Women's suffrage in the United States of America,
the legal right of women to vote, was established
over the course of more than half a century,
first in various states and localities, sometimes
on a limited basis, and then nationally in
1920.
The demand for women's suffrage began to gather
strength in the 1840s, emerging from the broader
movement for women's rights.
In 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention, the
first women's rights convention, passed a
resolution in favor of women's suffrage despite
opposition from some of its organizers, who
believed the idea was too extreme.
By the time of the first National Women's
Rights Convention in 1850, however, suffrage
was becoming an increasingly important aspect
of the movement's activities.
The first national suffrage organizations
were established in 1869 when two competing
organizations were formed, one led by Susan
B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
the other by Lucy Stone.
After years of rivalry, they merged in 1890
as the National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA) with Anthony as its leading force.
The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU),
which was the largest women's organization
at that time, was established in 1873 and
also pursued women's suffrage, giving a huge
boost to the movement.Hoping that the U.S.
Supreme Court would rule that women had a
constitutional right to vote, suffragists
made several attempts to vote in the early
1870s and then filed lawsuits when they were
turned away.
Anthony actually succeeded in voting in 1872
but was arrested for that act and found guilty
in a widely publicized trial that gave the
movement fresh momentum.
After the Supreme Court ruled against them
in the 1875 case Minor v. Happersett, suffragists
began the decades-long campaign for an amendment
to the U.S. Constitution that would enfranchise
women.
Much of the movement's energy, however, went
toward working for suffrage on a state-by-state
basis.
In 1916 Alice Paul formed the National Woman's
Party (NWP), a militant group focused on the
passage of a national suffrage amendment.
Over 200 NWP supporters, the Silent Sentinels,
were arrested in 1917 while picketing the
White House, some of whom went on hunger strike
and endured forced feeding after being sent
to prison.
Under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt,
the two-million-member NAWSA also made a national
suffrage amendment its top priority.
After a hard-fought series of votes in the
U.S. Congress and in state legislatures, the
Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S.
Constitution on August 18, 1920.
It states, "The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any State on account
of sex."
== 
National history ==
=== 
Early voting activity ===
Lydia Taft (1712–1778), a wealthy widow,
was allowed to vote in town meetings in Uxbridge,
Massachusetts in 1756.
No other women in the colonial era are known
to have voted.
The New Jersey constitution of 1776 enfranchised
all adult inhabitants who owned a specified
amount of property.
Laws enacted in 1790 and 1797 referred to
voters as "he or she", and women regularly
voted.
A law passed in 1807, however, excluded women
from voting in that state.Kentucky passed
the first statewide woman suffrage law in
the New Republic Era (since New Jersey revoked
their woman suffrage rights in 1807) – allowing
any widow or feme sole (legally, the head
of household) over 21 who paid property taxes
for the new county "common school" system.
This partial suffrage rights for women was
not expressed as for whites only.
=== Emergence of the women's rights movement
===
The demand for women's suffrage
emerged as part of the broader movement for
women's rights.
In the UK in 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft wrote
a pioneering book called A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman.
In Boston in 1838 Sarah Grimké published
The Equality of the Sexes and the Condition
of Women, which was widely circulated.
In 1845 Margaret Fuller published Woman in
the Nineteenth Century, a key document in
American feminism that first appeared in serial
form in 1839 in The Dial, a transcendentalist
journal that Fuller edited.
Significant barriers had to be overcome, however,
before a campaign for women's suffrage could
develop significant strength.
One barrier was strong opposition to women's
involvement in public affairs, a practice
that was not fully accepted even among reform
activists.
Only after fierce debate were women accepted
as members of the American Anti-Slavery Society
at its convention of 1839, and the organization
split at its next convention when women were
appointed to committees.Opposition was especially
strong against the idea of women speaking
to audiences of both men and women.
Frances Wright, a Scottish woman, was subjected
to sharp criticism for delivering public lectures
in the U.S. in 1826 and 1827.
When the Grimké sisters, who had been born
into a slave-holding family in South Carolina,
spoke against slavery throughout the northeast
in the mid-1830s, the ministers of the Congregational
Church, a major force in that region, published
a statement condemning their actions.
Despite the disapproval, in 1838 Angelina
Grimké spoke against slavery before the Massachusetts
legislature, the first woman in the U.S. to
speak before a legislative body.Other women
began to give public speeches, especially
in opposition to slavery and in support of
women's rights.
Early female speakers included Ernestine Rose,
a Jewish immigrant from Poland; Lucretia Mott,
a Quaker minister and abolitionist; and Abby
Kelley Foster, a Quaker abolitionist.
Toward the end of the 1840s Lucy Stone launched
her career as a public speaker, soon becoming
the most famous female lecturer.
Supporting both the abolitionist and women's
rights movements, Stone played a major role
in reducing the prejudice against women speaking
in public.Opposition remained strong, however.
A regional women's rights convention in Ohio
in 1851 was disrupted by male opponents.
Sojourner Truth, who delivered her famous
speech "Ain't I a Woman?" at the convention,
directly addressed some of this opposition
in her speech.
The National Women's Rights Convention in
1852 was also disrupted, and mob action at
the 1853 convention came close to violence.
The World's Temperance Convention in New York
City in 1853 bogged down for three days in
a dispute about whether women would be allowed
to speak there.Susan B. Anthony, a leader
of the suffrage movement, later said, "No
advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly
contested as that of speaking in public.
For nothing which they have attempted, not
even to secure the suffrage, have they been
so abused, condemned and antagonized."Laws
that sharply restricted the independent activity
of married women also created barriers to
the campaign for women's suffrage.
According to William Blackstone's Commentaries
on the Laws of England, an authoritative commentary
on the English common law on which the American
legal system is modeled, "by marriage, the
husband and wife are one person in law: that
is, the very being or legal existence of the
woman is suspended during the marriage", referring
to the legal doctrine of coverture that was
introduced to England by the Normans in the
Middle Ages.
In 1862 the Chief Justice of the North Carolina
Supreme Court denied a divorce to a woman
whose husband had horsewhipped her, saying,
"The law gives the husband power to use such
a degree of force necessary to make the wife
behave and know her place."
Married women in many states could not legally
sign contracts, which made it difficult for
them to arrange for convention halls, printed
materials and other things needed by the suffrage
movement.
Restrictions like these were overcome in part
by the passage of married women's property
laws in several states, supported in some
cases by wealthy fathers who didn't want their
daughters' inheritance to fall under the complete
control of their husbands.
Sentiment in favor of women's rights was strong
within the radical wing of the abolitionist
movement.
William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of the
American Anti-Slavery Society, said "I doubt
whether a more important movement has been
launched touching the destiny of the race,
than this in regard to the equality of the
sexes".
The abolitionist movement, however, attracted
only about one per cent of the population
at that time, and radical abolitionists were
only one part of that movement.
=== Early backing for women's suffrage ===
The New York State Constitutional Convention
of 1846 received petitions in support of women's
suffrage from residents of at least three
counties.Several members of the radical wing
of the abolitionist movement supported suffrage.
In 1846, Samuel J. May, a Unitarian minister
and radical abolitionist, vigorously supported
women's suffrage in a sermon that was later
circulated as the first in a series of women's
rights tracts.
In 1846, the Liberty League, an offshoot of
the abolitionist Liberty Party, petitioned
Congress to enfranchise women.
A convention of the Liberty Party in Rochester,
New York in May 1848 approved a resolution
calling for "universal suffrage in its broadest
sense, including women as well as men."Gerrit
Smith, its candidate for president, delivered
a speech shortly afterwards at the National
Liberty Convention in Buffalo, New York that
elaborated on his party's call for women's
suffrage.
