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chapter 9 Reconstruction: The Making and Unmaking of a Revolution
Thus, in 1869 and 1870, ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment proved to be 1865–1877
as contentious in the North and West as it was in the South. The former slave states
Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Tennessee rejected the amendment, but so did
California and New Jersey; New York rescinded its ratification; and Ohio waffled,
first rejecting and then ratifying the amendment. Reasons for the opposition varied.
Californians, for example, wanted to ensure that the amendment did not enfranchise
Chinese residents. The debate in states that eventually ratified the amendment var-
ied. Massachusetts and Connecticut had literacy requirements that they hoped would
remain unaffected. Rhode Island wanted to retain its requirement that foreign-born
citizens had to own property worth at least $134 to be eligible to vote. These restric-
tions narrowed the electorate in the North and West by making it difficult for poor and
illiterate whites, as well as blacks, to vote. After the end of Reconstruction, some of the
same and similar techniques would be used by southern states to disfranchise blacks.
The Fifteenth Amendment proved most contentious among many northern
women for what it did not do: it did not extend the vote to women. Many woman
suffrage supporters, especially white women, felt betrayed that black men would get
the vote before women. Abolitionists and feminists had long been allied in the strug-
gle for equal rights, and women had actively worked for abolition, emancipation, and
the Thirteenth Amendment. In 1866, to present a united front in support of univer-
sal suffrage, women’s rights leaders Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton joined with Frederick Douglass to found the American Equal Rights
Association. But it soon became apparent that members of this organization did not
all share the same priorities. (See Document Project: The Vote, pp. 356–65.) Douglass
and Stone believed that the organization should work to secure the black male vote
first and then seek woman suffrage. Stanton and Anthony detested the idea that the
rights of women would take a backseat to those of black men. Stanton even resorted
45
to using the racist epithet “Sambo” in reference to black men. Black feminists such
as Sojourner Truth and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper took Stanton to task for ignor-
ing the reality of black women’s lives. “You white women speak here of rights,” Harper
protested. “I speak of wrongs.” 46
Dissension over the Fifteenth Amendment divided old allies, destroyed
friendships, and split the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) — and ulti-
mately the women’s movement itself. In 1869, in the wake of the AERA’s fractur-
ing, Anthony and Stanton organized the National Woman Suffrage Association,
which focused on securing voting rights for women at the national level. That
same year, Stone organized the rival American Woman Suffrage Association,
which included among its members Harper, Truth, and Douglass and developed
a state-by-state approach to woman suffrage. The bitter fight over the Fifteenth
Amendment revealed deeper divisions in American politics and society over the
rights and status of African Americans that would undercut their opportunities for
decades to come.

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