Declarations of Contradictions: Dr. Margaret Washington on broken promises, Womens Suffrage, and John Brown

This video clip comes from a John Brown: America250 Roundtable discussion with historian Margaret Washington, Ph.D., and environmental psychologist Shawndel Fraser, M.A., John Brown and Abolitionist Women, hosted by biographer Louis A. DeCaro Jr., Ph.D. In this clip, Washington discusses the promising, but disappointing Declarations of Independence and Sentiments.

TRANSCRIPT:

Margaret Washington: I'd like to start off by saying a couple of things about the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Sentiments in recognition of our 250th anniversary of the nation's founding and also Women's History Month, which is in March.

Brown believed in the bible and the declaration of independence

John Brown once famously said, "I believe in the Bible and the Declaration of Independence." Biblically speaking, we can understand the documents of the Old Testament and the children of Israel being led out of the house of bondage, and the New Testament, where Jesus comes to fulfill the Old Testament with the spirit of love for all humanity.

The Declaration of Independence is a little more contradictory because Thomas Jefferson, the main author, begins with the ringing words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Now, the caveat there is that this was not really the case. As far as Jefferson was concerned, all men were not created equal, because Jefferson throughout his life owned, at one time or another, about 600 enslaved people, and this document did not apply to them for many years. However, the spirit of that document is what John Brown embraced, in the same way that Abraham Lincoln embraced it when he made his famous speech during the war. John Brown was looking at the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, and that is what he lived by.

The Declaration of Sentiments was written at Women's convention 1848

The Declaration of Sentiments was compiled in 1848 at the first women's convention in Seneca Falls. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is attributed as the author, but it was actually a group of women who did it. The point of the document was to emphasize that the Declaration of Independence did not include women, just as it did not include African Americans. Women were demanding their own declaration and demanding that they be recognized as full citizens of the nation. The most significant aspect of that was suffrage, which was really the beginning of the women's movement.

Just like the Declaration of Independence, there is a caveat to the Declaration of Sentiments: no Black women were invited to Seneca Falls. Nonetheless, the first national women's convention, held two years later in 1850, came on the heels of the Fugitive Slave Law. At that convention, not only were several "colored sisters" on the platform, but the main speaker was none other than Sojourner Truth.

1850 National Convention welcomed Black women; featured Sojourner Truth  

It gives us a sense of the progression of the nation and how progress was something that the anti-slavery movement was deeply involved in. Many of the women who were at Seneca Falls were also at the convention in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts. To give you a sense of the progress that had been made on the issue of women, one of the most important executive resolutions to come out of that convention was that while we are passing these resolutions on behalf of women, let us remember that the most wronged and oppressed women of all are the enslaved women.

These declarations fell far short of Brown's expectations

Even though, unfortunately, the Seneca Falls convention did not recognize the position of African Americans and did not recognize abolition, two years later at the national convention, there was a recognition of African American women as being within not just the body politic of the nation, but as women who had a right to be part of the women's movement. As far as African American women are concerned, their "Seneca Falls" was in 1850 in Worcester, where the first national women's rights convention was held. Women after that went on to become a very prominent part of the women's movement, even though there was conflict and consensus. It is an important contrast: the Declaration of Independence fell far short of John Brown's expectations, and the Declaration of Sentiments fell far short of what women would later embrace in terms of race.

Outro music thanks to Guy Wolff via The John Brown Project