Lucretia Mott was suggested as the party's
vice-presidential candidate—the first time
that a woman had been proposed for federal
executive office in the U.S.—and she received
five votes from delegates at that convention.
=== Early women's rights conventions ===
Women's suffrage was not a major topic within
the women's rights movement at that point.
Many of its activists were aligned with the
Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement,
which believed that activists should avoid
political activity and focus instead on convincing
others of their views with "moral suasion".
Many were Quakers whose traditions barred
both men and women from participation in secular
political activity.
A series of women's rights conventions did
much to alter these attitudes.
==== Seneca Falls convention ====
The first women's rights convention was the
Seneca Falls Convention, a regional event
held on July 19 and 20, 1848, in Seneca Falls
in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
Five women called the convention, four of
whom were Quaker social activists, including
the well-known Lucretia Mott.
The fifth was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who
had discussed the need to organize for women's
rights with Mott several years earlier.
Stanton, who came from a family that was deeply
involved in politics, became a major force
in convincing the women's movement that political
pressure was crucial to its goals, and that
the right to vote was a key weapon.
An estimated 300 women and men attended this
two-day event, which was widely noted in the
press.
The only resolution that was not adopted unanimously
by the convention was the one demanding women's
right to vote, which was introduced by Stanton.
When her husband, a well-known social reformer,
learned that she intended to introduce this
resolution, he refused to attend the convention
and accused her of acting in a way that would
turn the proceedings into a farce.
Lucretia Mott, the main speaker, was also
disturbed by the proposal.
The resolution was adopted only after Frederick
Douglass, an abolitionist leader and a former
slave, gave it his strong support.
The convention's Declaration of Sentiments,
which was written primarily by Stanton, expressed
an intent to build a women's rights movement,
and it included a list of grievances, the
first two of which protested the lack of women's
suffrage.
The grievances which were aimed at the United
States government "demanded government reform
and changes in male roles and behaviors that
promoted inequality for women."This convention
was followed two weeks later by the Rochester
Women's Rights Convention of 1848, which featured
many of the same speakers and likewise voted
to support women's suffrage.
It was the first women's rights convention
to be chaired by a woman, a step that was
considered to be radical at the time.
That meeting was followed by the Ohio Women's
Convention at Salem in 1850, the first women's
rights convention to be organized on a statewide
basis, which also endorsed women's suffrage.
==== National conventions ====
The first in a series of National Women's
Rights Conventions was held in Worcester,
Massachusetts on October 23–24, 1850, at
the initiative of Lucy Stone and Paulina Wright
Davis.
National conventions were held afterwards
almost every year through 1860, when the Civil
War (1861–1865) interrupted the practice.
Suffrage was a preeminent goal of these conventions,
no longer the controversial issue it had been
at Seneca Falls only two years earlier.
At the first national convention Stone gave
a speech that included a call to petition
state legislatures for the right of suffrage.Reports
of this convention reached Britain, prompting
Harriet Taylor, soon to be married to philosopher
John Stuart Mill, to write an essay called
"The Enfranchisement of Women," which was
published in the Westminster Review.
Heralding the women's movement in the U.S.,
Taylor's essay helped to initiate a similar
movement in Britain.
Her essay was reprinted as a women's rights
tract in the U.S. and was sold for decades.
Wendell Phillips, a prominent abolitionist
and women's rights advocate, delivered a speech
at the second national convention in 1851
called "Shall Women Have the Right to Vote?"
Describing women's suffrage as the cornerstone
of the women's movement, it was later circulated
as a women's rights tract.Several of the women
who played leading roles in the national conventions,
especially Stone, Anthony and Stanton, were
also leaders in establishing women's suffrage
organizations after the Civil War.
They also included the demand for suffrage
as part of their activities during the 1850s.
In 1852 Stanton advocated women's suffrage
in a speech at the New York State Temperance
Convention.
In 1853 Stone became the first woman to appeal
for women's suffrage before a body of lawmakers
when she addressed the Massachusetts Constitutional
Convention.
In 1854 Anthony organized a petition campaign
in New York State that included the demand
for suffrage.
It culminated in a women's rights convention
in the state capitol and a speech by Stanton
before the state legislature.
In 1857 Stone refused to pay taxes on the
grounds that women were taxed without being
able to vote on tax laws.
The constable sold her household goods at
auction until enough money had been raised
to pay her tax bill.The women's rights movement
was loosely structured during this period,
with few state organizations and no national
organization other than a coordinating committee
that arranged the annual national conventions.
Much of the organizational work for these
conventions was performed by Stone, the most
visible leader of the movement during this
period.
At the national convention in 1852, a proposal
was made to form a national women's rights
organization, but the idea was dropped after
fears were voiced that such a move would create
cumbersome machinery and lead to internal
divisions.
=== Anthony–Stanton collaboration ===
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
met in 1851 and soon became close friends
and co-workers.
Their decades-long collaboration was pivotal
for the suffrage movement and contributed
significantly to the broader struggle for
women's rights, which Stanton called "the
greatest revolution the world has ever known
or ever will know."
They had complementary skills: Anthony excelled
at organizing while Stanton had an aptitude
for intellectual matters and writing.
Stanton, who was homebound with several children
during this period, wrote speeches that Anthony
delivered to meetings that she herself organized.
Together they developed a sophisticated movement
in New York State,
but their work at this time dealt with women's
issues in general, not specifically suffrage.
Anthony, who eventually became the person
most closely associated in the public mind
with women's suffrage,
later said "I wasn't ready to vote, didn't
want to vote, but I did want equal pay for
equal work."
In the period just before the Civil War, Anthony
gave priority to anti-slavery work over her
work for the women's movement.
=== Women's Loyal National League ===
Over Anthony's objections, leaders of the
movement agreed to suspend women's rights
activities during the Civil War in order to
focus on the abolition of slavery.
In 1863 Anthony and Stanton organized the
Women's Loyal National League, the first national
women's political organization in the U.S.
It collected nearly 400,000 signatures on
petitions to abolish slavery in the largest
petition drive in the nation's history up
to that time.
Although it was not a suffrage organization,
the League made it clear that it stood for
political equality for women,
and it indirectly advanced that cause in several
ways.
Stanton reminded the public that petitioning
was the only political tool available to women
at a time when only men were allowed to vote.
The League's impressive petition drive demonstrated
the value of formal organization to the women's
movement, which had traditionally resisted
organizational structures,
and it marked a continuation of the shift
of women's activism from moral suasion to
political action.
Its 5000 members constituted a widespread
network of women activists who gained experience
that helped create a pool of talent for future
forms of social activism, including suffrage.
=== American Equal Rights Association ===
The Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention,
the first since the Civil War, was held in
1866, helping the women's rights movement
regain the momentum it had lost during the
war.
The convention voted to transform itself into
the American Equal Rights Association (AERA),
whose purpose was to campaign for the equal
rights of all citizens, especially the right
of suffrage.In addition to Anthony and Stanton,
who organized the convention, the leadership
of the new organization included such prominent
abolitionist and women's rights activists
as Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone and Frederick
Douglass.
Its drive for universal suffrage, however,
was resisted by some abolitionist leaders
and their allies in the Republican Party,
who wanted women to postpone their campaign
for suffrage until it had first been achieved
for male African Americans.
Horace Greeley, a prominent newspaper editor,
told Anthony and Stanton, "This is a critical
period for the Republican Party and the life
of our Nation...
I conjure you to remember that this is 'the
negro's hour,' and your first duty now is
to go through the State and plead his claims."
They and others, including Lucy Stone, refused
to postpone their demands, however, and continued
to push for universal suffrage.
