# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Guest Essayist: Cleta Mitchell

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

On Aug 26, 2020, we will celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote to America's women citizens. It is a short and simple statement of law:

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Amendment XIX, United States Constitution.

It may seem unusual in post-modern America of 2018 to think that there was ever a serious doubt or question about whether or not women should be granted the right to vote, but in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, extending voting rights to women was as contentious as the fight over citizenship and voting rights for former slave African-American men.

The struggle to achieve women's voting rights began at a conference in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848, when a group of men and women gathered to discuss the laws and legal status of women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became one of the national leaders of the women's suffrage movement in the last half of the 19th century, wrote the report of the Seneca Falls meeting, signed by the participants. She patterned it after the US Declaration of Independence, and it contained the first recorded demand for the right to vote for American women. Her compatriot in the women's suffrage movement was Susan B. Anthony, often referred to as the mother of woman suffrage in America. Indeed, the Nineteenth Amendment was referred to at the time of its ratification as the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment".

Following the Seneca Falls proclamation in 1848, there was a slow but steady growth of the national movement to pressure lawmakers in state legislatures, state constitutional conventions, and in Congress as well as newspaper publishers and the American public to support voting rights for women.

The movement gathered steam in earnest following the Civil War. There came to be a bitter struggle within the women's suffrage movement, as some believed that any voting rights conferred on former slaves should simultaneously extend to women. Others, including the leading abolitionists of the day, argued that it was the time of the "Negro Man" and that women's voting rights would have to follow in time. That debate split the women's suffrage movement into two groups, which remained divided until 1890, when the two rejoined their efforts, and worked together over the remaining thirty years until securing the passage and final ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

The struggle for women's voting rights went on for 72 years from that original meeting in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848. From the first (unsuccessful) state referendum on women's suffrage in Kansas in 1865, the womens' suffrage movement engaged in 480 petitions and lobbying drives in state legislatures, 277 campaigns at state party conventions to get woman suffrage endorsed by the state parties, and 56 separate state referendum campaigns to persuade male voters to enact women's suffrage.

In addition, the suffragists targeted nineteen sessions of Congress in their quest to get Congress to approve a federal woman's suffrage amendment and send it to the states for ratification.

Of all the state efforts, the suffrage movement in New York was perhaps the most disappointing but two years later, it may have been the most significant.

In 1915, the male voters in New York defeated the woman's suffrage proposal but in 1917, that same referendum was approved by the most populous state in the country, and that victory made politicians take notice, including President Woodrow Wilson. Never an ardent supporter of woman suffrage, President Wilson nonetheless made the political calculation that support for a federal suffrage amendment would be a politically smart decision and, in 1918, announced his support for a federal constitutional amendment to grant women voting rights.

By the time Congress finally passed the Nineteenth Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification in 1919, all but a handful of states had enacted some form of woman's suffrage, either for all purposes or for certain elections such as in school board or other local elections, or solely in presidential elections. Many western states had come into the Union in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries with woman suffrage as part of their state constitutions and Jeannette Rankin from Wyoming was elected to Congress in 1916, the first woman ever to serve in the United States Congress.

Thirty six states were needed for ratification of the Susan B Anthony Amendment. By August 1920, thirty five states had approved the ratifying resolution and after some surprising defeats in Delaware and Maryland, the last best hope for ratification rested in Tennessee.

The battle could not have been more vicious or intense. And in the end, despite all the arguments and political shenanigans, the Tennessee legislature passed the ratification resolution on August 18, 1920. It was enrolled by the Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby on August 26, 1920 - who announced at 8 am that morning that the struggle for women's suffrage was finally over.

The Nineteenth Amendment was the law of the land.

