Black voters came out strongly for the Republicans in the 1868 elections, helping Grant win the presidency. With Grant in office, the Fifteenth Amendment passed through Congress and was submitted to the states for ratification. This amendment guaranteed all citizens the right to vote, regardless of their race. Douglass's push for state approval of the amendment caused a breach between him and the woman suffragists, who were upset that the measure did not include voting rights for woman. Old friends such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton accused Douglass of abandoning the cause of women's rights. At the annual meeting of the Equal Rights Association in May 1869, Douglass tried to persuade the woman suffragists that voting rights for blacks must be won immediately, while women could afford to wait. "When women because they are women are dragged from their homes and hung upon lampposts, .....then they will have the urgency to obtain the ballot," said Douglass. One of the women in the crowd cried out, "Is that not also true about black women?" "Yes, yes," Douglass replied, "but not because she is a woman but because she is black." The women in the audience were not convinced by Douglass's argument, and some of them even spoke out against black suffrage. Douglass's relationship with the woman suffragists eventually healed, but women would not receive the right to vote until 1920.
After the war, Anthony and others tried to link women's suffrage with rights for the newly freed slaves, but they were unsuccessful. The 15th Amendment, adopted in 1870, specified voting privileges for black men only. At this point, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, effectively separating the woman's cause from the abolitionist movement.
Prior to the Civil War a coalition had been forged comprised of abolitionist and suffragist and at that time the eradication of slavery was prioritized. After the war as the country struggled with the question of what to do with the “freed” peoples an argument arose over whether the 15th amendment should be supported despite its obvious shortcomings.
Fredrick Douglass argued passionately that “When women because they are women are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; than they will have the urgency to obtain the ballot” equal to that of black people in this country. When it was pointed out to him that the Black women were being victimized in exactly those same ways, his response was that Black women were treated in this way on the basis of their race not their sex and that white middle class women had ways to redress their grievances that were not afforded to them” (i.e. black men). [All the women are White.] He had concluded that “The death of slavery did not automatically mean the birth of freedom.” And that “Slavery is not abolished until the Black man has the ballot.” […”All the men are Black”]. Douglass characterized this time in history as the “Negro’s hour” and felt strongly that universal male suffrage must be secured first (Foner 1976, 32-33).
Some Black women such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper agreed with Douglass in his support of the 15th amendment believing that it was imperative that Black men receive their voting rights because while the ballot was “desirable” for women it was “vital” for black men. Although agreeing to “let the lesser question of sex go” she also made the astute observation that “white women all go for sex, letting race occupy a minor position” when the interest of black male abolitionists were pitted against the interests of white women suffragists. But Frances E. W. Harper and Sojourner Truth both Black women abolitionists and suffragette took opposing stances on this issue. Thus Sojourner Truth advocated strongly for women to get the vote at the same time as men. Indeed after the passage of the 15th amendment Sojourner Truth in Michigan, Susan B. Anthony in New York State, and Mary Ann Shadd Cary in Washington D.C. expressed their frustrations with the limitations of the 15th amendment by attempting, unsuccessfully, to vote in several local elections (Simien 2006, 42-44; Hine 1998, 157).
Clearly opinions about this critical issue were not monolithic. Women’s Suffrage movement leadership and some of its members became openly hostile to Frederick Douglass—both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued that universal suffrage for women was no less compelling than universal male suffrage and in fact they began to express antiblack sentiment publicly as their movement began to factionalize around this question. Stanton went so far as to proclaim that “it is better to be the slave of an educated white man, than of a degraded, ignorant black one”. She moved to form the National Woman’s Suffrage Association so as to separate herself from the cause of Black people (Simien 2006, 42).
Some of Susan B. Anthony's writings were also quite racist by today's standards, particularly those from the period when she was angry that the Fifteenth Amendment wrote the word "male" into the constitution for the first time in permitting suffrage for freedmen. She sometimes argued that educated white women would be better voters than "ignorant" black men or immigrant men.
In the late 1860s she even portrayed the vote of freedmen as threatening the safety of white women. George Francis Train, whose capital helped launch Anthony and Stanton's Revolution newspaper, was a noted racist.
Following the war, debates over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments (ratified in 1868 and 1870, respectively) led to a major breach in the women's rights movement. Some leaders--Stanton and Anthony, most notably--insisted that women should be included in the coverage of the amendments intended to ensure suffrage rights for the newly freed slaves; others, led by Stone, agreed with Wendell Phillips that including such a provision would endanger the passage of the amendments and that women should wait their turn. The latter position prevailed. Stanton and Anthony then split organizationally with Stone and her allies, forming the National Woman Suffrage Association (open initially to women only), which gave rise to Stone's American Woman Suffrage Association (with male and female members).
Although McMillen clearly sympathizes with her protagonists and applauds their efforts, she is also honest about their shortcomings. The white, relatively privileged activists, she notes, proposed such reforms as access to better education and professional careers, which meant little to ordinary American women; no wonder, then, that most women responded with indifference, if not hostility, to the activists' message. McMillen accurately pronounces some of Stanton's speeches "unquestionably racist and xenophobic" in their complaints that ignorant black and immigrant men had been enfranchised while well-educated white women still lacked the vote. Admitting the "discomfort" Stanton's words cause the contemporary reader, McMillen offers as a partial excuse the fact that at the time such statements "were commonplace not only for someone of her background and education but also among a broad spectrum of society." She closes the final chapter on an upbeat note, quoting Stanton at the 1890 convention calling for the enfranchisement of "colored women, Indian women" and "Infidels," among others.
Yet that positive impression is deceptive, as we learn from Allison Sneider, who details the increasingly vocal racism of the women's rights movement that developed not only in response to the question of the enfranchisement of black and immigrant men in the United States but also in relation to the acquisition and governance of new imperial territories
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