Women's Suffrage in The United States - Internal Divisions

Internal Divisions

Another problem for the Equal Rights Association was funding. It took good deal of money to rent halls for speeches, print pamphlets, and pay suffrage workers. Most of the contributors, however, were female volunteers without incomes. The campaign of 1867 was the very first test of women's suffrage; and most activists were not experienced in raising money. Even more frustrating, as Susan B. Anthony expressed in a letter to Sam Wood, "neither the radical republicans or Old Abolitionists, nor yet the Democrats open their purses, pulpits or presses to our movement."

These conflicts eroded the loyalties between abolitionists and suffragists in the Equal Rights Association until its near-disintegration in the summer of 1867. The major eruption, however, stemmed from the schism created within the women's suffrage movement itself. Stone and Blackwell, who had worked closely with Stanton and Anthony throughout the campaign, were appalled by the decision to collaborate with the overtly racist George Francis Train. Stanton's and Anthony's steadfast commitment to Train left them vulnerable to the Republican accusation that the Democratic party was only using women's suffrage to defeat black suffrage, thus giving black equal rights supporters reason to feel animosity towards suffragists. In The Revolution, Anthony wrote that 2 million black men, among "the lowest orders of manhood", were inferior to 15 million white women, a racist position which shocked her former allies. The final blow to the Equal Rights Association came during the annual meeting in May 1869. Stanton and Anthony found themselves outnumbered by the majority of women suffrage activists, accused of racism and opposing the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Realizing that they could not win, the two women withdrew from the Equal Rights Association. Two days later, they formed their own separate association.