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Synopsis
When Clowns Make Laws for Queens, 1880 to 1887 is the fourth of six planned volumes of The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony . The entire collection documents the friendship and accomplishments of two of America's most important social and political reformers. At the opening of the fourth volume, suffragists hoped to speed passage of a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution through the creation of Select Committees on Woman Suffrage in Congress. Congress did not vote on the amendment until January 1887. Then, in a matter of a week, suffragists were dealt two major blows: the Senate defeated the amendment and the Senate and House reached agreement on the Edmunds-Tucker Act, disenfranchising all women in the Territory of Utah. As evidenced in this volume's selection of letters, articles, speeches, and diary entries, these were years of frustration. Suffragists not only lost federal and state campaigns for partial and full voting rights, but also endured an invigorated opposition. In spite of these challenges, Stanton and Anthony continued to pursue their life's work. In 1880 both women retired from lecturing to devote attention to their monumental History of Woman Suffrage. They also opened a new transatlantic dialogue about woman's rights during a trip to Europe in 1883., In this the third volume of the Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the story opens while woman suffragists await the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in cases testing whether the Constitution recognized women as voters within the terms of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. At its close they are pursuing their own amendment to the Constitution and pressing the presidential candidates of 1880 to speak in its favor. Against the backdrop of an end to Reconstruction, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony set the goal of "National Protection for National Citizens"--a phrase defined by Anthony at the end of this volume as the "Supremacy of the United States government in the protection of citzens in their right to vote." Through their letters, speeches, articles, and diaries, the volume recounts the national careers of Stanton and Anthony as popular lecturers, their work with members of Congress to expand women's rights, their protests during the Centennial Year of 1876, and the launch that same year of their campaign for a sixteenth amendment. Among many speeches in the volume are Anthony's "Social Purity" and Stanton's "National Protection for National Citizens, " "The Bible and Woman Suffrage, " and "Our Girls.", At the opening of this volume, suffragists hoped to speed passage of a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution through the creation of Select Committees on Woman Suffrage in Congress. Congress did not vote on the amendment until January 1887. Then, in a matter of a week, suffragists were dealt two major blows: the Senate defeated the amendment and the Senate and House reached agreement on the Edmunds-Tucker Act, disenfranchising all women in the Territory of Utah.
