Women’s Suffrage

By Ann Klefstad

Afterdecades of struggle for suffrage for women, Carrie Chapman Catt spoke to Congress regarding the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “Woman suffrage is inevitable — you know it. There is one thing mightier than . . . political parties — the power of an idea when its time has come to move. The idea will not perish; the party which opposes it may.” (In 1919, Minnesota women gained the right to vote by state constitutional amendment. The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution wasn’t ratified until August 1920.)

The struggle had been a long one. The Women’s Rights Convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is a kind of official beginning of the campaign for women’s suffrage: the right to vote. It was convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who wrote the “Declaration of Sentiments” outlining the agenda of women’s activism for decades to come. This was followed in 1850 by the first National Women’s Rights Convention, attended by Frederick Douglass, Paulina Wright Davis, Abby Kelley Foster, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth, among others. The group also advocated for civil rights for black people.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), a more radical institution, to achieve the vote through a constitutional amendment as well as pushing for other women's rights issues, such as the right of women to own property. Meanwhile, Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe and other more conservative activists form the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) to work for woman suffrage through amending individual state constitutions. AWSA was based in Boston.

1872: Susan B. Anthony registers and votes in Rochester, New York, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives her that right. However, she is arrested a few days later. Victoria Woodhull was the first female to run for President of the United States, nominated by the Equal Rights Party, with a platform supporting women’s suffrage and equal rights.

1890: The National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association merge to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Its first president is Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Wyoming renewed general women’s suffrage, becoming the first state to allow women to vote.

In 1870 the 15th Amendment enfranchised black men, but not women: This seemed to some woman suffrage advocates a betrayal. NWSA refused to work for its ratification and instead advocated for a 16th Amendment that would dictate universal suffrage. Frederick Douglass broke with Stanton and Anthony over the position of NWSA.

Until the 1890s, the battle for the vote, and for women’s rights, was left to what was regarded as a radical few. But in the 1890s, women began to enter business and public life in much greater numbers. The campaign for full rights, the right to vote among them, went mainstream. The new Western states — Utah, Idaho, and others — gave women the right to vote. Women out West lived freer lives. The first successful campaign for suffrage was a state victory: When Wyoming territory was organized in 1869, women were given full voting rights.

In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt came out in support of women’s voting: His Bull Moose Party adopted this as a platform plank. Woodrow Wilson, in 1916, added the support of the Democratic Party.

WWI proved to be a force that intensified the suffrage struggle, both because many potential women voters were anti-war, and because women’s

1902: Women from 10 nations meet in Washington, D.C. to plan an international effort for suffrage. Clara work outside the home in men’s jobs awakened activism. Activists began picketing, protesting and staging dramatic parades. In 1917, Alice Paul, leader of the National Woman’s Party, was put in solitary confinement in the mental ward of the prison, to break her will and to undermine her credibility with the public.

In June of that year, arrests of the National Woman’s party picketers began on charges of obstructing sidewalk traffic. Subsequent picketers are sentenced to up to six months in jail. In November, the government released the picketers in response to public outcry and an inability to stop National Woman’s Party picketers’ hunger strike: People had been outraged by accounts published in newspapers about the use of force-feeding by tube as a torture technique. The term “Iron-Jawed Angels” arose to describe the resistance of women’s rights advocates to these tactics. Things were drawing to a climax.

Individual Western states continued to grant suffrage, including California. Minnesota followed in 1919. Finally the 19th Amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920. It had been a long 72 years of work: a lifetime.

1918: The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which eventually granted women suffrage, passes the U.S. House with exactly a two-thirds vote but loses by two votes in the Senate.

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1920: The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, stating:

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. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.