Source 1 Context: Excerpt from a journal entry dated May 12, 1865, written by Catherine Anne Devereux Edmondston, a wealthy white Southern woman recording her views on emancipation and Reconstruction in North Carolina.
Such a week as the past has been, I hope never to see again. Excitement & anxiety have ruled each day, until at last I became heartsick & weary & longed for rest, rest, come how it would, only rest. As we had feared, father's negroes either misunderstood or pretended to misunderstand father's and brother's talk with them. On Monday several of them were absent from work & one man kept his wife at home contrary to plantation discipline. A firm & resolute hand checked all disobedience at home, however, and a visit to Weldon satisfied some of the absentees, who have almost all returned, professing to have found out that they were better off as they were. We have lost none here. The poor creatures seem as usual, only terribly dejected, & are much more tender & affectionate in their manner to us than ever before. It is a terrible cruelty to them, this unexpected, unsolicited gift of freedom, & they are at their wits ends. Their old moorings are rudely & suddenly cut loose, & they drift without a rudder into the unknown sea of freedom. God help such philanthropy.
Source 2 Context: Excerpt from We Are All Bound Up Together, a speech delivered by Black abolitionist and women’s rights activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at the 11th National Women’s Rights Convention in New York City in 1866.
We have a woman in our country who has received the name of “Moses,” not by lying about it, but by acting out (applause)—a woman who has gone down into the Egypt of slavery an brought out hundreds of our people into liberty. The last time I saw that woman, her hands were swollen. That woman who had led one of Montgomery’s most successful expeditions, who was brave enough and secretive enough to act as a scout for the American army, had her hands all swollen from a conflict with a brutal conductor, who undertook to eject her from her place. That woman, whose courage and bravery won a recognition from our army and from every black man in the land, is excluded from every thoroughfare of travel. Talk of giving women the ballot-box? Go on. It is a normal school, and the white women of this country need it. While there exists this brutal element in society which tramples upon the feeble and treads down the weak, I tell you that if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is the white women of America. (Applause.)
Source 3 Context: Excerpt from an 1867 address delivered by Sojourner Truth at the first annual meeting of the American Equal Rights Association.
Men is trying to help us. I know that all--the spirit they have got; and they cannot help us much until some of the spirit is taken out of them that belongs among the women. (Laughter. ) Men have got their rights, and women has not got their rights. That is the trouble. When woman gets her rights man will be right. How beautiful that will be. Then it will be peace on earth and good will to men. (Laughter and applause. ) But it cannot be that until it be right.
I am glad that men get here. They have to do it. I know why they edge off, for there is a power they cannot gainsay or resist. It will come. A woman said to me, "Do you think it will come in ten or twenty years?" Yes, it will come quickly. (Applause. ) It must come. (Applause. ) And now then the waters is troubled, and now is the time to step into the pool. There is a great deal now with the minds, and now is the time to start forth…
I want to see, before I leave here--I want to see equality. I want to see women have their rights, and then there will be no more war. All the fighting has been for selfishness. They wanted something more than their own, or to hold something that was not their own; but when we have woman's rights, there is nothing to fight for. I have got all I want, and you have got all you want, and what do you fight for? All the battles that have even been was for selfishness--for a right that belonged to some one else, or fighting for his own right. The great fight was to keep the rights of the poor colored people. That made a great battle. And now I hope that this will be the last battle that will be in the world. Fighting for rights.
Source 4 Context: Excerpt from an opinion article written by suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, published in her newspaper The Revolution in 1868.
We object to the proposed amendment of the Constitution of the United States securing “Manhood Suffrage,” for several reasons.
There is only one safe, sure way to build a government, and that is on the equality of all its citizens, male and female, black and white.
2d, We object to a “man’s government,” because the male element, already too much in the ascendant, is a destructive force; stern, selfish, aggrandizing; loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition; breeding discord, disorder, disease and death.
If the civilization of the age calls for an extension of the suffrage, a government of the most virtuous, educated men and women would better represent the whole humanitarian idea, and more perfectly protect the interests of all, than could a representation of either sex alone. But to ignore the influence of woman in the legislation of the country, and blindly insist upon the recognition of every type of brutalized, degraded manhood, must prove suicidal to any government on the footstool, hence we protest against the extension of suffrage to another man, until enough women are first admitted to the polls to outweigh the dangerous excess of the male element already there.
Source 5 Context: Excerpt from a letter written by Clara Leonard, a known opponent of women’s suffrage, read at a legislative hearing on January 29, 1884, several years after the passage of the 15th Amendment.
It is the opinion of many of us, that woman’s power is greater without the ballot or possibility of office-holding for gain, when, standing outside of politics, she discusses great questions upon their merit. Much has been achieved by women in the anti-slavery cause, the temperance cause, the improvement of public and private charities, the reformation of criminals, all by intelligent discussion and influence upon men. Our legislators have been ready to listen to women, and carry out their plans when well framed.
Women can do much useful public service upon boards of education, school committees, and public charities, and are beginning to do such work. It is of vital importance to the integrity of our charitable and educational administration that it be kept out of politics. Is it not well, that we should have one sex who have no political ends to serve, who can fill responsible positions of public trust?
Voting alone can easily be performed by women without rude contact, but to attain any political power women must affiliate themselves with men; because women will differ on public questions, must attend primary meetings and caucuses, will inevitably hold public office and strive for it; in short, women must enter the political arena. This result will be repulsive to a large portion of the sex, and would tend to make women unfeminine and combative, which would be a detriment to society.