One hundred and thirty years after ratification of the United States Constitution, women were, at long last, granted full citizenship and voting rights in America. The Nineteenth Amendment is a piece of the struggle for freedom that had eluded half of America's population for more than a century.
Cleta Mitchell is a partner in the Washington, DC office of Foley & Lardner, LLP, where she practices election and political law. Click Here Click Here for the previous essay. Click Here for the next essay. Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress. to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day at 12:30 pm Eastern!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Great Debates - The Nineteenth Amendment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Guest Essayist: Cleta Mitchell LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD: On Aug 26, 2020, we will celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote to America's women citizens.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Susan B. Anthony was a pioneer in the women's suffrage movement in the United States and president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which she founded with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Anthony's work helped pave the way for the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote. The amendment was known as the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment" to honor her work on behalf of women's rights, and on July 2, 1979, she became the first woman to be featured on a circulating coin from the U.S. mint.
WATCH: Susan B. Anthony: Rebel for the Cause on HISTORY Vault
Early Life and Abolitionist Movement

Born Susan Brownell Anthony on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Daniel Anthony, a cotton mill owner, and his wife, Lucy Read Anthony. She grew up in a politically active family who, as part of the abolitionist movement, worked to end slavery.

When they moved to Rochester, New York, in 1845, the Anthony's social circle included anti-slavery activist Frederick Douglass, who would later join Anthony in the fight for women's rights, and journalist William Lloyd Garrison. The Anthonys were also part of the temperance movement, which attempted to cease the production and sale of alcohol in the United States.

When Susan B. Anthony was denied a chance to speak at a temperance convention because of her gender, she was inspired to shift her focus to the fight for women's rights. She realized that no one would take women in politics seriously unless they had the right to vote, writing: "There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers."
WATCH: Yohuru Williams on Susan B. Anthony and the Long Push for Women's Suffrage
National Woman Suffrage Association

Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 alongside activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Around this time, the two created and produced The Revolution, a weekly publication that lobbied for women's rights under the American Equal Rights Association (AERA). Its masthead read: "Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less."

Later the pair edited three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage together alongside activist Matilda Joslyn Gage.

Anthony was tireless in her efforts, giving speeches around the country to convince others to support a woman's right to vote. She even took matters into her own hands in 1872 when she voted in the presidential election illegally. Anthony was arrested and tried unsuccessfully to fight the charges. She ended up being fined $100-a fine she never paid.
READ MORE: Early Women's Rights Activists Wanted Much More than Suffrage
Susan B. Anthony Death and Dollar

Susan B. Anthony never married, and devoted her life to the cause of women's equality. She once said she wished "to live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women." When she died on March 13, 1906, at the age of 86 from heart failure and pneumonia, women still did not have the right to vote.

It wasn't until 1920-14 years after her death-that the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving all adult women the right to vote was passed, largely spearheaded by Anthony's successor as president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, Carrie Chapman Catt.

The 19th Amendment was nicknamed the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment" in Anthony's honor. In recognition of her dedication and hard work, the U.S. Treasury Department put Anthony's portrait on one-dollar coins in 1979, making her the first woman to be so honored. She is buried in Rochester, New York, at Mount Hope Cemetery.

Quotes
"I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand." "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." "Independence is happiness." "Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry." "No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent." READ MORE: Women's History Milestones
Sources

Susan B. Anthony: Biography.com
Susan B. Anthony Family: SusanBAnthonyFamily.com.
Susan B. Anthony Dollar. USMint.gov.
Susan B. Anthony Supports Women's Suffrage Amendment. AmericasLibrary.gov.
Susan B. Anthony. NPS.gov.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Susan B. Anthony: Dollar, Quotes & Suffrage - HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Susan B. Anthony, a leader in the U.S. women's suffrage movement and president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, is honored by a one dollar coin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Champion of temperance, abolition, the rights of labor, and equal pay for equal work, Susan Brownell Anthony became one of the most visible leaders of the women's suffrage movement. Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she traveled around the country delivering speeches in favor of women's suffrage.

Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father, Daniel, was a farmer and later a cotton mill owner and manager and was raised as a Quaker. Her mother, Lucy, came from a family that fought in the American Revolution and served in the Massachusetts state government. From an early age, Anthony was inspired by the Quaker belief that everyone was equal under God. That idea guided her throughout her life. She had seven brothers and sisters, many of whom became activists for justice and emancipation of slaves.

