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Major professor Date _6__.I1me_l9_8.6_ MS U i: an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-1277 1 h» -4 ._ -— - _ h . H' IV‘ESI.) RETURNING MATERIALS: Piace in book drop to LIBRARJES remove this checkout from -_ your record. FINES wil] be charged if book is returned after the date a stamped below. ”a JAN 2&9 20%;- -929i M .543 APR 0165123101 ’n ' t 865, JUN 1 41333 sfl72 #3333?” 06300336 mess' 6 A HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN MICHIGAN BY Virginia Ann Paganelli Caruso A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English: American Studies 1986 J\9/}, Copyright by Virginia Ann Paganelli Caruso 1986 ABSTRACT A HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN MICHIGAN BY Virginia Ann Paganelli Caruso This is the first study of the woman suffrage movement in Michigan since women obtained the vote in 1918 through an amendment to the state constitutition. The worn presents a clear chronology of the development of the movement in Michigan and its accomplishments over sixty- five years agitation for suffrage in Michigan. The worK involves both narrative and analysis. The narrative is built on most of the surviving manuscript and printed sources for the woman suffrage movement in Michigan. One finding of interest is that the first partial suffrage achievement, school suffrage, occurs in a period devoid of Observable suffrage agitation. Secondly the split between the American and National Woman Suffrage Association appears to be non-existent in Michigan. The two state associations that exist before the split is healed have cordial relations with both groups. The analysis examines the impact of a number of variables on attitudes toward woman suffrage through manuscript and printed materials, regression analysis and roll call analysis of legislative and constitutional convention voting patterns. Findings of significance are that the association of support for prohibition and support for woman suffrage emerges in Michigan after 1874, but is not consistent across the twentieth century, and that partisanship is rarely associated with support for woman suffrage in Michigan. Also significant is the finding that support for woman suffrage was on occassion linked to nativist attitudes. Women in Michigan achieved equal suffrage with men largely as a result of their persistent efforts in agitation, education and organization. Even before the -National American Woman Suffrage Assocition revived, reorganized and redirected its energies under Carrie Chapman Catt after 1915, Michigan suffragists had moved in those directions under Nellie Sawyer Clark. This revitalized movement both.at the state and national level is the largest single factor in the success of the movement in Michigan. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It has taken me six years to complete this study from first idea to final draft. Along the way numerous people have helped with advice, facilities, suggestions, emotional support and time. At Nazareth College in Kalamazoo where I teach, Registrar Joan Noteboom has accommodated my needs for research time by scheduling my classes so that I had large blocks of time in which to write or do research off campus. I started my Ph. D. program with the encouragement of Academic Dean Jack Hopkins. His successors, Dr. Marie Gabriel Hungerman IHM and Dr. Lynn W. Lindeman also encouraged and supported my efforts by adjusting my work load. A year's sabbatical in 1984-1985 enabled me to travel to research sites, and uninterrupted by any college responsibilities, write over a sixteen month period. It was a productive experience. Dr. Rosemary Kenarny, SSJ and Dr. George McMurrow provided special encouragement along the way. My office mate Dr. William A. Sprunk, Jr. read a draft and made comments on its style in his inimitable way. Dr. G. K. Kripalani, Professor of Economics at Western Michigan University, and family friend, graciously discussed an early version ii of the regression work and offered suggestions for improvement. My research trips outside Michigan were underwritten by a woodrow Wilson Educational Foundation Dissertation Grant in Women's Studies. Some of my Michigan trips were funded by an Albert J. Beveridge Research Grant in American History from the American Historical Association. Both grants were deeply appreciated and most helpful in enabling me to travel to materials I needed. The unfailing courtesy and helpfulness of librarians and archivists was impressive. The staff of the Michigan Historical Collections housed in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan saw me every day for seven weeks in the summer of 1984 and sporadically for 18 months after that. Nancy Bartlett, reference archivist at the Bentley, was especially helpful in correspondence. The staff at the Burton Historical Collections in the Detroit Public Library, Detroit Michigan was thoughtful. Curator Joseph Oldenberg deserves special commendation for tracking down the Clara B. Arthur Papers and for photocopying cburtesies. The New York Public Library Manuscript Division staff went to extra effort to obtain material from remote storage where thereehad been damage and disordering of the stored material four days before my research appointment was iii scheduled to start. It would have been costly'for me to reschedule my trip, so they made the extra effort. The Interlibrary Loan Service of Michigan State University Libraries located books, articles and dissertations in large numbers for me. Sister Mary Hallock of the David Metzger Library at Nazareth College in Kalamazoo patiently ordered reels and more reels of microfilm from the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Dr. Louis J. Marchiafava of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas mailed me photocopies of the four letters regarding Michigan in the Minnie Fisher Cunningham Collection, saving me a trip to Texas. Librarians and archivists at other institutions were also helpful. These include: Richard Lucas of the Library of Michigan, Lansing, Michigan, whose knowledge of Michigan documents was invaluable; Leroy Barnett of the State of Michigan Archives, Lansing, Michigan; Catherine Larson, Local History Librarian, Kalamazoo Public Library, Kalamazoo, Michigan; Gordon Olson, City Historian, Grand Rapids Public Library, Grand Rapids, Michigan; Dione Miles Reference Archivist, Archives of Labor and Urban History, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan; Galen Wilson, The William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; the staff in the manuscript room of the Library of Congress, Washington D. Cm; Elizabeth Shenton and the staff at the Schlesinger iv Library on the History of WOmen in America at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Charles Lindquist, Curator, Lenawee County Historical Museum, Adrian, Michigan; Mary Ann Bamberger, Special Collections Librarian, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Susan L. Boone, Curator, Sophia Smith Collection, Women's History Archive, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts; Mary M. Huth, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York; and the staff of the Regional History Collections, Western _Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. At Michigan State University my committee has been supportive, informative, knowledgeable and considerate. In; William Hixson, as dissertation supervisor, has given service above and beyond the call of duty. He has promptly read and responded to my drafts with clear and detailed commentary and suggestions for improvement. Professors Alan Pu Grimes and Victor Howard made suggestions which have strengthen the paper at particular points. Professor Sam Baskett was there when I needed him. My family has been supportive. My brother-in-law, Jerry Klomparens, asked good questions to help me focus how much background non-historians needed to understand my project.' My sister, Jeanette Paganelli, has patiently listened to my frustrations and helped me deal with them. My cousins' expressions of interest have been encouraging. My parents, Santi and Naomi Paganelli supported my interest V in education and learning from childhood. Even during the fatal illness of my mother they both encouraged me to research and write as much as I could under the circumstances and asked intelligent questions about my progress. My father's injunction "Keep after it“ sustained me during final revisions after his sudden death. My husband, Phillip P. Caruso, has served as statistical consultant and discussant, computer operator, occasional typist, and general support mainstay throughout my graduate program. Obviously none of these helpful and supportive people are responsible for the pages that follow. Without their support and suggestions the pages would be less than they are. What they are is my responsibility. vi PREFACE The women's liberation movement of the last twenty years has resulted in a revived interest in earlier women's rights movements in the United States. The earlier movements focused on the denial of educational and to a lesser extent economic opportunities and civil and legal disabilities; and they demanded the extension of opportunities and civil and political rights for women, including the suffrage. Only suffrage is not an issue for the current women's movement. The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution settled that issue. The successful passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 came seventy-two years after the issue had been raised publicly at the woman's rights meeting in Seneca Falls, New York on July 19 and 20, 1848. By 1919 years of agitation at both the state and national levels had made ratification possible by obtaining woman suffrage of some kind in thirty-seven of the forty-eight states. Members of Congress, even ones personally opposed to the idea of women voting, had voted for the amendment in Congress because their state had some form of woman suffrage. Without the successes at the state level, Wbman Suffrage might well have suffered the fate of the Child Labor Amendment rather vii than being the last successful reform of the progressive era.l Most general studies of women in America have not focussed heavily on the battle for suffrage and have been narrative rather than analytical.2 Recently Carl Degler has attempted to incorporate the two major themes of women's history as they have been developed in the United States into a single interpretive framework. Degler has tried to identify and address the tensions created between the "separate spheres doctrine“ of female domesticity and the undeniable importance of home and family for women on the one side and the doctrine of equality with its corollary of equal political participation by women on the other. He suggests that woman suffrage was highly radical because it I'asserted the individuality of women and assumed 1 Maud Wood Park, “The Winning Plan" in National American Wbman Suffrage Association yictory: now Women Won It: A Centennial Symposium, 1§AQ_121Q‘ (New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1940). ' 2Among them are: Carol Hymowitz and Michaele Weissman, A History of Wbmen in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1978): Robert E. Reigel, American Women: A Story of Social Change (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970): Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America from Colonial Times to the Present 3rd edu,(New York: Franklin Watts, 1983): Andrew Sinclair, The Emancipation of the American Woman (New York: Harper Colophon Books, Harper and Row, Publishers: 1965,1966): Page Smith, Daughters of the Promised Land: 'Wbmgn in America History. (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1970): June Sochen, gerstory: A Record of the Merican Woman's Past 2nd ed., (Sherman Oaks, California: Alfred Publishing, 1981). viii and asserted a woman's self-interest.“ Suffrage attacked the doctrine of separate spheres directly.3 Most published studies of the woman's rights struggle have followed the lead of _'l_'h_e_ History _o_f_ 391m Suffrage.4 While scholars have paid attention to issues of education, property rights and employment, woman suffrage, especially the struggle for the Federal amendment, has commanded the bulk of the attention. These studies mostly confined themselves to a narrative of the events.5 More recently some political analysis of the voting patterns in Congress and the influence of party politics and regional variations has been done by David Morgan. He finds that while President WOodrow Wilson and the national Democratic 3Carl Degler, At Odds: Women and the Fami_l_y in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980) pp. 328-361, 343. 4 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and others. The History of Woman Suffrage 6 volumes (Rochester and New York, New York: Susan B. Anthony and National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1881-1922). 5The classic is Eleanor Flexner, A Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the pnited States (Cambridge Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, revised edition, 1975). Others include: Mildred Adams, 1p; Right to pe People (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1966): Olivia Coolidge, Woman's Rights: The Suffrage Movement in America 1840-1220 ( New York: Dutton, 1966): Richard Evans, The Feminists: Wom__en' s Emancipation Movements in Europe, America and Australia 1840-1229 (London: Croon Helm, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1977): National American WOman Suffrage Association, Victory: 'gow Wbmen flpp 1;; A Centennial Symposium, 1840-1249 (New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1940): William L. O'Neill, Everyone Was grave: The Rise anduFal 11 of Feminism in America ( Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969): Robert E. Reigel, American Feminists (Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 1963). ix Party came gradually to favor woman suffrage, they could not muster enough votes to get the Federal woman suffrage amendment through Congress. The southern Democrats could not be moved to vote for woman suffrage. Morgan argues that the southern Democrats were fearful of Federal action on any voting issue both because they opposed possible re- enfranchisement of the blacks and because they feared that women's voting would lead to the outlawing or restricting of child labor and would lessen the South's advantage for its developing textile industry, And so it was the Republicans, after the election of 1918, who pushed it through and reaped whatever rewards there were to be had.5 At the beginning of the revival of interest in woman's rights struggle the ideas of the suffragists and their opponents were ably delineated by Aileen Kraditor. Her central perception is that the rhetoric and arguments used by supporters of woman suffrage changed greatly around 1890. Before 1890 woman suffrage advocates stressed the natural rights argument: women were persons and entitled to give consent to their government in the same way that men did. After 1890 suffragists increasingly stressed the benefits which would occur in a society which granted women 5 David Morgan, Suffragists and Democrats: _The Politics of Wbman Suffrage in America (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1972). the vote. She calls the first argument the argument from justice, the second the expediency argument.