History of women's suffrage in the United States

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Suffrage parade, New York City, 1912
Suffrage parade, New York City, 1912

The effort to obtain women's suffrage in the United States was a primary effort of those involved in the greater women's rights movement of the 19th century. Women's suffrage was permanently granted in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Contents

[edit] Beginnings

Lydia Chapin (Taft) (February 2, 1712 –November 9, 1778) was a forerunner of women's suffrage in Colonial America. She was the first legal woman voter in colonial America. She was granted this right by the town meeting of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, in 1756.

Women were guaranteed the right to vote with the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. Prior to the passage of this amendment women's suffrage was only guaranteed in some of the states. During the early part of the century, agitation for equal suffrage was carried on by only a few individuals. The first of these was Frances Wright, a Scottish woman who came to the country in 1826 and advocated women's suffrage in an extensive series of lectures. In 1836 Ernestine Rose, a Polish woman, came to the country and carried on a similar campaign, so effectively that she obtained a personal hearing before the New York Legislature, though her petition bore only five signatures. At about the same time, in 1840, Lucretia Mott and Margaret Fuller became active in Boston, the later being the author of the book The Great Lawsuit; Man vs. Woman. Efforts to gain various women's rights were subsequently led by women such as Susan B. Anthony, Virginia Minor, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis.

[edit] Civil War

During the Civil War and immediately after little was heard of the movement, but in 1869 the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with the object of securing an amendment to the Constitution in favor of woman suffrage, thus opposing passage of the Fifteenth Amendment without it being changed to include female suffrage.

Another more conservative suffrage organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, headed by Lucy Stone, was also formed at this time by those who believed that suffrage should be brought about by amendments to the various state constitutions. They supported the proposed 15th amendment as written. In 1890, these two bodies united into one national organization, led by Susan B. Anthony and known as the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

[edit] National American Woman Suffrage Association

In 1900, regular national headquarters were established in New York City, under the direction of the new president Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who was endorsed by Susan B. Anthony after her retirement as first president. Three years later headquarters were moved to Warren, Ohio, but were then brought back to New York again shortly afterward, and re-opened there on a much bigger scale. The organization obtained a hearing before every Congress, from 1869 to 1919.

[edit] Women's suffrage in individual states

[edit] New Jersey

New Jersey, on confederation of the United States following American War for Independence, placed only one restriction on the general suffrage — the possession of at least £50 (~USD250) worth of cash or property.[1] The election laws referred to voters as "he or she." In 1790, the law was revised to include women specifically. Female voters became so objectionable to professional politicians, that in 1807 the law was revised to exclude them. Later, the 1844 constitution banned women voting, the 1947 one then allowed it - but, by 1947, all state constitutional provisions that barred women from voting had been rendered ineffective by amendment of the United States Constitution in 1919.

[edit] Kansas

In the summer of 1865, Republicans proposed a Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that would enfranchise the two million newly freed black men. This was the first time the word “male” would be introduced into the constitution, and women were now explicitly not guaranteed the right to vote.[2] Thus, feminists, in an effort to secure their political rights alongside freedmen, resolved to combine the abolitionist and suffragist movements into one Equal Rights Association, an idea officially proposed by female suffrage activists Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony at an antislavery meeting in January, 1866.[3] The suffragists believed they had support for the proposal from the abolitionists, who had previously supported their cause. However, when the Republican Party chose to make black suffrage part of their program after the American Civil War, the Republicans began to collaborate more closely with the abolitionists, and by 1867, most were full supporters of the Republican Party. The Republican party believed that black suffrage, which was a party measure in national politics held far more prospects than women’s suffrage, and the Republican cry was “this is the negro’s hour.”[4]

Feminists, knowing that women’s suffrage could not succeed without support, put their hope in the Equal Rights Association and pushed for a campaign for universal suffrage. From April until November of 1867, women furiously campaigned, distributing thousands of pamphlets and speaking in numerous locations for the cause. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another leading women’s rights activist, focused their attentions on New York, while Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell, her husband, headed to Kansas, where the November election would be taking place.[5] During the New York Constitutional Convention, held on June 4, 1867, Horace Greeley, the chairman of the committee on Suffrage and an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage over the previous 20 years, betrayed the women’s movement and submitted a report in favor of removal of property qualification for free black men, but against women’s suffrage. New York legislators supported the report by a vote of 125-19.[6]