After many years of teaching, Anthony returned to her family who had moved to New York State. There she met William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, who were friends of her father. Listening to them moved Susan to want to do more to help end slavery. She became an abolition activist, even though most people thought it was improper for women to give speeches in public. Anthony made many passionate speeches against slavery.

In 1848, a group of women held a convention at Seneca Falls , New York. It was the first Women's Rights Convention in the United States and began the Suffrage movement. Her mother and sister attended the convention but Anthony did not. In 1851, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two women became good friends and worked together for over 50 years fighting for women's rights. They traveled the country and Anthony gave speeches demanding that women be given the right to vote. At times, she risked being arrested for sharing her ideas in public.

Anthony was good at strategy. Her discipline, energy, and ability to organize made her a strong and successful leader. Anthony and Stanton co-founded the American Equal Rights Association. In 1868 they became editors of the Association's newspaper, The Revolution, which helped to spread the ideas of equality and rights for women. Anthony began to lecture to raise money for publishing the newspaper and to support the suffrage movement. She became famous throughout the county. Many people admired her, yet others hated her ideas.

When Congress passed the which give voting rights to African American men, Anthony and Stanton were angry and opposed the legislation because it did not include the right to vote for women. Their belief led them to split from other suffragists. They thought the amendments should also have given women the right to vote. They formed the National Woman Suffrage Association , to push for a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote.

In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting. She was tried and fined $100 for her crime. This made many people angry and brought national attention to the suffrage movement. In 1876, she led a protest at the 1876 Centennial of our nation's independence. She gave a speech-"Declaration of Rights"-written by Stanton and another suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage.

"Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less."

Anthony spent her life working for women's rights. In 1888, she helped to merge the two largest suffrage associations into one, the National American Women's Suffrage Association. She led the group until 1900. She traveled around the country giving speeches, gathering thousands of signatures on petitions, and lobbying Congress every year for women. Anthony died in 1906, 14 years before women were given the right to vote with the passage of the in 1920.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Champion of temperance, abolition, the rights of labor, and equal pay for equal work, Susan Brownell Anthony became one of the most visible leaders of the women's suffrage movement. Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she traveled around the country delive

# data[].attributes.body
This talks about how she voted for the first time and how she got convicted and charged for voting. It also talks about 1906 when her illness was getting too much and she said the women's suffrage convention that “failure is impossible.” Her and other activists Staton wrote newspapers and the motto was “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Back to search results
Susan B. Anthony taught school in New Rochelle and Canajoharie, New York, and discovered that male teachers were paid several times her salary. She devoted her first reform efforts to anti-slavery and to temperance, the campaign to curb alcohol. But when she rose to speak in a temperance convention, she was told, "The sisters were not invited here to speak!" Anthony promptly enlisted in the cause of women's rights.

In a lifelong partnership with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony's organizational skill and selfless dedication built the women's rights movement. The ballot, she became increasingly to believe, was the necessary foundation for all other advances. When she and Stanton published a newspaper, they called it The Revolution. Its motto was "Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less." In order to press a test case of her belief that women, as citizens, could not be denied the ballot, Anthony voted. She was tried, convicted and fined for voting illegally.

For over thirty years she traveled the country almost ceaselessly working for women's rights. In 1906, her health failing, Anthony addressed her last women's suffrage convention. Although she sensed that the cause would not be won in her lifetime, she looked out across the assembled women and told them, "Failure is impossible."

Year Honored: 1973

Birth: 1820 - 1906

Born In: Massachusetts

Achievements: Humanities

Educated In: New York, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Back to search results

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Anthony, Susan B. - National Women's Hall of Fame

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Susan B. Anthony taught school in New Rochelle and Canajoharie, New York, and discovered that male teachers were paid several times her salary. She devoted her first reform efforts to anti-slavery and to temperance, the campaign to curb alcohol. But when she rose to speak in a temperance convention, she was told, "The sisters were...

