Woman Suffrage in the U.S.A.

This is just an overview of the women�s suffrage movement.

Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote. The women's suffrage movement was the struggle to gain the same right to vote as men. The quest for women's suffrage was a struggle, which plagued America for 72 years, for the simple and inalienable right of representation and equality.


Women today have the same voting rights as men, with a few exceptions. However, this was not always the case. Voting was limited to adult males who owned property, during US colonial times. Many thought that property owners had the strongest interest in good government; therefore, they were the best qualified to make decisions.

In the early nineteenth century, changing social conditions and the idea of equality led to the beginning of the woman suffrage movement. By then, more women were receiving education. Women also began to participate in reform movements and take increased interest in politics. Women and men began to question why women were not also allowed to vote. Supporters of this drive were called suffragists.

In 1848, following several decades of a quietly emerging egalitarian spirit among women, the first women�s rights meeting was held at Seneca Falls, New York in the United States. Said meeting was called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. It was a long road, and more than 70 years would pass before the 19th Amendment would secure women�s right to vote in the U.S. However, the Woman Suffrage Movement weakened during and after the Civil War for political reasons, as it collided with the black suffrage issue and tactical differences divided the leadership.

Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone founded the American Woman Suffrage Association, and worked for woman suffrage state-by-state, but also worked for black suffrage and the 15th Amendment and accepted men as members. However, Elizabeth Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, which included women members only and opposed the 15th Amendment because for the first time citizens were explicitly defined as �male�. The NWSA strictly worked for a national constitutional amendment for woman suffrage.

Many other social reform groups drew women into other activities and organizations, such as Frances Williard�s Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the growing Women's Club movement after 1868, though many worked for suffrage, too. These women often applied their organizational skills learned in the other groups to the suffrage battles -- but by the turn on the century, those suffrage battles had been going on for fifty years already.

Stanton and Anthony and Mathilda Jocelyn Gage published the first three volumes of their history of the suffrage movement in 1887, after winning women's vote in only a few states. In 1890, the two rival organizations, the NWSA and the AWSA, merged, under the leadership of Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt in the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

After fifty years, a leadership transition had to take place. Lucretia Mott died in 1880, Lucy Stone died in 1893, Elizabeth Stanton died in 1902 and Susan B. Anthony died in 1906.

Large suffrage marches and parades in 1913 and 1915 helped bring the cause of woman suffrage back to the center. The NAWSA also shifted tactics, and in 1916 unified its chapters around efforts to push a suffrage Amendment in Congress.

Finally, in 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, sending it to the states. On August 26, 1920, after Tennessee ratified the Amendment by one vote, the 19th Amendment was adopted.

Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsuffrage.htm



Cartoon by Lou Rogers
entitled "Tearing Off The Bonds"