‘7 To fully understand and appreciate the enormity of the task involved in obtaining woman's suffrage historians need to look not only at the struggle for the federal amendment but also at the struggles for woman suffrage in each of the individual states.8 The various combinations of political factions, interest groups, ethnic and religious differences and urban-rural proportions that the forty-eight states provide is immense. .Historians could ask themselves a number of questions about the patterns of hsupport and opposition woman suffrage faced and explore those questions with the data from various states. To create a manageable dissertation topic this paper will focus on Michigan, a state for which the last study of the entire woman suffrage ’movement preceded the establishment of full suffrage!9 The author became convinced that a study of the woman suffrage movement in Michigan was needed while she tried to assemble a chronology of woman suffrage in 7 Aileen Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman's Suffrage Movement, 1829-1229 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), pp. 43-74. 8A number of state studies of varying quality and interest exist. I read all for which I could obtain copies. Those I found useful or suggestive are in the footnotes and the bibliography. 9Karolena M. Fox, "Equal Suffrage in Michigan", Micpigan gistogy Magazine, 2 (January 1918): 90-109. xi Michigan from the one article on the subject, the three chapters on Michigan in Egg History pp Eppgp Suffrage and the standard books on Michigan history. To illustrate the problem, when did Michigan women gain full suffrage? Both Bald and Dunbar state that women in Michigan did not have full suffrage until after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, while Egg fiistogy p; flgppp Suffrage implies that the successful woman suffrage referendum of 1918 gave women full suffrage beginning with the April 1919 e1ections.1° My research has confirmed that the gistgry pf nggp Suffgage was correct. This dissertation involves both narrative and analysis. The narrative questions require establishing a clear and specific chronology for the woman suffrage movement in Michigan and describing the efforts by women suffrage advocates though a variety of organizations in agitating for the vote. Subsidiary questions in this part of the work include: 1) What prompted legislative action at various times? 2) In what areas of Michigan were there woman suffrage and women's rights activists? 19 Fox “Equal Suffrage“: and "Michigan“ in EWS 3:513-532, 4:755é77l, 6:303-316:-C1ever F. Bald, Michigan in Four Qentugies (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954) 334: ‘Willis F. Dunbar, gichigan Through the Centuries 4 'volumes (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc. 1955) 1:467-68. xii 3) How did school suffrage come about and how did it operate? 4) How much activism was there at any one time? 5) How did woman suffrage get on the ballot as a referendum issue in 1874, 1912, 1913 and 1918? The analysis requires looking for linkages between woman suffrage and other issues and events among Michigan legislators, among Michigan voters and among suffrage advocates. Questions addressed include: 1) Did generational changes make any difference in the vigor of the woman suffrage movement? To what extent does the revival in several states, associated with new blood in the movement between 1890 and the turn of the century, extend to Michigan?11 2) In all the maneuvering that occurred when woman suffrage was discussed and voted on were party advantages or disadvantages perceived by the legislators? Morgan suggests there might be. .Alan P. Grimes also points to partisan advantages in the 11Flexner, Century of Struggle, pp. 225, 245 comments on the revival of suffrage activity at the turn of the century and connects it to a changing social climate and the increase in the numbers of college educated women. Sharon Strom notes a generational change coupled with social changes which helped fuel a revival of woman suffrage activity in Massachusetts in "Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts“, Journal of American' glstogy, 62 (September 1975):296-315. xiii decision to adopt woman suffrage by some western states and territories.12 3) Was woman suffrage presented to the voters in Michigan or any other state as being connected or linked to other reforms being advocated, or did the voters have to make the connections by themselves? Can one find behaviors that suggest connections? The following are possibilities this work will examine. a) In light of the conviction by woman suffrage advocates that the liquor interests opposed them, are there observable links to the prohibition movement in the early twentieth century? Are there observable links to the temperance~movement of the late nineteenth century? The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was the most prominent anti-liquor group in the United States. Beginning in the 1880's the WCTU at the national level endorsed woman suffrage. In addition, from 1872 on the Prohibition party supported woman suffrage in its platforms. Many suffragists were 12Morgan, Suffragists and Democrats describes the party platforms of the Republicans and the Democrats pp. 107-108. The 1917 maneuvering in Congress is described on pp. 127- 138. Alan P. Grimes The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffragg (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967) points to a Democratic advantage in Wyoming p. 54. xiv temperance people. Some historians have insisted on the link.13 b)Does foreign birth, ethnicity or religion matter? What kind of voting patterns for woman suffrage does one see in relation to the ethnic or religious composition of the geographic area? An article published as this was being written finds some connections. Eileen M. McDonagh and H. Douglas Price used some Michigan data pooled with some Ohio data in a statistical analysis of referenda voting patterns in the Midwest. They find that Protestant and northern European areas tended to support woman's suffrage, that German areas consistently opposed woman suffrage and that 13 Ruth Bordin: Woman and gemperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1313-;299 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981): Donald Bruce Johnson: National Party Platforms, lS40-l2§§ rev. ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978 ) p. 46: T. A. Larson, 'The Woman's Rights Movement in Idaho“, Idaho Yesterdays 16 (1972): 2- 15. A number of early woman suffrage advocates, including Susan B. Anthony were temperance people. See Ross Evans Paulson, Wbmanfls Suffrage and Prohibition: A Qomparative Study of Eguality and Social Control (Glenview 111:, Scott Foresman and Company, 1973) pp. 70-71. Anne F. Scott and Andrew M. Scott: One Half the Peeple: The Fight for Woman Suffrage (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1975) pp. 41-42 argue that the woman's suffrage amendment passed the United States Congress only after the prohibition amendment had already done so and effectively separated the two issues. Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: .nggnj Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth Century America (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1981) delineates similarities and differences between‘the women's rights advocates goals and concerns and the WCTU's home protection orientation. Their goals and concerns overlapped some, but far from completely. XV southern European and Catholic areas showed no clear pattern of support or opposition regarding woman suffrage.“ c) Does geography matter? Burnham in his study of realigning elections in Pennsylvania noticed a connection between the vote patterns and the distance from railroad and other means of communication.15 Did The upper peninsula of Michigan show a different pattern of behavior regarding woman suffrage than the lower peninsula in any of the four referenda elections? Engelmann in his study of Michigan local option elections, separates the upper peninsula from the lower one because the two peninsulas behave so differently in local option elections.“ 4) Lastly, what happened in Michigan between the referendum of November 1912 in which woman suffrage lost by 760 votes and the referendum of 14Eileen L. McDonagh and H. Douglas Price, 'Wbman Suffrage in the Progressive Era: Patterns of Opposition and Support in Referenda Voting, 1910-1918“, American political Science Beview, 79 (June 1985): 415- 435. 15 Walter Dean Burnham, Qritical Elections and the gainsprings of American Politics ( New York, W. W. Norton 8 Company Inc. 1970) pp. 42-44. ‘ 16Larry Engelmann, 'Dry Renaissance: The Local Option Years; 1889-1917“, nichigan History, 59 (Spring- Summer 1975): 69-90. .- xvi April 1913 in which woman suffrage lost by 96,144 votes? The narrative sections of this dissertation required research in the Soupnals of the Michigan House and Senate to establish a clear chronology of events in the legislature: reading the Sougnals and the Pgoceedlngs and Debates for the Michigan Constitutional Conventions of 1835-1836, 1850, 1867 and 1907-1908 and the Spgppgl of the Constitutional Commission of 1873 to establish attitudes regarding qualifications of electors. I also sought and —read all the papers and information I could find about the Michigan Equal Suffrage Association and its predecessor the Michigan State WOman Suffrage Association. Fires had destroyed some records I sought. The State of Michigan archives were largely destroyed in the February 1951 fire at the State Library and Archives. The official files of the Michigan Equal Suffrage Association were lost during a fire at the home of the association President in 1917.17 The various volumes of The Sistory g; Wbman Suffrage provide in footnotes a calendar of where the state conventions were held and a list of officers and speakers. I continued hunting for personal papers even while writing drafts of this dissertation. Newspapers gave accounts of 17'State Library Fire Problems Many’, Michigan Library News 10 (February l951):2 & ff. describes the fire and the nine day smoldering that followed: Ida Porter Boyer to Mary Ogden White, May 15, 1918. State Ratification Correspondence, Michigan 1918-1919, NAWSA Papers, RL-NYPL. xvii suffrage meetings and editorial reaction to them. The Library of Michigan has participated in a newspaper microfilming project which makes available'to Michigan residents on interlibrary loan most of the newspapers I wanted to examine for information. The Michigan Manual for each legislature lists the members of the legislature and gives biographical information about them. Party affiliation proved difficult to establish for legislators before the mid 18808 because it was not given in the Michigan Manual. Party affiliation for all members of all constitutional conventions and commissions and for legislators before the 18808 had to be sought in biographical dictionaries and newspapers contemporaneous with the individual. It proved to be tedious, tiresome work and not always rewarding. The woman suffrage referenda results for 1874, 1912, 1913 and 1918 are in the Michigan Manual published immediately after each referendum year. The Journals of the Michigan House and Senate and the Constitutional Conventions and commission give the roll call votes which were useful both for narrative and analysis. The papers of individuals yielded information about internal tensions among the supporters of woman suffrage, some indications how strategic decisions were made and the feelings of suffrage supporters through the numerous campaigns for school, municipal and full suffrage. xviii The analytical sections of the dissertation required research activity of several types. .First, since the Constitutional Conventions of 1850, 1867 and 1907-08 were actively petitioned, I cross-tabulated each topic addressed by the petitions and each area from which the petition came in every constitutional convention in order to examine possible association among issues. Second, I applied regression analysis to the state-wide referenda of 1874, 1912, 1913 and 1918 to look for linkages among issues. The United States Census for 1870, 1910 and 1920 coupled with the Michigan Census of 1874 contained the demographic data I needed for my regression analysis. Realizing that the analytical sections of the project required some statistical knowledge, I began reading methodological materials in 1981. I read both examples of quantitative history and discussions of the various techniques. In the summer of 1983 I attended the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Summer Institute to take the Quantitative Historical Analysis WbrkshOp under Dr. Terence McDonald of the University of Michigan. In the workshop I learned how to formulate appropriate questions, look for data and interpret the simple contingency tables tools I would use for roll call analysis. From my reading I learned that anyone analyzing group behavior must be careful to avoid the “ecological fallacy“ first discussed by W. 8. Robinson. He pointed out xix that correlations that a researcher obtained in .fo xx regression and correlation analysis for a group could not describe the action of any single individual in that group. This means that in working with voting data at the county level a researcher's descriptions could only be for the voters as a group in that county and not for any individual voter.18 For a number of years concerns over ecological fallacy retarded discussion.of past voting behavior and other phenomena for which scholars had only aggregate data. Two responses to the problemigradually emerged. Some scholars set out to develop techniques to make possible qualified estimates of individual behavior from group data. This technique, ecological inference, has been used by several historians to examine voting behavior.19 In recent years other political scientists and historians also interested in electoral behavior and developing a “new 18W. S. Robinson, “Ecological Correlations and the Behavior of Individuals“, Qerican Sociological Review, 15 (June 1950): 351-357: Leo Goodman, “Ecological Regression and the Behavior of Individuals“, American Sociological Seview, 18 (December 1953): 663-664: “Some Alternatives to Ecological Correlation“, American Journal of Sociolmy, 64 (May 1959): 610-625 are the pioneering works in this area. 19Laura Irwin Langbein and Allan J. Lichtman, geological Inference Sage University Paper series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 07-010, (Beverly Hills, Ca1if., Sage Publications, 1978). 'A recent example of the technique in all its refinement is Allan J. Lichtman, Prejudice and tpe Qld politics: The Presidential Election of l22§ (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1979). Lichtman discusses his methodology with great detail and clarity on pages pp. 25-39, 247-264. 8)! political history“ have chosen to avoid the dangers of ecological fallacy by describing trends and tendencies for groups.20 I have followed their lead. All students of electoral history agree that, regardless of the techniques chosen, careful specification of variables, as many variables as possible, and caution in interpreting the results are called for in analyzing electoral behavibr. I analyzed voting patterns among the state legislators to explore whether legislators who supported woman suffrage consistently and as a group supported other reforms or activities using roll call analysis by contingency tables.