Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony at first hoped to combine the emancipation of the slaves with their demands for women’s suffrage. The organization that they formed, the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), was designed to advocate for both simultaneously. During the debate of the Fourteenth Amendment in Congress, they urged that the clause including the three uses of the word male be removed from the amendment. Many male abolitionists, some of whom had been including calls for women’s suffrage in their speeches during the 1850s, feared that a formal linking of these two causes would lead to a rejection of the amendment. They refused to express AERA’s demands to the members of Congress when they met with them. Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment with the word male included in June 1866. The amendment was ratified in 1868. In essence, abolitionist...