# data[].attributes.body
It says that 14 years later after her sad death on March 13th that is when the 19th amendment which gave all adult women was passed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The National Archives is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment with the exhibit Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote, which runs in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery of…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
Susan B. Anthony: Women’s Right to Vote

# data[].attributes.body
This gives us a deeper understanding of the relationship of Anthony and Stanton which was her partner in crime. As they both started the Revolution newspapers together.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

# data[].attributes.body
Political cartoon- it was supposed to be a tease to the two women making it seem as they were just as important as George Washington but in fact George Washington is known as the "forefather" and so the two women were known as the "foremothers"

# data[].attributes.body
Women suffrage international gathering

# data[].attributes.body
The ERA amendment is a law that has been passed for the rights of all. Not only did the 19th amendment give women their rights to vote but it also paved the way to create other amendments like the ERA amendment. The equal rights amendment is an amendment that invalidates any law that discriminates against women.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Melissa Harris-Perry: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and these are the words of the equal rights amendment, which became the 28th amendment to the US constitution late last week. Or did it? The ERA has been on a nearly 100-year journey. First introduced in 1923 for five decades at ping pong through a reluctant Congress and finally passed out of both House and Senate in March, 1972. Ready for ratification by the states, but carrying an arbitrary 7-year deadline to secure ratification of three-quarters of them.

Supporters and opponents battled for another four decades, granting and rescinding extensions, reintroducing and defeating the amendments, pushing for the final necessary state votes. Then on January 27th, 2020 Virginia became the 38th state to vote for ratification. Section III of the amendment itself states that it takes effect 2 years after its ratification. By that standard, the ERA became law on Friday. Or did it? Representative Carolyn Maloney represents New York's 12th congressional district and chairs the Oversight and Reform Committee. Representative Maloney, thank you for being here.

Carolyn Maloney: Well thank you for having me.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry: How many amendments does the constitution now have?

Carolyn Maloney: Well, if you follow the constitution, there are 28 amendments because we have met all of the constitutional requirements. Article 5 of the constitution has two requirements. First that two-thirds of the Congress vote and pass the equal rights amendment and send it to the states for ratification, which happened in the '70s. Then that 38 states ratify it. That's what Article 5 says. We have met those two requirements as set out in the constitution. It should be ratified and a technicality should not stand in the way. What happened is that the archivist has refused to publish it in the federal register.

Even though he wrote me a letter in October 25th that I'm going to send to you where he talked about the minute that 38 states ratify it, that he would certify it. We passed a law, a statute that called upon the archivist to do a secretarial duty, which is to publish it in the Federal Register. He refused to do it when the last three states ratified it. He wrote the Department of Justice, the very political Trump Department of Justice, and asked them, ''What should I do?'' Well, what do you think they're going to say?

Their whole idea was to keep women down and back. This element of the country's trying to take away or chip away. Not even chip away at a woman's right to choose, bulldoze away the rights of women and they of course wrote back that he was not to ratify it. He has refused to do it based on an erroneous interpretation of the office of legal counsel. That's where we are.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's talk about this. What seems like a very odd procedural blockage here. How is it that one person, again, after 100 years of movement of 38 states of elected officials across multiple decades? I'm moving along this amendment. How is it that the archivist is the one with the power to do this?

Carolyn Maloney: Well, I contend that he doesn't have the power to do it. In fact, the last three states to ratify the ERA have sued the archivists to do its duty, to recognize the ratification. This litigation is now pending in the DC circuit court. DOJ's response of brief is due coming up soon in March. It's my hope that the current DOJ will not take the same position as the Trump-era erroneous era of the DOJ in opposing final ratification of the ERA. Now, a very important development happened when the president came out and very strongly expressed his deep support for the equal rights amendment and we're very grateful.

