The Women's Rights Movement, 1848-1920   The beginning of the fight for women's suffrage in the United States, which predates Jeannette Rankin's entry into Congress by nearly 70 years, grew out of a larger women's rights movement

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The Women's Rights Movement, 1848-1920

 

The beginning of the fight for women's suffrage in the United States, which predates

Jeannette Rankin's entry into Congress by nearly 70 years, grew out of a larger

women's rights movement. That reform effort evolved during the 19th century, initially

emphasizing a broad spectrum of goals before focusing solely on securing the franchise

for women. Women's suffrage leaders, moreover, often disagreed about the tactics for

and the emphasis (federal versus state) of their reform efforts. Ultimately, the suffrage

the movement provided political training for some of the early women pioneers in Congress,

but its internal divisions foreshadowed the persistent disagreements among women in

Congress and among women's rights activists after the passage of the 19th

Amendment.

The first gathering devoted to women's rights in the United States was held July 19-20,

1848, in Seneca Falls, New York. The principal organizers of the Seneca Falls

Convention was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a mother of four from upstate New York, and

the Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott. About 100 people attended the convention;

two-thirds were women. Stanton drafted a "Declaration of Sentiments, Grievances, and

Resolutions," that echoed the preamble of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold

these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." Among the

13 resolutions set forth in Stanton's "Declaration" was the goal of achieving the "sacred

right of franchise." The sometimes fractious suffrage movement that grew out of the

Seneca Falls meeting proceeded in successive waves. Initially, women reformers

addressed social and institutional barriers that limited women's rights; including family

responsibilities, a lack of educational and economic opportunities, and the absence of a

voice in political debates. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a Massachusetts teacher, met

in 1850 and forged a lifetime alliance as women's rights activists. For much of the 1850s

they agitated against the denial of basic economic freedoms to women. Later, they

unsuccessfully lobbied Congress to include women in the provisions of the 14th and

15th Amendments (extending citizenship rights and granting voting rights to freedmen,

respectively).

In the wake of the Civil War, however, reformers sought to avoid marginalization as

"social issues" zealots by focusing their message exclusively on the right to vote. In

1869 two distinct factions of the suffrage movement emerged. Stanton and Anthony

created the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which directed its efforts

toward changing federal law and opposed the 15th Amendment because it excluded

women. Lucy Stone, a one-time Massachusetts antislavery advocate and a prominent

lobbyist for women's rights, formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).

Leaders of the AWSA rejected the NWSA's agenda as being racially divisive and

organized with the aim to continue a national reform effort at the state level. Although

California Senator Aaron Sargent introduced in Congress a women's suffrage

amendment in 1878, the overall campaign stalled. Eventually, the NWSA also shifted its

efforts to the individual states where reformers hoped to start a ripple effect to win

voting rights at the federal level.

During the 1880s, the two wings of the women's rights movement struggled to maintain

momentum. The AWSA was better funded and the larger of the two groups, but it had

only a regional reach. The NWSA, which was based in New York, relied on its statewide

network but also drew recruits from around the nation, largely on the basis of the

extensive speaking circuit of Stanton and Anthony. Neither group attracted broad

support from women or persuaded male politicians or voters to adopt its cause. Susan

B. Anthony and Ida H. Harper co-wrote, "In the indifference, the inertia, the apathy of

women, lies the greatest obstacle to their enfranchisement." Historian Nancy Woloch

described early suffragists' efforts as "a crusade in political education by women and for

women, and for most of its existence, a crusade in search of a constituency." The

turning point came in the late 1880s and early 1890s when the nation experienced a

surge of volunteerism among middle-class women—activists in progressive causes,

members of women's clubs and professional societies, temperance advocates, and

participants in local civic and charity organizations. The determination of these women

to expand their sphere of activities further outside the home helped legitimize the

suffrage movement and provided new momentum for the NWSA and the AWSA. By

1890, seeking to capitalize on their newfound "constituency," the two groups united to

form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Led initially by

Stanton and then by Anthony, the NAWSA began to draw on the support of women

activists in organizations as diverse as the Women's Trade Union League, the Woman's

Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and the National Consumers League.

For the next two decades, the NAWSA worked as a nonpartisan organization focused

on gaining the vote in states, though managerial problems and a lack of coordination

initially limited its success. The first state to grant women complete voting rights was

Wyoming in 1869. Three other western states—Colorado (1893), Utah (1896), and

Idaho (1896)—followed shortly after NAWSA was founded. But prior to 1910, only these

four states allowed women to vote.

Between 1910 and 1914, the NAWSA intensified its lobbying efforts and additional

states extended the franchise to women: Washington, California, Arizona, Kansas, and

Oregon. In Illinois, future Congresswoman Ruth Hanna McCormick helped lead the fight

for suffrage as a lobbyist in Springfield, when the state legislature granted women the

right to vote in 1913; this marked the first such victory for women in a state east of the

Mississippi River. A year later, Montana granted women the right to vote, thanks in part

to the efforts of another future Congresswoman, Jeannette Rankin. Despite the new

momentum, however, some reformers were impatient with the pace of change. In 1913,

Alice Paul, a young Quaker activist who had experience in the English suffrage

movement, formed the rival Congressional Union (later named the National Woman's

Party). Paul's group freely adopted the more militant tactics of its English counterparts,

picketing and conducting mass rallies and marches to raise public awareness and

support. Embracing a more confrontational style, Paul drew a younger generation of

women to her movement, helped resuscitate the push for a federal equal rights

amendment, and relentlessly attacked the Democratic administration of President

Woodrow Wilson for obstructing the extension of the vote to women.

In 1915, Carrie Chapman Catt, a veteran suffragist since the mid1880s and a former

president of the NAWSA again secured the organization's top leadership post. Catt

proved an adept administrator and organizer, whose "Winning Plan" strategy called for

disciplined and relentless efforts to achieve state referenda on the vote, especially in

nonWestern states.8 Key victories—the first in the South and East—followed in 1917

when Arkansas and New York granted partial and full voting rights, respectively.

Beginning in 1917, President Wilson (a convert to the suffrage cause) urged Congress

to pass a voting rights amendment. Another crowning achievement also occurred that

the year when Montana's Jeannette Rankin (elected two years after her state enfranchised

women) was sworn into the 65th Congress on April 2, as the first woman to serve in the

national legislature.

Catt's steady strategy of securing voting rights state by state and Paul's vocal and

partisan protest campaign coincided with the Wilson administration's decision to

intervene in the First World War—a development that provided powerful rhetoric for and

a measure of expediency for granting the vote. The NAWSA publicly embraced the war

cause, despite the fact that many women suffragists, including Rankin, were pacifists.

Suffrage leaders suggested that the effort to "make the world safe for democracy" ought

to begin at home, by extending the franchise. Moreover, they insisted, the failure to

extend the vote to women might impede their participation in the war effort just when

they were most needed to play a greater role as workers and volunteers outside the

home. Responding to these overtures, the House of Representatives initially passed a

voting rights amendment on January 10, 1918, but the Senate did not follow suit before

the end of the 65th Congress. It was not until after the war, however, that the measure

finally cleared Congress with the House again voting its approval by a wide margin on

May 21, 1919, and the Senate concurring on June 14, 1919. A year later, on August 26,

1920, the 19th Amendment, providing full voting rights for women nationally, was ratified

when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it.

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