American Founding Son by Gerard N. Magliocca

Author:Gerard N. Magliocca
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2013-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Victoria Woodhull presenting her suffrage petition to the House Judiciary Committee. Bingham is seated at the side of the table to the right of Benjamin Butler. Originally published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Library of Congress.

On the broader issue of gender equality, Bingham was indifferent. Many of his public statements assumed that sex discrimination was constitutional, though he did say that, since a woman was a person under the Due Process Clause, “those rights which are universal and independent of all local State legislation belong, by the gift of God, to every woman, whether married or single.”46 It is difficult to know if Bingham’s lack of enthusiasm for women’s rights was personal or political. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (no relation to Edwin Stanton) once attended a speech that Bingham gave on the Fourteenth Amendment and asked him why his reasoning did not apply fully to women. He replied that he “was not the puppet of logic but the slave of practical politics.”47 This was a wonderfully enigmatic answer. Was he saying that he was an opponent of treating women as second-class citizens who could not act due to public opinion? Or was he pretending to sympathize, as canny politicians often do, while shifting the blame for inaction to others?

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