Women in American History
to 1920
-The Road to Suffrage
Prof. Margaret S. Thompson
History Department
Syracuse University
October 2011
Women’s Suffrage Precedents
Lydia Chapin Taft, Uxbridge, MA—voted
in 3 Town Meetings as early as 1756
 In New Jersey, women owning more
than $250 in property could vote, 17901807.
 June 1848, Gerrit Smith of
Utica made women’s suffrage a
plank in the Liberty Party
platform.
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Abigail Adams (1744-1818)
“… remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable
to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power
into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be
tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid
to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will
not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no
voice, or Representation.” [letter to John Adams, March 1776]
“Republican Motherhood”
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Children should be raised to uphold the
ideals of republicanism, making them ideal
citizens of the new nation.
Elevated the role of women in raising the
next generation.
Contributed to support for educational
opportunities for girls and women as
“future mothers” in the Early Republic.
Not unrelatedly, Susan B. Anthony’s second known
instance of public activism was in 1837, calling for equal
pay for women teachers. She was only 17, and a new
teacher herself. [Her first significant political action was
at the age of 16, when she collected 2 boxes of
antislavery petitions.]
[Susan B. Anthony in
her 20s.]
Women as Social/Political Reformers
[prior to women’s rights activism]
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Temperance
Education [Indeed, in 1837, Kentucky gave some women
property owners the right to vote in school board elections.]
Abolitionism
Women Speakers at “promiscuous assemblies.”
Property Rights—leading to the New York Married Women’s
Property Rights Act of 1848.
Early women’s rights activists
[many prior to 1848]
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Lucretia Mott
Margaret Fuller
Frances Wright
Martha Coffin Wright (sister of L. Mott)
Abby Kelley
Sophia Ripley
Sarah and Angelina Grimke
Ernestine Rose
Harriet Tubman
Male allies: Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, William
Lloyd Garrison, Henry Blackwell.
In 1840, a young Elizabeth Cady Stanton attended the
International AntiSlavery Convention in London on her
honeymoon. There, she met numerous abolitionists,
including William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott. Mott
was a delegate to the Convention (as was Henry Stanton),
but it refused to seat her because she was a woman. In
protest, Garrison sat with the women in the balcony, where
ECS and Mott held their first known conversation about
women’s rights.
Seneca Falls Women’s Rights
Convention, 19-20 July 1848
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3 main organizers: Stanton, Mott, Martha Wright
(Declaration of Sentiments written at Wright’s
home in Auburn).
c. 300 in attendance, 100 of whom signed, 1/3 of
them men.
The suffrage resolution was a last-minute addition,
not originally a central component.
Only one signer (Charlotte Woodward, 19 in 1848)
was alive to vote in 1920, after ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment.
American Equal Rights Assn.
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Founded in 1866 from the American AntiSlavery Society—would disintegrate by 1869.
Initially aimed at uniting the causes of racial
and women’s equality. Initially, debate over
whether or not to support 14th Amendment
(1868) and, even moreso, the 15th. WHY
WOULD THESE BE AN ISSUE?
NWSA & AWSA founded from splinters in 1869.
Constitutional Amendment
Controversies
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State Referenda on Black and Women’s
Suffrage—first in Kansas (1867). Both lost,
but women’s suffrage by larger margin.
What were the issues with 14th and 15th
Amendments?
The controversy itself was a sign of
progress.
“Take your turn, ladies”: F. Douglass, etc.
Three More Controversies of 1872
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The peculiar story of George Francis Train.
Victoria Woodhull ran for president on the
“Equal Rights Party” ticket.
November: Susan B. Anthony arrested and
tried (in Canandaigua) for attempting to
vote in the Presidential election. Found
guilty; never paid fine.
George Francis Train
Victoria Woodhull
National Women’s Suffrage Assn.
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Opposed Fifteenth
Amendment.
More inclusive women’s
rights agenda.
Members included: Eliz.
Cady Stanton, Susan B.