In April 1867 Stone and her husband Henry
Blackwell opened the AERA campaign in Kansas
in support of referenda in that state that
would enfranchise both African Americans and
women.Wendell Phillips, an abolitionist leader
who opposed mixing those two causes, surprised
and angered AERA workers by blocking the funding
that the AERA had expected for their campaign.
After an internal struggle, Kansas Republicans
decided to support suffrage for black men
only and formed an "Anti-Female Suffrage Committee"
to oppose the AERA's efforts.
By the end of summer the AERA campaign had
almost collapsed, and its finances were exhausted.
Anthony and Stanton were harshly criticized
by Stone and other AERA members for accepting
help during the last days of the campaign
from George Francis Train, a wealthy businessman
who supported women's rights.
Train antagonized many activists by attacking
the Republican Party, which had won the loyalty
of many reform activists, and openly disparaging
the integrity and intelligence of African
Americans.After the Kansas campaign, the AERA
increasingly divided into two wings, both
advocating universal suffrage but with different
approaches.
One wing, whose leading figure was Lucy Stone,
was willing for black men to achieve suffrage
first, if necessary, and wanted to maintain
close ties with the Republican Party and the
abolitionist movement.
The other, whose leading figures were Anthony
and Stanton, insisted that women and black
men be enfranchised at the same time and worked
toward a politically independent women's movement
that would no longer be dependent on abolitionists
for financial and other resources.
The acrimonious annual meeting of the AERA
in May 1869 signaled the effective demise
of the organization, in the aftermath of which
two competing woman suffrage organizations
were created.
=== New England Woman Suffrage Association
===
Partly as a result of the developing split
in the women's movement, in 1868 the New England
Woman Suffrage Association (NEWSA), the first
major political organization in the U.S. with
women's suffrage as its goal, was formed.
The planners for the NEWSA's founding convention
worked to attract Republican support and seated
leading Republican politicians, including
a U.S. senator, on the speaker's platform.
Amid increasing confidence that the Fifteenth
Amendment, which would in effect enfranchise
black men, was assured of passage, Lucy Stone,
a future president of the NEWSA, showed her
preference for enfranchising both women and
African Americans by unexpectedly introducing
a resolution calling for the Republican Party
to "drop its watchword of 'Manhood Suffrage'"
and to support universal suffrage instead.
Despite opposition by Frederick Douglass and
others, Stone convinced the meeting to approve
the resolution.
Two months later, however, when the Fifteenth
Amendment was in danger of becoming stalled
in Congress, Stone backed away from that position
and declared that "Woman must wait for the
Negro."
=== The Fifteenth Amendment ===
In May 1869, two days after the final AERA
annual meeting, Anthony, Stanton and others
formed the National Woman Suffrage Association
(NWSA).
In November 1869, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe,
Henry Blackwell and others, many of whom had
helped to create the New England Woman Suffrage
Association a year earlier, formed the American
Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).
The hostile rivalry between these two organizations
created a partisan atmosphere that endured
for decades, affecting even professional historians
of the women's movement.
The immediate cause for the split was the
proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
a reconstruction amendment that would prohibit
the denial of suffrage because of race.
Stanton and Anthony opposed its passage unless
it was accompanied by another amendment that
would prohibit the denial of suffrage because
of sex.
They said that by effectively enfranchising
all men while excluding all women, the amendment
would create an "aristocracy of sex" by giving
constitutional authority to the idea that
men were superior to women.
Male power and privilege was at the root of
society's ills, Stanton argued, and nothing
should be done to strengthen it.
Anthony and Stanton also warned that black
men, who would gain voting power under the
amendment, were overwhelmingly opposed to
women's suffrage.
They were not alone in being unsure of black
male support for women's suffrage.
Frederick Douglass, a strong supporter of
women's suffrage, said, "The race to which
I belong have not generally taken the right
ground on this question."
Douglass, however, strongly supported the
amendment, saying it was a matter of life
and death for former slaves.
Lucy Stone, who became the AWSA's most prominent
leader, supported the amendment but said she
believed that suffrage for women would be
more beneficial to the country than suffrage
for black men.
The AWSA and most AERA members also supported
the amendment.Both wings of the movement were
strongly associated with opposition to slavery,
but their leaders sometimes expressed views
that reflected the racial attitudes of that
era.
Stanton, for example, believed that a long
process of education would be needed before
what she called the "lower orders" of former
slaves and immigrant workers would be able
to participate meaningfully as voters.
In an article in The Revolution, Stanton wrote,
"American women of wealth, education, virtue
and refinement, if you do not wish the lower
orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish,
with their low ideas of womanhood to make
laws for you and your daughters ... demand
that women too shall be represented in government."
In another article she made a similar statement
while personifying those four ethnic groups
as "Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung".
Lucy Stone called a suffrage meeting in New
Jersey to consider the question, "Shall women
alone be omitted in the reconstruction?
Shall [they] ... be ranked politically below
the most ignorant and degraded men?"Henry
Blackwell, Stone's husband and an AWSA officer,
published an open letter to Southern legislatures
assuring them that if they allowed both blacks
and women to vote, "the political supremacy
of your white race will remain unchanged"
and "the black race would gravitate by the
law of nature toward the tropics."The AWSA
aimed for close ties with the Republican Party,
hoping that the ratification of the Fifteenth
Amendment would lead to a Republican push
for women's suffrage.
The NWSA, while determined to be politically
independent, was critical of the Republicans.
Anthony and Stanton wrote a letter to the
1868 Democratic National Convention that criticized
Republican sponsorship of the Fourteenth Amendment
(which granted citizenship to black men but
for the first time introduced the word "male"
into the Constitution), saying, "While the
dominant party has with one hand lifted up
two million black men and crowned them with
the honor and dignity of citizenship, with
the other it has dethroned fifteen million
white women—their own mothers and sisters,
their own wives and daughters—and cast them
under the heel of the lowest orders of manhood."
They urged liberal Democrats to convince their
party, which did not have a clear direction
at that point, to embrace universal suffrage.The
two organizations had other differences as
well.
Although each campaigned for suffrage at both
the state and national levels, the NWSA tended
to work more at the national level and the
AWSA more at the state level.
The NWSA initially worked on a wider range
of issues than the AWSA, including divorce
reform and equal pay for women.
The NWSA was led by women only while the AWSA
included both men and women among its leadership.Events
soon removed much of the basis for the split
in the movement.
In 1870 debate about the Fifteenth Amendment
was made irrelevant when that amendment was
officially ratified.
In 1872 disgust with corruption in government
led to a mass defection of abolitionists and
other social reformers from the Republicans
to the short-lived Liberal Republican Party.
The rivalry between the two women's groups
was so bitter, however, that a merger proved
to be impossible until 1890.
=== New Departure ===
In 1869 Francis and Virginia Minor, husband
and wife suffragists from Missouri, outlined
a strategy that came to be known as the New
Departure, which engaged the suffrage movement
for several years.
Arguing that the U.S. Constitution implicitly
enfranchised women, this strategy relied heavily
on Section 1 of the recently adopted Fourteenth
Amendment, which reads, "All persons born
or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens
of the United States and of the State wherein
they reside.
No State shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States; nor shall
any State deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws."
In 1871 the NWSA officially adopted the New
Departure strategy, encouraging women to attempt
to vote and to file lawsuits if denied that
right.
Soon hundreds of women tried to vote in dozens
of localities.
In some cases, actions like these preceded
the New Departure strategy: in 1868 in Vineland,
New Jersey, a center for radical spiritualists,
nearly 200 women placed their ballots into
a separate box and attempted to have them
counted, but without success.
The AWSA did not officially adopt the New
Departure strategy, but Lucy Stone, its leader,
attempted to vote in her home town in New
Jersey.
