Zinn’s thesis 2:

The Declaration of Independence did not grant women the rights it granted men.

Opposing view:

While certainly true in some ways, it is somewhat of an unfair and truncated statement of historical developments when taking the long view.  In the first instance, specific rights granted to American citizens are more commonly found in the Constitution than the Declaration of Independence, so it behooves us to amend the statement to include both documents together.

To always portray the gender issue as “all women” versus “all men” is itself misleading.  At the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls (1848), 68 women and 32 men voted for passage of its Declaration of Sentiments.  There were progressive-minded men involved in the women’s rights movement from the very beginning, including the famed abolitionist and speaker, Frederick Douglass.

As regards a specific right such as voting, clearly some men were allowed to vote for many long years before the women gained the right of suffrage: of this, there can be little argument.

Nevertheless, there are a few salient points to be added: for example, many men did not have the right to vote, either.  If one wishes to rectify past historical injustice, it is important to be accurate in what is being first stated: it wasn’t just women who could not vote in the new nation; most men could not vote, either.  It goes without saying that Blacks and Native Americans were not entitled to vote but neither were white men without sufficient property: poor people, indentured servants, workers who did not own land or house or tools, etc.

The first census of 1790 puts the country’s population at about 4 million (and by working backwards, at about 2.6 million in 1776). In the first presidential election in 1788, approximately 38,000 votes were cast: that’s all.  Why?  Because there were significant property restrictions placed on the eligibility to vote and an even higher property restriction on the right to run for office.  Most male citizens did not have the right to vote in the first presidential election, let alone run for office.

One should keep in mind that there were very rich women in the colonies and the early years of the Republic: wives and daughters found within wealthy families who lived a life of relative ease and luxury.  In a time when wealth was perhaps more important than voting in determining one’s level of comfort, rights, and social status, we should note that there have always been wealthy women in America, as is still true today.

The case can be made by contrast: to put together the richest women in the nation’s history with the poorest would show a vast chasm between the comfort of the wealthiest and the misery of the poorest; the divide is so great that it simply staggers the imagination.

Thus to insist that women’s gender alone is more important than all other factors, including race and class, is itself misleading.  To insist that the richest and poorest women have more in common than not, ignores the vast social chasm that has always existed between the wealthiest and poorest families in our nation.

Martha Washington, the widow of one of the wealthiest men in Virginia (before she re-married) kept a good deal of property in her own name, even though Zinn and other writers tell us women could not own property by themselves.  When George Washington was arranging in his will to emancipate his slaves, he could only free those that belonged to him—not those who belonged to his wife (and neither could free her dower slaves belonging to the estate of her first husband).

Luckily for him and his reputation, Martha agreed with his plan and so all the slaves they owned (excepting the dower slaves) were emancipated in due course.  This example shows that wealthy women could control inherited property in their own name—even though it would become a commonplace later to state that women could not own property or that when a woman married whatever she owned passed to the control of her husband, etc.  This was generally true but not the whole story, either.

Should we think of white women on a southern plantation as being oppressed because as females they lacked the vote, or should we think of them as part of a wealthy ruling-class plantation elite?

Were the wives of the wealthiest industrialists of the North–the wives of the “robber barons” whose fortunes were soon measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars—more “deprived” and “oppressed” than any man, no matter how poor, so long as that man had the right to vote while she did not?

Women who lived lives of luxury, who traveled widely, who could afford the best doctors, who entertained on a lavish scale, who owned all the finer things of life, who could become educated (through access to a family’s personal library), who could adopt hobbies and indulge their creative talents to the fullest—are they oppressed?

Are the women of the wealthiest families disadvantaged in the same way as working-class wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters? Among the poorest women are some who are forced to turn to prostitution to survive; others were maimed and even killed by dangerous machinery in mill and factory or suffer abuse at the hands of foreman or husband with virtually no legal recourse.

If we fail to draw a line between the rights and privileges of rich women and the absence of opportunities for poor women, we do a grave disservice to an honest and frank appraisal of the conditions and problems of all women, not merely by gender but also by race and class.

If we fail to make a distinction between the lives of comfort and splendor of wealthy women as distinct from the poverty and misery of women of the lower classes, we will miss entirely an often overlooked dimension of American society where one’s real status and privileges are based far more on wealth and class than on gender (or suffrage) alone.

However, there is a much deeper objection to this postulate of Zinn’s, that The Declaration of Independence—and by extension the Constitution–did not grant women the rights it granted men.  While certainly true regarding voting, it conveniently ignores the fact that the Bill of Rights in general is intended to apply to all Americans, both male and female (save those specifically excluded at the time such as slaves).  Women, however, are not specifically excluded from the free exercise of such rights:

  • Freedom of religion: is there anything that states women do not have freedom of religion? The same question can be applied to all other First Amendment and Bill of Rights liberties: are women specifically excluded from these guarantees?  In practice, social inequality with men existed on many levels yet it does not mean women were not granted any rights under the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
  • Legal due process: If there is a court case, is there anything that specifically excludes women from having a fair trial? This includes the right to a speedy trial, right to an attorney, the right to confront witnesses, the right to post bail, etc.
  • Freedom of speech: is there anything that declares women prohibited from thinking their own thoughts and speaking their own minds?