‘21 Exploring the linkage between woman suffrage and other reforms of the progressive era will be difficult. Just because one has coincidence in time does not mean one has causality or connections. 20Jerome M. Clubb, William, H. Flanigan and Nancy H. Zingale, ed., Analyzing Electoral Sistory: A guide to the Study of American Voter Behavior (Beverly Hills Calif.: Sage publications, 1981) 198-200: In the same volume see all of Part III: “Analyzing Quantitative Data on Electoral Behavior“ pp. 195-303. On the “New Political History“ see Philip Vandermeer, “The New Political History: Progress and Prospects“ in Georg Iggers and Harold T. Parker, ed., lnternational Handbook of Historical Studies: Contemporary Research and Theory (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979) 87-108. ’ 21Roderick Floud An Introduction to Quantltative Methods for Historians 2d.ed. (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1979) pp. 133-138 provides an example of the approach I used. See also Charles H. Dollar and Richard J. Jensen, Sistorians guide to Statistics: Quantitative Apalysis and istor ca esearch (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1971) pp. 80-87. xxi In the case of prohibition, some testing of the linkage can be done not only for legislators'*votes but also for voter behavior. From 1889 on Michigan allowed local county option regarding prohibition. This meant a county could vote itself “dry“ or prohibitionist in a county referendum. A county which did not support prohibition was known as “wet“ By comparing the results in the “dry“ and “wet“ counties on woman suffrage referenda in 1912, 1913 and 1918 we can see if there is any ground for supposing the ordinary voter saw a connection between woman's suffrage and prohibition. If there was a link in the mind of the ordinary voter, dry counties should show a more favorable percentage for women's suffrage than wet counties. If the existence of prohibition in an area made a difference, the Michigan woman's suffrage referendum of 1918 should be especially'informative. In 1916 Michigan voters in a state wide referendum had approved state wide prohibition to take effect May 1, 1918. Did the counties which had opposed prohibition in the 1916 state referenda oppose woman's suffrage in 1918? A history of the woman suffrage movement in Michigan is important for several reasons beside the need for an accurate chronology for the statefls movement. The slow progress of woman suffrage in Michigan presents a case study in the agitation, education and conversion of voters to a position. The Equal Rights Amendment supporters might have learned something from the woman xxii suffrage supporters development of grass roots support through agitation and education over a long period of time. The drive for woman suffrage took place in a society with clear social divisions between the sexes in which woman's place was in the home. This separation allowed, even encouraged, the development of a separate woman's culture. Many women who participated in this woman's culture were concerned with what can be called woman's emancipation without being supporters of suffrage. Gerda Lerner has suggested the terms woman's rights and woman's emancipation as ways to distinguish among activists 'in the woman's movement of the nineteenth century. She suggests this is a better distinction than the blanket terms feminism and feminist which have very ambiguous meanings. Woman's rights advocates were concerned with equality with men in all aspects of society. Woman's emancipation advocates were concerned with freeing women from oppressive restrictions imposed by sex. They shared the concern of the woman rights supporters for ending biological and societal restrictions on women. Their main concern however was not equal rights with men but woman defined goals and processes. Lerner points to Susan B. Anthony as a woman's rights advocate and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Catherine Beecher as emancipation advocates. Woman's Culture is what I call the world of single sex voluntary organizations women created to address the needs and concerns of women in their society. This culture is xxiii discussed by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg in several places.22 Scattered work has been done on separate woman's culture in America, both describing and analyzing it in studies of the various women's organizations in the nineteenth century.23 This dissertation will attempt to show how suffragists used the existence of this woman's culture with its complex of concerns and goals as a wedge for gaining support for suffrage. To do this the drive for woman suffrage must be placed in the context of this woman's culture. Unfortunately historians have done little in this area with Michigan women. This means it will be difficult for me to put the Michigan movement in a specifically Michigan context. The success of women in gaining suffrage raises the question of how women influenced politics in the years 'before they had the vote. A study of the struggle for woman suffrage in a single state provides a microcosm in which to examine how women influenced politics, especially' reform politics, without the vote. A study of woman suffrage in Michigan will illustrate in one case how'women influenced politics. 22See “Politics and Culture in Women's History: A Symposium“ Feminist Studies 6 (Spring 1980): 50-51 for Lerner's comments and 55-63 for Smith-Rosenberg's discussion. ‘ ‘ ' 23Nancy Hewitt: Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester New York, ”22-1512 (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1984) is an example of the kind of work that is beginning to appear. xxiv I hope this study will provide women's studies students with a case study of women's influence on politics before suffrage, students of Michigan history with a clear chronology, and students of woman suffrage with a detailed narrative and analysis of developments in Michigan. XXV TABLE OF CONTENTS AKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvi LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXX CHAPTER 1 To 1867: “SUCH AN INNOVATION“. . . . . . 1 CHAPTER 2 1867-1874: “A GREAT WORK BEFORE US" . . 32 CHAPTER 3 1875-1893: “OUR ONE BIT OF FRANCHISE“ . 73 CHAPTER 4 1894-1908: I'A SPARK GATHERING" . . . . 122 CHAPTER 5 1909-1913: “THE FIGHT IS GETTING WARM“ 165 CHAPTER 6 1914-1920: “THE COMPLETION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE". . . . . 228 CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . 276 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MATERIALS CONSULTED . . . . . . . . . 295 xxvi Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 12.7 2.8 2.9 3.1 3.2 LIST OF TABLES Petitions Presented to the 1850 Constitutional Convention, By Topic . . . 23 Petitions Presented to the 1850 Constitutional Convention, By Area and Selected Topics .. . .. . .. . .. 24 1867 Constitutional Convention, Counties with WOman Suffrage Petitions . . . . . . 42 1867 Constitutional Convention, Counties without WOman Suffrage Petitions . . . . 43 Comparison of Percentage of Petitions on the Liquor Issue, 1867 Constitutional Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 1867 Constitutional Convention, Summary Table WOman Suffrage and Selected variables 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O I O O 50 1873 Constitutional Commission, Summary Table, Issue Linkage, WOman Suffrage and Selected Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 1874 Michigan Senate: Roll Call on WOman SUffrage O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O. O O 65 1874 Michigan House: Roll Call on WOman SUffrage o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 66 1874 Regression Results: Counties with PROHG VOtes O O O I O O O O O O O O O O 69 1874 Regression Results: All Counties; No PROHG vote . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Number of WOman Suffrage Petitions at Each Regular Session of the Legislature, 1889-1893 0 0.0 o o o o o o o o o o o o 103 1893 Michigan Senate: Roll Call on Municipal Suffrage . .... . .... . . 107 xxvii Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 4.1 4.2 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.8 4.9 4.10 1893 Michigan House: Roll Call on Municipal Suffrage .. . .. . .. . . 108 1893 Michigan Senate: Roll Call on Repeal of Local Option (RLO) and Municipal Suffrage (MS) . .... . . . 110 1893 Michigan House: Enforcement of Local Option (ELO) and Municipal Suffrage (MS) . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 1893 Michigan Senate: Support for Alien Suffrage (AS) and Municipal Suffrage (MS) I O O O O O O O O O O O I O O O O 113 1893 Michigan House: Support for Alien Suffrage (AS) and Municipal Suffrage (MS) 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O I O O 113 Petitions to the 1907-1908 Constitutional convention O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 144 Summary Table Issue Linkage 1907-1908 Constitutional Convention, WOman Suffrage & Selected Issues . . . . . . . 150 Voting on Full Woman Suffrage (FWS) and Initiative (1) O O O O O O O O O O O O I 152 Voting on Taxpayer WOman Suffrage (TPWS) and Initiative (I) . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Voting on Taxpayer WOman Suffrage (TPWS) and Municipal Home Rule (MHR) . . . . . 153 Voting on Full Woman Suffrage (FWS) and Bank Regulation (BR) . . . . . . . . . 153 Voting on Taxpayer WOman Suffrage (TPWS) and Bank Regulation (BR) . . . . 154 Voting on Full Woman Suffrage (FWS) and Regulation of Women's & Children's Labor (RmL’ O O O O O O O O O O O O O 155 Voting on Taxpayer WOman Suffrage (TPWS) and Regulation of Women's & Children's ' Labor (RWCL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Voting on Full Woman Suffrage (FWS) and Amended Liquor Proposal (AML) .‘. . . . 156 xxviii Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table 4.11 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 6.1 6.2 Voting on Taxpayer WOman Suffrage (TPWS) and Amended Liquor Proposal (AML) . . .' 156 Petitions to the 1912 Special Sessions of the Legislature' . . . . . . . . . . 176 1912 Legislature Summary Table Wbman Suffrage & Selected Topics . . . . 180 1912 House Voting On WOman Suffrage (WS) & Ending Brewery-Owned Saloons (BOS) . . 181 1912 Senate Voting On Woman Suffrage (WS) & Ending Brewery-Owned Saloons (£808) ."181 House Vbting On WOman Suffrage (WS) and Immediate Effect for Presidential Primary (IE) 0 O O I O O O O O O O O O O 182 Senate Voting On Wbman Suffrage (WS) and Immediate Effect for Presidential Primary (IE) 0 O O O O C O O O O O O O 182 Sumamry Table: Woman Suffrage and Selected Topics, 1913 . . . . . . . . . 201 House Vbting: WOman Suffrage (WS) By Party Affilliation (Rep, Dem, NP) . . . 201 House voting on WOman Suffrage (WS) and Prohibition Amendment (PRO) . . . . . . 202 Senate Voting: WOman Suffrage (WS) and Opposition to Election Fraud (OEF) . . 202 1912 Regression Results: Local Option Counties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 1912 Regression Results Without Local Option I O O O I O O O O O O O O O O O 215 1913 Regression Results: Local Option counties 0 O O 0 O O O O O O O O O O O 220 1913 Regression Results Without Local option 0 O O O O O O I O O O I O O O O 223 Summary Table, 1917 Legislature, Both Kinds Wbman Suffrage & Party . . . . . 257 1918 Referendum Results, (1910 Data), (1920 Data) 0 O O O O O O O . O. O O O O O 266 xxix Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure 5.1 6.2 6.3 LIST OF FIGURES Number of Petitions in 1912 Special seSSionS O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 177 Scatter Diagram: % Favorable Vote, Woman Suffrage (WS) % Local Option (LO),1912 . 218 Scatter Diagram: % Favorable Vote, Woman Suffrage (WS) % Local Option (L0), 1913 . 221 Attitudes re Woman Suffrage 1916, By percentage in Parts of One Ward in DetrOit O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 238 Range of Support for Woman Suffrage By Liquor Status 0 O O I O O I O O O O O O O 267 Scatter Diagram: % Favorable Vote, Referenda Woman Suffrage (WS), 1918 & Prohibition (PROH) 1916 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 268 XXX KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS AAW Association for the Advancement of WOmen. AERA American Equal Rights Association. ALTB Alde L. T. Blake. AWSA American WOman Suffrage Association. BB Belle Brotherton. BHC-DPL Burton Historical Collections, Detroit Public Library, Detroit, Michigan. ' CBA Clara B. Arthur. CCC Carrie Chapman Catt. CU Congressional Union. FMHR-GRPL Family and Michigan History Room, Grand Rapids Public Idbrary, Grand Rapids, Michigan. HES History of Woman Suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Josyln Gage and Ida Busted Harper, eds. 6 vol. (Rochester, N.Y. and New York: Susan B. Anthony and National American WOman Suffrage Association, 1881-1920). IWVA Independent WOmen voters Association. LESSD League of Equal Suffrage Societies of Detroit. LG Lucia Isabelle Grimes. LTSSC Lucy Tilden SteWart Suffrage Collection. MAOWS Michigan Association Opposed to Wbman Suffrage. MD-LC Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. MESA Michigan Equal Suffrage Association. xxxi MHC-BHL HSFWC MSWSA NAWSA NEWC NSC NWSA NW? 088 RHC-WMU RL-NYPL SBA SL-RC Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Michigan State Federation of Wbman's Clubs. Michigan State WOman Suffrage Association. National American WOman Suffrage Association. New England WOman's Club. Nellie Sawyer Clark. National WOman Suffrage Association. National WOman's Party. Olivia H. Hall. Regional History Archives, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Rare Books and Manuscript Division, Research Library, New York Public Library, Astor Lenox and Tilden Foundations, New York, New York. Susan B. Anthony. Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of WOmen in America, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Michigan Suffragist. Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Wbman's Republican Association. Women's Rights Collection, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of women in America, Radcliffe College, Cambridge Massachusetts. xxxii CHAPTER 1 TO 1867: “SUCH AN INNOVATION" Senate Select Committee, 1859 The French were the first Europeans in Michigan. Initially seeking a water route to the Pacific the French returned because of the profits in the fur trade. To further the fur trade they established forts and trading posts. When Antoine deLamothe Cadillac arrived in 1701 he wanted his base, Pontchartrain du Detroit, to be not just a fur trading post and fort, but a self-supporting town. To persuade prospective settlers and the Indians he was serious, he had his wife and the wife of his lieutenant come to Detroit. Madame Cadillac thus become the first white woman to enter what is now the state of Michigan. Recognizing the dangers, hardships, and isolation of living in Detroit, she joined her husband motivated by love and duty.1 How many other women followed Madame Cadillac to Michigan because their husbands or fathers chose to come and they followed out of love or duty is unknown. The French settlement at Detroit grew slowly in the eighteenth century, partly because the century saw a series of wars between Great Britain and France. In 1763 1'53 Cleaver Bald, Michigan in Four Centuries (New York: Harper, 1954), p. 50. at the end of the French and Indian War (the Seven Years War in Europe) Canada which included all the territory between the alleghenies and the Mississippi River passed to Great Britain as part of the Victor's spoils. During the American War of Independence the British used Detroit as a base of operations for raids into the Western country. At the end of the war in 1783, title to Michigan passed to the United States. But it was not until 1796 that the British withdrew their military presence from MichiganJ2 In 1781 Congress created the Northwest Territory, _territory held by all the people of the United States and formed out of the area formerly claimed by several of the states and ceded to the central government under promise that the western lands would become members of the federal union “with the same rights, and sovereignty, freedom and independence as the other statesJ' Michigan and the other states formed from the Northwest Territory came under the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The Land Ordinance provided that the land must be surveyed before it was open to sale and settlement. The ordinance also set the amount that could be purchased and the price. Both the amount one could purchase and the price were 2 The discussion of Michigan while a French and British territory draws on Willis F. Dunbar, Michigan: A History of the flolgerine State (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965). pp. 19-172 and Bald: Michigan in Four Centuries, pp. 8‘92. ' altered several times before Michigan became a state in 1837.3 At first Michigan was simply part of the Old Northwest. After 1803, when Ohio was granted statehood, Michigan remained part of the Indiana territory until 1805 when Michigan and Indiana territories were separately organized. In 1818 the Michigan territory was re-defined again, covering all of what is now Michigan and Wisconsin. That arrangement lasted until statehood in 1837.4 The Northwest Ordinance stipulated three stages of government through which a territory must pass on its road to statehood. In 1805 Michigan was a first-grade territory; ‘As such it was governed by a governor a secretary and a council of three judges, all appointed by the President. The only places where white settlers lived were around Detroit and Mackinac. The rest of the state had not been surveyed and the Indian titles had not been extinguished“ The War of 1812 delayed the solution of these problems, but after 1815 they were energetically attacked. 5 In 1823 Michigan became a second-grade territory. Congress authorized voters to nominate eighteen persons for a territorial council. The President with the advice and consent of the Senate chose nine from that group to serve. 3Dunbar, Michi an, pp. 158, 161-167. 4Bald, Michigan in Four Centuries, map p. 105. The council served as a legislature. From 1827 to statehood, Michigan was a grade three territory. Michigan voters elected their own legislative council and a territorial delegate to Congress. {All adult male inhabitants could vote in these elections. Of the five states formed from the old Northwest Territory, only Wisconsin took longer to fill with settlers and become a state. To settle in Michigan, pioneers had to turn north from Ohio, Indiana or Illinois, and few bothered to do so. Only after the development of navigation on the lower Great Lakes (Lakes Ontario and Erie) made getting to Michigan easier, quicker and cheaper than it had been before, did Michigan really growu.Federal expenditures for buoys and lighthouses made Great Lakes travel safer. Steamboats came to the Great Lakes in 1818 making travel quicker. Finally, the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, linking the the Hudson River and Lake Erie eased transportation to Michigan.5~ The people who came to Michigan in the 18208 and 18308 brought with them the customs and ideas of the areas from which they came. Pioneer life in Michigan was hard. The pioneer farming family needed all the workers it could get to fell trees, plow fields, plant gardens and fields, hunt game, build shelter for people and animals, cook, 5Dunbar, Michigan, pp. 191-199. clean, prepare and repair clothing and equipment, and process and preserve food stuffs. ‘While traditions of division of labor between male and female were strong, in farm families whoever was healthy did what ever had to be done. In this environment women worked at least as hard as the men and the work they did was as necessary as that of the men. One historian has characterized this rough economic equality of men and women (in the sense they both made a positive economic contribution to the household) as a status of “Adam's rib,“ a period of rough economic equality, even while the subordination of women to men was maintained in principle.5 By the time Michigan population began growing rapidly, this idea was already being replaced in the cities back East by another concept of the position of women in American society. Between the 17708 and the 18208 Americans successfully established themselves as an independent nation. The commercial sector of the economy grew rapidly, especially in the cities. The process of industrialization began with textiles. .Rapid change and great fluidity of status and role accompanied these changes. The idea of woman as man's helpmate declined. The household was less an economic unit. In the industrial world and the 6Mary P. Ryan, Momanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present 3d ed. (New York: Franklin Watts, 1983), pp. 19-68 presents the concept. 'Dunbar discusses rural and urban frontier life in Michi an, pp. 256-269. mercantile world, men's and women's work became increasingly separated as it had not been in the agricultural world. Men got a pay envelope and therefore had obvious economic value. In cities and towns, the housekeeping roles that middle class women had filled could be performed by hired help. If a married couple chose to live in a boarding house, there were no housekeeping roles for the wifefi7 The ideal image of woman that emerged in conjunction with these changes was very different from a helpmate. Woman under this ideal is described as “pious and pure, fragile and weak, submissive and domestic, passive and un-intellectual."8 Women were expected to live what today we would call lives of vicarious satisfaction and service to others.9 A true woman was pious, pure, domestic and submissive.10 Physicians united in finding woman physically frail and dominated by her reproductive 7Keith E. Melder, The aeginnings of Sisterhood: The American Moman's Rights Movement, W (New York: Schocken Books, 1977), p. 4. 8 Barbara J. Berg, The Remembered gate The Qrigins of American Feminism; The Moman and the City, 1809- 1869 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980 paperback ' edition), p. 85. 91bid., pp. 75-94 develops the belle-ideal. The consequences are outlined on pp. 95-142. lpBarbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood 1820- 1860' Merican Quarterly 18: (Summer 1966‘): 152-165. organs and functions.11 Motherhood became woman's crowning glory: her tasks, to civilize the age and to guide future generations in the paths of righteousness.12 This development of separate spheres for men and women may have given some women more status in marriage than wives had had earlier. At least now women were not just decorative or brood mares or drones.13 The legal status of women in the colonies had varied. Though custom.(especia11y in sea-going areas) and antenuptial agreements could retain fghhgwghlg status for a married woman, her more common status was fighhg covgrte. Under this common law doctrine a married woman could not sign contracts, had no title to her earnings or property and her children were the husband's. A femme sole could sign contracts and control her own property and wages. 11Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, 'From Puberty to Menopause: The Cycle of Femininity in Nineteenth Century America“ pp. 24-34 and Regina Morantz, “The Lady and her Physician“ pp. 38-53 in Clixvs Consciousness Raised: Mew Perspectives on the History of Momen Mary S. Hartman and Lois Banner eds., (New York, Harper and Row, 1974). 12 Melder, fieginnings, pp. 8-10. 13 Carl N. Degler, At @ds: Mohen and the Family in America from the gevolution golthg Preseng (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981 paperback edition). In pp. 26-51 Degler develops the doctrine of two spheres to describe the distinctness of the separation between male and female spheres in the family. He argues that the nineteenth century saw the female responsibilities as serious and that they probably marked an improvement in status for women. Divorce was difficult or impossible»to obtain.14 Michigan laws did not deal with the status of women in the territorial period. Bringing some of these attitudes with them, the men who gathered to write Michigan's first state constitution in May and June of 1835 simply did not think of women as part of the body politic with specific needs or rights. From the scattered debates and records that have survived it is clear that they were aware of attitudes and ideas current in the East. The suffrage debates show _clearly they were aware of attitudes toward suffrage in the other states of the Union. Since colonial times, voting in America had moved from being a suffrage restricted to those who had a stake in society (usually defined by property holding or taxpaying) to a suffrage restricted by category. By the 1830's the idea that all white male adult citizens should have the vote was increasingly common. But the focus on white males disenfranchised black property holders in several states and in the case of New Jersey, the 1807 revision of suffrage qualifications disenfranchised not only some blacks but also the few women who had voted in New Jersey between 1790 and 1807 when suffrage definitions applied to all inhabitants who met the property 14Eleanor Flexner, Centuhy of Struggle: The Moman' s Mights Movement in the united States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1975), p. 8. qualification.15 Similar patterns had existed in Michigan. In April 1804, property holding widows in Detroit voted on the defense of the town.16 On the bases of surviving records the greatest concern in the Michigan Constitutional Convention of 1835 centered on a bill of rights which took up more than three days of debate and the elective franchise which took up more than five days of debate. Discussion on the rest of the Constitution took seven days.” Debate on colored suffrage began on Friday, May 22, 1835 and ran 15Chilton‘Williamson, American Suffrage from Property to Democracy, l260-lS6Q (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1960), discusses the shift from property qualification to white male universal suffrage in the first eleven chapters of the book. On New Jersey see Sophie H. Drinker, “Votes for Women in Eighteenth Century New Jersey" Proceedings of the Mew Sersey Historical Society 80 (January 1962):31-45. 16_"The First WOman Voter in Michigan,“ clipping, Scrapbook (brown), p. 3 Nanette Gardner Papers, MHC-BHL. 17Minutes were kept and Journals published for the 1835-1836 conventions. The debates, proceedings, committee reports and supporting papers were not officially' printed for distribution. Over time the materials were lost, scattered or destroyed. The territorial press reported some of the debates. A compilation made in 1940 drew on the Journals, the surviving committee reports and supporting papers. The debates were partially' reconstructed from the territorial press materials that had survived. What the press reported was partly a function of what interested the press and partly a function of the importance and political alignment of those who spoke. The compiler of the debates describes the debate coverage as neither balanced nor complete. Henry M. Dorr, ed., Ihg Michigan Constitutional Conventions of lSSS-lSSS: Debates and Proceedings (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1940), pp. v, vi, 27. 10 intermittently until Wednesday, May 27 when striking the word 'white' out of the provisions lost 17 to 63. Arguments from justice and natural right were the pillars of the few supporters of colored suffrage. The fear of a black influx into the state, a belief in black inequality and a view that suffrage was a conventional not a natural right all were ideas used to defeat it.18 The debate on foreigners voting covered many more pages and occurred over more days. The discussion began on Monday May 25 and ran through Thursday May 29. The convention apparently could not find a compromise solution to the divisions among them for a long time. :Part of the problem was that all white male inhabitants over twenty-one years of age had voted in the territorial elections and many were reluctant to disenfranchise those aliens who had voted while Michigan was a territory, some for reasons of justice, others for reasons of political expediency. The issue was tackled again on June 15. Finally on June 17 a compromise was reached. Every white male citizen above twenty-one years of age, who had resided in the state six months preceding any election and every white male inhabitant above twenty-one years of age, resident of the state at the time of the signing of the constitution had the right to vote. 'This version of the definition of elector held against the attempt on June 22 to remove 131816.. pp. 154-169, 246. 11 “inhabitant“ from the article; 7 to 60. The idea of Indians voting commanded few supporters in the convention. It lost: 17 to 63.19 Only twice did the convention consider recognizing that women lived in Michigan, both times over what we today would call sexist language in the Constitution. The Convention declined to add “or herself“ to Section 8, Article I which dealt with a person's rights in relation to trials and to counsel. The Convention did agree to substitute person for man in Section 4, Article I which dealt with religious freedom. 20 Within the first decade of the state's existence, discussion about woman suffrage began in some places. The Kalamazoo Lyceum debated the issue of woman suffrage at least twice before 1840. On “Would the effect of extending to females the right to vote at elections be beneficial to them and to the institutions of our country?“ the judges felt the nays made a better argument and the house concurred. In a November 1839 Lyceum debate, the judges gave the nod (on the weight of argument) to the affirmative on the question “Ought women to be‘allowed the 191816.. pp. 173- -245, 249- -267. 382-384, 392-394. 406-407, 246- 248. 2°Ibid., pp. 288, 290. 12 same political rights with man?“ The house decided against the question 541.21 4 In the legislature, maneuvering about suffrage began soon after the state was organized. The focus was usually colored suffrage, but a few legislators acted on woman suffrage. In 1841 in connection with maneuvering regarding colored suffrage proposals, Gurdon C. Leech of Macomb county in the House moved an amendment so that unmarried females twenty-one years of age be allowed to vote if they held the same freehold ($250) as was proposed for the colored males. Leech's amendment lost 10-31. Leech then moved that Indians with a $250 freehold be given the vote. 'That proposal passed the House but not the Senate.22 Despite frequent discussions and recommendations nothing was actually done about suffrage qualifications until the Constitutional Convention of 1850. At least once or twice a session, members of the legislature voted the use of the chamber to someone for a presentation of some kind. On March 24 and 25 1846, Ernestine Rose, an advocate of woman's‘rights, was allowed to use the House chamber to give two speeches, “Science of Government“ and “Antagonistic Principles of Society“. 