Wiley AP U.S. History by Greg Velm

Author:Greg Velm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

Question: What was the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Answer: The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship and civil rights for former slaves.

Question: What was the most serious constitutional issue following the Civil War?

Answer: How the former Confederate states would be readmitted to the Union.

Women, former slaves, and the limits of freedom

Women’s rights leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton put their own cause on hold to work tirelessly for emancipation of the slaves. Although women’s rights was a growing concern before the Civil War, most politically involved women were even more concerned with ending slavery and preserving the Union. Women from outside the women’s rights movement also served during the war. For example, Dorothea Dix was the leader of Union nurses. The Woman’s Loyal League gathered nearly 400,000 signatures on a petition for a constitutional amendment banning slavery. Many of these socially involved women were more than a little upset that the new Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments gave black males the right to vote, but not white or black women. Women would have to wait almost 60 years before their election rights became part of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, more and more Western states acted on their own to let women step up to the ballot box, starting with Wyoming (“The Equality State”) in 1869. Black women, voting or not, helped rally black political participation in the South until they were silenced by the heavy hand of segregationist governments.

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