He also said it was up to the courts and up to Congress. The constitution and the laws and statutes give it totally to Congress and to the states to ratify it. If the Executive Branch has no role in the amending process, which he said, if they have no role in the amending process, they should not interfere with the archivists moving forward. The Executive Branch has interfered in the case of the Trump administration, where they then told him not to move forward and filed a long brief stating why they thought he should not move forward. Yet, the president now is saying that the president has no role in it. I would suggest that the memo be removed from the archivist and that he should move forward and certify the equal rights amendment.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What is the next step if in this call out to the DOJ the new Administration's Department of Justice removes that blockage? Is that the moment when the archivist really must enter this into the record?

Carolyn Maloney: He would. The office of Legal Counsel must still withdraw the erroneous Trump era memo and proceed with publishing the amendment. Congress can help by passing a bipartisan joint resolution, which I introduced in Congress with Jackie Speier last week to confirm the validity of all 38 ratifications and confirm beyond the shadow of doubt that the ERA is now in the law of the land, but it's not needed. That's just a confirmation. Deadlines, however, are not included. They are not included in any way in the Article 5 of the US constitution and therefore are not binding.

We must pass H.R. 17, which we passed in the House, in the Senate in order to leave no doubt about the validity of the ERA. As I said on Friday, we introduced a new resolution. We have over 153 co-sponsors, including Speaker Pelosi, which shows her profound commitment to the ERA. This resolution affirms the ERA as the 28th Amendment. This is the same thing that was done with the most recent amendment, the Madison Amendment, which was ratified over 200 years after it first passed in Congress. It is now the 27th Amendment and no one disputes that it's part of the constitution.

I would just have to say that gender equality is an American value and it should be in our foremost important foundational document. When it is solidified in the constitution, people who suffer discrimination on the basis of sex will fare much better in the courts. Without the ERA in the constitution, many of our laws on equal pay, on protecting women from sexual violence, all kinds of laws are not being upheld by the court on technicalities that it's not part of the Commerce Clause or some silly thing, even though all of the information is there on our side.

We as members of Congress, if we pass the Equal Rights Amendment and when we pass it and have it ratified and recognized by the president and everybody else in the country, we will have a better hook in the constitution to pass stronger laws to protect women in all aspects.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Us Representative, Carolyn Maloney represents New York's 12th Congressional District. Representative Maloney, thank you so much for joining us.

Carolyn Maloney: Thank you so much.
[00:08:06] [END OF AUDIO] Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio's programming is the audio record. terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Is The Equal Rights Amendment Now Law? | The Takeaway | WNYC Studios

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Melissa Harris-Perry: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and these are the words of the equal rights amendment, which became the 28th amendment to the US constitution late last week.

# data[].attributes.body
Shows that women all around the world wanted that right to vote.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/the-fight-for-womens-suffrage#&gid=ci0260ccc2400026b3&pid=womens-suffrage-gettyimages-514872332

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Contents

1. Women's Rights Movement Begins

2. Seneca Falls Convention

3. Civil War and Civil Rights

4. The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage

5. Winning the Vote at Last

The women's suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Women's Rights Movement Begins

The campaign for women's suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and '30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had.

At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States- temperance leagues, religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti- slavery organizations-and in many of these, women played a prominent role.

Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the "Cult of True Womanhood": that is, the idea that the only "true" woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.

Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen of the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists-mostly women, but some men-gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women's rights. They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.

Most of the delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, "that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.
READ MORE: Women Who Fought for the Vote
Civil War and Civil Rights

During the 1850s, the women's rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution's protection to all citizens-and defines "citizens" as "male"; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees Black men the right to vote.

Some women's suffrage advocates believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women's votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African Americans.

In 1869, a new group called the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Others argued that it was unfair to endanger Black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.
READ MORE: Early Women's Rights Activists Wanted Much More than Suffrage
The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the organization's first president.

By then, the suffragists' approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were "created equal," the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men.

They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral "maternal commonwealth."

This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would "ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained."

Did you know? In 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed an amendment to the Constitution that prohibited all discrimination on the basis of sex. The so-called Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified.

READ MORE: Why the Fight Over the Equal Rights Amendment Has Lasted Nearly a Century
Winning the Vote at Last

Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.

