Fighting Chance

The advocates of woman suffrage and black suffrage came to a bitter falling-out in the midst of Reconstruction, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it granted the vote to black men but not to women. How did these two causes, so long allied, come to this? Based on extensive research, Fighting Chance is a major contribution to women's history and to 19th-century political history-a story of how idealists descended to racist betrayal and desperate failure. Rich in archival material, set against a backdrop of lively debate concerning the meanings of citizenship, rights, and freedoms during Reconstruction, with a notable cast of characters, Duddenas work is a particularly valuable contribution to the history of the struggle for equal rights in nineteenth-century America and that of womenas rights more generally. Rebecca J. Fraser, Labour History Review