In one court case resulting from a lawsuit
brought by women who had been prevented from
voting, the U.S. District Court in Washington,
D.C., ruled that women did not have an implicit
right to vote, declaring that, "The fact that
the practical working of the assumed right
would be destructive of civilization is decisive
that the right does not exist."In 1871 Victoria
Woodhull, a stockbroker, was invited to speak
before a committee of Congress, the first
woman to do so.
Although she had little previous connection
to the women's movement, she presented a modified
version of the New Departure strategy.
Instead of asking the courts to declare that
women had the right to vote, she asked Congress
itself to declare that the Constitution implicitly
enfranchised women.
The committee rejected her suggestion.
The NWSA at first reacted enthusiastically
to Woodhull's sudden appearance on the scene.
Stanton in particular welcomed Woodhull's
proposal to assemble a broad-based reform
party that would support women's suffrage.
Anthony opposed that idea, wanting the NWSA
to remain politically independent.
The NWSA soon had reason to regret its association
with Woodhull.
In 1872 she published details of a purported
adulterous affair between Rev. Henry Ward
Beecher, president of the AWSA, and Elizabeth
Tilton, wife of a leading NWSA member.
Beecher's subsequent trial was reported in
newspapers across the country, resulting in
what one scholar has called "political theater"
that badly damaged the reputation of the suffrage
movement.The Supreme Court in 1875 put an
end to the New Departure strategy by ruling
in Minor v. Happersett that "the Constitution
of the United States does not confer the right
of suffrage upon anyone".
The NWSA decided to pursue the far more difficult
strategy of campaigning for a constitutional
amendment that would guarantee voting rights
for women.
=== United States v. Susan B. Anthony ===
In a case that generated national controversy,
Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in
the presidential election of 1872.
The judge directed the jury to deliver a guilty
verdict.
When he asked Anthony, who had not been permitted
to speak during the trial, if she had anything
to say, she responded with what one historian
has called "the most famous speech in the
history of the agitation for woman suffrage".
She called "this high-handed outrage upon
my citizen's rights", saying, "... you have
trampled under foot every vital principle
of our government.
My natural rights, my civil rights, my political
rights, my judicial rights, are all alike
ignored."
The judge sentenced Anthony to pay a fine
of $100, she responded, "I shall never pay
a dollar of your unjust penalty", and she
never did.
However the judge did not order her to be
imprisoned until she paid the fine, for Anthony
could have appealed her case.
=== History of Woman Suffrage ===
In 1876 Anthony, Stanton and Matilda Joslyn
Gage began working on the History of Woman
Suffrage.
Originally envisioned as a modest publication
that would be produced quickly, the history
evolved into a six-volume work of more than
5700 pages written over a period of 41 years.
Its last two volumes were published in 1920,
long after the deaths of the project's originators,
by Ida Husted Harper, who also assisted with
the fourth volume.
Written by leaders of one wing of the divided
women's movement (Lucy Stone, their main rival,
refused to have anything to do with the project),
the History of Woman Suffrage preserves an
enormous amount of material that might have
been lost forever, but it does not give a
balanced view of events where their rivals
are concerned.
Because it was for years the main source of
documentation about the suffrage movement,
historians have had to uncover other sources
to provide a more balanced view.
=== Introduction of the women's suffrage amendment
===
In 1878 Senator Aaron A. Sargent, a friend
of Susan B. Anthony, introduced into Congress
a women's suffrage amendment.
More than forty years later it would become
the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution with no changes to its wording.
Its text is identical to that of the Fifteenth
Amendment except that it prohibits the denial
of suffrage because of sex rather than "race,
color, or previous condition of servitude".
Although a machine politician on most issues,
Sargent was a consistent supporter of women's
rights who spoke at suffrage conventions and
promoted suffrage through the legislative
process.
=== Early female candidates for national office
===
Calling attention to the irony of being legally
entitled to run for office while denied the
right to vote, Elizabeth Cady Stanton declared
herself a candidate for the U.S. Congress
in 1866, the first woman to do so.
In 1872 Victoria Woodhull formed her own political
party and declared herself to be its candidate
for President of the U.S. even though she
was ineligible because she was not yet 35
years old.In 1884 Belva Ann Lockwood, the
first female lawyer to argue a case before
the U.S. Supreme Court, became the first woman
to conduct a viable campaign for president.
She was nominated, without her advance knowledge,
by a California group called the Equal Rights
Party.
Lockwood advocated women's suffrage and other
reforms during a coast-to-coast campaign that
received respectful coverage from at least
some major periodicals.
She financed her campaign partly by charging
admission to her speeches.
Neither the AWSA nor the NWSA, both of whom
had already endorsed the Republican candidate
for president, supported Lockwood's candidacy.
=== Initial successes ===
Women were enfranchised in frontier Wyoming
Territory in 1869 and in Utah in 1870.
Because Utah held two elections before Wyoming,
Utah became the first place in the nation
where women legally cast ballots after the
launch of the suffrage movement.
The short-lived Populist Party endorsed women's
suffrage, contributing to the enfranchisement
of women in Colorado in 1893 and Idaho in
1896.
In some localities, women gained various forms
of partial suffrage, such as voting for school
boards.
According to a 2018 study in The Journal of
Politics, states with large suffrage movements
and competitive political environments were
more likely to extend voting rights to women;
this is one reason why Western states were
quicker to adopt women's suffrage than states
in the East.In the late 1870s, the suffrage
movement received a major boost when the Women's
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the largest
women's organization in the country, decided
to campaign for suffrage and created a Franchise
Department to support that effort.
Frances Willard, its pro-suffrage leader,
urged WCTU members to pursue the right to
vote as a means of protecting their families
from alcohol and other vices.
In 1886 the WCTU submitted to Congress petitions
with 200,000 signatures in support of a national
suffrage amendment.
In 1885 the Grange, a large farmers' organization,
officially endorsed women's suffrage.
In 1890 the American Federation of Labor,
a large labor alliance, endorsed women's suffrage
and subsequently collected 270,000 names on
petitions supporting that goal.
== 1890–1919 ==
=== Merger of rival suffrage organizations
===
The AWSA, which was especially strong in New
England, was initially the larger of the two
rival suffrage organizations, but it declined
in strength during the 1880s.
Stanton and Anthony, the leading figures in
the competing NWSA, were more widely known
as leaders of the women's suffrage movement
during this period and were more influential
in setting its direction.
They sometimes used daring tactics.
Anthony, for example, interrupted the official
ceremonies of the 100th anniversary of the
U.S. Declaration of Independence to present
the NWSA's Declaration of Rights for Women.
The AWSA declined any involvement in the action.
Over time, the NWSA moved into closer alignment
with the AWSA, placing less emphasis on confrontational
actions and more on respectability, and no
longer promoting a wide range of reforms.
The NWSA's hopes for a federal suffrage amendment
were frustrated when the Senate voted against
it in 1887, after which the NWSA put more
energy into campaigning at the state level,
as the AWSA was already doing.
Work at the state level, however, also had
its frustrations.
Between 1870 and 1910, the suffrage movement
conducted 480 campaigns in 33 states just
to have the issue of women's suffrage brought
before the voters, and those campaigns resulted
in only 17 instances of the issue actually
being placed on the ballot.
These efforts led to women's suffrage in two
states, Colorado and Idaho.
Alice Stone Blackwell, daughter of AWSA leaders
Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, was a major
influence in bringing the rival suffrage leaders
together, proposing a joint meeting in 1887
to discuss a merger.
Anthony and Stone favored the idea, but opposition
from several NWSA veterans delayed the move.
In 1890 the two organizations merged as the
National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA).
Stanton was president of the new organization,
and Stone was chair of its executive committee,
but Anthony, who had the title of vice president,
was its leader in practice, becoming president
herself in 1892 when Stanton retired.
