke at the Third Woman Suffrage Convention in Syracuse. It was her first public speech: well-researched, fiery, and spellbinding. [I will post her address in a separate blog.] For now, suffice it to say that the speech was rousing, that the president of the convention, Lucretia Mott, sat a motion by Susan B. Anthony to only record the speeches of women who spoke to a full audience. That would have meant that the speech by novice Matilda would not have been recorded. Instead, Mott asked Matilda to publish her speech so that those who were not able to attend the convention would be able to benefit from her research and insights.
Matilda must have heard the motion and President Mott’s quashing of the notion. While this action may have put a bitter taste in Matilda’s mouth, she did not show it. Instead, after Matilda was introduced to Susan B. Anthony and her colleague Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the convention, she began a decades long relationship that spun out pamphlets and books including multiple volumes of History of Woman Suffrage.
A focus of the 1852 convention was women’s suffrage. The cherished right to vote had been contested since the inception of the United States. White men? Landed folk? This contrasts with the people who were counted during a decennial census – women, Native Americans, and blacks. Note that before the Civil War, in many states the latter only counted as three fifths of a white person whether they were free or enslaved. This hypocrisy of who votes and who is counted was as galling as the American colonists’ mid-18th century call to arms of taxation without representation. Remedying that situation only came with a war against the British. Resolution of the right for Blacks to vote, the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, also came after the Civil War. That right was undermined by Jim Crow laws in the Southern states and currently by steps in many states issuing laws that target Black voters by restricting citizens’ access to voting systems.
In theory, a simple reading of the 15th Amendment awards the right to vote to all citizens. Section 1 says, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Despite this, the specified right continued to be denied to women and indigenous peoples. The right for women to vote did not result from a military war, however, many battles were waged and lives were spent before the 19th Amendment passed in 1920. Native Americans had to wait longer; they did not get the right to vote until 1924 when the Snyder Act granted indigenous people American citizenship.
Though many activists in the early 1800's focused on the rights of women or Blacks, the fight for the rights of women, Native Americans, and Blacks was often coordinated. This movement for universal rights was championed by Matilda Joslyn Gage and Frederick Douglass. It is noteworthy that Mr. Douglass was one of the few men who attended the First Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848.
Despite ample legislation and judicial precedent, fights over voting rights continue to present day. As Ms. Anthony abandoned the campaign for universal rights, I posit that if she were alive today, her cavalier response to the battle over the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill might be, “No matter. We have our vote. Serves them [Blacks] right for getting the vote before we did.” That contention would sharply contrast with what Frederick Douglass or Matilda Joslyn Gage. Likely, they might have quipped, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
An unfortunate, but glaring example of Matilda being forgotten is the description of the series "The History of Woman Suffrage" by Arizona State University. The first three volumes were authored by Stanton, Anthony, and Gage. The ASU website (https://cptl.asu.edu/womens-suffrage) incorrectly lists Elizabeth Joslyn Gage and the accompanying figures only show Stanton and Anthony. I raise this solely as an example of how Matilda has been lost to history. Matila Joslyn Gage was an example of the Matilda Effect insofar as her contribution was lost to others who took the credit, but that is the subject of another blog.
@Grover Cleveland @MatildaJoslynGage