Still, southern and eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a "Winning Plan" to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with special focus on those recalcitrant regions.

Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Woman's Party founded by Alice Paul focused on more radical, militant tactics-hunger strikes and White House pickets, for instance-aimed at winning dramatic publicity for their cause.

World War I slowed the suffragists' campaign but helped them advance their argument nonetheless: Women's work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men.

Finally, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. And on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The women's suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nwsa-organize

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The disagreement about whether or not to support the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted African American men the right to vote, led to a division in the women's rights movement. In 1869, activists established two competing national organizations focused on winning woman suffrage. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) opposed the Fifteenth Amendment, while the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) supported the new law.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the NWSA first. The pair believed that instead of supporting the Fifteenth Amendment as it was, women's rights activists should fight for women to be included as well. They started the NWSA to lead this effort.

Stanton and Anthony established the NWSA's headquarters in New York City. They started a newspaper, The Revolution, as the mouthpiece of their women-led organization. The Revolution 's motto was: "Justice, not Favors.-Men, their Rights and Nothing More; Women, their Rights and Nothing Less." Their paper covered topics including a woman's right to suffrage, education, and divorce. The NWSA was more radical and controversial than the competing American Woman Suffrage Association, which focused only on the vote. The NWSA wanted a constitutional amendment to secure the vote for women, but it also supported a variety of reforms that aimed to make women equal members of society.

By Allison Lange, Ph.D.
Fall 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
National Woman Suffrage Association - History of U.S. Woman's Suffrage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The disagreement about whether or not to support the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted African American men the right to vote, led to a division in the women's rights movement. In 1869, activists established two competing national organizations focused on winning woman suffrage.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/the-fight-for-womens-suffrage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Women's Rights Movement Begins

The campaign for women's suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and '30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had.

At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States- temperance leagues, religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti- slavery organizations-and in many of these, women played a prominent role.

Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the "Cult of True Womanhood": that is, the idea that the only "true" woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.

Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen of the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists-mostly women, but some men-gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women's rights. They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.

Most of the delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, "that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.

Civil Rights and Women's Rights During the Civil War

During the 1850s, the women's rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution's protection to all citizens-and defines "citizens" as "male"; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees Black men the right to vote.

Some women's suffrage advocates believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women's votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African Americans.

In 1869, a new group called the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Others argued that it was unfair to endanger Black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.

Gallery: The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the organization's first president.

By then, the suffragists' approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were "created equal," the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men.

They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral "maternal commonwealth."

This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would "ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained."

Did you know? In 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed an amendment to the Constitution that prohibited all discrimination on the basis of sex. The so-called Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified.

Winning the Vote at Last

Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.

Still, southern and eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a "Winning Plan" to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with a special focus on those recalcitrant regions.

Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Woman's Party founded by Alice Paul focused on more radical, militant tactics-hunger strikes and White House pickets, for instance-aimed at winning dramatic publicity for their cause.

World War I slowed the suffragists' campaign but helped them advance their argument nonetheless: Women's work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men.

Finally, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. And on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Women's Suffrage - The U.S. Movement, Leaders & 19th Amendment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The women's suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Misrepresenting Susan B. Anthony on Abortion – National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Misrepresenting Susan B. Anthony on Abortion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
“Fine Dignity, Picturesque Beauty, and Serious Purpose”:: The Reorientation of Suffrage Media in the Twentieth Century

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
“Fine Dignity, Picturesque Beauty, and Serious Purpose”:: The Revolution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To understand what made the woman’s suffrage campaigns of the twentieth century so distinctly approachable, the radical nature of the nineteenth century campaigns must be examined. An organized woman’s rights movement emerged out of the equally marginal ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 1850 the first national convention of the women's rights movement is held in Worcester, Massachusetts, by Lucy Stone and a group of prominent Eastern suffragists. Another convention, held in Syracuse, New York, in 1852, is the first joint venture between Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) is formed with the aim of securing the ballot for women through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Anthony and Stanton lead the organization. Stone helps establish another organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), with the aim of securing woman suffrage by obtaining amendments to the constitutions of the various states.

