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How Women Gained the Right to Vote

Introduction

The Declaration of Independence stated that men were created equal, and despite its publication, it sowed a seed of the women’s suffrage interest group in the United States. The movement started in 1840 during a conference in London where two women, Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who had met for the first time, were denied participation because they were women. This is despite the fact that they were both delegates of the World Anti-Slavery Congress. This experience brought them close and inspired them to team up and work to guarantee equal rights for women. The movement was decades-long struggle for women to get the voting rights in the United States. It took reformers and activists almost 100 years to prevail in the fight and the journey was full of struggle. On more than one occasion, disagreements in strategy threatened to shut down the movement. On 18th August 1920, the 19th constitutional amendment was finally ratified. The amendment enfranchised African American women and declared that just like their male counterparts, they deserved equal responsibilities and rights of citizenship. As a result, for the first time, they had the right to vote. The purpose of this essay is to discuss how women gained the right to vote and the controversial compromises and actions surrounding their struggle. Specifically, this paper highlights the leaders, organizations, and events that contributed to the cause, including Seneca Falls Convection, Elizabeth Stanton, the arrest of Susan B. Anthony (1872), The National Woman Suffrage Association, the arrest of Susa Anthony, and the National Woman’s Party (NWP).

Elizabeth Stanton (1815-1902)

Elizabeth Stanton was a lecturer, author, and the main philosopher of the women’s suffrage and rights movement. Her main contribution to women’s rights is that she developed the agenda that guided women’s struggle in the 20th century. Born in Johnston, New York, in 1815, Stanton was born to prominent citizens, Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston. She went through formal education. Her father was a renowned state assemblyman and lawyer. Growing up, she acquired informal legal knowledge by talking to him and listening in on conversations he held with his guests and friends. She married Henry Stanton an abolitionist lecturer and eventually became an activist in the ant-slavery movement. It was during her honeymoon that she attended the first Anti-slavery conference where she met Lucretia Mott who just like herself, was angered by the segregation of women in the convections proceedings. They decided to work together, and eight years later, they convened the first women’s rights conference at Seneca Falls in New York. According to (Harper, 217) Stanton wrote the declaration of sentiments that builded on the Declaration of Independence by simply including the word “women” throughout the document. The document was crucial as it sought to make social and legal changes which would elevate the position of women in society. It also listed 18 grievances ranging from property, lack of control of wages, difficulty obtaining custody following divorce, and the right to vote. Moreover, Stanton gave examples of how men subjected women to oppression by denying them college education, keeping them from taking part in church affairs, making them dependent, asking them to obey rules made without their representation and compelling them to follow a different moral code than that of men. Additionally, Stanton wrote petitions and circulated them in New York calling upon the New York Congress to enact the New York Married Women’s Property Act.

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

Susan Anthony was a champion of labor rights, temperance abolition, and equal pay for equal work. She came to be known as one of the most vocal leaders during the suffrage movement for women. She was a lecturer, suffragist, speaker, and American writer who later served as the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA)’s president. Susan was born in Adams, Massachusetts, in 1820 to local cotton mill owners. In the 1840s, Anthony’s kin was actively drawn in in the rights against slavery, popularly known as the abolitionist faction. The family’s Rochester farm was a meeting point for abolitionists including Frederick Douglass, who were famed at the time. At this point, Anthony headed the girls’ sector in Canajoharie Academy. After a few years of holding the position, she made the decision to leave the academy in 1849 and devoted her time towards social problems. She actively took part in the temperance association that intended to completely stopping or limiting the sale and production of alcohol. She was motivated to advocate for women’s rights during the alcohol campaign. She was deprived of an opportunity to speak at the temperance convection because of her gender. At this point, she realized that women in leadership would never be recognized until they acquired the right to vote. She attended the anti-slavery temperance in 1851, where she crossed paths with Elizabeth Stanton and together they established an organization) known as the Women’s New York State Temperance Society in 1852 (Allen, 77). It did not take long for them to start advancing women’s rights. They also established the New York State Woman’s Rights Committee. Notably, Susan drafted petitions that pushed for women’s right to vote and own property. Anthony traveled widely, campaigning for women’s issues on their behalf. Anthony got a role as the agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1856 where she used up many years pushing the agenda until the start of the civil war.

Seneca Falls Convection

In 1848, a convection was held in Seneca Falls in New York to talk about the issues facing women’s rights at the time. Originally, the convection was called the Woman’s Rights Convection before being called Seneca Falls Convection. The convection advocated for the civil, religious, and social rights of women. A multitude of abolitionists’ activists attended the convection. The majority of them were women, but it also included men. The convection was organized by two reformers, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Stanton. The majority of the delegates who had attended the Convection concluded that just like their male counterparts, black women were autonomous beings deserving of their own opinionated identities. Stanton’s (34) declaration of sentiments provided by the delegates notes that “that all men and women are created equal, that their creator endows them with certain inalienable right, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This pointed to the fact that women should not be denied voting rights and all other rights they deserved. On that day, 11 resolutions were passed unanimously, all of which were meant to push for the privileges and rights of women in that era. The ninth resolution, which centered on women’s voting rights passed narrowly after Stanton’s insistence. The resolution made Seneca Falls victim to ridicule which made many people that backed women’s rights to withdraw support. Nonetheless, the Seneca Falls convection served as a foundation for the women’s suffrage movement that ended with the approval of the nineteenth constitutional amendment in 1920.