=== National American Woman Suffrage Association
===
Although Anthony was the leading force in
the newly merged organization, it did not
always follow her lead.
In 1893 the NAWSA voted over Anthony's objection
to alternate the site of its annual conventions
between Washington and various other parts
of the country.
Anthony's pre-merger NWSA had always held
its conventions in Washington to help maintain
focus on a national suffrage amendment.
Arguing against this decision, she said she
feared, accurately as it turned out, that
the NAWSA would engage in suffrage work at
the state level at the expense of national
work.Stanton, elderly but still very much
a radical, did not fit comfortably into the
new organization, which was becoming more
conservative.
In 1895 she published The Woman's Bible, a
controversial best-seller that attacked the
use of the Bible to relegate women to an inferior
status.
The NAWSA voted to disavow any connection
with the book despite Anthony's objection
that such a move was unnecessary and hurtful.
Stanton afterwards grew increasingly alienated
from the suffrage movement.
The suffrage movement declined in vigor during
the years immediately after the 1890 merger.
When Carrie Chapman Catt was appointed head
of the NAWSA's Organization Committee in 1895,
it wasn't clear how many local chapters the
organization had or who their officers were.
Catt began revitalizing the organization,
establishing a plan of work with clear goals
for every state every year.
Anthony was impressed and arranged for Catt
to succeed her when she retired from the presidency
of the NAWSA in 1900.
In her new post Catt continued her effort
to transform the unwieldy organization into
one that would be better prepared to lead
a major suffrage campaign.Catt noted the rapidly
growing women's club movement, which was taking
up some of the slack left by the decline of
the temperance movement.
Local women's clubs at first were mostly reading
groups focused on literature, but they increasingly
evolved into civic improvement organizations
of middle-class women meeting in each other's
homes weekly.
Their national organization was the General
Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), founded
in 1890.
The clubs avoided controversial issues that
would divide the membership, especially religion
and prohibition.
In the South and East, suffrage was also highly
divisive, while there was little resistance
to it among clubwomen in the West.
In the Midwest, clubwomen had first avoided
the suffrage issue out of caution, but after
1900 increasingly came to support it.
Catt implemented what was known as the "society
plan," a successful effort to recruit wealthy
members of the women's club movement whose
time, money and experience could help build
the suffrage movement.
By 1914 women's suffrage was endorsed by the
national General Federation of Women's Clubs.Catt
resigned her position after four years, partly
because of her husband's declining health
and partly to help organize the International
Woman Suffrage Alliance, which was created
in Germany, Berlin in 1904 with Catt as president.
In 1904 Anna Howard Shaw, another Anthony
protégée, was elected president of the NAWSA.
Shaw was an energetic worker and a talented
orator but not an effective administrator.
Between 1910 and 1916 the NAWSA's national
board experienced a constant turmoil that
endangered the existence of the organization.Although
its membership and finances were at all-time
highs, the NAWSA decided to replace Shaw by
bringing Catt back once again as president
in 1915.
Authorized by the NAWSA to name her own executive
board, which previously had been elected by
the organization's annual convention, Catt
quickly converted the loosely structured organization
into one that was highly centralized.
=== MacKenzie v. Hare ===
Section 3 of the Expatriation Act of 1907
provided for loss of citizenship by American
women who married aliens.
The Supreme Court of the United States first
considered the Expatriation Act of 1907 in
the 1915 case MacKenzie v. Hare.
The plaintiff, a suffragist named Ethel MacKenzie,
was living in California, which since 1911
had extended the franchise to women.
However, she had been denied voter registration
by the respondent in his capacity as a Commissioner
of the San Francisco Board of Election on
the grounds of her marriage to a Scottish
man.
MacKenzie contended that the Expatriation
Act of 1907 "if intended to apply to her,
is beyond the authority of Congress", as neither
the Fourteenth Amendment nor any other part
of the Constitution gave Congress the power
to "denationalize a citizen without his concurrence".
However, Justice Joseph McKenna, writing the
majority opinion, stated that while "[i]t
may be conceded that a change of citizenship
cannot be arbitrarily imposed, that is, imposed
without the concurrence of the citizen", but
"[t]he law in controversy does not have that
feature.
It deals with a condition voluntarily entered
into, with notice of the consequences."
Justice James Clark McReynolds, in a concurring
opinion, stated that the case should be dismissed
for lack of jurisdiction.
=== Opposition to women's suffrage ===
Brewers and distillers, typically rooted in
the German American community, opposed women's
suffrage, fearing—not without justification—that
women voters would favor the prohibition of
alcoholic beverages.
During the 1896 election, woman suffrage and
prohibition stood together, and this was brought
to the attention of those who opposed both
woman suffrage and prohibition.
In order to disrupt the campaign's success,
a day before the election, the Liquor Dealers'
League gathered some businessmen to help undermine
the effort.
Rumors said that these businessmen were going
to make sure all the "bad women" in Oakland,
California acted rowdy in order to hurt their
reputation and in turn, this would lessen
the women's chances of getting the woman's
suffrage amendment passed.
German Lutherans and German Catholics typically
opposed prohibition and woman suffrage; they
favored paternalistic families with the husband
deciding the family position on public affairs.
Their opposition to women's suffrage was subsequently
used as an argument in favor of suffrage when
German Americans became pariahs during World
War I.Defeat could lead to allegations of
fraud.
After the defeat of the referendum for women's
suffrage in Michigan in 1912, the governor
accused the brewers of complicity in widespread
electoral fraud that resulted in its defeat.
Evidence of vote stealing was also strong
during referenda in Nebraska and Iowa.
Some other businesses, such as southern cotton
mills, opposed suffrage because they feared
that women voters would support the drive
to eliminate child labor.
Political machines, such as Tammany Hall in
New York City, opposed it because they feared
that the addition of female voters would dilute
the control they had established over groups
of male voters.
By the time of the New York State referendum
on women's suffrage in 1917, however, some
wives and daughters of Tammany Hall leaders
were working for suffrage, leading it to take
a neutral position that was crucial to the
referendum's passage.
Although the Catholic Church did not take
an official position on suffrage, very few
of its leaders supported it, and some of its
leaders, such as Cardinal Gibbons, made their
opposition clear.The New York Times after
first supporting suffrage reversed itself
and issued stern warnings.
A 1912 editorial predicted that with suffrage
women would make impossible demands, such
as, "serving as soldiers and sailors, police
patrolmen or firemen...and would serve on
juries and elect themselves to executive offices
and judgeships."
It blamed a lack of masculinity for the failure
of men to fight back, warning women would
get the vote "if the men are not firm and
wise enough and, it may as well be said, masculine
enough to prevent them.".
==== 
Women against suffrage ====
Anti-suffrage forces, initially called the
"remonstrants", organized as early as 1870
when the Woman's Anti-Suffrage Association
of Washington was formed.
Widely known as the "antis", they eventually
created organizations in some twenty states.
In 1911 the National Association Opposed to
Women's Suffrage was created.
It claimed 350,000 members and opposed women's
suffrage, feminism, and socialism.
It argued that woman suffrage "would reduce
the special protections and routes of influence
available to women, destroy the family, and
increase the number of socialist-leaning voters."Middle
and upper class anti-suffrage women were conservatives
with several motivations.
Society women in particular had personal access
to powerful politicians, and were reluctant
to surrender that advantage.
Most often the antis believed that politics
was dirty and that women's involvement would
surrender the moral high ground that women
had claimed, and that partisanship would disrupt
local club work for civic betterment, as represented
by the General Federation of Women's Clubs.
The best organized movement was the New York
State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage
(NYSAOWS).
Its credo, as set down by its president Josephine
Jewell Dodge, was:
We believe in every possible advancement to
women.