Anthony, Matilda Joslyn
Gage, Martha Wright
Coffin, Lucretia Mott,
Ernestine Rose, etc.
American Women’s Suffrage Assn.
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Supported Fifteenth
Amendment.
“Suffrage only”
agenda.
Members included:
Lucy Stone, Julia
Ward Howe, Blanche
Ames, Josephine
Ruffin, Frederick
Douglass.
National American Women’s
Suffrage Association (1890).
NWSA/AWSA merged to form new organization, basically
with the agenda of the old AWSA. Among new leaders were
Frances Willard, Anna Shaw, Mary Church Terrell, and
Carrie Chapman Catt.
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1868: First women’s suffrage amendment introduced
in US House; in 1878 in Senate (called the “Anthony
Amendment”).
1869: Wyoming Territory grants full voting rights to
women; Utah does so in 1870, and Washington
Territory in 1883.
1872: GOP Platform includes reference to women’s
suffrage for the first time.
1878: Senate hearing on the Anthony Amendment.
1887: Senate votes on women’s suffrage for the first
time (and the last for the next 25 years); it is
defeated.
STATEHOOD Suffrage: Wyoming (1890), Colorado
(1893), Utah (1896), Washington (1910), California
(1911), Oregon, Kansas, Arizona (1912), Illinois
(1913—first state east of Mississippi River).
Expanding Suffrage’s Constituency
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Frances Willard and the WCTU.
African-American women: welcome, or
not? [NACW and Mary M. Bethune]
Suffrage and the Clubwoman movement.
“Social Housekeeping”
As Jane Addams put it: “Politics is housekeeping
on a grand scale.”
 Stressed the nurturing and redemptive qualities
of motherhood and social justice.
 Women should vote not
because they were human
Beings like men—but precisely because they were
different and “feminine.”
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The Final Push Toward Suffrage
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Federal Amendment or State-by-State
Approach?
Suffrage only, or broader “women’s” agenda?
Radical or mainstream tactics?
Feminism: are women the same as (sharing
common “human” identities) or distinct from
men? Do they deserve suffrage in spite or, or
because of, their similarities or differences?
The central role and strategic sophistication of
Carrie Chapman Catt.
3 March 1913—Suffrage March on
Washington.
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Timed for the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural
(and upstaged it).
More than 5000 marchers, including delegations from
nations that had already enfranchised women.
Women wore white (became the “official” color of the
suffrage movement, and continued with the Equal
Rights movement in the later part of the century).
Racially segregated, so as not to “offend” Southern
white women, or President-elect Wilson. Not all Black
women went along with this.
Alice Paul
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Founded the Congressional
Union in 1913, initially
within NAWSA.
1914: Split with NAWSA
and, in 1916, became the
National Women’s Party.
By 1916, NWP picketing
the White House and
performing acts of civil
disobedience.
Introduces the Equal Rights
Amendment in 1923.
Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973)
Becomes first woman (R-MT) elected to
Congress in 1916. Elected again in 1940, she
voted against US entry into both World War I
and World War II.
 Founding member (1915)
of the Women’s International League for Peace
& Freedom, and founding
VP of the ACLU.
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The Campaign’s Last Stages
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The “Great War” and support for women’s suffrage.
January 1918: President Wilson declares need for
women’s suffrage as a “war measure.”
January 1919 Ratification of the Eighteenth
Amendment.
21 May 1919: House passes “Anthony Amendment.
4 June: Senate passes it, too.
36 States needed for ratification; the last was
Tennessee. [The story of Harry Burns.]
Suffrage finally passed in Tennessee by one vote,
and the “Anthony Amendment” ratified, 18 August
1920.
The meaning of suffrage—what
was accomplished, and not?
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By the time it was achieved, was women’s
suffrage a feminist accomplishment?
Was there then—and has there ever
been—a “women’s vote”?
What about the larger agenda of Seneca
Falls, and of “First-Wave” feminism?
Did suffragists compromise too much to
achieve the objective of the vote alone?