the parties were a battle between the sexes. AMERICAN CHRONICLES Republicans and Democrats are “just like men and women,” Trent Lott liked to say: Democrats might be from Venus, but THE WOMAN CARD the G.O.P. is “the party of Mars.” Dem- ocrats have talked about a Republican How feminism and antifeminism created Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. “war on women”; Trump says, of Clin- ton, “The only card she has is the woman BY JILL LEPORE card.” She polls better among women; he polls better among men. The immediacy and starkness of the contrast between the candidates obscures the historical re- alignment hinted at in their own biogra- phies: she used to be a Republican and he used to be a Democrat. This election isn’t a battle between the sexes. But it is a bat- tle between the parties, each hoping to win the votes of women without losing the votes of men. It’s also marked by the sweeping changes to American politics caused by women’s entry into public life. Long before women could vote, they car- ried into the parties a political style they had perfected first as abolitionists and then as prohibitionists: the moral crusade. No election has been the same since. or a very long time, the parties had no idea what to do with women. At Fthe nation’s founding, women made an argument for female citizenship based on their role as mothers: in a republic, the civic duty of women is to raise sons who will be virtuous citizens. Federalists dofed their top hats, and no more. In the eighteen-twenties and thirties, Jack- sonian democracy involved a lot of brawls: women were not allowed. When the so- cial reformer Fanny Wright spoke at a t means FREEDOM for WOMEN Buren, and James Buchanan as the only political meeting in 1836, she was called “ TO VOTE AGAINST THE PARTY THIS Presidents to have served both in the a “female man.” Instead, women entered DONKEYI REPRESENTS” read the sign on Senate and as Secretary of State. If she public afairs by way of an evangelical a donkey named Woodrow who, wear- loses the election to Donald Trump, he religious revival that emphasized their ing a bow, was paraded through Denver will be the first man elected President who moral superiority, becoming temperance by the National Woman’s Party during has never served the public either in gov- reformers and abolitionists: they wrote its campaign against the Democratic in- ernment or in the military. Trump wants petitions. “The right of petitioning is the cumbent, President Wilson, in 1916. This to make America great again; Clinton only political right that women have,” year, the hundredth anniversary of the wants to make history. That history is Angelina Grimké pointed out in 1837. Woman’s Party arrived, unnoticed, on less about the last glass ceiling than about The Whig Party was the first to make June 5th. Two days later, Hillary Clin- a party realignment as important as the use of women in public, if ridiculously: ton became the first woman to claim the Nixon-era Southern Strategy, if less well in 1840, Tennessee women marched Presidential nomination of a major party: known. Call it the Female Strategy. wearing sashes that read “Whig Hus- the Democratic Party. For the past century, the edges of the bands or None.” Because neither the If elected, Clinton will become the parties have been defined by a debate Whig nor the Democratic Party was first female President in the nation’s about the political role and constitutional able to address the question of slavery, history. She will also join John Quincy rights of women. This debate is usually a crop of new parties sprang up. Fuelled Adams, James Monroe, Martin Van reduced to cant, as if the battle between by antislavery arguments, and adopting the style of moral suasion favored by The G.O.P. was built by women, who brought the moral crusade to party politics. female reformers, these parties tended to 22 THE NEW YO R K E R , JUNE 27, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTOPH NIEMANN be welcoming to women, and even to not everyone bought the argument that of the female campaign on the Ameri- arguments for women’s rights. it was necessary to disenfranchise women can political style has yet to be taken. The Republican Party was born in in order to secure ratification. “Can any But that influence was felt first, and long- 1854, in Ripon, Wisconsin, when fifty- one tell us why the great advocates of est, in the Republican Party. four citizens founded a party to oppose Human Equality . forget that when At the Republican nominating con- the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which threat- they were a weak party and needed all vention in 1872, the Party split into two, ened to create two new slave states. Three the womanly strength of the nation to but neither faction added a sufrage plank of those citizens were women. Women help them on, they always united the to its platform. “We recognize the equal- wrote Republican campaign literature, words ‘without regard to sex, race, or ity of all men before the law,” the Lib- and made speeches on behalf of the color’? ” one frustrated female supporter eral Republicans declared, specifically Party. Its first Presidential nominee, in of the Republican Party asked. She could discounting women. Stanton called the 1856, was John Frémont, but more have found an answer in an observation position taken by the regular Republi- than one Republican observed that his made by Charles Sumner: “We know cans—“the honest demand of any class wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, “would how the Negro will vote, but are not so of citizens for additional rights should have been the better candidate.” One of sure of the women.” be treated with respectful consider- the Party’s most popular and best-paid This election, many female voters, es- ation”—not a plank but a splinter. Still, speakers was Anna Dickinson, who be- pecially younger ones, resent being told a splinter was more than sufragists ever came the first woman to speak in the that they should support Hillary Clin- got from the Democratic Party. In 1880, Hall of the House of Representatives. ton just because she’s a woman. It turns Anthony wrote a speech to deliver at The women’s-rights movement was out that women don’t form a political the Democratic National Convention. founded in 1848. “It started right here in constituency any more than men do; like It began, “To secure to twenty millions New York, a place called Seneca Falls,” men, women tend to vote with their fam- of women the rights of citizenship is to Clinton said in her victory speech on ilies and their communities. But, in 1865, base your party on the eternal princi- June 7th, after efectively clinching the how women would vote was impossible ples of justice.” Instead, her statement Democratic nomination. Advocates of to know. Would black women vote the was read by a male clerk, while Anthony women’s rights were closely aligned with way black men voted? Would white looked on, furious, after which, as the the Republican Party, and typically fought women vote like black women? The par- Times reported, “No action whatever was to end slavery and to earn for both black ties, led by white men, decided they’d taken in regard to it, and Miss Anthony men and all women political equality just as soon not find out. vexed the Convention no more.” with white men. In 1859, Elizabeth Cady Women tried to gain the right to vote Close elections seemed to be good for Stanton wrote to Susan B. Anthony, by simply seizing it, a plan that was known the cause because, in a tight race, both “When I pass the gate of the celestials as the New Departure. Beginning in 1868, parties courted sufragists’ support, but and good Peter asks me where I wish to black and white women went to the polls women soon discovered that this was sit, I will say, ‘Anywhere so that I am all over the country and got arrested. So- fruitless: if they allied with Republicans, neither a negro nor a woman. Confer on journer Truth tried to vote in Battle Creek, Democrats campaigned against Repub- me, great angel, the glory of White man- Michigan. Five black women were arrested licans by campaigning against sufrage. hood, so that henceforth I may feel un- for voting in South Carolina in 1870, This led to a certain fondness for third limited freedom.’ ” months before Victoria Woodhull be- parties—the Equal Rights Party, the Pro- After Lincoln signed the Emancipa- came the first woman to run for Presi- hibition Party, the Home Protection Party. tion Proclamation, Stanton and Anthony dent. She announced that women already J. Ellen Foster, an Iowa lawyer who had gathered four hundred thousand signa- had the right to vote, under the privileges- helped establish the Woman’s Christian tures on petitions demanding the Thir- and-immunities clause of the Constitu- Temperance Union, spoke at a Republican teenth Amendment. They then began tion, and, in 1871, she made this argument rally and cautioned that a third party re- fighting for the Fourteenth Amendment, before the House Judiciary Committee. wards women’s support with nothing more which they expected to guarantee the Anthony was arrested for voting in 1872— than flattery: “It gives to women seats in rights and privileges of citizenship for all not for Woodhull but for the straight conventions and places their names on Americans.