We believe that this advancement should be
along those legitimate lines of work and endeavor
for which she is best fitted and for which
she has now unlimited opportunities.
We believe this advancement will be better
achieved through strictly non-partisan effort
and without the limitations of the ballot.
We believe in Progress, not in Politics for
women.
The NYSAOWS New York State Association Opposed
to Woman Suffrage used grass roots mobilization
techniques they had learned from watching
the suffragists to defeat the 1915 referendum.
They were very similar to the suffragists
themselves, but used a counter-crusading style
warning of the evils that suffrage would bring
to women.
They rejected leadership by men and stressed
the importance of independent women in philanthropy
and social betterment.
NYSAOWS was narrowly defeated in New York
in 1916 and the state voted to give women
the vote.
The organization moved to Washington to oppose
the federal constitutional amendment for suffrage,
becoming the "National Association Opposed
to Woman Suffrage" (NAOWS), where it was taken
over by men, and assumed a much harsher rhetorical
tone, especially in attacking "red radicalism".
After 1919 the antis adjusted smoothly to
enfranchisement and became active in party
affairs, especially in the Republican Party.
=== Southern strategy ===
The Constitution required 34 states (three-fourths
of the 45 states in 1900) to ratify an amendment,
and unless the rest of the country was unanimous
there had to be support from the 11 ex-Confederate
states.
Three more western territories became states
by 1912, helping the suffragist cause; they
now needed 36 states out of 48.
In the end Tennessee provided the critical
36th state.
The South was the most conservative region
and always gave the least support for suffrage.
There was little or no suffrage activity in
the region until the late nineteenth century.
Aileen S. Kraditor identifies four distinctly
Southern characteristics that were in play:
1) Southern white men held to traditional
values regarding women's public roles; 2)
the Solid South was tightly controlled by
the Democratic Party, so playing the two parties
against each other was not a feasible strategy;
3) strong support for states' rights meant
there was automatic opposition to a federal
constitutional amendment; 4) Jim Crow attitudes
meant that expansion of the black vote (to
black women) was strongly opposed.Mildred
Rutherford, president of the Georgia United
Daughters of the Confederacy and leader of
the National Association Opposed to Woman
Suffrage made clear the opposition of elite
white women to suffrage in a 1914 speech to
the state legislature:
The women who are working for this measure
are striking at the principle for which their
fathers fought during the Civil War.
Woman's suffrage comes from the North and
the West and from women who do not believe
in state's rights and who wish to see negro
women using the ballot.
I do not believe the state of Georgia has
sunk so low that her good men can not legislate
for women.
If this time ever comes then it will be time
for women to claim the ballot.
Elna Green points out that, "Suffrage rhetoric
claimed that enfranchised women would outlaw
child labor, pass minimum-wage and maximum-hours
laws for women workers, and establish health
and safety standards for factory workers."
The threat of these reforms united planters,
textile mill owners, railroad magnates, city
machine bosses, and the liquor interest in
a formidable combine against suffrage.Henry
Browne Blackwell, an officer of the AWSA before
the merger and a prominent figure in the movement
afterwards, urged the suffrage movement to
follow a strategy of convincing southern political
leaders that they could ensure white supremacy
in their region without violating the Fifteenth
Amendment by enfranchising educated women,
who would predominantly be white.
Shortly after Blackwell presented his proposal
to the Mississippi delegation to the U.S.
Congress, his plan was given serious consideration
by the Mississippi Constitutional Convention
of 1890, whose main purpose was to find legal
ways of further curtailing the political power
of African Americans.
Although the convention adopted other measures
instead, the fact that Blackwell's ideas were
taken seriously drew the interest of many
suffragists.Blackwell's ally in this effort
was Laura Clay, who convinced the NAWSA to
launch a state-by-state campaign in the South
based on Blackwell's strategy.
Clay was one of several southern NAWSA members
who opposed the idea of a national women's
suffrage amendment on the grounds that it
would impinge on states' rights.
(A generation later Clay campaigned against
the pending national amendment during the
final battle for its ratification.)
Amid predictions by some proponents of this
strategy that the South would lead the way
in the enfranchisement of women, suffrage
organizations were established throughout
the region.
Anthony, Catt and Blackwell campaigned for
suffrage in the South in 1895, with the latter
two calling for suffrage only for educated
women.
With Anthony's reluctant cooperation, the
NAWSA maneuvered to accommodate the politics
of white supremacy in that region.
Anthony asked her old friend Frederick Douglass,
a former slave, not to attend the NAWSA convention
in Atlanta in 1895, the first to be held in
a southern city.
Black NAWSA members were excluded from 1903
convention in the southern city of New Orleans,
which marked the peak of this strategy's influence.The
leaders of the Southern movement were privileged
upper-class belles with a strong position
in high society and in church affairs.
They tried to use their upscale connections
to convince powerful men that suffrage was
a good idea to purify society.
They also argued that giving white women the
vote would more than counterbalance giving
the vote to the smaller number of black women.
No southern state enfranchised women as a
result of this strategy, however, and most
southern suffrage societies that were established
during this period lapsed into inactivity.
The NAWSA leadership afterwards said it would
not adopt policies that "advocated the exclusion
of any race or class from the right of suffrage."
Nonetheless NAWSA reflected its white membership's
viewpoint by minimizing the role of black
suffragists.
At the 1913 suffrage march on Washington,
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a leader in the African
American community, was asked to march in
an all-black contingent to avoid upsetting
white southern marchers.
When the march got underway, however, she
slipped into the ranks of the contingent from
Illinois, her home state, and completed the
march in the company of white supporters.
=== New Woman ===
The concept of the New Woman emerged in the
late nineteenth century to characterize the
increasingly independent activity of women,
especially the younger generation.
The move from households to public spaces
was expressed in many ways.
In the late 1890s, riding bicycles was a newly
popular activity that increased women's mobility
even as it signaled rejection of traditional
teachings about women's weakness and fragility.
Susan B. Anthony said bicycles had "done more
to emancipate women than anything else in
the world".
Elizabeth Cady Stanton said that "Woman is
riding to suffrage on the bicycle.
Activists campaigned for suffrage in ways
that were still considered by many to be "unladylike,"
such as marching in parades and giving street
corner speeches on soap boxes.
In New York in 1912, suffragists organized
a twelve-day, 170-mile "Hike to Albany" to
deliver suffrage petitions to the new governor.
In 1913 the suffragist "Army of the Hudson"
marched 250 miles from New York to Washington
in sixteen days, gaining national publicity.
=== New suffrage organizations ===
==== 
College Equal Suffrage League ====
When Maud Wood Park attended the NAWSA convention
in 1900, she found herself to be virtually
the only young person there.
After returning to Boston, she formed the
College Equal Suffrage League, which affiliated
with the NAWSA.
Largely through Park's efforts, similar groups
were organized on campuses in 30 states, leading
to the formation of the National College Equal
Suffrage League in 1908.
==== Equality League of Self-Supporting Women
====
The dramatic tactics of the militant wing
of the British suffrage movement began to
influence the movement in the U.S. Harriet
Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, returned to the U.S. after several
years in England, where she had associated
with suffrage groups still in the early phases
of militancy.
In 1907 she founded the Equality League of
Self-Supporting Women, later called the Women's
Political Union, whose membership was based
on working women, both professional and industrial.
The Equality League initiated the practice
of holding suffrage parades and organized
the first open air suffrage rallies in thirty
years.
As many as 25,000 people marched in these
parades
==== 
National Woman's Party ====
Work toward a national suffrage amendment
had been sharply curtailed in favor of state
suffrage campaigns after the two rival suffrage
organizations merged in 1890 to form the NAWSA.