The list goes on: in point of fact, the principles and rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution apply to women despite the fact that there were very specific legal rights that they lacked, when compared with the rights of men.  However, to conclude that these two documents granted no rights to women whatsoever is a vast misinterpretation of the actual legal import of both.

Fast forward to the Nineteenth Amendment: when women finally gained the right to vote in 1920 there is no sudden need for a secondary movement demanding each and every one of the individual liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and elsewhere.  It was understood that women were already covered by these documents; they needed no special redressing of grievances, one-by-one, for all the rights and individual liberties contained in the first ten amendments or any other section of either document.

Historians like Zinn should be careful to avoid blanket statements made in such a manner as to lead the reader to believe that no provisions of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution ever applied to women until after 1920.

Did women after 1783 remain subjects of King George III or were they part of a new country?  Obviously, they became Americans and were just as American as anyone else.  The fact that women did not have the right to vote at the time does not mean they were completely denied all the rights and new thinking contained within America’s two founding documents.

Thus, to say these documents did not grant women the rights granted to men is not entirely true; serious legal inequalities remained but it is not proper to conclude, on that basis alone, that women had no legal rights or protections under the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.  They did, and they do!

Nor should we confuse social prejudice with legal sanctions, where custom (not law) sometimes prevented women from gaining access to a full equality with men.  Despite such chauvinistic taboos, brave women broke down barriers and set precedents in many area.

We should not see women as victims or downplay their successes and heroic accomplishments, even during periods of time when “male supremacy” seemed to control everything.  It is misleading to argue that women were unable to expand their choices due to social hostility and male chauvinism; individual determination also played a key role in the exercise of their rights and choices.  Even Black women, facing the double burden of race and gender, achieved small victories on occasion.

Sojourner Truth, an ex-slave, brought suit in a New York court more than once and won.  The same is true for W.E.B. DuBois’ grandmother, who won her freedom in a Massachusetts court.  Harriet Jacobs, an escaped slave, told a similar story about her own mother; having been freed, her mother won a legal victory in court to secure her own children.

Consider: all these women succeeded in an era when slavery existed and declared most black people to be property with virtually no rights whatsoever.  Sojourner Truth was a black woman born a slave many years before the Civil War began.  Even so, she went to court three times and won each time.  Although such successes are rare, historians must be careful not to overstate the case when dealing with women’s inequality (when compared to men) or their status in society more generally.

Issues of class distinctions should not be neglected when dealing with the spectrum of women ranging from the poor and powerless to the wealthy and well-married.  For that matter, questions of race and ethnicity need to be addressed as well even within the forum discussing women’s rights and obligations.

When we consider for a moment the wife of a wealthy plantation owner or the wife of a wealthy industrialist in the North: do these women appear as oppressed and exploited as poor white women, north and south–not to mention the heartbreaking poverty and wretched condition of poor Black women?  Zinn jumps on the band-wagon of women’s liberation but his opinion is not fully formed; there are numerous instances when his views would benefit from appropriate qualification.

The Declaration of Independence in any event does not grant men or any group the vote; it is a statement of general principles and in that spirit it follows the philosophy of natural rights in which all human beings are born free.  While the Constitution does address suffrage (Amendment 19, women suffrage, and Amendment 26, changing the voting age from 21 to 18) it is left to the states to set the standards for voting.

This is true for other kinds of social conventions as well, such as the minimum age at which two individuals may willingly consent to marry.  Such specifics are not to be found in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution; each state makes its own rules.

Several states actually passed laws giving women the right to vote long before Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment; on that point alone, Zinn is wrong to assert that it was the Declaration of Independence that denied women the right to vote.

It is not in the Declaration where a list of legal rights is to be found for Americans; those rights are found either in the national constitution or even more commonly in the constitutions of the various states.

Slavery was outlawed in the northern states long before the Civil War began; it is important to understand how and where rights are granted and recorded into law.  State constitutions, as well as the national constitution, deal with the specifics of many individual rights and liberties.

Of course, the language of the Declaration of Independence includes universal sentiments that can and should apply to all people regardless of color or gender.  That slavery existed until 1863 and women did not get the vote (on a national basis) until 1920, does not negate the beautiful prose and inspiring intentions of the Declaration of Independence.

Even so, no American woman remained a subject of King George III after the new nation was formed (save the women in Loyalist families who left for other climes).  For those who stayed, their destinies were intertwined with a new nation shaped by bedrock principles of freedom.  In time these same principles would give rise to a powerful movement for full legal and social equality: a movement that is still with us today and is thriving.

The Declaration of Independence is not responsible for the lack of suffrage for women; it does not oppose the efforts of succeeding generations of Americans to abolish slavery nor does oppose the movement to extend equality of rights to women.  Rather, we must believe that at least some of the Founding Fathers would rejoice to know that American freedom endured and prospered.  Their dreams and hopes grew ever stronger in each succeeding generation of “posterity” to whom they bequeathed these noble sentiments of liberty and justice!

The language of the Declaration of Independence remains on the side of all those who champion change and reform, freedom and equality–as our own generation has discovered and as the generations who follow our historic commitment to freedom will soon find to be true as well!