After the defeat in New York, Sam Wood, leader of a rebel faction of the state Republican Party, arrived in Kansas by request of Stone, and invited the Equal Rights Association to help launch their women’s suffrage campaign. Wood had emigrated to Kansas to prevent the extension of slavery, but was also lured by the prospect of land and fortune. A true Abolitionist and successful politician, Wood won election to the Kansas senate in 1867. Though he genuinely cared about women’s suffrage, Wood also hoped to make his campaign in Kansas a success so that he could get enough recognition to run for national office. He directed a strong rights campaign, forcing the Republican Kansas legislature to submit two separate bills for black and women’s suffrage. The Equal Rights Association tried to sway the abolitionists to campaign alongside them, but received no response. Wood, though he claimed to support both women’s and black suffrage, was only interested in women’s suffrage. Many abolitionists, however, began to question Wood’s motives when he openly opposed black suffrage as a member of the house in 1864. They began to heavily criticize his campaign, accusing him of promoting women’s suffrage only to defeat black suffrage.[7] Nonetheless, the equal rights campaign managed to stay afloat through the spring of 1867, due to a heavy female populace in Kansas that produced “the largest and most enthusiastic meetings and any one of our audiences would give a majority for women.”[8]

The defeat of women’s suffrage in New York strengthened the Republicans’ position against women’s suffrage, and on August 31, they opened their anti-female suffrage campaign in Kansas. By the time Stanton and Anthony arrived in September, Anthony wrote that “the mischief done was irreparable,” and the universal equal rights campaign, faced with a fierce Republican anti-feminist campaign and the refusal of support from ambivalent abolitionists, had fallen apart.[9] Stanton and Anthony, desperate for support, looked towards the Democrats, who made up one-fourth of the Kansas legislature. They, however, expressed opposition to both women’s and black suffrage and refused to lend aid. One wealthy Democrat, George Francis Train, a former Copperhead, was willing to help Anthony and Stanton. Train was blatantly racist, and he campaigned by attacking black suffrage. Though his racist standpoint conflicted with the policy set forth by the Equal Rights Association, Stanton and Anthony, with no other political allies to turn to, chose to work with Train to keep women’s suffrage alive in Kansas, although they had long been abolitionists.[10]

The results of the Kansas election saw both women’s and black suffrage defeated, with black suffrage receiving 10,483 votes and women’s receiving 9,070. With the defeat, equal rights activists were forced to realize that their campaign had failed.[11]

The failure of the campaign stemmed from the tensions within the Equal Rights Association. The major problem arose from the fact that many members were feminists and abolitionists torn between taking on the harder fight first and supporting suffrage for freedmen or fighting for freedmen and women at the same time.[12]

Another problem for the Equal Rights Association was funding. It took good deal of money to rent halls for speeches, print pamphlets, and pay suffrage workers. Most of the contributors, however, were female volunteers without incomes. The campaign of 1867 was the very first test of women’s suffrage; and activists were not experienced in raising money. Even more frustrating, as Susan B. Anthony expressed in a letter to Sam Wood, “neither the radical republicans or Old Abolitionists, nor yet the Democrats open their purses, pulpits or presses to our movement.”[13]

These conflicts eroded the loyalties between abolitionists and feminists in the Equal Rights Association until its near-disintegration in the summer of 1867. The major eruption, however, stemmed from the schism created within the women’s suffrage movement itself. Stone and Blackwell, who had worked closely with Stanton and Anthony throughout the campaign, were appalled by their decision to collaborate with the overtly racist Train. Stone even accused Anthony of squandering money on Train that should have been given to other workers. Stanton’s and Anthony’s steadfast commitment to Train left them vulnerable to the Republican accusation that the Democratic party was only using women’s suffrage to defeat black suffrage, thus giving black equal rights supporters reason to feel animosity towards suffragists.[14] The final blow to the Equal Rights Association came during the annual meeting in May 1869. Stanton and Anthony found themselves outnumbered by abolitionists, among them their former allies Stone and Blackwell, and accused of supporting a racist and opposing the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Realizing that they could not win, the two women withdrew from the Equal Rights Association. Two days later, they formed their own separate National Woman Suffrage Association and continued work on their own newspaper, The Revolution. The paper was filled with harsh criticisms of the Republican party and radical feminist challenges to traditional female roles. Stone and Blackwell, embarrassed by the radical opinions of the Republican party expressed in The Revolution, formed their own organization, the New England Woman Suffrage Association. The feud between the two organizations would continue for another twenty years before the leaders could reconcile their differences and join together to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.[15]

