Woman's Bible, The, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton….Let Reflecting Women Think" broadside.
*Callaway, James. Broadside: “The Woman’s Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the National Suffrage Association, one of the Revising Committee, Denies the Divinity of Christ, or that the Bible is the Inspired Word of God. Let Reflecting Women Think.” Montgomery, Ala.: Brown Printing Company, [ND, but ca. 1915-1920].
Single sheet: 11-1/4 x 17,” printed on off-white stock (one side only). One small 1/4” notch to right edge, else fine.
The broadside attacks the issue of woman suffrage and the Anthony Amendment through Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible. It quotes Stanton’s preface in which she states that the Jewish belief that the birth of Christ was natural rather than a miracle the more rational: “So we see where Max Eastman’s 'ballad,' making mockery of the birth of Christ, had its origin.” Callaway cites other quotes by Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mrs. Pankhurst which he believes demonstrate the radical and iconoclastic thinking of suffragists. After recording Mrs. Stanton’s association with Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Anna Dickinson, William Lloyd Garrison, 'Fred' Douglas and others [i.e., Abolitionists], Callaway declares: “Her mantle is now worn by Mrs. Chapman Catt, who has risen to great influence with the present Democratic Administration, by whose aid she expects...to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment and deprive the States of the right to regulate their franchise...”
Mrs. Catt was not a member of Stanton’s 'Revising Committee'; she and other suffragists emphatically had distanced themselves from The Woman’s Bible, believing that the issue of suffrage and the issue of women and religion should be kept separate. The broadside represents the kind of anti-suffrage arguments and insinuations Catt feared might arise from Stanton’s radical doctrines. The writer also has taken care to underscore the woman suffrage movement’s origins and kinship with the abolitionist movement. The broadside suggests that if the federal government can determine who has the vote other disenfranchised elements (i.e., African Americans) will gain the vote: “If this be true, what a triumph for Cady Stanton and the Shaws and the Catts and their teacher, Susan B. Anthony! But what a fall for the States!” An important anti-suffrage piece documenting anti-suffrage attitudes and issues in the South, the most resistant to the enfranchisement of women.
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