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Question

Topic: In what ways did the early nineteenth century reform movement for abolition of slavery and women's rights illustrate both the strengths and weakness of democracy in the early American Republic?

Answer 1

One strength: The movement illustrated how many Americans wanted all people to be considered truly equal. Neither women nor slaves could vote so they clearly didn't have equal rights. Weaknesses: Under a democratic government all men were supposed to be equal and they absolutely weren't. In addition to not being allowed to vote, women and slaves were very restricted when it came to owning property and petitioning courts.

Answer 2

(1) Strengths
In both cases, activists applied democratic principles to reform the laws. They successfully used protests and print media (First Amendment rights) to rally support for change, and used the legislative process to amend the Constitution to abolish slavery and establish voting rights for blacks and for women (13th, 15th, and 19th Amendments). These examples demonstrate how the Constitutional structure of the legislature, and protected exercise of individual rights, can be applied to reform government policies to represent the public interest; so that democracy works.

(2)
(a) Inherent inequalities
The fact that blacks and women had to fight for equal rights shows the system was biased to begin with. The laws were originally written and biased toward the interest of property owners who were mostly white men. Slaves were considered and treated as property, to the point of counting the population as 3/5 when determining elected representation per district.

It is interesting to note that women were granted suffrage after blacks; so that black women were the most disenfranchised.

(b) majority-rule and political change

In order to organize a majority needed to reform the laws, it should also be noted that these two issues had to be advocated separately in order to maintain a cohesive movement without losing focus or dividing public support. So instead of creating equality voting rights for all people at once, it took longer and twice the effort to address these issues separately.

To illustrate this point, you might note the failed campaign of Victoria Woodhull and Frederick Douglass to run for office under the Equal Rights Party. Because they promoted suffrage for blacks and women together as a common issue of human rights, this approach was rejected as too controversial and threatening to either movement.

Even though Woodhull was the first woman to for President, at a time when women couldn't even vote, instead of being celebrated and credited for her bold political statement, she was chased out of the country, and subsequently written out of history books by the forces of censorship, led by competing feminists as Susan B. Anthony.

So it is both a strength and a weakness that the democratic process is slow to change the system. On one hand people can suffer oppression for a long time until laws are changed and justice is finally served; but on the other hand, the system is stable and does not suddenly change or collapse overnight by disruptive revolution.