[edit] Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah

The first territorial legislature of the Wyoming Territory granted women suffrage in 1869.[16] In the following year, the Utah Territory followed suit. However, in 1887, the United States Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1890, Wyoming was admitted to the Union as the first state that allowed women to vote. In 1893, voters of Colorado made that state the second of the woman suffrage states.[17] In 1895, Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of woman suffrage. Colorado was the first state where men voted to give women the right to vote.

[edit] Illinois

In 1912, Grace Wilbur Trout, then head of the Chicago Political Equality League, was elected president of the state organization. Changing her tactics from a confrontational style of lobbying the state legislature, she turned to building the organization internally. She made sure that a local organization was started in every Senatorial District. One of her assistants, Elizabeth Booth, cut up a Blue Book government directory and made file cards for each of the members of the General Assembly. Armed with the names, four lobbyists went to Springfield to persuade one legislator at a time to support suffrage for women. In 1913, first-term Speaker of the House, Democrat Champ Clark, told Trout that he would submit the bill for a final vote, if there was support for the bill in Illinois. Trout enlisted her network, and while in Chicago over the weekend, Clark received a phone call every 15 minutes, day and night. On returning to Springfield he found a deluge of telegrams and letters from around the state all in favor of suffrage. By acting quietly and quickly, Trout had caught the opposition off guard.

After passing the Senate, the bill was brought up for a vote in the House on June 11, 1913. Trout and her team counted heads and went as far as to fetch needed male voters from their homes. Watching the door to the House chambers, Trout urged members in favor not to leave before the vote, while also trying to prevent "anti" lobbyists from illegally being allowed onto the House floor. The bill passed with six votes to spare, 83-58. On June 26, 1913, Illinois Governor Edward F. Dunne signed the bill in the presence of Trout, Booth and union labor leader Margaret Healy.

Women in Illinois could now vote for Presidential electors and for all local offices not specifically named in the Illinois Constitution. However, they still could not vote for state representative, congressman or governor; and they still had to use separate ballots and ballot boxes. But by virtue of this law, Illinois had become the first state east of the Mississippi River to grant women the right to vote for President of the United States. Carrie Chapman Catt wrote:

"The effect of this victory upon the nation was astounding. When the first Illinois election took place in April, (1914) the press carried the headlines that 250,000 women had voted in Chicago. Illinois, with its large electoral vote of 29, proved the turning point beyond which politicians at last got a clear view of the fact that women were gaining genuine political power."

Besides the passage of the Illinois Municipal Voting Act, 1913 was also a significant year in other facets of the women's suffrage movement. In Chicago, African American anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett founded the Alpha Suffrage Club, the first such organization for Negro women in Illinois. Although white women as a group were sometimes ambivalent about obtaining the franchise, African American women were almost universally in favor of gaining the vote to help end their sexual exploitation, promote their educational opportunities and protect those who were wage earners.[citation needed]

Women's suffragists parade down Fifth Avenue, New York, October 1917, carrying the signatures of a million women
Women's suffragists parade down Fifth Avenue, New York, October 1917, carrying the signatures of a million women

On March 3, 1913, over 5,000 suffragists paraded in Washington, D.C. When Wells tried to line up with her Illinois sisters, she was asked to go to the end of the line so as not to offend and alienate the southern women marchers. Wells feigned agreement, but much to the shock of Trout, she joined the Illinois delegation once the parade started. As the suffragists started down Pennsylvania Avenue, the crowd became abusive and started to close in, knocking the marchers around with hostility. With local police doing little to keep control, the cavalry was called in as 100 women were hospitalized. Many suffragists concluded that public protests might be the quickest route to universal franchise.