24Kalamazoo gazette, 6 January 1838, p. 2: 13 January 1838, p. 3: 9 November 1839, p. 3: 13 November 1839 p. 3. ‘ ‘ ‘ 22Michigan House, Qgghhgl, 8 April 1841, p. 631. 13 Whether either speech focused on woman suffrage or even women's rights is unclear.23 Ernestine Rose's appearance in Michigan is an example that not all women accepted the ideology of the woman-belle or true woman. The ideology of woman's place insisted that women should (be in the home making it a refuge and sanctuary from the turmoil of the world. .Not all women passively accepted the vision. In a number of ways some women pushed against the cage of societst ideal woman. Women in moral reform societies identified problems, analyzed their causes, and then planned and took action to address those problems. Their work concerned prostitutes, orphans, and women's health. The work was justified as part of woman's mission of “practical piety.“24 Most women engaged in the moral reform movement did not become women's rights advocates. They accepted the popular definitions of women's proper sphere as the home with some extension to church work of various types. Their loyalty 23Michigan House, Journal, 23 March 1846, p. 342: 25 March 1846, p. 353. I have been unable to locate a newspaper account of either speech in the Detroit newspapers of the period and no ms. or report of either speech has survived. 24Berg, Bemembered Cate, pp. 146-261. 14 to church work made it difficult for many of these women to separate religion from religious institutionsd25 When women stepped out of their sphere ministers and others invoked Biblical injunctions to put the women back into their appropriate sphere. The best known of these attacks is that launched against Sarah and Angelina Grimke when they spoke in opposition to slavery before mixed (male and female) audiences in Massachusetts during 1837.26 Sarah and Angelina Grimke would claim the right to speak and act publicly for abolition of slavery because women, as well as men, were morally responsible persons and obliged to speak out on moral issues. Both men and women had a responsibility to the community.27 For the Grimke sisters and some other abolitionists, Garrisonian abolitionism provided a world view which enabled them to free themselves from the conventions of woman's sphere. Garrison and his followers 25 Ellen DuBois, “Women's Rights and Abolition: The Nature of the Connection“ in Anti-Slavegy geconsidgred: Mew Perspectives on the Abolitionists, Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman eds. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), p. 241. 26For “The Pastoral Letter of the Massachusetts Congregationalist Clergy “ and an excerpt from Sarah Moore Grimke's response see Aileen Kraditor, ed. Up From the Pedestal: Selected Mritings in the history of hperlcan Feminism (Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1968), pp. 50-57. 27Blanche Glassman Hersh, {Hm I Not a WOman and a Sister? Abolitionist Beginnings oquineteenth Century Feminism“ in Perry and Fellman eds., 'hhti-Slavery geconsldered:, p. 277. 15 assumed absolute human equality; ‘Women appropriated this for themselves along with Garrison's critical approach to religious institutions. ‘This freed many to claim they were religious persons motivated by high Christian principles, but allowed them to be critical of churches and ministers who supported, defended or advocated female or black inferiority.28 Increasingly in the 18508, however, women advocating the abolition of slavery were not the only women in public roles. In the temperance movement women acted in a variety of roles and became less subordinate to men in temperance activity. In the 18508 male temperance leaders increasingly shifted away from moral suasion to legislative prohibition which required political action. If the end of drinking required political action, women, who did not have the vote, would have a smaller role in temperance work than previously}.9 Several women became women's rights advocates in part because of struggles within the temperance movement over the right of women to speak at meetings or act in public roles. In 1854, Otsego Michigan women axed the town's liquor supply and were defended in court and print by men as protecting their homes and 28DuBois, “Women Rights and Abolition“ in Perry and Fellman eds., hhtl-Slavery Beconsidered:, pp. 242-244. 29Jed Dannenbaum, “The Origins of Temperance Activism and Militancy Among American Women,“ Jgugnal pf Soclal history 15 (Winter 1981):235. 16 families.30 In the years after the Civil War “protecting the home and family“ would become the justification for women doing and demanding a number of things outside their “separate sphere.“ From their experiences in the various reform movements of the early nineteenth century and their own needs, between the 18308 and the 18508 women gradually’ built up a women's rights movement. Its primary concerns were property rights and child custody for married women and educational and job opportunities for all women. Emma Willard, Mary Lyon and Catherine Beecher are justly famous for their work in education for women.” Michigan law provided equal opportunity for elementary education. How many families sent their girls as well as their boys is unclear. At the elementary level boys and girls were taught together. Coeducation beyond the elementary grades was not popular. In theory those academies and institutes which admitted both males and females had separate departments for females. In Michigan, Lucinda Hinsdale Stone worked for wider eduCation opportunities for women. She taught in the women's department at the Kalamazoo Branch of the University of Michigan which became Kalamazoo 3°Ibid., pp. 240, 242-243. Susan B. Anthony is perhaps the most famous example. 31 Flexner, Century of Struggle, pp. 23-40 describes their efforts and accomplishment as well as those of other women. g 6* ~ 17 0‘ College after 1855 while her husband was Principal of the Brahch nd President of the college 1843-1863. After they were fokced out at Kalamazoo College she continued to be activeekor women's education. Hillsdale College (then calledkgMichigan Central College) was the only Michigan Col leg'e to grant a degree to a woman before the Civil war.32 Ernestine Rose had begun petitioning for property rights for married women in 1838 in New York state. In the 18308 and 18408 a number of states acted to give married women various degrees of control over their property and their wages. While there is no trace of effort to persuade the Michigan legislature in this direction in the Journals of the Michigan House and Senate between 1836 and 1850, the legislature acted in 1844. The act provided that a married woman's real and personal property was her own separate estate and not liable for her husband's debts. A student of women's property rights law suggests the Michigan legislature was motivated by a desire to protect wives' property in a time of financial panic and hardship.33 32 Dunbar, Michi an, pp. 412, 411. The most recent discussion of Lucinda Hinsdale Stone is Gail B. Griffin, “Heretic: Lucinda Hinsdale Stone“ in Emancipated Spirits: portraits of Malamazoo College Momen by Gail B. Griffin and others, (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Ihling Bros Everard Co., 1983), pp. 31- 124 33Elizabeth Warbasse, “The Changing Legal Rights of Married Women, 1800- -.1861“ (Ph.D. dissertation, Radcliffe College, 1960), pp. 202-204. 18 Michigan's revision of the status of married women's property was part of a general movement in the states during the 18408 and 18508 to revise married women's property rights.34 The movement grew out of the codification movement in which each state adjusted the common law to be compatible with its needs. Property rights for married women were urged as enabling women to be better wives and mothers.35 While Michigan women were quiet, women further east were petitioning and even holding meetings. The first known women's rights meeting was held in Seneca Falls New -York, July 19 and 20, 1848. It was called “to discuss the social, civil and religious rights of woman“35 The organizers were unsure how many people would come since it was the haying season. About 300 attended, some coming from as far away as fifty miles.’ At the end of two days of discussion, they issued a “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions]' The declaration and subsequent resolutions attacked organized religion for hindering woman's spiritual development and denying her right to be a minister of God. The resolutions demanded property and civil rights, 34Ibid., pp. 182-248 outlines the results of that reform in.each state. 351bid., pp. 86-87, 136. 36Efl§1 1:67-74. The “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions“ is easily available in Miriam Schneir, ed. Feminism: The Essential historical Mritings (New York, Vintage Books, 1972) pp. 76- -82. 19 insisted on equal opportunity for education and work and voiced the mother's right to have custody of her children. Significantly, the only resolution which did not pass unanimously was the demand for woman suffrage. That demand sparked fierce debate and a close vote.37 Their demand would be seconded in Michigan in 1849 by a legislative committee whose report gives no indication they had heard of the meeting. On February 15, 1849 the Special Senate Committee on the General Revision of the Constitution reported in favor of a number of revisions. The revision on which they spent the most paper and argument was the right of woman to vote. Using natural rights arguments about the consent of the governed, the committee called limiting the franchise to one portion of the adult population “unjust and anti- republican“ and “this doorway to unlimited oppression.“ The committee concluded its discussion of woman suffrage with the observation that regarding consent and representation women in Michigan were in a parallel position to that of the American colonies in relation to Great Britain.‘The committee went on to urge a single set of qualifications for all voters, more elective offices, a general system of charters for towns and cities and corporations, a uniform system of valuation of property, free schools, a reformed 37F1exner, Century of Struggle, pp. 74-77. 20 judiciary, a limit on the right to pursue fugitive slaves and revisions regarding apportionmentfi38 Senators Dwight Webb, Edward Thompson and Rix Robinson signed the report. The Constitutional Convention which met in 1850 did not share the committee's view of woman suffrage. In the 1850 Convention the debate over foreigners voting, unlike that of 1835, was short. The debate over colored suffrage was longer. Democratic principles were urged as the reason to support colored suffrage. The supposed black inferiority in intelligence and morals were urged against it. John D. Pierce argued that voting was a conventional right not a natural one. JPierce was willing to give “coloreds' their natural rights but not legal or political ones. He stated bluntly that part of his opposition was rooted in his conviction that giving blacks the vote would open the door to amalgamation. The motion to strike out the word “white“ lost. The vote was not recorded.39 ~ ~ Beardsley of Baton County presented a resolution to instruct the elective franchise committee to examine the 38Michigan Senate, Senate Documents lSAS, Document 10, pp. 32-69. The quotations are from p. 35. The Great Britain parallel is on p. 38. ’ 39.3eport of the Proceedings and Debates in the Convention to Revise the Constitution of the State of Michigan, 1353 (Lansing: R. W. Ingals, State Printers, 1850), pp. 278-284 contains the debate on foreigners voting, pp. 284-296 the debate on colored suffrage. Pierce's speech is‘on pp. 289-290. 21 propriety suffrage for all white, single females twenty- one years of age or older. Crouse of Livingston County amended it to “single and married“ but the the resolution in either form‘was not supported by the Convention with no vote reported.4o Regarding suffrage the Constitution of 1850 continued the pattern of the one of 1835. White male citizens, aged twenty-one or older and white male inhabitants as of June 24, 1835 could vote. The Constitution of 1850 provided that residents who had declared their intention to become citizens at least six months before an election could also vote if male, white and over twenty-one years of age. Indians also were given the right to vote if male, civilized, native of the United States, twenty-one years of age or older and not a member of a tribe.“- The Constitutional Convention of 1850 was actively petitioned by residents. The presentation of petitions was one of the first orders of business each day. Petitions were recorded in the Proceedings hhg Debates. The topic, the number of signatures and the geographic area from which the petition came are usual 1y clear. On the basis of that information Tables 1.1 (p. 23) and 1.2 (p. 24) were constructed. 401616., p. 37. 411850 Constitution of Michigan, Article VII Section 1. 22 Table 1.1 shows the petitions by topic. The liquor issue was the one which most agitated Michigan residents. Almost half the petitions the convention received concerned that issue. Residents petitioned for outright prohibition, for no authorization to sell (no licensing system for the sale of liquor), and against prohibition. The no-authorization option expressed a position that saw liquor as a moral evil and did not want the state to regulate a moral evil. The qualifications for electors was also a topic of considerable concern, especially' for “colored suffrage“ as they phrased it. The petitions concerning colored suffrage came from both blacks and whites. On only two other issues were there more than one or two petitions. Workingmen's organizations protested the use of convict labor in Michigan prisons and jails as injurious to the workers economic interests. The petitions concerned with the courts were all from groups of lawyers. In Table 1.2 the distribution of petitions is broken down by topic and area. Michigan was organized into thirty-two counties in 1850. Residents of twenty-one of them petitioned the convention. Petitions regarding colored suffrage came from eleven counties while liquor petitions came from fourteen counties. There does not seem to be any clear pattern of association among the issues. wayne County, the most populous in the state, was the only one in which residents petitioned on liquor, colored 23 TABLE 1.1 PETITIONS PRESENTED TO THE 1850 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION: BY TOPIC Prisons 8 Courts 7 Public 3 Lands Taxes 3 Grand 2 Juries Militia 2 Race 2 Other 5 (19 prohibitionist, 17 no authority to sell, 2 opposed to prohibition) (12 favor colored suffrage, l oppose colored suffrage, 1 aliens not vote until naturalized, 2 unclear what desired) (7 no convict labor competition, 1 about management of prisons) (7 an independent Supreme Court, 1 the circuit judges compose the Supreme Court) (2 re equalization and collection, 1 call for corporations subject to local taxes) (1 single member districts, 1 biennial sessions of the legislature (1 re location of armory, 1 re encouraging enlistment) (1 each: debt collect, amendments, civilized Indians, townships, ministers no hold public office) 24 TABLE 1.2 PETITIONS PRESENTED TO THE 1850 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION: BY AREA AND SELECTED TOPICS prohibit no license no colored other total liquor liquor prohibit suffrage Allegan - - - l - l Berrien l - - - 4 5 Calhoun 2 - - - l 3 Cass - 3 - - l 2 Genesee - - - 1 - l Hillsdale - l - l - 2 Ingham - - - 1 - 1 -Ionia 2 - - - - 2 Jackson 3 - l l 2 7 Kalamazoo 4 - - - 2 6 Kent - - - - 4 4 Lapeer 1 - - 1 2 4 Lenawee - - - 1 l 2 Livingston 1 - - - l 2 Macomb 2 - - l l 4 Monroe - - - l 1 2 Oakland 1 2 - - 1 4 Saginaw - - - - 1 1 St.Joseph 2 - - - 2 4 washtenaw - l - 3 - 4 Wayne 0 10 l 1 12 19 unknown - - - - 0 1 TOTALS 19 17 2 13 37 88 25 suffrage and a variety of other issues. The only petitions delegates indicated women signed were the ones concerned with liquor issues. The Constitution of 1850 remained in operation until replaced by the one written in 1907-1908. All principal state officials were elected including the judges. The circuit court system was established in the Constitution of 1850. Reflecting the opinions acquired in the boom-and-bust economic cycle of the the early 18408, special acts of incorporation were forbidden and banking laws could take effect only after a majority vote of approval by the voters. The new Constitution mandated three months of free schooling in each district. The requirement was to take effect five years after the Constitution was ratified. The State University‘s Regents were to be elected by the people» In order to satisfy prohibitionist demands, the convention adopted a provision which forbade the granting of licenses for the sale of spirits and intoxicating liquors."2 The Constitution of 1850 enlarged and more securely established certain property rights for married women. The “Exemptions“ article gave the wife a right to hold the homestead, and its income, rents and profits while she remained a widow. A female could hold property held 42Dunbar, Michi an, pp. 424-425: Bald, Michigan in Four Centuries, p. 256. 