Educators and Students

Teaching With Documents:
Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment

Petition to Congress, December 1871

In the year following the ratification of the 15th amendment, a voting rights petition sent to the Senate and House of Representatives requested that suffrage rights be extended to women and that women be granted the privilege of being heard on the floor of Congress. It was signed by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other suffragists. Well known in the United States suffrage movement, Anthony and Stanton organized the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869.

The Document

Petition to Congress, December 1871

Record Group 46
Records of the U.S. Senate
National Archives and Records Administration

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