The Long Road for Women’s Suffrage

From the founding, Americans have struggled to define the guiding principle of American liberty succinctly stated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  The definitions of many of the words Jefferson used have been the subject of continuing and passionate debate ever since.  The Women’s Suffrage Movement developed into an essential part of the debate.  Today is the anniversary of the death of Susan B. Anthony which offers a milestone to review one of the longest lasting reform movements in American History.  The struggle for the basic right to vote took a multi-generational effort and political dexterity to accomplish.

In 1789 more than 90% of Americans lived on farms relying almost exclusively on agrarian pursuits for subsistence.  Political participation was still limited, even for white males.  Property requirements limited white male participation.  The British embargo during the War of 1812 began to change the economic landscape.  Cut off from European finished goods, the embryonic industrial sector in the Northeast continued growing throughout the Jacksonian Era.  Innovation created more efficient factories as its market of American settlers expanding westward grew.  By the 1830s, manufacturing began to replace property as the basis of wealth as more factories appeared and urban centers developed in the northeast.

Historian Ellen Carol DuBois noted a new social phenomenon, the development of a private and public sphere.  The family sphere encompassed rearing children, maintaining the household and other domestic duties.  Working outside the home and political participation became the hallmarks of the public sphere.  As the public sphere became more prominent, it remained solely a man’s domain.

At first women sought to elevate their domestic sphere as equal to the public sphere.  But as universal white male suffrage took hold in the 1830s, some women became frustrated being relegated to domestic duties.  The male dominated public sphere created a power imbalance.   The abolitionist movement in the north became an outlet.   Often associated with church activities, the anti-slavery movement fell into the domestic sphere.  Women could participate without challenging social mores.   Further, abolitionism was not popular at first and the movement accepted all the help it could get.

As the Abolitionist Movement gained steam women and some men recognized of the injustices of slavery also applied to women.  In many states, women could not own property once married, had limited inheritance rights, and suffered other legal disabilities like the right to vote.  They believed Jefferson’s standard should apply to them as well.  Early female abolitionists led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Quaker Lucretia Mott began pressing for women’s rights.  In 1848, they organized the Seneca Falls Convention to lay out a platform dominated by a call for suffrage.  Over two days, advocates gave speeches which was first forum devoted to women issues.  For many, it was their first opportunity to speak publicly.  Abagail Brown was candid: “we present ourselves here before you as an oppressed class, with trembling frames and faltering tongues and we do not expect to be able to speak to be heard as to be heard by all at first.”

Many of the early leaders lacked the confidence and experience to create a movement on their own.  Working as abolitionists provided a training ground to develop the arguments, organization skills and methods of advocacy.  The movement also created associations and friendships amongst likeminded women that would sustain them in later years.  By 1867-1868 they were ready to launch their own movement in a way they would not have been in 1848.

The Seneca Falls Convention led to other meetings and followers grew.  However, women’s suffrage took a backseat to the more pressing issue of ending slavery.  The end of the Civil War propelled abolitionists from the political fringe to prominence in the Republican dominated Congress.  The original goal of emancipation was not sufficient.  Abolitionists focus extended beyond passing the 13^th and 14^th Amendments (emancipation and citizenship for African Americans) to voting rights (15^th Amendment). Even passing the 13^th Amendment was not easy task and it took another 3 years to pass the 14^th Amendment.   Voting rights would be a tough political battle with no guarantee of success. 

In 1867, Kansas held a statewide referendum on voting rights for African-Americans and women.  Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone crisscrossed the state pressing for passage.  It failed.  Supporters of African American rights, already worried about gaining voting rights for men, worried that adding women’s suffrage would result in defeat.  The long alliance between abolitionists and suffragists ended in bitterness and recriminations.  Stanton and Anthony continued to press for the inclusion of women in the 15^th Amendment.  Other suffragists such as Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe wanted to work within the Republican Party working to achieve suffrage on a state-by-state basis.  Two rival suffragist movements formed in 1869, Stanton and Anthony’s National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) and Stone and Howe’s American Women’s Suffrage Association (AWSA).

