The merger of the two major national woman suffrage organizations ended the divisiveness that had long hampered the woman suffrage movement and created a body that would play a major role in the eventual ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
Many of the men and women who campaigned for women’s rights during the nineteenth century were also involved in other reformist causes. For example, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott attended the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, where women were denied the right to participate. Susan B. Anthony was first involved in the temperance
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During the decade leading up to the Civil War (1861-1865), feminists made modest gains. Limited protection of a married woman’s personal property was legislated in Ohio
As the Civil War approached, the antislavery movement came to dominate reform causes. Basing their argument on Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, feminist leaders asserted that both women and African Americans had natural rights. In general, they were in accord with Frederick Douglass, former slave and abolitionist leader, who argued that, if the U.S. Constitution
With the end of the Civil War in 1865 and proposals to add the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, feminists suffered a setback. While the Constitution previously had not defined citizens as male, the wording of this amendment did so. Thus, for the first time, women were explicitly denied rights that were guaranteed to men. Previously, they were denied voting rights by state laws alone. With the passage of the Fourteenth
In May, 1869, that strategy led to a split among suffragists. The New York group, which became the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), was led by Anthony and Stanton. Stanton was the first NWSA president and remained president for twenty-one years. To establish a short-lived newspaper, The Revolution, Anthony and Stanton accepted funds from George Francis Train, a radical Irish American; Train may have been a racist, but his support of organized labor alone would have made him unacceptable to most middle-class reformers. The newspaper’s association with Train offended many NWSA members.
Federal law never restricted the franchise to men, as it was up to the individual states to determine franchise rights. Long before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, some states did, in fact, permit women to vote. Here women are seeing voting in a Boston election in 1888.
When the Fifteenth Amendment
Meanwhile, a Boston-based group, led by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, concentrated on the vote. Founded by Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Isabella Beecher Hooker, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) allowed men full participation. The popular Protestant preacher Henry Ward Beecher
The division between the two organizations was hardened by the NWSA’s brief acceptance of radical orator Victoria Woodhull. Once a spiritualist healer, Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, had become the first female Wall Street
A charismatic orator, Woodhull was initially accepted by Stanton and some others in the NWSA. She spoke to large gatherings on such matters as political and civil service corruption, the unequal division of wealth, and the need to unite labor reformers and suffragists. Her most outspoken opponents were from the Boston faction and included two sisters of Henry Ward Beecher—Catharine Beecher
Through almost two decades, the division between the two associations remained. Both claimed memberships of about ten thousand during this period, while millions of women were drawn into other reformist or self-help movements, including cultural and garden clubs, the Women’s National Committee for Law Enforcement,
Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy Stone’s daughter, was among those who saw the need to unite the two suffrage factions into a single, more effective body. She and Rachel Foster Avery
Stanton resigned as president of the NAWSA in 1892. She was skeptical of the temperance affiliation and the piety and conservatism of the new group. After she left, she continued her radical attack on organized religion. Publication of her 1895 Woman’s Bible
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Baker, Jean H, ed. Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2002. Solid history of the woman suffrage movement. -
Barry, Kathleen. Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist. New York: New York University Press, 1988. Readable scholarly biography that emphasizes Anthony’s public life and covers the many issues and divisions of the suffrage movement. -
Blackwell, Alice Stone. Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman’s Rights. 2d ed. Norwood, Mass.: Alice Stone Blackwell Committee, 1930. Reprint. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001. Biography of Lucy Stone by her daughter, who presents an insightful and personal view of Stone’s personal and public life. -
Bordin, Ruth. Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981. Traces the complex relationship between suffrage and the then-more-numerous and powerful forces for temperance, a relationship that led the alcohol industry and drinkers to oppose suffrage. -
Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975. First published in 1959 and extensively revised in 1975, this remains the best basic survey of women’s rights issues from colonial times until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. -
Griffith, Elisabeth. In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. The first fully scholarly study of Stanton and her leadership in the women’s rights movement. -
Gurko, Miriam. The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the Women’s Rights Movement. New York: Macmillan, 1974. Traces major figures of the women’s movement from 1848 through the formation of the NAWSA in 1890. -
Kern, Kathi. Mrs. Stanton’s Bible. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001. Examination of Stanton’s nonsexist Women’s Bible, published in 1895. Kern argues that Stanton’s biblical commentary alienated her from less radical members of the women’s movement and may have delayed the achievement of woman suffrage. -
McFadden, Margaret, ed. Women’s Issues. 3 vols. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 1997. Comprehensive reference work with numerous articles on woman suffrage, women’s rights organizations, individual leaders, and many related issues. -
Sherr, Lynn. Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words. New York: Times Books, 1995. Collection of excerpts from Anthony’s speeches and letters, with commentaries on Anthony’s life and career. -
Underhill, Lois Beachy. The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull. Bridgehampton, N.Y.: Bridge Works, 1995. Balanced and scholarly study of the charismatic feminist leader whose scandalous life has caused her to be omitted from or patronized in most early histories.
Social Reform Movement
Seneca Falls Convention
Akron Woman’s Rights Convention
Suffragists Protest the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment Is Ratified
Woman Suffrage Associations Begin Forming
Wyoming Gives Women the Vote
Anthony Is Tried for Voting
Minor v. Happersett
Declaration of the Rights of Women
New Zealand Women Win Voting Rights
National Council of Women of Canada Is Founded
Susan B. Anthony; Henry Ward Beecher; Amelia Bloomer; Matilda Joslyn Gage; Julia Ward Howe; Lucretia Mott; Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Lucy Stone; Victoria Woodhull.