American Suffrage Movement

10 Key excerpts on "American Suffrage Movement"

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  From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World Volume III

  Infernos and Paradises: The Triumph of Capitalism in the 19th Century

  • Marilyn French(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • The Feminist Press at CUNY

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 7 WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN

  In the United States

  T HE AMERICAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT was an uneasy alliance of women whose main bond beyond their sex and inferior status was work in some area of reform. Few were militant feminists. Some were active abolitionists; most were evangelicals working in moral reform, political conservatives who claimed a right to political action on grounds of moral superiority. Their vision of women as superior collided with the feminist vision of women as like men. Conflicting interpretations of Woman’s Nature produced a tension that characterized the suffrage movement (and women’s movements into the present) in debates over education, protective legislation, maternity leave, and other issues.

  In the early republic, some women had the franchise: in 1783 New Jersey granted the vote to all residents of age worth £50. Only two women voted in 1787, because of confusion about eligibility, but few women had £50. Women’s participation in local elections (in large numbers in 1797), aroused male resentment: newspaper articles ridiculed “petticoat politics,” warning of a legislature “filled with petticoats.” Men opposed to women’s voting often claimed that slaves did too; an 1806 election was voided after reports that women, blacks, and white men voted more than once. After John Condict, a Republican representative from Essex County, New Jersey, was nearly defeated by women’s vote, he led a campaign to limit eligibility. In 1807 New Jersey limited the franchise to white male adults with property.

  In the nineteenth century, women made giant steps toward full citizenship, but won not one victory for woman suffrage. Men feared suffrage more than any other reform as a threat to “the family,” that is, to male supremacy. Too cowardly to admit this explicitly, they argued that women who wanted the vote were insulting their husbands, who always voted in the best interests of the entire family. Woman suffrage would generate domestic chaos (two voices instead of one), unsex women, and emasculate men, as women abandoned housekeeping and child-rearing, leaving them to men.1

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  A Companion to American Women's History

  • Nancy A. Hewitt, Anne M. Valk, Nancy A. Hewitt, Anne M. Valk(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  2019 ).

  The freshest and most enduring histories of the woman suffrage struggle use an intersectional lens to describe a movement that was multigenerational, multi‐class, multiracial, and multi‐ethnic. Nuanced, balanced, and inclusive accounts show that the effort to secure US women’s access to the vote did not start in Seneca Falls, did not end with ratification, and did not stand alone, but rather drew from and contributed to women’s movements in other nations and for other causes. These histories are vital now, as efforts to curb voting rights in recent US elections make clear. Some issues that concerned suffragists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are not yet settled.

  Origin Stories

  Current scholarship honors many origins of the movement for woman suffrage. As Anne Boylan (2002 ) and others have shown, challenges to conventional thinking about gender roles in the 1820s emerged from women’s rich associational life, working‐class activism, and the pens of “freethinkers” such as Fanny Wright. These conversations expanded in the tumultuous 1830s, scarcely two generations from the American Revolution, in an era when religious upheavals challenged bedrock belief systems, an industrial boom and market revolution transformed work and confounded the boundaries between domestic and public spaces, and fierce resistance by enslaved blacks inspired urgent antislavery activism by free blacks and whites. In this same decade, the American electorate expanded dramatically as more and more white men gained access to the ballot and mass‐participation political parties mobilized them to vote. For the balance of the century, as Walter Dean Burnham (1982 ) and Jon Grinspan (2016

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  Feminism and the Women's Movement

  Dynamics of Change in Social Movement Ideology and Activism

  • Barbara Ryan(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1

  The Early Woman’s Movement: From Equal Rights to Suffrage

  But I ask no favors for my sex, surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.

  (Sarah Grimke, 1837)1

  Early women’s rights advocates began their activism by thinking that women’s secondary position in society was the result of some mistake, an oversight, carried on through ignorance and custom, to be righted by bringing the matter to public attention. In the nineteenth century, women’s rights advocates embarked on a mission to inform the public of the need for change in women’s status in the social system. They undertook a variety of issues, eventually focusing on the vote as a necessary step in the process of having a say in the social and political decisions over their lives. A simple enough demand in a democracy premised on citizenship participation. But the history of the early woman’s movement reveals another story altogether.

  Beginning with the first call for the franchise in 1848, over 500 separate campaigns were launched in the years it took to achieve women’s suffrage. These included 56 state referendum campaigns, 277 separate efforts to persuade state party conventions to add women’s suffrage to their planks, 19 congressional battles, and the ratification campaign in 1919 and 1920 (Kraditor 1981; Papachristou 1976; Blatch and Lutz 1940; Catt and Shuler 1923). Susan B. Anthony traveled the country speaking on women’s rights and suffrage for over 40 years (Barry 1988). Elizabeth Cady Stanton engaged in lyceum trips, those “long weary pilgrimages from Maine to Texas, that lasted twelve years; speaking steadily for eight months—from October to June” (Stanton and Blatch 1922: 218). More than 200 suffragists were arrested, eventually to be vindicated by an appeals court which ruled their arrests and imprisonment illegal, but not before many had suffered imprisonment and forced feedings. Yet, a century later we are informed that:

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  The Woman Suffrage Movement in America

  A Reassessment

  • Corrine M. McConnaughy(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  30 The Woman Suffrage Movement in America process. Their specific tools of influence have certainly changed over time – in the time of woman suffrage politics, for example, the major political parties directly controlled decisions such as ballot wording and distribution and the location of polling places. Although some of their previous specific powers have been transferred to the state, to this day no other political organizations stand ready to mobilize electorates in favor or against a cause as readily as parties. This electoral influence is of particular importance because voting rights changes at the state level so often require a constitutional amendment that must be ratified by the existing electorate. The costs of educating and mobilizing the public to actually vote in support of the proposed change are formidable, and difficult for the disfranchised to bear. In contrast, the party apparatus, designed to influence elections, could be a most effective ally or formidable obstacle in achieving the necessary public vote. No matter the influence of parties, however, it is still through legislatures that suffrage provisions must generally pass. What is most important to note about the legislative process, itself, is how difficult it makes the provision of new voting rights. In other words, placing suffrage politics inside legislative institu- tions imposes some important constraints. In the United States, at both the state and federal levels, legislative institutions in general make status quo protection easier than change, but particularly so in the case of voting rights. Because voter qualifications are generally defined by states’ constitutions, changes most often require the clearing of extra policy-making hurdles, including legislative super-majorities, passage in multiple consecutive legislative sessions, and final approval through public referenda.

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  Feminism

  • June Hannam(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Sex was a key factor in deciding who should, or should not, be included in the franchise. The demand for women’s suffrage, therefore, highlighted women’s common interests and raised the possibility of a ‘universal sisterhood’. It was the one issue that brought women from a variety of backgrounds together in organized groups and in highly public campaigns. This in turn could foster a sense of solidarity among women as they faced intransigent opposition to their cause. Organized suffrage movements developed first in the ‘liberal democracies’ of Europe, North America and the white-settler colonies of Australia and New Zealand and in most cases reached a peak in the decade before the First World War. Given their size and ‘militancy’, the British and American movements took centre stage among contemporaries and also in later suffrage histories. But this should not lead us to neglect suffrage movements in other countries. They had their own priorities, aims and tactics which need to be recognized and should not simply be viewed through the eyes of Anglo-American campaigners.

  Origins of women’s suffrage campaigns

  The first women’s suffrage organizations were formed in the 1860s in the context of broader political developments. Although women’s suffrage was raised in the United States at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, it was not until the Civil War that organizations were formed at state level with the specific aim of campaigning for the vote. Once hostilities were over, two national groups were established: the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the American Woman Suffrage Association led by Lucy Stone. In Britain women raised their own demands when working-class men, who were excluded from a property-based franchise, campaigned for political reforms in the late 1860s. Women’s suffrage societies were formed in large provincial cities as well as in London and in 1868 these joined together in a loose federation called the National Society for Women’s Suffrage.

  Box 3.1 Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)

  Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were leading figures in the nineteenth-century women’s suffrage movement in America and their example inspired women throughout the world. Both women were influenced by the movement to abolish slavery. The daughter of a cotton mill owner, Anthony was born into a Quaker household that supported abolition and temperance. Elizabeth Cady was the daughter of a judge and married the abolitionist leader Henry Stanton. She attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London where women were excluded on the grounds of their sex and this influenced her later decision, along with Lucretia Mott, to call the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848.

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  A History of the U.S. Political System

  Ideas, Interests, and Institutions [3 volumes]

  • Richard A. Harris, Daniel J. Tichenor, Richard A. Harris, Daniel J. Tichenor(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, drafted by Congress in 1866, referred to ‘‘male inhabitants’’ and ‘‘male citizens’’ in its stipulations of consequences for apportioning repre- sentatives following from denial of the right to vote by any state. The introduction of gender in the Fourteenth Amendment angered suffrage leaders, who presented petitions containing 10,000 names in their attempt to thwart Congress on this language (Siegal 2002). The Fifteenth Amendment, which passed Congress in early 1869, would be the final straw for some women activists. Members of Congress told women that they could not ensure black enfranchisement if the suffrage amendment included women. The decision Susan B. Anthony (left) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were pio- neers in the fight for equal suffrage and women’s rights. (Library of Congress) The Suffrage Movement and American Political Development 197 to enfranchise blacks before women caused a rift in the suffrage ranks. The woman suffrage movement, which had been organized as the American Equal Rights Association, split in 1869 over the exclusion of women from the Fifteenth Amendment stipulating that the right to vote would not be denied on account of race. The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) supported the Fourteenth Amendment and stuck with the Republican Party, vowing to mobilize on a state- by-state basis to secure suffrage for women at the state level. Lucy Stone, her husband, Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe (1819--1910) were among the promi- nent leaders of the AWSA. The Women’s Journal was the official AWSA publication. Opposing the Fifteenth Amendment at the National Woman Suffrage Convention, the first such convention, in January of 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued that ‘‘manhood suffrage’’ was appalling and meant the low- est depths of political degradation for women.

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  Before Equal Suffrage

  Women in Partisan Politics from Colonial Times to 1920

  • Robert J. Dinkin(Author)
  • 1995(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 7 Politics and the Suffrage Amendment For many decades, as we have seen, the woman suffrage movement had had at least some connection with partisan politics. Beginning in the late 1860s, the suffragists had offered to support either of the parties, promising everlasting allegiance to the one that would help them achieve the vote. They at times had participated in campaigns with the hope that the particular party would be grateful and reward them for their contribution. After a while, it had become evident that this strategy was not working: The parties, especially the Republican side, had benefited from women's efforts but had not provided any degree of reciprocation. Nevertheless, some suffrage advocates continued to back their favorite party, believing, as GOP activist J. Ellen Foster did, that this was the best alternative for women and would ultimately lead to their obtaining thefranchise.Yet the majority of suffragists, particularly those involved in the reunited National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) starting in 1890, chose to follow a nonpartisan approach and avoid making any political commitment. They insisted that neutrality was essential in gaining legis- lative support in the states or building a consensus in Congress for a constitutional amendment. But after 1912 a significant minority would reenter the partisan arena, and, instead of asking for favors, attempted to put pressure on the party in power to hasten passage of a suffrage amendment. As a result, many additional women were thrust into partisan politics via election campaigns, and although the plan as outhned did not fully succeed, it did have a catalytic effect on the process of securing the vote for all women. 124 Before Equal Suffrage This new strategy was made possible by the fact that many more women had recently become eligible voters in the western states.

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  Encyclopedia of American Social Movements

  • Immanuel Ness(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  After Catt took the helm of NAWSA, she molded the organization into a tightly controlled lobbying machine. She considered the liquor industry the invisible enemy and charged that its corrupt practices in American politics delayed the woman suffrage victory. However, other changes at the turn of the century, outside the suffrage movement, were aiding the cause.

  During the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the quest for woman suffrage started to become more of a mainstream issue. More activists joined the movement as women's roles in society expanded, and they saw the need for reforms strengthened by legislation. Around the country, men and women who supported Progressive reforms, such as workers' protection, and an end to child labor, political corruption, and unsafe food and drugs, recognized that women's votes could help secure these efforts.

  Middle-class reformers such as Jane Addams, founder of Hull-House in Chicago, Florence Kelley, executive secretary of the National Consumers League, Rose Schneiderman, labor organizer with the Women's Trade Union League, and Agnes Nestor, president of the International Glove Workers Union, worked diligently for suffrage as a way to achieve improved conditions for workers.

  Harriot Stanton Blatch, Stanton's daughter, returned to New York in 1902 after many years of living in England where she observed the radical and innovative British suffrage movement. She was determined to bring more working-class women into the suffrage movement to improve their economic status. She organized the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women in 1907, which became the Women's Political Union. Blatch excelled at pulling together political alliances between middle-class reformers and working class women to rally for suffrage, infusing the campaign with new life and broadening its constituency.

  After Catt stepped aside from the NAWSA leadership after four years to care for her dying husband, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw took over. A veteran suffragist, medical doctor, and Methodist minister, Shaw embodied the essence of an emancipated woman. While her compelling oratory championed suffrage in every state in the Union, Shaw lacked Catt's vision and organizational skills, and she struggled to steer NAWSA for eleven years until Catt returned in 1914 after her husband's death. In that capacity, Catt, who was a brilliant and effective organizer, speaker, and fundraiser for the cause, spearheaded the final ratification effort in Tennessee in 1920.

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  Approach to Child Abuse and Woman Suffrage, An

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Learning Press

    (Publisher)

  Women in the audience of his public speeches began to ask the question Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of all the people, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement of women? On January 1918 the President acceded to the women who had been protesting at his public speeches and made a pro-suffrage speech. The next year Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote. ______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ Woman suffrage in individual states Women's suffrage laws before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment Full suffrage Presidential suffrage Primary suffrage Municipal suffrage School, bond, or tax suffrage Municipal suffrage in some cities Primary suffrage in some cities No suffrage In addition to the strategy to obtain full suffrage through a constitutional amendment, reformers pursued state-by-state campaigns to build support for, or to win, residence-based state suffrage. Towns, counties, states and territories granted suffrage, in full or in part, throughout the 19th and early 20th century. As women received the right to vote, they began running for, and being elected to, public office. They gained positions as school board members, county clerks, state ______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ legislators, judges, and eventually, shortly before ratification of the 19th Amendment, as Mem-bers of Congress. To make the point that women were interested in partisan politics and would be effective public officials, in the 19th century two women ran for the presidency: Victoria Woodhull in 1872, and Belva Lockwood in 1884 and 1888. Neither was permitted under the law to vote, but nothing in the law prevented them from running for office. Each woman pointed to this irony in her campaigning. Lockwood ran a fuller, more national campaign than Woodhull, giving speeches across the country and organizing several electoral tickets.

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  Teaching U.S. History Through Children's Literature

  Post-World War II

  • Wanda Miller(Author)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • Libraries Unlimited

    (Publisher)

  How do you think Lila felt at the parade? Why? 14. What made Lila's grandmother believe that someday women would be able to vote? 15. When were women in New York given the right to vote? H o w was this a turning point in the suffragist movement? 16. Discuss the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In what ways did it change women's lives? Vocabulary parlor (p3) a room for receiving visitors or entertaining guests telegram (p4) a message sent by telegraph, which sends and receives messages by means of a series of electrical or electromagnetic pulses suffrage (p4) the right to vote suffragist (p4) a person who advocates extension of the right to vote, especially to women spectacle (p6) an unusual or painful sight amendment (p6) a change, such as to a law or bill Constitution (p6) the fundamental law of the United States democracy (p8) a form of government in which the people rule, either by voting directly, or by electing representatives to manage the government and make the laws convict (pll) a person found guilty of a crime and serving a prison sentence riot (pll) a violent disturbance made by a large group of people behaving in a wild, disorderly way Victrola (pl7) an early record player prim (pi9) very precise and formal; stiffly proper and neat shirtwaist (pl9) a woman's tailored blouse that looks some- thing like a man's shirt tenement (p20) an apartment house that is poorly built or maintained, usually overcrowded, and often located in a slum trolley (p26) a vehicle for public transportation that runs on rails and is powered by electricity obtained from overhead wires running through it torpedo (p29) a large, underwater projectile that moves under its own power, is shaped like a cigar, and is filled with high explosives that blow up when it strikes a ship twilight (p33) the light in the sky just after sunset or just before sunrise declaration (p53) a formal statement or announcement abolitionists (p53) people who wanted to end slavery in the United States petition (p53) a formal written request, often with many signatures, sent to a person or group in authority From Teaching U.S.

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