Interest in a national suffrage amendment
was revived primarily by Alice Paul.
In 1910, she returned to the U.S. from England,
where she had been part of the militant wing
of the suffrage movement.
Paul had been jailed there and had endured
forced feedings after going on a hunger strike.
In January 1913 she arrived in Washington
as chair of the Congressional Committee of
the NAWSA, charged with reviving the drive
for a constitutional amendment that would
enfranchise women.
She and her coworker Lucy Burns organized
a suffrage parade in Washington on the day
before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration as president.
Opponents of the march turned the event into
a near riot, which ended only when a cavalry
unit of the army was brought in to restore
order.
Public outrage over the incident, which cost
the chief of police his job, brought publicity
to the movement and gave it fresh momentum.
In 1914 Paul and her followers began referring
to the proposed suffrage amendment as the
"Susan B. Anthony Amendment," a name that
was widely adopted.Paul argued that because
the Democrats would not act to enfranchise
women even though they controlled the presidency
and both houses of Congress, the suffrage
movement should work for the defeat of all
Democratic candidates regardless of an individual
candidate's position on suffrage.
She and Burns formed a separate lobbying group
called the Congressional Union to act on this
approach.
Strongly disagreeing, the NAWSA in 1913 withdrew
support from Paul's group and continued its
practice of supporting any candidate who supported
suffrage, regardless of political party.
In 1916 Blatch merged her Women's Political
Union into Paul's Congressional Union.
In 1916 Paul formed the National Woman's Party
(NWP).
Once again the women's movement had split,
but the result this time was something like
a division of labor.
The NAWSA burnished its image of respectability
and engaged in highly organized lobbying at
both the national and state levels.
The smaller NWP also engaged in lobbying but
became increasingly known for activities that
were dramatic and confrontational, most often
in the national capital.
One form of protest was the watchfires, which
involved burning copies of President Wilson's
speeches, often outside the White House or
in the nearby Lafayette Park.
The NWP continued to hold watchfires even
as the war began, drawing criticism from the
public and even other suffrage groups for
being unpatriotic.
==== Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference
====
The leaders of the NAWSA's Southern Strategy
began to find their own voice by 1913 when
Kate Gordon of Louisiana and Laura Clay of
Kentucky formed the Southern States Woman
Suffrage Conference (SSWSC).
The suffragists of the SSWSC chose to work
within the Jim Crow customs of their states
and spoke openly about how the enfranchisement
of white women would enhance the socio-economic
and political work inherent to white supremacy.
To clarify how their political ideology fit
within the increasingly rigid status quo of
segregation, they published a newspaper New
Southern Citizen with the motto: "“Make
the Southern States White.”
The SSWSC became increasingly at odds with
NAWSA and its primary focus on achieving a
federal amendment.
Most southern suffragists however disagreed
and continued to work in affiliation with
the NAWSA.
Gordon actively campaigned against the Nineteenth
Amendment since, in theory, it would also
enfranchise African-American women.
This would, as Laura Clay stated in a debate
with Kentucky Equal Rights Association president
Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, raise the
spectre of Reconstruction Era interventions
and bring increased federal scrutiny of elections
in the South.
=== Suffrage periodicals ===
Stanton and Anthony launched a sixteen-page
weekly newspaper called The Revolution in
1868.
It focused primarily on women's rights, especially
suffrage, but it also covered politics, the
labor movement and other topics.
Its energetic and broad-ranging style gave
it a lasting influence, but its debts mounted
when it did not receive the funding they had
expected, and they had to transfer the paper
to other hands after only twenty-nine months.
Their organization, the NWSA, afterwards depended
on other periodicals, such as The National
Citizen and Ballot Box, edited by Matilda
Joslyn Gage, and Women's Tribune, edited by
Clara Bewick Colby, to represent its viewpoint.In
1870, shortly after the formation of the AWSA,
Lucy Stone launched an eight-page weekly newspaper
called the Woman's Journal to advocate for
women's rights, especially suffrage.
Better financed and less radical than The
Revolution, it had a much longer life.
By the 1880s it had become an unofficial voice
of the suffrage movement as a whole.
In 1916 the NAWSA purchased the Woman's Journal
and spent a significant amount of money to
enhance it.
It was renamed Woman Citizen and declared
to be the official organ of the NAWSA.Alice
Paul began publishing a newspaper called The
Suffragist in 1913 when she was still part
of the NAWSA.
Editor of the eight-page weekly was Rheta
Childe Dorr, an experienced journalist.
=== Turn of the tide ===
New Zealand enfranchised women in 1893, the
first country to do so on a nationwide basis.
In the U.S. women gained the franchise in
the states of Washington in 1910; in California
in 1911; in Oregon, Kansas and Arizona in
1912; and in Illinois in 1913.
Some states allowed women to vote in school
elections, municipal elections, or for members
of the Electoral College.
Some territories, like Washington, Utah, and
Wyoming, allowed women to vote before they
became states.
As women voted in an increasing number of
states, Congressmen from those states swung
to support a national suffrage amendment,
and paid more attention to issues such as
child labor.
The reform campaigns of the Progressive Era
strengthened the suffrage movement.
Beginning around 1900, this broad movement
began at the grassroots level with such goals
as combating corruption in government, eliminating
child labor, and protecting workers and consumers.
Many of its participants saw women's suffrage
as yet another progressive goal, and they
believed that the addition of women to the
electorate would help their movement achieve
its other goals.
In 1912 the Progressive Party, formed by Theodore
Roosevelt, endorsed women's suffrage.
The socialist movement supported women's suffrage
in some areas.By 1916 suffrage for women had
become a major national issue, and the NAWSA
had become the nation's largest voluntary
organization, with two million members.
In 1916 the conventions of both the Democratic
and Republican parties endorsed women's suffrage,
but only on a state-by-state basis, with the
implication that the various states might
implement suffrage in different ways or (in
some cases) not at all.
Having expected more, Catt called an emergency
NAWSA convention and proposed what became
known as the "Winning Plan".
For several years the NAWSA had focused on
achieving suffrage on a state-by-state basis,
partly to accommodate members from southern
states who opposed the idea of a national
suffrage amendment, considering it an infringement
on states' rights.
In a strategic shift, the 1916 convention
approved Catt's proposal to make a national
amendment the priority for the entire organization.
It authorized the executive board to specify
a plan of work toward this goal for each state
and to take over that work if the state organization
refused to comply.In 1917 Catt received a
bequest of $900,000 from Mrs. Frank (Miriam)
Leslie to be used for the women's suffrage
movement.
Catt formed the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission
to dispense the funds, most of which supported
the activities of the NAWSA at a crucial time
for the suffrage movement.
The entry of the U.S. into World War I in
April 1917 had a significant impact on the
suffrage movement.
To replace men who had gone into the military,
women moved into workplaces that did not traditionally
hire women, such as steel mills and oil refineries.
The NAWSA cooperated with the war effort,
with Catt and Shaw serving on the Women's
Committee for the Council of National Defense.
The NWP, by contrast, took no steps to cooperate
with the war effort.Jeannette Rankin, elected
in 1916 by Montana as the first woman in Congress,
was one of fifty members of Congress to vote
against the declaration of war.In January
1917 the NWP stationed pickets at the White
House, which had never before been picketed,
with banners demanding women's suffrage.
Tension escalated in June as a Russian delegation
drove up to the White House and NPW members
unfurled a banner that read, "We, the women
of America, tell you that America is not a
democracy.
Twenty million American women are denied the
right to vote.
President Wilson is the chief opponent of
their national enfranchisement".
In August another banner referred to "Kaiser
Wilson" and compared the plight of the German
people with that of American women.Some of
the onlookers reacted violently, tearing the
banners from the picketers' hands.
