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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
As I began researching religion and woman suffrage in the South I asked a prominent historian of southern religion if he knew of any sources. I had assumed that religion and woman suffrage had an intimate relationship in the South, since historians have amply documented the close connection between southern religion and culture. After scraching his head for a moment, however, he commented dryly, “There really aren't any sources. That will be a short paper.” He went on to explain that religious arguments were seldom used in the struggle for woman suffrage, that natural rights ideology and the social benefits of moral women voting were more common defenses than ones based on Scripture. Even antisuffragists relied on the threat of black women voting and the superfluity of women voting when they were represented by their husbands at the ballot box more often than explicitly religious arguments.
1. For an example of how negatively some northern suffragists viewed the Bible, see Stanton, Elizabeth C. and the Revising Committee, The Woman's Bible (1895, 1898; reprint, New York, 1972)Google Scholar.
2. Mathews, Donald G., Religion in the Old South (Chicago, 1977);Google ScholarBailey, Kenneth K., Southern White Protestantism in the Twentieth Century (Gloucester, Mass., 1968).Google Scholar
3. Eighmy, John L., Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Attitudes of Southern Baptists (Knoxville, Tenn., 1972).Google Scholar
4. Kraditor, Aileen, “Tactical Problems of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the South,” Louisiana Studies 5 (1966): 307Google Scholar n. 26.
5. For attitudes of black women toward suffrage, see Friedman, Jean E., The Enclosed Garden. Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830–1900 (Chapel Hill, 1985), P. 126,Google Scholar chap. 4; Giddings, Paula, When and Where I Enter (New York, 1984), pp. 123–131, 159–164.Google Scholar
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7. While nearly every article on woman suffrage in the South describes the racial issue, see Kraditor, “Tactical Problems,” for a helpful, concise discussion.
8. Virginia Clay-Clopton, undated fragments, Clement C. Clay Papers, Manuscript Collection, Duke University Library, Durham, North Carolina (hereafter cited as CCP).
9. Clay-Clopton, undated address at Alabama Second Equal Suffrage Convention, CCP.
10. Fuller, Paul E., Laura Clay and the Woman's Rights Movement (Lexington, 1975), p. 64.Google Scholar
11. Daily Observer, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1 November 1914.
12. Clay-Clopton, “Women in Politics,” undated address, CCP.
13. Kearney, Belle, A Slaveholder's Daughter (New York, 1900), p. 42.Google Scholar
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15. Clay-Clopton, undated address, CCP.
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17. Clark, Walter, “Equal Suffrage,” address at Richmond, Virginia, 30 January 1914, p. 18,Google Scholar PC.
18. Although I have not examined every southern suffrage tract and speech, no reference to Galatians 3:28 was made in the hundred or so sources I consulted. On the ideal of the evangelical southern woman and the importance of gender differences among southern evangelicals, see Mathews, , Religion in the Old South, pp. 97–124.Google Scholar
19. HWS, 4:94.
20. Lyon, A. A., Suffragettes and Suffragettism, as quoted in A. Elizabeth Taylor, The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee (New York, 1957), p. 79.Google Scholar
21. Gospel Advocate, 22 July 1920, as quoted in Taylor, , Woman Suffrage Movement, p. 114.Google Scholar
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25. Ibid., p. 348.
26. Religious Herald, 5 January 1899, as quoted in Scott, Anne F., “Women, Religion, and Social Change in the South, 1830–1930,” in Religion and the Solid South, ed. Hill, Samuel S. Jr (Nashville, 1972), p. 104.Google Scholar
27. Gospel Advocate, 22 July 1920, as quoted in Taylor, , Woman Suffrage Movement, p. 114.Google Scholar
28. Broadside, undated, Bennehan Cameron Papers, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
29. Daily Observer, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1 November 1914.
30. Holland, Robert A., “The Suffragetnovemberte,” Sewanee Review 17 (1902): 282.Google Scholar
31. Eugene Anderson, “Unchaining the Demons of the Lower World,” undated pamphlet published in Macon, Ga., as quoted in Taylor, A.Elizabeth, “The Last Phase of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 43 (1959): 16.Google Scholar
32. The Methodists were Sue White (Tenn.), Caroline Merrick (La.), Belle Kearney (Miss.), Gertrude Thomas (Ga.), and during her childhood, at least, Elizabeth Meriwether (Tenn.). The Episcopalians were Laura Clay (Ky.), Madeline Breckinridge (Ky.), and Virginia Clay-Clopton (Ala.). Of the remaining four, Kate Gordon (La.) was a Unitarian, Martha Schofield (S.C.) was a Quaker, Pattie Jacobs (Ala.) Presbyterian, and Elsie Riddick (N.C.) Baptist. I doubt if this sample is representative of woman suffrage workers in general, but only of leaders. Suffrage ranks mirrored the general religious composition of the South, with Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians numerically dominant.
33. Scott, , “Women, Religion, and Social Change,” pp. 108–109, 120Google Scholar n. 49; Shadron, Virginia, “The Laity Rights Movement, 1906–1918: Woman Suffrage in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,” in Women in New Worlds, ed. Thomas, Hilah F. and Keller, Rosemary S. (Nashville, 1981), pp. 266, 274.Google Scholar
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35. Merrick, , Old Times, pp. 156, 157; 223–224.Google Scholar
36. Samuel Lewis Morgan diary, 20 June 1919, Samuel Lewis Morgan Papers, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
37. Meriwether, Elizabeth A., Recollections of 92 Years, 1824–1916 (Nashville, 1958), pp. 7, 34–35, 20–21; 7–8, 13–14; 35.Google Scholar
38. Ibid., pp. 220, 225–226; 221–225; 36, 32, 217.
39. Goodman, Clavia, Bitter Harvest: Laura Clay's Suffrage Work (Lexington, 1946), p. xv;Google ScholarFuller, , Laura Clay, p. 8.Google Scholar
40. Laura Clay diary, 26 July 1874, as quoted in Goodman, , Bitter Harvest, p. 19.Google Scholar
41. NAW, 1:346.
42. Fuller, , Laura Clay, p. 99.Google Scholar
43. Laura Clay to Harriet Upton, 26 June 1906, as quoted in Goodman, , Bitter Harvest, p. 48.Google Scholar
44. NAW, 2:310.
45. Kearney, , Slaveholder's Daughter, pp. 46, 130.Google Scholar
46. Ibid., pp. 136, 165, 269.
47. Scott, , “Women, Religion, and Social Change,” p. 116.Google Scholar
48. Ibid., p. 117.
49. Scott, Anne F., Making the Invisible Woman Visible (Urbana, Ill., 1984), P. 215.Google Scholar
50. Scott, , “Women, Religion, and Social Change,” p. 110.Google Scholar
51. Merrick, , Old Times, p. 172.Google Scholar
52. Kearney, , Slaveholder's Daughter, pp. 118, 189.Google Scholar
53. Kraditor, Aileen, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York, 1965), p. 94.Google Scholar
54. HWS, 6:328, 123.
55. Breckinridge, Sophonisba P., Madeline McDowell Breckinridge: A Leader in the New South (Chicago, 1921), pp. 208–209.Google Scholar
56. Kraditor, , Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, p. 94.Google Scholar
57. HWS, 4:922.
58. Taylor, , Woman Suffrage Movement, p. 32.Google Scholar
59. Taylor, , “Woman Suffrage Movement in Mississippi,” p. 12.Google Scholar
60. Taylor, A. Elizabeth, “Revival and Development of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 42 (1958): 352;Google ScholarHWS, 6:666.
61. Prescott, Grace E., “The Woman Suffrage Movement in Memphis: Its Place in the State, Sectional, and National Movements,” West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 18 (1964): 105.Google Scholar
62. Taylor, , Woman Suffrage Movement, p. 32.Google Scholar
63. Taylor, A Elizabeth, “The Woman Suffrage Movement in Arkansas,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 15 (1956):27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
64. HWS, 4:237.
65. Ibid., 6:327.
66. Suffrage Association of North Carolina, Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the North Carolina Equal Suffrage League (1915, 1917, 1918), pp. 5, 10 (1917), 3(1918)Google Scholar.
67. Fuller, , Laura Clay, p. 78.Google Scholar
68. Kraditor, , Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, p. 89.Google Scholar
69. Taylor, , “Woman Suffrage Movement,” p. 9.Google Scholar
70. Fuller, , Laura Clay, p. 32.Google Scholar
71. HWS, 4:928.
72. Herald, Louisville, Kentucky, 22 October 1911, as quoted in Guethlein, Carol, “Women in Louisville: Moving Toward Equal Rights,” Filson Club Historical Quarterly 55 (1981): 166.Google Scholar
73. Scott, , Making the Invisible Woman Visible, p. 214.Google Scholar
74. Scott, , “Women, Religion, and Social Change,” p. 94.Google Scholar
75. On the development of the slaveholding ethic and its relationship to southern religion, see Mathews, , Religion in the Old South, pp. 136–184.Google Scholar
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