page_title: American Equal Rights Association
section_title: Kansas campaign
hierarchical_section_title: American Equal Rights Association / History / Kansas campaign
caption_attribution_description: English: A scan of a framed photographic portrait of Lucy Stone, between 1840 and 1860
context_page_description: The American Equal Rights Association was formed in 1866 in the United States. According to its constitution, its purpose was "to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex."
  Some of the more prominent reform activists of that time were members, including women and men, blacks and whites.
  The AERA was created by the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention, which transformed itself into the new organization. Leaders of the women's movement had earlier suggested the creation of a similar equal rights organization through a merger of their movement with the American Anti-Slavery Society, but that organization did not accept their proposal.
  The AERA conducted two major campaigns during 1867. In New York, which was in the process of revising its state constitution, AERA workers collected petitions in support of women's suffrage and the removal of property requirements that discriminated specifically against black voters. In Kansas they campaigned for referenda that would enfranchise African Americans and women.
context_section_description: Two referenda were placed before voters in Kansas in 1867, one that would extend suffrage to black men and one that would extend it to women.  Kansas had an anti-slavery heritage and the strongest laws for the protection of women's rights outside New York.  The AERA concentrated its resources on this campaign with high hopes of winning both referenda, which would boost the chances of winning suffrage for both blacks and woman at the national level.  Both referenda failed, however, and the AERA campaign ended in disarray and recrimination.  The Kansas campaign created divisions between those who worked primarily for the rights of African Americans and those who worked primarily for the rights of women, and it also created divisions within the women's movement itself.
  The New York campaign had been financed partly by the Hovey Fund, which was created by a bequest that provided a large sum of money to support abolitionism, women's rights and other reform movements.
  According to the terms of the bequest, if slavery was abolished, the remainder of the money was to go to the other reform movements, which meant that the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment should have freed up a significant stream of money for the women's movement.  However, Wendell Phillips, the head of the fund, declared that slavery would not truly be abolished until blacks were enfranchised on the same basis as whites, and he channeled much of fund's money toward that cause.
  The AERA nonetheless expected the Hovey Fund to support its Kansas campaign, which worked for the enfranchisement of both African Americans and women.  The fund refused to finance the Kansas campaign, however, because Phillips opposed mixing those two causes, leaving the campaign desperately short of money.
  It was difficult for the women's movement itself to raise enough money for projects like this because few women had independent sources of income, and even those with employment generally were required by law to turn over their pay to their husbands.
  The AERA's Kansas campaign began when Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell arrived in April.
  The AERA workers were disconcerted when, after an internal struggle, Kansas Republicans decided to support suffrage for black men only, not merely refusing to support women's suffrage but forming an "Anti Female Suffrage Committee" to organize opposition to those who were campaigning for it.
  In a letter to Anthony, Stone wrote, "But the negroes are all against us. There has just now left us an ignorant black preacher named Twine, who is very confident that women ought not to vote. These men ought not to be allowed to vote before we do, because they will be just so much more dead weight to lift."
  By the end of summer the AERA campaign had almost collapsed under the weight of Republican hostility, and its finances were exhausted.
  Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton arrived in September to work on the campaign.  They created a storm of controversy by accepting help during the last two and a half weeks of the campaign from George Francis Train, a Democrat, a wealthy businessman and a flamboyant speaker who supported women's rights.
  Train was a political maverick who had attended the Democratic convention during the presidential election year of 1864 but then campaigned vigorously for the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln.  By 1867 he was promoting himself as an independent candidate for president.
  Train was also a racist who openly disparaged the integrity and intelligence of African Americans, supporting women's suffrage partly in the belief that the votes of women would help contain the political power of blacks.
  The usual procedure was for Anthony to speak first, declaring that the ability to vote rightfully belonged to both women and blacks.  Train would speak next, declaring that it would be an outrage for blacks to vote but not women also.
  The willingness of Anthony and Stanton to work with Train alienated many AERA members and other reform activists.  Stone said she considered Train to be "a lunatic, wild and ranting".
  Anthony and St
caption: Lucy Stone
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