26 before marriage as a sole femme and be able to inherit. A wife was not liable for her husbands debt's. A married woman could also write her own will. 43 These provisions strengthened the property rights of married women which had been created in 1844 by the legislature. In the years after the Constitution of 1850 went into effect, the legislature saw petitions from time to time about women's rights or woman suffrage. The House Judiciary Committee on 26 January 1853 reported it “unwise“ to allow the woman in a marriage to have the full exercise of her rights to property as if not married.‘44 In 1855 another attempt was made to obtain the same right. The concern was to bring the law of 1844 into conformity with the Constitution of 1850 which had expanded the rights obtained under that law.45 On February 5, 1855 James H. Parker of Lenawee County submitted a petition signed by Betsey P. Parker and sixty-one others asking for the extension of the elective franchise to women.“6 The petition was referred to the Elections Committee. The Elections Committee reported on ‘3Michigan Constitutional Convention 1850, groceedings, pp. 672, 740. The married women's exemptions were inserted in the Constitution with no debate. 44Michigan House, Journa , 26 January 1853, p. 201. 45Michigan House, Journal, 10 January 1855, p. 63. 46Michigan House, Journal, 5 February 1855 p. 368. 27 February 12. The ladies were called “strong minded.“ The committee because of gallantry was opposed to imposing upon the women of our country the politicians sorry part". care of political life rather than the more congenial fostering of those domestic relations, which now make women little less an angel. uuwhen the scenes of excitement and brute force that now prevail at the election poll shall give way to the same holy impulses that control womanhood, your committee would gladly’see the elective franchise given to the Betsys, Lucindas and Electras on an equal right with men. Representative Parker found the report “contemptuous in its tone, uncourteous and ungentlemanly in its language and unworthy of the approbation of this house.“ His resolution to that effect was laid on the table.“7 The House session of 1857 received five petitions for woman suffrage. The House session of 1859 received fourteen petitions regarding equal political rights. These were the first years that more than one petition appeared for either topic. The petitions came from wayne, Lenawee and washtenaw Counties. In 1859 the House Special Committee on Constitutional Amendments reported favorably on colored suffrage. Woman suffrage was another matter. The committee agreed that taxation and representation are inseparable but woman suffrage was such an “innovation“ that the popular will would not sustain it and therefore it 47Michigan House, Mouse Docuhents 1355, Report 31 “Report of the Committee on Elections“ p. 1: Michigan House, Journal, 12 February 1855, p. 606. 28 should not be made law. To grant woman suffrage would not accomplish the objective of its proponents which was “the enlargement of the sphere of woman's influence.“ 43 . The Senate also was petitioned regarding woman suffrage. In 1857 the Senate Committee of State Affairs reported that woman suffrage was “...an innovation... [which demands]...candid and careful examination.“ The committee supported the idea pointing out that woman was a citizen and subject to the laws, and that taxation and representation went together. Later in the report the committee waxed less prosaic. The Author of nature allows the great and small each its place together which together yield perfection of the whole. Relations of life therefore should be so adjusted as to‘ leave personal identity to develop spontaneously its own forces of nature and thus occupy just such positions as congenital qualification command. Law should be instituted for no other purpose than to establish a relative~equa1ity and to secure the most perfect development, and complete happiness of each and every subject: and man fails to imitate the Supreme Legislative authority, and falls below the high demands of his nature when he neglects to recognize for others that which he claims for himself. ‘8 Michigan House, Mouse Documents, 1552 Document 25, “Report of the Special Committee on Constitutional Amendments relative to the right of suffrage“ pp. 1-2: or see Michigan House Jouhnal, 7 February 1859, p. 599. 29 The committee concluded by observing that woman would humanize public life};9 In 1859 the Senate Select Committee upon Amendments to the Constitution did not concur in the report of 1857. They declined to call for the elective franchise for women because such an innovation .u. [would].uso destroy and overthrow the high regard for the female character .uas to really defeat the object which friends of the measure seem to have in view, viz: the enlgrgement of the sphere of female influence. The Senate was petitioned for equal franchise rights in 1861 but declined to make any recommendations.51 People in Michigan were moved by the same reform currents that circulated through the rest of the county. The temperance movement was strong enough to get liquor licenses forbidden in the 1850 Constitution and to put strong pressure on the legislature for other prohibitory legislation. Anti-slavery sentiment was strong. The underground railway had routes through Michigan to Ontario, Canada. Michigan passed a strong personal liberty law after ‘9 Michigan Senate, Senate Documents, 1352: Document 27, “Report of the Committee on State Affairs upon the memorial of Ladies, praying the Legislature to grant them the privilege of the Elective Franchise,“ pp. 1-3, 5,6. soMichigan Senate, Senate Documents lSSS, Document 12, “Report.of the Select Committee upon Amendments to the Constitution,“ p. 2. 51 Michigan Senate, Jppphhl, 7 March 1861, “Report of the Committee on Privileges and Elections“ pp. 834-5. 30 the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. In 1854 Michigan anti- slavery'people organized and ran a full slate of state office candidates. That meeting in Jackson took the name Republican for the party; From their success in 1854 until 1932, Michigan was a citadel of Republicanism, the party rarely lost a statewide election.52 Michigan sent more than 90,000 men to serve in the Civil War. One Michigan woman, Sarah Emma Edmonds, served under the name Franklin Thompson for two years. She later received a pension and was the only woman admitted to full membership in the Grand Army of the Republic. Michigan women worked for victory in the Soldier's Aid Societies and by taking up the work left by the men who served.53 Michigan legislatures were littlebpetitioned about suffrage during the Civil War. In 1863 a group of women petitioned the House to have woman suffrage submitted to the people..A petition for colored suffrage appears in the House Journals for 1864. In January 1867 Michigan ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.54 The Michigan Constitution of 1850 provided that the issue of a new constitution be submitted to the 52Dunbar, Michigan pp. 418-420. In chapter 18, pp. 525-546, he discusses political party patterns from the Civil war to the Depression under the titlee“Citadel of Republicanism“. 531616.. pp. 454-455, 457. 5"Michigan House, Journal, 9 February 1863 p. 408, 18 January 1865, pp. 159-165: Michigan House, Journal, 15 January 1867 p. 125: Michigan Senate, Journal, 17 January 1867, p. 162. ‘ 31 people every 16 years. The voters approved a Constitutional Convention for 1867. Advocates of woman suffrage met a variety of responses in the legislature in the years before the Constitutional Convention of 1867. Sometimes requests for woman suffrage and justifications for it were received respectfully. At other times they were mocked. In the arguments presented in the various House and Senate reports the clear outlines of the two basic positions regarding woman suffrage can be seen. One side argued that woman as citizen, subject and taxpayer had the right to signify her consent to the government and be represented by voting. The other side felt that to give woman the vote would be to allow her to enter into the public sphere and that would somehow lessen or damage her influence and power in the one sphere nineteenth century gladly gave woman, the home. The national debate on citizenship and suffrage that accompanied the debates and ratification struggles over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and Reconstruction would do little to alter the main arguments on each side. The national debate would alter the proportions on the two sides, and lessen the ridicule in the Legislature. CHAPTER 2 1867-1874: “A GREAT WORK BEFORE US“ James Stone, 1874 As the Civil War ended national debates developed about what to do with the states of the Confederacy and what to do about slavery and those of African descent.‘The answers emerged gradually in the three Civil War era amendments to the Federal Constitution and the various reconstruction and civil rights acts that Congress passed. Congressional debates on the Thirteenth Amendment focused on two issues: the need to protect property (slaves) and the power to amend the Constitution (nature of sovereignty).1 The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was sent to the states in February 1865 and proclaimed ratified in December of the same year.“ The abolition of slavery raised starkly the issue of the status of the freed slaves in American society and forced Americans to confront issues about the nature and content of citizenship in the United States which they had avoided in the pre-Civil war 1Edward R. Lewis, A History of American Political Thought from the Civil Mar to the World Mar (New York: Macmillan Company, 1937: reprint ed.,INew York: Octagon 32 33 period. The answers would have»significance for both blacks and women. By the end of the Revolutionary period Americans had identified three major principles of republican citizenship. Citizenship rested on consent, it was uniform without invidious gradations and it ought to confer equal rights. Negroes and Indians were consciously not included.2 Women went unmentionedn Questions left unclear by the Constitution and debates surrounding its ratifi- cation included: who was a citizen: what rights were included: how did one become a citizen: and was citizenship dual or singular? 3 The federated republic forged by the Constitution conferred membership rights and obligations that were both local (i.e. state) and national. This dual status created a number of problems, not examined at the time of the writing of the Constitution or immediately thereafter, which emerged during the debates on the admission of Missouri to the Union in 1821. 4 The debate focused on a provision of the proposed Missouri Constitution which barred free Negroes and mulattoes from entering the state. Were free Negroes citizens? If they were, the provision violated the federal 2James H. Kettner, The Development of Megican Citizenship, lSQS-lS7Q (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1978), pp. 3-10. ' 31bid., pp. 231-2. 41bid..;Pp. 248-286 discuss this issue in detail. 34 Constitution's guarantee of equal privileges and immunities. The position taken by Congressmen from southern states was that free blacks were persons, but either aliens or denizens. As Senator Alexander Smith (Va) phrased it “not every person.”born in a state and born free could become a member of the political community.“ The position of Congressmen from northern states was that free blacks were citizens with rights to acquire and bequeath property, religious freedom, personal protection and with obligations to pay taxes and bear arms. “If being native and free born of parents belonging to no other tribe or nation does not constitute a citizen of this country, then I am at a loss to know in what manner citizenship is acquired by birth!‘ was the way Representative Joseph Hempill (Pa) phrased it. The debates dragged on for months and settled nothing. In the end the clause was left standing but Congress declared it unenforcable.5 In the years following the Missouri debates, the state courts responded variously to the question of free Negroes citizenship. Northern courts tended to defend the idea that free native-born Negroes were citizens but denied that the fundamental privileges of citizenship included suffrage, a right which few states before the Civil War 5Annals of Congress 16th Cong. 2d sess. pp. 556, 599, quoted in Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, pp. 312-314. ' 35 were willing to grant to them. Courts in the slave states increasingly argued that the lack of rights (i.e. discriminatory laws) proved that free Negroes were not citizens. In the North the idea‘developed that since free Negroes were citizens their rights should be protected against the wishes of individual states. For most southerners that idea was frightening. It meant that Southern states were not free to identify their own citizens and were subject to the dictates of another government.6 There did gradually emerge some agreement on what rights of citizenship the states were obligated to respect. All states agreed that the right to acquire, possess and protect property and life and liberty were fundamental rights which each was obligated to respect. There was no agreement that access to federal tribunals, the right of habeas corpus or the right to pass through another state on business were among the fundamental rights of citizenship the states must respect.7 The federal courts avoided the issue until the Dred Scott case reached the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Taney concluded Negroes could not enjoy the privileges and immunities of citizenship. His position rested on two premises. The first was that state and national 51816.. pp. 314-324. 