I Speak of Wrongs

The sweeping, untold history of three women who shaped—and reshaped—women’s fight for representation: Lucy Stone, the daughter of a farmer; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who came from a life of privilege; and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a free Black woman who advocated for universal civil rights. Through impeccable research and vivid storytelling, Charlotte Gordon examines how the friendship and eventual rupture between Stanton, Stone, and Harper over race and gender determined the fate of suffrage, race politics, and feminist identity in the United States.

Drawing on diaries, letters, speeches, and newly reassessed archival material, Gordon illuminates Harper’s visionary call to extend rights to women and Black people; Stone’s principled but complicated antiracist stance; and Stanton’s turn toward white supremacy, which reshaped her legacy and provides a corrective to the story we think we know about her.

As gripping as a novel, I Speak of Wrongs reframes the origin story of nineteenth-century American feminism along the racial and ideological divides that surfaced after the civil war—and may have pushed back the possibility of women’s suffrage for decades.

Advance Praise

“I Speak of Wrongs . . . brilliantly retells the story of early struggles for women's rights. Through the lives of three visionary, principled, and also flawed pathbreakers — France Ellen Watkins Harper, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone — Charlotte Gordon sheds much-needed light on the fissures that continue to divide American women. Gordon insists that if women are to lead this democracy into the 21st century, they must first understand the troubled past that brought them here.”

—Martha S. Jones, author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

“With I Speak of Wrongs, veteran biographer Charlotte Gordon brings her vibrant and humane storytelling powers to a vital chapter in American history: that shining moment when three brave “mouthing women,” as hecklers called them—Lucy Stone, Frances Watkins Harper, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—came together to argue the case for universal rights. Gordon’s artfully braided narrative shows us the how, the why, and finally the why not of this almost success story that portends so many of the rights and wrongs we live with to this day.”

—Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, and After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart

“I Speak of Wrongs is a triumph. An unsparing reckoning that’s revelatory and immersive, psychologically incisive and intellectually bracing, exquisitely researched and light on its feet. By casting her empathic imagination on the vexed, messy origins of the American women’s movement, Charlotte Gordon shows exactly why what was felt, thought, said, and published in the far-ago 1800s is of urgent importance now. I could not put this book down.”

— Kate Bolick, author of the New York Times bestseller Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own

“In this energizing group biography, Charlotte Gordon brings vividly to life several of the key figures behind the nineteenth-century women’s movement. With righteousness and empathy, she illuminates the friendships, alliances, and conflicts that generated social change. At once a historical study and a deeply human book, I Speak of Wrongs should be read by anyone who has ever yearned for a better life and a better country in which to live.”

—Maggie Doherty, author of The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s

“Charlotte Gordon’s superpower is breathing life into historical women—their hopes, loves, and strategies for a better life. She excels in illuminating women’s friendships, alliances, and rivalries, and that’s what she does with her vibrant protagonists Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frances Harper. She sheds light both on these women’s inner lives and the bonds they forged with each other, as well as on their failures and missteps. Gordon’s story of the nineteenth-century women’s movement reads like a fast-paced political thriller, with women’s lives and dreams at the center of an against-the-odds race to tragedy and triumph.”

— Paul Fisher, author of The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World

“Charlotte Gordon shines a floodlight on the true origin story of the women’s suffrage movement in the U.S. and its entanglement with racial reckoning and the struggle for universal rights. I Speak of Wrongs illuminates the sources of feminism’s fatal flaw—the erasure of Black women—and brings a cast of neglected heroes to the foreground of history.”

— Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution and Amor & Psycho

“Brilliantly engaging, compulsively readable, and wise, this compelling, surprising story shows what might have been had nineteenth century feminists listened to Black women. Charlotte Gordon’s rigorous research meticulously reveals competing conceptions of freedom and rights which still reverberate today. Her lush, novelistic history, alive with striking characters and vivid scenes of both conflict and collaboration, is a must-read drama for our times: inspiring and cautionary.”

— Carla Kaplan, Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature, Northeastern Author of Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford and Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance