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Shelby Rockwell

Professor Johnson

ENG 1201.523

1 August 2020

The Importance of Suffrage

Some of the first voting laws in the United States that affected women were laws to strip

them of their right to vote. For instance, New York’s voter laws originally use the terms “his or

her ballot” but the female pronouns were struck from the law in 1777 (Cep 2). Out of the fifty

states, New Jersey was the only state that did not have rules regarding who could or could not

vote. Until 1807, New Jersey was the only state to allow it after the passing of the Constitution.

Women had their small political voice stripped from them with the founding of the United States

and they fought hard to be heard. The Suffrage movement advanced the ideas of feminism,

education, and gender equality through the ratification of the 19th Amendment but did little to

resolve many of the racial tensions that existed. 

In 1911, Max Eastman wrote a lengthy article in The North American Review entitled, Is

Woman Suffrage Important? a very loaded question during his time. In it Eastman tackles some

of the main stigmas and anti-suffrage arguments of the day, claiming at the base of everything

that it isn’t simply about the act of voting but that “it is an act demanded by the ideal principle

proof to which our government is devoted… a heroic step that we can take with nature in the

evolution of a symmetrical race” (Eastman 71). Eastman argues that men and women experience

life differently and therefore have different perspectives on many topics and that the nation

would benefit from “women’s vital intuitive judgements” (62). Many anti-suffrage supporters

believed that women could not handle the stress of politics, that husbands would take their
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wives’ views into consideration when it came to voting at the polls so giving women the right to

vote was redundant. Men leave their morality at home with their wives and daughters and

bringing the family into the political sphere will allow for a better and maybe a higher morality

in the sphere of politics. He also argues that women are not dainty and weak but are strong

especially since women are tasked with the birth and education of children which is no easy task.

The road that women travelled to get the vote was long and arduous, but they were ready for the

challenge.

The major convention took place in upstate New York in the 1840’s. This convention

became known as the Seneca Falls Convention. This convention is considered the catalyst of

women’s suffrage. The meeting was held and directed by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady as a

gathering to discuss women’s rights. The meeting had a relatively well known and large

attendance of about three hundred people including former slave Frederick Douglass. They set

forth a group of resolutions called the Declaration of Sentiments. The general outline of the DOS

was modeled after the Declaration of Independence. It appealed for equal rights for women

including the vote, higher platform for the church, ownership, and control over their own

property even after marriage, along with better education and job opportunities.

Women were still restrained by the laws of Coverture which, “rendered a woman unable

to sue or be sued on her own behalf or to execute a will without her husband’s consent and,

unless some prior specific provision separating a woman’s property from her husband’s had been

made, stripped a woman of control over real and personal property” (Britannica). Fundamentally,

women were reduced to the legal property of their husbands and were merged into the fictional

entity of “the husband” leaving them with little recourse in situations of abuse, having a political
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voice, or even custody of their children. Women like Stanton and Mott sought to abolish this way

of life and allow women the rights they deserved as citizens.

In 1866, after the completion of the American Civil War a civil rights group was formed

and called the American Equal Rights Association (AERA). Susan B. Anthony helped create the

AERA and would work to create equality for all people regardless of race or gender. Elizabeth

Cady Stanton was the co-created of the AERA and would spend her entire life fighting for

equality. She traveled the country doing speaking engagements. Anthony is most well-known for

attempting to vote in 1872 and the subsequent trial. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was Anthony’s

‘partner in crime’ so to speak, they worked together their entire lives. Stanton was married to

Republican party co-founder, Henry Brewster Stanton. She is most well-known for her staunch

defense of women’s parental rights, right to birth control, right to divorce and right to own

property.

In 1869, the AERA collapsed due to internal disagreements over the wording of the 15th

Amendment which would allow only African American men to vote. Many were dismayed at the

omission of women and the enfranchisement of African American men without the inclusion of

women because women had long worked for the Black vote. Leaders such as Stanton and

Anthony both began their fight for equal rights as abolitionists. The suffrage movement was

made up of women from many different racial, geographic, religious, and socioeconomic

backgrounds. Many women who ended up involved in the Suffrage movement got their

beginnings in abolition work, including the creators of the AERA. So this division within the

movement could have been the end of the suffrage movement. It was a huge blow to the

somewhat unified movement.

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The National Woman Suffrage Association was created in design separately from those

who had no qualms with Black men getting the vote while women were still excluded. Those left

who agreed with the wording of the 15th Amendment formed a group called the AWSA which

stood for the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The major separation in the

movement that occurred at this point honestly led to a standstill in progress for suffrage. Instead

of being able to set aside their differences these groups let their bias cloud their judgement.

Eventually these groups would resolve their differences and rejoin together forming a united

front to truly push for equal political rights for everyone.

The National Woman’s Suffrage Association or the NAWSA was created to heal the gaps

in the movement and combined to major organizations. An example of a major organization

would be the American Woman Suffrage Association. NAWSA’s members list was only around

a couple thousand. By the time, the 19th Amendment passed more than two million had joined the

cause and it became the largest volunteer association in the United States. Initially led by

women’s rights powerhouse Susan B. Anthony until 1900, Anthony eventually gave her roll over

to the younger and more exuberant Carrie Chapman Catt until 1904. Chapman Catt was replaced

by Anna Howard Shaw who lost support due to her brash and difficult nature. Chapman Catt was

pulled back in to lead NAWSA and remained in office until the 19th Amendment was

successfully passed. NAWSA policies to gain the vote were more moderate. Shaw’s term in

office was defined by her policy of recruiting rich white women to swell funding and increase

numbers. Catt’s second term was really the final push that NAWSA needed to switch from

educating to pushing for an amendment via political pressuring.

The National Women’s Association (NWA) founded by Alice Paul, a former NAWSA

chairperson in 1916 was more militant in their methods. Paul had spent years protesting for
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women’s rights in Britain and was arrested and imprisoned on seven different occasions. She and

the NWA began picketing the White House during the election year of 1916. Over 2000 women

protested over two years and were known as the “Silent Sentinals”. These women legally and

silently protesting dressed in white with banners asking, “Mr. President, How Long Must

Women Wait for Liberty?” Paul made sure to continue picketing through the beginning of World

War One, which was frowned upon by many for being “treasonous” and “anti-patriotic.”

Because of this precarious social situation many women were arrested, “not because the

American suffragists were particularly radical but because so many of them had been convicted

of crimes as frivolous as striking matches” (Cep 2). Hundreds of female protestors were arrested

and sent to local prisons and workhouses and to bring more attention to their cause engaged in

passive protests like hunger strikes. Between the NWA’s picketing and NAWSA’s political

pressuring, the suffragists were making progress towards their goals, but they still had a long

way to go.

Forty years had passed since the introduction of an amendment to give women equal

rights. Suffragists had failed in their attempts to convince politicians that the 14th and 15th

Amendments had technically given women the right years ago. Anthony and Stanton had fought

their whole lives to see women equal in the eyes of the law. Many women had been arrested,

detained, force fed and harassed. But come early 1919 there was still no end in sight. In May of

the same year the amendment shockingly was approved in the House of Representatives and then

in June it made its way through the Senate. Once the amendment was passed, it had to be

submitted to the states for ratification. In August, everyone converged on the steps of the state

house in Tennessee, politicians, suffragists, anti-suffragists, and reporters. Tennessee was the

final state out of the required thirty-six states to ratify and if the amendment did not pass here,
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the suffragists would be back to square one. But the movement gained a lucky break, a

congressman thought to be anti-vote received a last-minute telegram from his mother and

switched sides. After years and years of toil and protesting and politics in August of 1920

women achieved the right to go to the poll on both the state and national level. Or did they?

Although the 19th Amendment was the biggest one time increase in voters in the history

of the United States (over twenty-six million women), that many women were still not able to

vote. For African American female-voters, the 19th Amendment was a victory and became

known as the most “hollow victory” because their voting rights were prevented by whites-only

primaries and literacy tests (Ware). The early division of the movement disregarded the black

men and women who had been involved in the suffrage movement since its conception. Then

racism and Jim Crow Laws prevented African Americans from voting even after the 19th

Amendment was passed. Even though suffrage was a “women’s movement” Black Americans

did not get equality until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a full forty-five years after the

enactment of the 19th Amendment.

Native Americans we unable to gain the privilege to vote until congress passed

legislation in 1924 announcing “all Native Americans born in the United States were citizens”

(Ware). It is rather ironic considering the Declaration of Independence and Stanton’s Declaration

of Sentiments were both formed with the indigenous influences the Haudenosaunee people.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton had studied the Haudenosaunee’s way of life and self-governance. The

Haudenosaunee Confederacy was formed when six native nations gathered “to form an

egalitarian society that afforded women political power” (Cep 2). They were able helped choose

new leaders along with the council and had the right to discuss matters of war and peace. The

Haudenosaunee Confederacy is considered one the oldest contantily functioning democracy in

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the world by many political historians (Cep 2). It is amazing that even though the founding

fathers were influenced by this Native American group they ignored a vital part of their

society… women. Like their Native counterparts, Mexican and Puerto Rican women were not

able to legally vote until 1935. It took another 20 plus years before Chinese American women

could vote freely in 1948. History glosses over the 19th Amendment like it is a shiny “get out of

jail free” card in the U.S. game of politics for all women.

When evaluating who has the right to vote in this country it is vital to also understand

who cannot. It is important to know that “focusing too much on the 1920 milestone downplays

the political clout that enfranchised women already exercised as well as tends to overshadow

women’s earlier roles as community builders, organization founders and influence wielders”

(Ware 4). Women were making moves on the state level to make changes on social justice issues

such as child labor laws, education, and prohibition. In terms of the story of suffrage and

women’s involvement in politics, history tends to boil it down to the 19th Amendment but it’s

much more than that – they were teachers, speakers, and leaders.

Valerie Pope Burns wrote in article called Will Alabama Women Vote?:The Women’s

Suffrage Movement in Alabama from 1890-1920. The piece of writing gives a real look into the

efforts women were putting forth to win the vote at a state level. Burns gives a rundown of local

Alabamian women who pushed for the growth of the suffragist movement in Selma and

Birmingham. Many women were led to the Suffragist movement because of their involvement in

social justice. In Alabama women had been pushing for prohibition as early as 1884, “banning its

consumption was viewed as the most efficient way to clean up multiple areas of society [And]

Seeing the impact of alcohol consumption on workers and their families” (Burnes 33) led

Frances John Hobbs a local Alabama activist known for forming the Society of United Charities,
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to join the movement of women pushing for the vote. After the Alabama legislature refused to do

anything to enact prohibition in the state, she realized very clearly that nothing would be

accomplished without women being able to vote on these social reforms. Like so many women

who joined the suffragist movement she was led from charitable social reform groups into

joining suffrage groups to gain the vote.

Once the 19th Amendment was passed, it changed more than just the ability for women to

vote. The passage of the amendment leads to a growth in feminism, a better acceptance of gender

equality, and increased social expenditure. One study suggested that after women gained a

political voice child mortality dropped by 15% (Wong 2). Children on average were in school a

year longer than their predecessors, this was especially true for Black Southern kids. “’It appears

that one of the main benefits of suffrage may have been to help raise the bottom and middle of

the distribution of historically less-educated communities,’ the researchers write” (Wong 3). In

turn this led to those children’s income increase by 34% as adults leading to a better life for them

but also for their children’s children. Although the 19th Amendment was not meant to target

education, it did… leading to long lasting social reform.

Alabama was meant to be the flagship state for voting rights in the South, to +lead by

example and get other Southern states to legalize the vote for women. NAWSA was convinced,

“the gaining of the right to vote at the state level in Alabama would break the heart of the ‘Solid

South’ and driving surrounding states to authorize women the right to vote (Burnes 36).” And to

understand why NAWSA was so convinced Alabama was the breaking point of the South, one

needs to understand the place of White women in Southern society. White Southern women were

considered the “Queen of the Home” and many believed that their husband, brother, or son

would represent their view at the polls. Many Southern men were incredibly protective of their
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women, believing that their wives, daughters or sisters would be “dirtied” by involvement in

politics “instead of believing that women could clean up politics as they did the home, they felt

politics would degrade women (37).” This idea also relates back to the laws of Coverture and

their effect on women’s role in society. Women were constrained by society’s expectation of

them from what they said down to what they wore and how they did their hair.

Women’s suffrage has its roots in their fight for racial equality. We have come a long

way from the 1920’s but we are still far from reaching equal rights. Many women’s first contact

with any sort of social cause was joining abolitionist movements in the early 1800’s. These same

women took that knowledge and experiences and used those skills to battle for their own rights.

But minority women were left out of this victory of equality. This is the darker side of the

suffrage movement, a side that many do not acknowledge as much as recognizing the positive

side of educational reform and the beginnings of the feminist movement. Its unfortunate that

suffrage did not just end in 1920, when the 19th Amendment was passed. Gender equality and

racial equality are forever intertwined and are still widely debated current issues. The 19th was a

large action towards both objectives and gave equality a “firm constitutional foundation for

future progress” (Ware). But there is still much to be done in terms of equality for all.
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Works Cited

Burnes, Valerie Pope. “Will Alabama Women Vote?: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in

Alabama from 1890–1920.” Alabama Review, vol. 73, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 28–39.,

doi:10.1353/ala.2020.0011.

“Call for Suffrage at Seneca Falls.” History of U.S. Woman's Suffrage,

www.crusadeforthevote.org/seneca-falls-meeting.

Cep, Casey, et al. “The Imperfect, Unfinished Work of Women's Suffrage.” The New Yorker, 1

July 2019, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/the-imperfect-unfinished-work-of-

womens-suffrage.

Eastman, Max. “Is Woman Suffrage Important.” JSTOR, JSTOR, Jan. 1911,

www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25106847.pdf?refreqid=excelsior

%3Ac4636a94b14a5b470aa2709a3069d1a3.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Coverture.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia

Britannica, Inc., 8 Oct. 2007, www.britannica.com/topic/coverture.

Ware, Susan. “Leaving All to Younger Hands: Why the History of the Women's Suffragist

Movement Matters.” Brookings, Brookings, 7 May 2020,

www.brookings.edu/essay/leaving-all-to-younger-hands-why-the-history-of-the-womens-

suffrage-movement-matters/#:~:text=The%20campaign%20to%20win%20passage,time

%20increase%20in%20voters%20ever.
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Wong, Alia. “How Women's Suffrage Improved Education for a Whole Generation of Children.”

The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 29 Aug. 2018,

www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/08/womens-suffrage-educational-

improvement/568726/.