CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT VS. WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT

This research paper discusses the nature and course of the movements for civil rights and women's rights in the United States during the 1860s and draws appropriate comparisons and contrasts between them.

The principal struggle for civil rights related to improving the political, legal and, to a lesser extent, the economic status of blacks in the South, their emancipation from slavery and succor by the North during the Civil War (1860-1865) and their achievement of suffrage and other rights during the initial phases of Reconstruction (1865-1870). Emancipation only gradually became a central goal of Union policy during the war and its full parameters were far from settled by the time President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Reconstruction policy followed an even more tortured course. Such progress as was achieved in securing political rights for the black freedmen was largely temporary but a framework for their future realization on a permanent basis was laid during this period. As an almost incidental byproduct of this process, the civil rights of blacks in the North were substantially expanded, but patterns of racial prejudice and discrimination remained. Native Americans (Indians) were not recognized as having any civil rights and moved closer to extermination as peoples as the westward frontier expanded after the end of the war.

The women's rights movement was largely frozen during the Civil War

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n's impeachment trial was pending (or until May 1868), it became clear to southern white leaders that they had no choice but to comply with the wishes of Congress as to Reconstruction policy. The Army implemented Congress' wishes more or less despite of Johnson. New southern governments in order to gain admission to the Union would have to, among other things, and almost all did by 1868, except for Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia which complied in 1870, grant universal manhood suffrage. The emphasis of the Congress was on securing the voting and other political and other legal rights of blacks, what Belz calls the "laissez faire legal equality" approach. The effect of this approach, enshrined in the 13th and 14th Amendments, and, after 1869, in the 15th Amendment, barring any state from preventing anyone from voting due to color, race or condition of previous servitude, was to nationalize the protection of black civil rights. The previous emphasis during the latter stages of the war in securing their economic rights, beyond immediate relief, was de-emphasized. In particular, the hunger of blacks for land in the South was not satisfied. Riddleberger commented that Congress never undid Johnson's return to Southern white
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Approximate Word count = 7476
Approximate Pages = 30 (250 words per page)