In Rochester, New York, Anthony casts a vote in the U.S. presidential election. Police arrest her. A court convicts her and fines her, but she refuses to pay the fine. She insists, "There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth."

Congress considers amending the U.S. Constitution so that women can vote. The bill fails overwhelmingly.

The NWSA and the AWSA unite under the name National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

Congress again considers a women's suffrage bill. This one also fails.

The United States enters World War I in 1917. The war, and the major role that women played in it in various capacities, breaks down most of the remaining opposition to women's suffrage in the United States. By 1918 both major political parties are committed to women's suffrage. A women's suffrage amendment is carried by the necessary two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate in January 1918 and June 1919, respectively. Vigorous campaigns follow to secure ratification of the amendment by two-thirds of the state legislatures.

Tennessee becomes the 36th state to formally approve the women's suffrage amendment. This means the amendment can become federal law.

The Nineteenth Amendment is formally proclaimed as part of the U.S. Constitution. Women are enfranchised on an equal basis with men. Following the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, Carrie Chapman Catt reorganizes the two million-strong NAWSA into the League of Women Voters. This organization will continue to work for progressive legislation on a national and local level.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Women's Suffrage in the United States Timeline

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Timeline showing how the push for equal voting rights for women originated and grew in the United States and how the movement eventually came to fruition with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920) to the U.S. Constitution, which ensured that American women are enfranchised on an equal basis with men.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.biography.com/activist/susan-b-anthony

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With Susan B. Anthony as enthusiastic proprietor and business manager, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury as dedicated editors, and the controversial George Francis Train as initial financier, began publication on January 8, 1868. In the first issue of the New York paper, the editors explained: "[E]nfranchisement of woman is one of the leading ideas that calls this journal into existence.... [W]e think a fitting name for a paper that will advocate so radical a reform as this involves in our political, religious and social world." The first masthead read: "Principle, not policy; Justice, not favors," which was later amended to include: "The True Republic-Men, their rights and nothing more; Women, their rights and nothing less." The paper opposed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, and called for an "educated suffrage irrespective of sex and color," along with practical education for girls, more occupations opened to women, equal pay to women and men for equal work, and even more liberal divorce laws. Upon Anthony and Stanton's founding of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, The Revolution became a strong voice for the organized woman suffrage movement.

Within two years, however, the future of The Revolution was a serious concern for Anthony. Financial support from George Francis Train had ended in the spring of 1869, and Lucy Stone had begun publication of a rival paper, The Woman's Journal, in January of 1870. Anthony had purchased expensive, high-quality equipment, paid the staff a good wage, and refused to accept lucrative advertising for what she considered immoral alcohol and morphine-laden patent medicines. On May 26, 1870, Anthony and Stanton produced their last issue of The Revolution and announced a plan to create a joint stock company to finance the paper. The debt-ridden newspaper was ultimately sold to Laura J. Curtis Bullard, and Anthony assumed The Revolution's $10,000 debt, which she satisfied in 1876, after six years of steady lecturing across the country. Anthony's lecture tour of Oregon, Washington Territory and British Columbia, in the fall of 1871, was part of her effort to pay that debt.

Reorganized under Bullard, The Revolution became a literary and society periodical. The paper continued until February of 1872, when it ceased publication and was absorbed by the New York Christian Enquirer.
by Jean M. Ward
Source:

The Revolution, 1868-1872. Digitized, Watzek Library, Lewis & Clark College. Digitized from The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (microform). See Watzek microfilm C-1012, Series 1, Reels 1-3, Record #b1275522.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Susan B. Anthony's Suffrage Paper: The Revolution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With Susan B. Anthony as enthusiastic proprietor and business manager, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury as dedicated editors, and the controversial George Francis Train as initial financier, began publication on January 8, 1868. In the first issue of the New York paper, the editors explained: "[E]nfranchisement of woman is one of the leading ideas that calls this journal into existence....