Stanton and Anthony abandoned the Republicans and temporarily allied themselves with the Democrats but that failed.  Democrats were more interested in regaining power and resisting civil rights for African American men.  Stanton and Anthony then tried joining with the growing labor movement.  With more factories, came a larger female work force.  The alliance with women in the 19^th century workplace was not as natural as might be expected.  Working women had to contend with long hours and low wages.  Further, 70% of the 1.3 million women in the labor force worked in domestic trades for individual employers which made them difficult to organize.  Many of the suffragettes were affluent and did earn wages.  For blue collar women, voting rights were simply not a priority compared to immediate economic concerns.  The sides could never work out an accord.  For the time being, the suffragist movement remained dominated by middle class women.

Ultimately suffragists lost the fight for the inclusion of women’s right to vote in the 15^th Amendment.  With that, the nation’s focus shifted away from civil rights and the opponents of greater civil rights re-surged.  The end of Reconstruction brought about Jim Crow Laws and legalized racial segregation in the South and informal segregation in the North.  Women continued their struggle but lacked a cause to return to the national spotlight.  One answer came from within.

Stanton, Anthony and others had spoken out in favor of the Temperance Movement since the 1850s.  For these middle class activists, reform was always about more than just civil rights.  They sought a better society.  Often, alcohol abuse disrupted family life and resulted in domestic abuse.  Founded in 1874, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) grew in size under the administration of its second president Frances Willard.  Aligning with the Temperance Movement made the suffragists more diverse.  Adding more conservative women from the WCTU opened the door in 1890 for the NWSA and AWSA to re-merge into the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) with Stanton at the helm.

The 1880s and 1890s witnessed further growth in industry and therefore more women in the labor force.  Younger women began joining the Suffrage Movement who were more open to alliances that crossed economic lines.  Suffragists and blue collar women finally found common ground in the early 1900s pushing for better wages and working conditions combined with the right to vote as a means to elect representatives more sympathetic to their causes.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton died in 1902 and Susan B. Anthony followed in 1906.  Though they did not live to see the passage of the 19^th Amendment, they had achieved much.  Both played an important role in ending slavery.  They also achieved significant legal reforms including equal inheritance and property rights and more equality in legal proceedings such overturning the presumption that the husband as head of the family received custody of children.  They also spent decades building a movement and amassing skills of effective organization and advocacy.  Further, several states, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho, granted women the right to vote.  Within a decade, Washington, Arizona, Kansas, Montana, Nevada and Alaska Territory followed suit.

The newer generation of women added a new component.  Alice Paul spent several years working for women’s suffrage in England.  English women utilized a more confrontational approach.  Paul brought those tactics back to the US as World War I dawned.  She and Lucy Burns formed the Congressional Union staging marches and demonstrations that resulted in arrests and imprisonment.  In jail, some protesters went on hunger strikes and their jailers resorted to forced feedings.  In the long run, suffering imprisonment generated public sympathy.

The national movement took notice.  Anthony’s successor NAWSA President Carrie-Chapman Catt announced a call to action at the 1916 convention in Atlantic City to adopt more confrontational tactics.  By 1917, picketers appeared in front of the White House as “Sentinels of Liberty” carrying placards and demanding the vote.

When the US entered World War I, the Suffrage Movement stopped protesting and participated in the war effort.  The willingness to forestall their demands in favor of a national emergency gave suffragists additional credibility.  By 1920, the momentum was overwhelming and after decades of struggle, suffragists had garnered enough political power to enact the 19^th Amendment (right to vote) and the 18^th Amendment banning all sale of alcohol.  Temperance never really took hold and was repealed 13 years later, but the right to vote has remained part of the bedrock of American liberty ever since.

Early advocates were unprepared to mount a sustained and effective suffrage movement.  They needed time to learn the ropes of advocacy.  Political conflict within and without the suffrage movement also stymied progress.  However, the long struggle paid off.  The achievement of gaining the vote set the stage for a truly democratic nation for all Americans.

Sources:

1  DuBois, Ellen Carol, Feminism & Suffrage, The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848-1869.  Ithaca, NY and London, Cornell University Press, 1978, 1999, p. 25.

All images courtesy Wikipedia except the Official Program of Women’s Suffrage Procession courtesy of historynet.com (http://www.historynet.com/womens-suffrage-movement).

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