71816., pp. 258-259. 36 citizenship were separate in both theory and fact except for naturalization. The second was that national citizenship did not derive automatically'from.birth but from.descent of those who formed the political community in 1789. Justice Curtis in his dissent argued that state and national citizenship were joined: if an individual black was a citizen in Ohio or Massachusetts, that person re- mained a citizen in Mississippi or South Carolina.8 These differing legal positions went unresolved before the Civil War. After the war, Congress confronted the issue. In the summer and fall of 1865 public discussion turned from the abolition of slavery to the definition of the status of the freedmen and the right of suffrage for Negroes. Concepts that would go into section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment began to receive much thought and discussion in the press.9 Section 1 of the amendment defines citizen as one “born or naturalized in the United States“. That person automatically holds citizenship in the state in which he or she resides. The section also guarantees citizens the {privileges and immunities“ of citizenship, “due process“ of the laws and “equal protection“ of the laws. 81616.. pp. 324-331. 9Joseph B. James, The Framing of the Fourteenth Ahendment Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences vol. 37, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), pp. 21-33. 37 Congressional Radical Republicans seeking Negro suffrage went about it cautiously. The public and Congress both needed to be educated to the idea. At the same time there was a general consensus within the Republican Party that whatever was done should ensure party ascendancy in Congress. In the Fourteenth Amendment Congress went at Negro suffrage by the back door in Section 2. Representation in Congress would be reduced for those states which denied the vote to hplg citizens on grounds other than crime or participation in rebellion in the same proportion as the number of hplg citizens who were denied the vote was to the total number of 5;th citizens in the population of that state. (my emphasis). Women's rights advocates were deeply distressed when the word “male“ appeared with “citizen“ in Section 2. The use of “male“ with “citizen“ could imply that females were not citizens or it could permit unequal citizenship, one male, one female. Increasingly, citizenship in the nineteenth-century in the United States was based on the direct relationship between the individual and the government, not on the individual's role in the family as it had been in the seventeenth century. The wording of the Fourteenth Amendment suggested that political citizenship was male and individual and the relationship with the 38 government was direct.1p Where this left female citizenship was unclear. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony organized a petition drive against the use of “male“ in connection with “citizen“ in the proposed amendment and by the end of the Congressional session had more than 10,000 signatures.11 But the word “male“ stayed in the amendment. In June of 1866 the amendment was sent to the states and proclaimed ratified in July of 1868. During the struggle over the political status of black males in the United States, the thirty-year connection between women's rights and Negro rights was gradually severed. Pre-Civil War women's rights advocates had almost all been abolitionists. .Advocates of Negro rights had often been advocates of women's rights. The women's rights movement had used the abolitionist papers to agitate for women's rights. Women's rights advocates now divided over whether they should insist on the whole loaf of universal suffrage -- both male and female, black and white -- or settle for a half loaf of black male suffrage. The debate was conducted primarily within the framework of the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) which was formed in May of 1866 by women's rights advocates to work 10Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Moman's Movement in Qherich: 1118:1162 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), p.-58. 11James, The Framin of the Fourteenth Amendment, P. 56. t ' 39 for equal rights for blacks and women. 'The association initially focused on state issues seeking to remove racial and sexual restrictions from state constitutions. The two major campaigns were in New York for constitutional revision and in Kansas where separate referenda on Negro and woman suffrage were submitted to the voters in 1867. The New York campaign was only a partial success. Negro males were enfranchised on the same terms as white males but women remained unenfranchised.12 The Kansas campaign was the immediate background for the split in the AERA. The association's AERA effort for universal suffrage (female and Negro) in Kansas ran not only into indifference regarding woman suffrage from Republicans and abolitionists in Kansas but outright hostility and attacks from the former. The campaign emphasized the difference between those willing to settle for half a loaf and those insisting on both Negro and woman suffrage» Abolitionists and woman suffrage advocates in the AERA found themselves with a choice: accept the Republican leadership's choice to push for black suffrage or reject Republican leadership and seek a base for woman suffrage independent of most abolitionists and Republicans. 12DuBois, Feminism and Suffra e, discusses the women's rights-abolitionist link pp. 31-40. For the founding of the American Equal Rights Association see particularly pp. 64-67. 'The New York campaign is discussed on pp. 87—88. ' 4O Stanton and Anthony chose the second alternative and set out to find new alliances, constituencies and strategies. Lucy Stone and most other women's rights advocates within the abolitionist tradition chose the first alternative.13 While the Kansas campaign was being waged, Michigan held a constitutional convention to review'and revise the 1850 Constitution. It was controlled by the Republican Party. The Democrats pushed for a separate submission of the manhood suffrage issue which would remove the qualifier “white“ from the definition of elector, but the Republicans steamrolled every attempt.M There was little petitioning or discussion regarding foreignerfls voting or Negro suffrage. Only the Congregational Churches of Michigan memorialized the 1867 Constitutional Convention in favor of Negro suffrage» Given the pattern of petitioning for Negro suffrage before the Civil war, especially during the Constitutional Convention of 1850, the lack of petitions to the Constitutional Convention of 1867 suggests three possibilities: I) no interest (not likely), 2) a conspiracy of silence or 3) general agreement on granting it. An examination of the papers of party, 13Ibid.,jpp. 101-103. The Kansas campaign is discussed in detail pp. 79—104. 14Leslie H. Pishel Jr. “Northern Prejudice and Negro Suffrage 1865-1870,“ Journal of Negro gistory 39 (January 1954):21'. - . - 41 abolitionist and Negro leaders in Michigan might suggest an answer. The issue of woman suffrage in Michigan did generate some interest. Of the 677 petitions and memorials recorded in the Convention Debates and Proceedin s, eight- four were on woman's suffrage. There was no woman suffrage or womenfls rights organization in the state. The petitions appear to have been circulated on individual initiative and without any coordination or central direction. (Five hundred, thirty six petitions and memorials were on the liquor question. The liquor question battle was fought out basically between those who wanted some kind of license system and those who opposed it. Forthright prohibition drew somewhat less support. Fifty-seven petitions and memorials covered other issues. ‘Women appeared as petitioners on the liquor question and woman suffrage. Inhabitants of forty-five of the fifty-nine counties in Michigan petitioned the Convention. In addition seven state-wide organizations memorialized or petitioned the Convention. Those are not included in the tables and charts which follow. In looking for possible patterns of association in the counties between woman suffrage advocacy and other issues two tables were constructed, one for the counties from which woman's suffrage petitions were received (Table 241 p. 42) and one for the counties where inhabitants did not petition on woman's suffrage. (Table 2.2 p. 43). 42 ME 2.1 1867 WITUI‘IONAL CONVENTION (DINI'IEBWI'IHWSLFFRAGEPEI‘ITIOLE S47A4 LICENSE OI'HER 'IUIIAL 13 PIDHI- BITION 2 KHAN SIFFRAGE 3 COLM‘Y ALLEXEAN 14 BERRIEN 14 24 15 21 CLINIUN 10 16 GENESEE 26 14 HIIISDALE 11mm 34 20 IONIA ISABELLA 13 12 55 19 30 15 IAPEER 33 10 26 15 14 2 ST. CLAIR 14 ST. JCBEPH mm 31 VANBUREN 11 453 33 43 TABLE 2.2 1867 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION COUNTIES WITHOUT WOMAN'SUPFRAGE'PETITIONS COUNTY PROHIBITION s47A4 LICENSE OTHER TOTAL BARRY 2 1 2 o 5 BAY o 8 1 o 9 GRATIOT o 2 2 o 4 HOUGHTON o o 1 1 2 HURON o 1 o o 1 KEEWENAW o o 1 o 1 LIVINGSTON o 3 3 1 7 MACOMB o 18 5 2 25 MARQUETTE o o o l 1 MECOSTA o 2 o o 2 MONROE o 3 28 2 33 MONTCALM o 4 1 o 5 MUSKEGON o 3 3 3 9 NEWAYGO 1 o 1 2 4 OCEANA 1 1 o o 2 ONTONAGON o 1 1 o 2 OTTAWA 1 5 2 o 8 SAGINAW o 6 7 1 14 SANILAC o 11 2 o 13 SHIAWASSEE o 7 3 2 12 WAYNE, DETROIT 15 6 10 2 33 WAYNE, REST 2 s 12 o 19 TOTALS 22 ' 87 85 17 211 44 Petitions on the liquor issue were grouped by the three basic positions which Michigan residents held about it. Prohibition petitions advocated the prohibition of the sale»and manufacture of distilled spirits and usually also fermented beverages. S47A4 designates the advocacy of forbidding the legislature to issue licenses to sell alcohol which the Constitution of 1850 did in section 47 of Article IV; Petitions which supported the retention of the clause or its spirit are listed there. While the section ensured the state was morally pure by having nothing to do with liquor, it did not stop the sale or manufacture of ’liquor in Michigan. The clause simply prevented regulation. License indicates the petitioners sought some form of license system, often described in the petitions as “well regulated“ or “safe and secure“, so that the state could regulate the sale and manufacture of liquor and tax it. The only pattern revealed is that counties which petitioned on woman's suffrage had a larger percentage of their liquor petitions in favor of Article IV, section 47, the no-license position, than did the counties which did not petition on woman's suffrage. Table 2.3, p. 45, summarizes the differences. Dannenbaum's theory that women supporting temperance saw it as a matter for moral suasion while men increasingly saw the liquor problem as a matter 45 for legislation suggests why this pattern might appear.15 Supporting section 47 of Article IV in the 1850 Constitution was a moral position to take. Most activist women in the 1860 were in reform movements such as temperance or in benevolent activities of some kind and were committed to moral suasion rather than political force to address the liquor problem. Most of the petitions on woman suffrage received by the convention were signed by at least as many women as men. This suggests that petitioning on woman suffrage, in some degree, captures a womanus willingness to assume public roles or existing activism in public roles. In areas with activist women, one would expect large numbers of them to be concerned about temperance and if Dannenbaum is accurate in urging that women were disproportionately among those who regarded the liquor problem as a moral problem, then they would be strong and numerous supporters of keeping S47A4 in the constitution. 15Jed Dannenbaum, “The Origins of Temperance Activism and Militancy Amcng American Women,“ Journal of Social gistory 15 (Winter 1981):235-252. - 46 TABLE 2.3 COMPARISON OF PERCENTAGE OF PETITIONS ON THE LIQUOR ISSUE, 1867 MICHIGAN CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION PROHIBITION NO LICENSE LICENSE ‘(S47A4’ COUNTIES W/WOMAN SUFFRAGE 10% 63% 27% PETITIONS COUNTIES W/O WOMAN SUFFRAGE 11% 45% 44% PETITIONS Debates in the Committee of the Whole on the definition of electors consumed most of the attention on Saturday, July 20, and Monday, July 22 and some time on Tuesday, July 23 with woman suffrage occupying some of the debate. Indian suffrage consumed the largest number of pages of any single topic in the debate on Electors, sixteen pages in all. During the debate the question was raised, why grant suffrage to “wild, savage Indians“ and not to women?15 Woman suffrage occupied three pages of debate as did residency and age of voter. How to provide for voting by persons in the United States armed forces took up five pages Of debate.” The issue of woman suffrage came up again on August 12 when the Convention sat 16The Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the §tate of MichiganI Qonvened at the City of Lansing, Wednesday May 15, 1861, Officially reported by wm. Blair Lord and David WOlfe Brown. 2 volumes. (Lansing: John A. Kerr 5 Co., Printers to the State, 1867), 11:259-275. 171816., pp. 275-278, 252-255, 255-258, 284-289. 47 as the Convention rather than as a Committee of the Whole. Eleven pages of debate were spent on the issue of deleting “male“ from the description of electors. Supporters of woman suffrage tried to get the convention to submit woman's suffrage separately to the voters as a possible amendment to the Constitution. They lost on a roll call vote, 31 yeas to 34 nays.18 The arguments on each side are familiar to students of the issue. In the July 22 debate supporters had urged woman suffrage on grounds of abstract right, but also as expedient. This argument urged that if women had an indirect influence on men and policy, why not give them a direct influence with the vote? It further insisted that to exclude women the convention must establish either a woman's unfitness to vote or a public danger in her voting. If women were weaker than men, all the more reason to give them the ballot since the “u. weak need protection against the strong. You grant the Surest protection to an individual when you give the ballot to that individual!” Another delegate observed that if women voted, elections would be as orderly as a church. Since votes were given to the foreign-born, the vote should be given to women “who are more capable intelligently and virtuously voting than 131818.. pp. 766-775, 791. 19William S. Farmer, Ibid., p. 275. 48 the foreign born"20 Opponents sought to maintain the “sacred right of the domestic circle, the protection and enjoyment of home life, the prevention of strife and wrangling in the domestic circle.“21 Another opponent expressed the conviction that women did not really want the vote. Out of a population of about 125,000-150,000 women over 21 years of age, only about 2,500 had petitioned for the the right to vote. 22 In the August 12 debate delegates elaborated on points made in the July debates. The doctrine of the consent of the governed was advanced in support of the argument that voting was a natural right not a privilege. The same supporter attacked objections as “puerile', arguing that only women were fit to decide the fitness of women voting and that those who claimed women did not want the vote were getting their information from those intimidated by ridicule.23 Another advocate pointed out that if the husband represented the married woman, who represented the unmarried or widowed woman? The same delegate suggested that women as voters would be less bound by party.24 An opponent responded: 2°Nathanie1 I Daniels, Ibid., pp. 277-278. 21Wiiiiam B.Williams, Ibid., p. 278. 22Jacob vanValkenburgh Ibid., p. 276. 23Marsh Giddings, Ibid., pp. 768-770. 24Eenry R. Lovell, Ibid., pp. 771-772. 49 who shall vote is a political question...within the competency of those exercising or representing the sovereignty of the state to fix the limit and decide who shall be and who shall not be permitted to vote:... no violation of abstract justice, no infringement 05 unalienable rights when they do so. 5 The roll call votes in the Constitutional Convention of 1867 provide an opportunity to examine whether woman suffrage supporters were of a single party, supported temperance in great numbers or were disproportionately supporters of colored suffrage. The statistic known as a chi—square allows the researcher to quickly estimate if there is any relationship between two variables. Using the statistical package MIDAS, the roll call votes of the delegates to the 1867 Convention on No license (NL) a temperance position, colored suffrage (CS), and woman suffrage (WS), plus the party affiliation of the delegates were entered in a data matrix and chi- squares for woman suffrage and each of the other variables computed. Table 2.4 below indicates the results. In the table below none of the chi-squares is above 1.0. This indicates that there is little or no relationship between the vote on each of the issues given and woman suffrage.26 25neWitt c. Chapin, Ibid., p. 773. 2_6ihlubert M. Blalock Jr., Social Statistics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), pp. 279-292 discusses chi-square calculation and usage. 50 In contrast, party and colored suffrage had a chi-square of 46.08. All eighteen Democrats voting on the issue opposed colored suffrage and 86% of the Republicans supported it. TABLE 2 . 4 1867 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION SUMMARY TABLE ISSUE LINKAGE, WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND SELECTED VARIABLES PARTY .758 NO LICENSE .005 COLORED SUFFRAGE .591 The Constitution devised in 1867 was rejected by 'the voters. The provision for manhood suffrage regardless of race was widely regarded as the reason the Constitution was not ratified by the voters. ‘After Michigan had ratified the Fifteenth Amendment in March 1869, the state legislature sent to the voters the question oflallowing Negroes to vote. In November of 1869 colored suffrage was narrowly approved, 54,105 to 50,598.27 Congress had begun work on the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right to vote regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude, in December 1868 when it convened after the 1868 Congressional and Presidential elections. Republican Congressmen knew they 27‘Willis F. Dunbar, Michigan: 5 Sistory of tge Wolverine Spate, rev. ed by George S. May; (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1980), p. 446. (Hereafter cited as Dunbar 8 May, Micgigand 51 had to move carefully. Voters in northern referenda between 1865 and 1868 had frequently rejected Negro suffrage. Of the eleven referenda in states and territories nine had resulted in rejection.28 In debates two primary objectives emerged. One would ensure Negro suffrage in the North, thereby securing a Republican Party dominance and to do it without submitting the issue to the voters, since a Constitutional amendment could be ratified by'the state legislatures and the Republicans controlled twenty-two of the thirty-seven state legislatures to which the amendment would be submitted. The second objective was to make sure the amendment would protect the southern Negro against disenfranchisement.29 The amendment was sent to the states in February 1869 and proclaimed in March of 1870. 6 The Fifteenth Amendment brought tensions regarding strategy and tactics among woman rights supporters in the American Equal Rights Association to a head. The tension resulted in an explosion over linking Negro and women suffrage and relationships with the Republican Party. The 28William Gillette, The Right to Vote: The Politics and the Passa e of the Fifteenth Amendment, The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Series 83, number 1. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965) pp. 25-26. voting against Negro suffrage in 1865 were Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Minnesota & Wisconsin: in 1866, Nebraska 8 Ohio: in 1867, Kansas: in 1868, Michigan. 'In 1868 Iowa 8 Minnesota approved Negro suffrage. 291818., p. 49. 52 immediate issue was Frederick Douglass's motion to give unqualified support to the Fifteenth Amendment offered at the AERA meeting in May 1869. The split ran along the tactical and political lines which had developed as a result of the Kansas campaign. It also had a geographic dimension. By and large the New England women and the male abolitionists supported the motion, New York and western women tended to oppose it. When the oratory ended, for all practical purposes, so did the American Equal Rights Association.30 At a reception for the women delegates to the AERA meeting held two days after the meeting adjourned, Eliza- beth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony led in the formation of the the National Woman's (Suffrage Association (NWSA). In the November of 1869 the American Woman's Suffrage Association (AWSA) was organized in Cleveland. The Split would last twenty-one years. The sources of the split were numerous. There were genuine tactical differences regarding the linking of black and woman suffrage. ‘There were real ideological differences regarding the family and divorce. One historian suggests that the split represented a power struggle between Stanton and Lucy Stone. Another stresses the differing attitudes of the westerners led by 3°DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage. ‘pp. 162-202 is the most recent complete discussion of the break up of the American Equal Rights Association. 53 Stanton and the easterners led by Stone regarding the Republican Party and what it would do for women after the Fifteenth Amendment was ratifiedi31 In operation the National put most of its efforts into a federal amendment, the American concerned itself with working for state amendments. The creation of the National and American WOman Suffrage Associations in 1869 marked the emergence of woman suffrage as a movement in its own right with its own organizations, leaders and constituencies. The new constituency was found among the members of the developing woman's club movement. These women were in many ways middle class descendants of those who entered the reform societies of the early nineteenth century. Initially the NWSA contacts were with Sorosis and the AWSA contacts were with the New England Woman's Club. Both clubs justified their existence in terms of self improvement and action to erode the doctrine of separate spheres by invoking the domesticity and morality ladies were supposed to embody.32 The two clubs took differing approaches to suffrage. Sorosis founder Jane Cunningham Croly discouraged discussion of religion and suffrage. ‘The 31James M. McPherson, “Abolitionists, Woman Suffrage and the Negro, 1865-1869“ Mid-America 47 (January 1965):47: DuBois,'Feminism and Suffrage, pp. 199-200. 32DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, describes Stanton's and Anthony's search for a constituency in pp. 126-161. See also Karen J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, lggS-lglj. (New York: Holmes 4 Meier Publishers, Inc. 1980), p. 15. 54 New England Woman's Club quickly committed itself to suffrage and sought women to run for the Boston school committee. A woman won in 1874, fifteen years before women were eligible to vote for the office.33 Similar clubs devoted to self improvement and varieties of domestic feminism grew in Michigan. The Kalamazoo Ladies Library Society was founded in 1852. Battle Creek had one by 1864. Other early clubs in Michigan were in Grand Rapids (1869) and Detroit (1872). In 1875 the state-wide Women's A Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) was organized.34 Lucinda Hinsdale Stone, “the mother of women's clubs“ in Michigan was a founder of the Kalamazoo society and the American Woman's Suffrage Association. No Michigan residents were at the meeting that founded the NWSA. Nine Michigan residents signed the call for the Cleveland convention of November 1869 which founded the AWSA. Only two of the eight delegates from Michigan in November were signers of the call.35 When the Michigan State WOman Suffrage Association (MSWSA) was formed at Battle Creek, 20 January 1870 four of its officers and executive committee were peOple connected with the Cleveland Convention. MSWSA did not affiliate with either 33Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist, pp. 23, 34-36. 34Dunbar & May, Michigan p. 687. ”HHS. 3:757,759. 55 of the two national organizations, though the issue was debated with vigor.36 By the time MSWSA was formed, Michigan women in some areas were already doing more than petitioning. In Sturgis, they were voting. The Sturgis Journal reported the first instance, one in which the votes were only symbolic. The ladies were urged to do something in a prohibition campaign in the city. The ladies, 120 strong, cast votes in a separate ballot box since they could not deposit them in the regular box, not being entitled to vote on the issue. They voted 114 in favor of prohibition, 6 opposed to it. In school issues, on the other hand, the legislature in 1867 had rewritten the description of school electors. Section 145 of the Primary School laW' read “The words ‘qualified elector' shall be taken and construed to mean and include all taxable persons residing in the district of the age of twenty one years, and who have resided within three months next preceding the time of voting.“ Former State Superintendent John M. Gregory stated that this meant without distinction of sex, color or nationality. The Sturgis S53; printed GregoryWs opinion and published a notice in which the ladies eligible were urged to meet in Mrs. Pendleton's parlor to consider exercising the privilege of voting at the August 1868 school meeting. The Star noted that a woman who owned “a 35Ibid., 3:515-516 56 watch, cow, buggy, or personal property of any kind subject to tax, or who has real estate in her own name , or jointly with her husband, can vote“ in school elections..3'7 MSWSA memorialized the legislature at each regular session and some special sessions. In 1871 the Association met in Lansing while the Legislature was in session. In the evenings on both March 1 and March 2 the House chamber was made available to the convention for public lectures on woman suffrage over objections of some members. Three different women spoke over those two nights. Susan B. _Anthony, speaking on March 2, was the only national leader mentioned. The memorial was sent to the relevant committee in each House on March 3 and apparently buried, as no report is recorded. In each house, Mrs. Mary T. Lathrop, the Association President, presented the memorial and addressed the house. The memorial stressed taxation without representation. In each house there was some procedural maneuvering before Mrs. Lathrop was allowed to speak.38 Other areas of the country were also experiencing suffrage activity of various types. In 1870, both wyoming and Utah territories enfranchised women. In Utah, the 37Ibid., 3:514-515 quotes The Revolution of 30 April 1868 and 3 September 1868. 38Michigan House, Journal, 27 February 1871, p. 945: 1 March 1871, p. 1022: 3 March 1871, pp. 1104-05: Michigan Senate, Journal, 3 March 1871, p. 809. 57 Mormon Church brought about woman suffrage to serve its own advantage in a struggle to maintain its power in Utah. One issue was certainly polygamy for which the church leaders sought support and defense among the women voters in their struggle for Utah's statehood and noninterference from territorial governors in the matter of polygamy.39 In wyoming, party advantage, some logrolling, persuasive women and public relations seem to have contributed to the decision of the territorial legislature to approve the idea. Once on the voting lists, women in wyoming were eligible for jury duty. That issue raised even more fuss than woman suffrage, but wyoming women did both without either their homes or the government of wyoming falling apart.40 Vermont's Constitutional Convention of 1870, rejected woman suffrage without debate and with only one vote in favor despite efforts of both local and New England woman suffrage advocates in an extensive canvass of the state. Most of the state newspapers had opposed the idea because it would destroy the cohesiveness of the family and 39Alan P. Grimes, The Puritan Ethic and floman Suffrage, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), PP. 34-41: Eleanor Flexner, Centur Of Stru 1e: he Woman's Rights Movement in the gnited States, revued., (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1975), pp. 165- 166. 4oGrimes, Puritan Ethic, p. 54: Flexner, Qentury g; Struggle, pp. 163-164. ‘ 58 respect for men, because women were unfit for the ballot as their sphere in life was different from men's and because the ballot would be an unnecessary burden for them.“- In 1871 some Michigan women tried to vote using the Fourteenth Amendment as justification. The idea was the brainchild of Francis Minor, a Missouri lawyer, and his wife Virginia and first appeared in the resolutions of a St. Louis woman's suffrage convention in 1869. The Minors sent a copy of the resolutions and Virginia L. Minor's speech containing the same idea to 1h; Revolution which circulated them throughout the nation and saw to it that every member of Congress got a copy when the NWSA held a convention in Washington D. C. in 1870. Basically'the Minors' idea centered on the vote as one of the privileges of citizenship guaranteed by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. With a definition of citizen in the Fourteenth Amendment which made clear that women were citizens if native born, women had the vote if this interpretation withstood court challenges.42 _ On 25 March 1871 Catherine A. F. Stebbins, accompanied by her husband attempted to register in Detroit and was refused. Her friend, Nanette B. Gardner succeeded ‘1Deborah P. Clifford, “An Invasion of Strong- Minded WOmen: The Newspapers and the WOman Suffrage Campaign in vermont in 1870,“ yermont gistory 43 (Winter l975):1-l9. ' " ”HES. 2:407-410. 59 in registering in another voting district. She claimed she was a person under the Fourteenth Amendment, a taxpayer without representation, and a widow. Peter Hill, the enrolling Officer, registered her. The Detroit Board of Registry debated both the Stebbins and Gardner applications and refused to register Stebbins, but let the Gardner registration stand. Gardner voted in 1871 and 1872, Hill sustaining her right even after the Board of Registry voted to censure him. Stebbins tried again in November of 1872 when she presented herself at the polls arguing she had been “wrongfully prevented from registering“ and claiming her vOte should be counted under the “enforcing act“. The election board declined her vote on the advice from City Counselor, D.