The National Woman Suffrage Association

It was the disagreement as to whether to support or reject the fifteenth amendment that gave black men the right to vote that caused a divide between the rights movement for women. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed in 1869 in New York with the aim of rejecting the fifteenth amendment. Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony developed it. NWSA prioritized securing women’s right to vote. Through reform proposals, the group stirred public debate on various social issues, including divorce and marriage. The association welcomed all women’s suffrage societies in the U.S. to become auxiliaries of the organization. The move worked in their favor, significantly increasing the association’s rank by the time it was reuniting with the American Woman Suffrage Association’s rank organization in 1890 (Waldman, 133). This is because AWSA supported the law at the time. NWSA proponents Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton believed that instead of supporting t. amendments, women’ lobbyist groups should push for the inclusion of women too.

The arrest of Susan B. Anthony

After dedicating more than fifty years to pushing the agenda of women’s suffrage, Susan Anthony was arrested on November 5th for voting in the 1872 presidential election in her hometown in New York. She voted for Republican Ulysses Grant, a presidential incumbent in the election. At that time, women had no right to vote. Anthony had stormed into a voter registration office in Rochester four days before the election and demanded to be listed as a voter. The election official said remarked that they could not list her name. She enquired on what grounds and was told that the New York’s constitution only allowed male citizens the right to vote. She eventually managed to persuade the officer and his two colleagues to accept her registration. Anthony and 14 other women cast their votes in the contested presidential election between Horace Greeley and Ulysses Grant on the material day. After two weeks, Susan Anthony was arrested, indicted and convicted for voting illegally. Ruiz (19) notes that Anthony was tried for two days, a trial she later tremed as “the greatest judicial outrage history has ever recorded.” She was given a fine of $100, which she declined to pay. She said, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.” She never paid the fine. This was over 40 years before the 19th amendment was ratified granting women in the United States the right to vote.

National Woman’s Party

Formerly the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage, The National Woman’ Party (NWP) dates to 1912. It was formed by two young Americans, Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, who were schooled on militant strategies in the suffrage movement in Britain. They were selected to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Congressional Committee where they brought new militancy in the campaign hence shifting attention away from voting rights at the state level to federal amendment. Although they founded the union in 1913, Burns and Paul remained in the Congressional committee up to December, where after two months, NAWSA cut links with the Congressional Union (Wagner, 181). NWP steadfast lobbying and militant tactics, not to mention the public’s support for detained suffragists, forced the-then president-Woodrow Wilson to support the suffrage endorsement of 1918. In 1919, Congress approved the measure and soon after NWP started pushing for state ratification. Tennessee ratified women’s suffrage as the 36th state shortly after, and in August 1920, the amendment was passed into law. After suffrage was attained, the NWP concentrated on passing amendments for equal rights. All through 20th century, the NWP remained at the forefront of pushing for women’s economic, social, and political equality.

Conclusion

The era of women’s suffrage was a period where women had limited access to social, political, and economic rights. The women’s suffrage movement was born in 1840 after Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Stanton who, despite being delegates, were denied participation at the World Anti-Slavery Congress at the Seneca Falls convection. Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony played a crucial role in the movement. They dedicated their years to pushing for women’s rights. Anthony was arrested and fined for voting illegally and Stanton wrote the declaration of sentiments that improved the ideologies of the Declaration of Independence.

Works Cited

Allen, Ann Taylor. “Woman Suffrage and Progressive Reform in Louisville, 1908–1920.” Ohio Valley History 20.1 (2020): 54-78.

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins. “We are all bound up together.” A brighter coming day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper reader (1990): 217-218.

Wagner, Sally Roesch. “A Declaration of Sentiment.” NWSA Journal 12.2 (2000): 181-181.

Waldman, Charlotte. “The National Woman Suffrage Association and Fringe Marriage Ideology

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. “throughout his 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), one of the founders of the mod-ern women’s movement, promulgated a distinctively feminist version of freethought. A signer of the famous 1848 Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls, New York, she promoted the cause of gender equal.” American Religion, American Politics: An Anthology (2017): 73.Suffragists: Navigating Public Relationships with Victoria Woodhull and Mormon Women.” (2019).

Ruiz Ulloa, Anne. “The origins of women’s rights movement in the United States: the Seneca Falls Convention.” (2020).