The police, whose actions had previously been
restrained, began arresting the picketers
for blocking the sidewalk.
Eventually over 200 were arrested, about half
of whom were sent to prison.
In October Alice Paul was sentenced to seven
months in prison.
When she and other suffragist prisoners began
a hunger strike, prison authorities force-fed
them.
The negative publicity created by this harsh
practice increased the pressure on the administration,
which capitulated and released all the prisoners.In
November 1917 a referendum to enfranchise
women in New York - at that time the most
populous state in the country - passed by
a substantial margin.
In September 1918, President Wilson spoke
before the Senate, calling for approval of
the suffrage amendment as a war measure, saying
"We have made partners of the women in this
war; shall we admit them only to a partnership
of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not
to a partnership of privilege and right?"
By the end of 1919, women effectively could
vote for president in states with 326 electoral
votes out of a total of 531.
Political leaders who became convinced of
the inevitability of women's suffrage began
to pressure local and national legislators
to support it so that their respective party
could claim credit for it in future elections.The
war served as a catalyst for suffrage extension
in several countries, with women gaining the
vote after years of campaigning partly in
recognition of their support for the war effort,
which further increased the pressure for suffrage
in the U.S.
About half of the women in Britain had become
enfranchised by January 1918, as had women
in most Canadian provinces, with Quebec the
major exception.
=== Nineteenth Amendment ===
World War I had a profound impact on woman
suffrage across the belligerents.
Women played a major role on the home fronts
and many countries recognized their sacrifices
with the vote during or shortly after the
war, including the U.S., Britain, Canada (except
Quebec), Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands,
Germany, Russia, Sweden; and Ireland introduced
universal suffrage with independence.
France almost did so but stopped short.
Despite their eventual success, groups like
the National Woman's Party that continued
militant protests during wartime were criticized
by other suffrage groups and the public, who
viewed it as unpatriotic.On January 12, 1915,
a suffrage bill was brought before the House
of Representatives but was defeated by a vote
of 204 to 174, (Democrats 170-85 against,
Republicans 81-34 for, Progressives 6-0 for).
President Woodrow Wilson held off until he
was sure the Democratic Party was supportive;
the 1917 referendum in New York State in favor
of suffrage proved decisive for him.
When another bill was brought before the House
in January, 1918, Wilson made a strong and
widely published appeal to the House to pass
the bill.
Behn argues that:
The National American Woman Suffrage Association,
not the National Woman's Party, was decisive
in Wilson's conversion to the cause of the
federal amendment because its approach mirrored
his own conservative vision of the appropriate
method of reform: win a broad consensus, develop
a legitimate rationale, and make the issue
politically valuable.
Additionally, I contend that Wilson did have
a significant role to play in the successful
congressional passage and national ratification
of the 19th Amendment.The Amendment passed
by two-thirds of the House, with only one
vote to spare.
The vote was then carried into the Senate.
Again President Wilson made an appeal, but
on September 30, 1918, the amendment fell
two votes short of the two-thirds necessary
for passage, 53-31 (Republicans 27-10 for,
Democrats 26-21 for).
On February 10, 1919, it was again voted upon,
and then it was lost by only one vote, 54-30
(Republicans 30-12 for, Democrats 24-18 for).There
was considerable anxiety among politicians
of both parties to have the amendment passed
and made effective before the general elections
of 1920, so the President called a special
session of Congress, and a bill, introducing
the amendment, was brought before the House
again.
On May 21, 1919, it was passed, 304 to 89,
(Republicans 200-19 for, Democrats 102-69
for, Union Labor 1-0 for, Prohibitionist 1-0
for), 42 votes more than necessary being obtained.
On June 4, 1919, it was brought before the
Senate, and after a long discussion it was
passed, with 56 ayes and 25 nays (Republicans
36-8 for, Democrats 20-17 for).
Within a few days, Illinois, Wisconsin, and
Michigan ratified the amendment, their legislatures
being then in session.
Other states followed suit at a regular pace,
until the amendment had been ratified by 35
of the necessary 36 state legislatures.
After Washington on March 22, 1920, ratification
languished for months.
Finally, on August 18, 1920, Tennessee narrowly
ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, making
it the law throughout the United States.
Thus the 1920 election became the first United
States presidential election in which women
were permitted to vote in every state.
Three other states, Connecticut, Vermont and
Delaware, passed the amendment by 1923.
They were eventually followed by others in
the south.
Nearly twenty years later Maryland ratified
the amendment in 1941.
After another ten years, in 1952, Virginia
ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, followed
by Alabama in 1953.
After another 16 years Florida and South Carolina
passed the necessary votes to ratify in 1969,
followed two years later by Georgia, Louisiana
and North Carolina.Mississippi did not ratify
the Nineteenth Amendment until 1984, sixty
four years after the law was enacted nationally.
== Effects of the Nineteenth Amendment ==
=== Immediate effects ===
Politicians responded to the newly enlarged
electorate by emphasizing issues of special
interest to women, especially prohibition,
child health, public schools, and world peace.
Women did respond to these issues, but in
terms of general voting they shared the same
outlook and the same voting behavior as men.The
suffrage organization NAWSA became the League
of Women Voters and Alice Paul's National
Woman's Party began lobbying for full equality
and the Equal Rights Amendment which would
pass Congress during the second wave of the
women's movement in 1972 (but it was not ratified
and never took effect).
The main surge of women voting came in 1928,
when the big-city machines realized they needed
the support of women to elect Al Smith, while
rural drys mobilized women to support Prohibition
and vote for Republican Herbert Hoover.
Catholic women were reluctant to vote in the
early 1920s, but they registered in very large
numbers for the 1928 election—the first
in which Catholicism was a major issue.
A few women were elected to office, but none
became especially prominent during this time
period.
Overall, the women's rights movement declined
noticeably during the 1920s.
==== Changes in the voting population ====
Although restricting access to the polls because
of sex was made unconstitutional in 1920,
women did not turn out to the polls in the
same numbers as men until 1980.
From 1980 until the present, women have voted
in elections in at least the same percentage
as have men, and often more.
This difference in voting turnout and preferences
between men and women is known as the voting
gender gap.
The voting gender gap has impacted political
elections and, consequently, the way candidates
campaign for office.
==== Changes in representation and government
programs ====
The presence of women in Congress has gradually
increased since 1920, with an especially steady
increase from 1981.
In 2019, there were 25 female senators and
102 female representatives.
==== Notable legislation ====
Immediately following the ratification of
the Nineteenth Amendment, many legislators
feared a powerful women's bloc would emerge
as a result of female enfranchisement.
The Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, which expanded
maternity care during the 1920s, was one of
the first laws passed appealing to the female
vote.
==== Socio-economic effects ====
A paper by John Lott and Lawrence W. Kenny,
published by the Journal of Political Economy,
found that women generally voted along more
liberal political philosophies than men.
The paper concluded that women's voting appeared
to be more risk-averse than men and favored
candidates or policies that supported wealth
transfer, social insurance, progressive taxation,
and larger government.A paper found that "exposure
to women's political empowerment during childhood
leads to large increases in educational attainment
for children from economically disadvantaged
backgrounds, in particular blacks and Southern
whites.
We also find improvements in employment outcomes
among this group."
== 
See also ==
African-American women's suffrage movement
Anti-suffragism
California Proposition 4 (1911)
League of Women Voters
List of suffragists and suffragettes
List of women's rights activists
National American Woman Suffrage Association
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution
Silent Sentinels
Suffrage
Suffrage Hikes
Timeline of women's rights (other than voting)
Timeline of women's suffrage
Timeline of women's suffrage in the United
States
Women's suffrage in states of the United States
Women in United States juries
