The woman suffrage movement was first seriously proposed in the United States
at Seneca Falls, NY, July 19, 1848, in a general declaration of the rights of
women prepared by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and several others.
The early leaders of the movement in the United States—Susan B. Anthony,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley Foster, Angelina
Grimké, Sarah Grimké, and others—were usually also advocates
of temperance and of the abolition of slavery. When, however, after the close
of the Civil War, the 15th amendment (1870) gave the franchise to newly emancipated
African American men, but not to the women who had helped win it for them, the
suffragists for the most part confined their efforts to the struggle for the
vote.
The National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, was formed in 1869 to agitate for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Another organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone,
was organized the same year to work through the state legislatures. In the 1870s,
disheartened by the response to the proposed Federal amendment, suffragists
also tried other approaches to winning the vote. These included using the courts
to challenge their exclusion from voting on the grounds that, as citizens, they
could not be deprived of their rights as protected by the Constitution. In 1872,
Susan B. Anthony attempted to vote, hoping to be arrested and to have the opportunity
to test this strategy in the courts. She was arrested and indicted for "knowingly,
wrongfully and unlawfully vot[ing] for a representative to the Congress of the
United States." Found guilty and fined, she insisted she would never pay
a dollar of it. Virginia Minor, a suffrage leader in St. Louis, succeeded in
getting the issue before the United States Supreme Court, but in 1875 the Court
ruled unanimously that citizenship did not automatically confer the right to
vote and that the issue of female enfranchisement should be decided within the
states.
These differing approaches—i.e., whether to seek a Federal amendment
or to work for state amendments—kept the woman suffrage movement divided
until 1890, when the two societies were united as the National American Woman
Suffrage Association. Later leaders included Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman
Catt. Several of the states and territories (with Wyoming first, in 1869) granted
suffrage to the women within their borders. By 1913, 12 states and territories
had granted voting rights to women, so the National Woman’s party, under
the leadership of Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and others, resolved to use the voting
power of the enfranchised women to force a suffrage resolution through Congress
and secure ratification from the state legislatures. In 1920 the 19th amendment to the Constitution granted nationwide suffrage to women.
Teaching Suggestion:
Provide students with a copy of the photograph, and lead a class discussion
about it using questions from the photograph analysis worksheet (it can
be printed from the Our Documents Teachers Sourcebook). Explain to
students that this photograph illustrates one kind of activity that participants
in the woman suffrage movement engaged in during the early years of the 20th
century. Remind students that although the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920, the suffrage movement began nearly a century earlier, and even today women have
yet to earn salaries equal to their male counterparts. Divide students into
groups of two or three, and assign each group a decade between 1840 and 2000.
Ask students to investigate what kinds of activities participants in the woman
suffrage movement or equal rights movement engaged in during their assigned
decade, and encourage them to draw a picture of it, labeling their drawing on
the back. Invite students to post their drawings around the classroom and ask
them to guess when each of the illustrated activities took place. Finally, lead
a class discussion about the methods and activities used in the woman suffrage
movement over the decades and their relationship to the 1st amendment to the Constitution.