[edit] Arizona, Oregon, Other Western States, and New York

One after another, western states granted the right of voting to their women citizens, the only opposition being presented by the liquor interests and the machine politicians. In both Arizona and Oregon the right was won in 1912 by suffragettes forcing statewide votes through those states' ballot initiative processes. Montana allowed women to vote in 1914, and proceeded to elect the first woman to the United States Congress two years later, in the person of Jeannette Rankin. New York joined the procession in 1917.

[edit] Making a federal case of suffrage: the Nineteenth Amendment

Many groups were opposed to women's suffrage at the time.
Many groups were opposed to women's suffrage at the time.

On January 12, 1915, a suffrage bill was brought before the House of Representatives but was lost by a vote of 174 to 204. Again a bill was brought before the House, on January 10, 1918. On the evening before President Wilson made a strong and widely published appeal to the House to pass the bill. It was passed with one more vote than was needed to make the necessary two-thirds majority. The vote was then carried into the Senate. Again President Wilson made an appeal, and on September 30, 1918, the question was put to the vote, but two votes were lacking to make the two-thirds majority. On February 10, 1919, it was again voted upon, and then it was lost by only one vote.

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, 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. It only remained that the necessary number of states should ratify the action of Congress. Within a few days Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, their legislatures being then in session, passed the ratifications. Other states then followed their examples, and Tennessee was the last of the needed 36 states to ratify, in the summer of 1920. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was an accomplished fact, and the Presidential election of November 1920, was therefore the first occasion on which women in all states were allowed to exercise their right of suffrage.[18]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Constitution of New Jersey, 1776, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/nj15.htm>. Retrieved on 2007-12-09 
  2. ^ Dubois, Ellen Carol, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848-1869, Cornell University Press, (1978), 53
  3. ^ Stone, Lucy & Blackwell, Henry, Loving Warriors, The Dial Press, (1981), 212
  4. ^ Dubois, Feminism and Suffrage, 74-75
  5. ^ Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, & Anthony, Susan B., & Gage, Matilda Joslyn, History of Women’s Suffrage II, Ayer Company Publishers Inc. (1985), 230-232
  6. ^ Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, & Anthony, Susan B., The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Rutgers University Press (2000) 106
  7. ^ Sister Jeanne McKenna, “With the Help of God and Lucy Stone,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 36 (1970), 13-21
  8. ^ Anthony & Stanton, Selected Papers, 57
  9. ^ Dubois, Feminism and Suffrage, 88-92
  10. ^ Dubois, Feminism and Suffrage, 94-95
  11. ^ Stone & Blackwell, Loving Warriors, 222
  12. ^ Dubois, Feminism and Suffrage, 67-68
  13. ^ Stanton & Anthony, Selected Papers, 53
  14. ^ Dubois, Feminism and Suffrage, 95
  15. ^ Ward, Geoffrey C., Not Ourselves Alone: the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Alfred A. Knopf (1999), 111-117
  16. ^ see fac-simile at An Act to Grant to the Women of Wyoming Territory the Right of Suffrage and to Hold Office, Library of Congress, 10 December 1869, <http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/displayPhoto.pl?path=/pnp/ppmsca/03000/&topImages=03000r.jpg&topLinks=03000v.jpg,03000u.tif&title=An%20Act%20to%20Grant%20to%20the%20Women%20of%20Wyoming%20Territory%20the%20Right%20of%20Suffrage%20and%20to%20Hold%20Office&displayProfile=0&dir=ammem&itemLink=r?ammem/awhbib:@field(DOCID+@lit(03000))>. Retrieved on 2007-12-09 
  17. ^ see fac-simile at An act to submit to the qualified electors of the State the question of extending the right of suffrage to women of lawful age, and otherwise qualified, according to the provisions of Article 7, Section 2, of the constitution of Colorado, Library of Congress, 7 April 1893 (adopted by referendum on 7 November 1893 by 35,798 votes to 29,451, ratified by the Governor on 2 December 1893), <http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=awh_llmisc&fileName=awh/awh0001/awh0001page.db&recNum=0&itemLink=S?ammem/awhbib:@FIELD(SUBJ+@od1(+women+suffrage++colorado+))>. Retrieved on 2007-12-09 
  18. ^ Hakim, Joy (1995). War, Peace, and All That Jazz. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 29-33. ISBN 0-19-509514-6. 
  • Baker, Jean H. Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists. Hill and Wang, New York, 2005. ISBN 0-8090-9528-9.

[edit] External links