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watch this video to start our discussion of women's rights. After watching this video get into groups and discuss the video.

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Women's Suffrage: Crash Course US History #31

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take the time to go through this and memorize the vocabulary

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Start studying Women Rights. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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watch this video and then make a list of all the historical references it makes.

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Read letter 3 from Susan B. Anthony, then write a letter as if you were responding to her yourself in this time. Have it turned in by the end of the class period.

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[Note: Letters writers of the time commonly used a "--" where modern writers would use "."]

[ Letter 1 (SBA letter to her close friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton):
Ida Harper Collection, Huntington Library]
Click on the image to view it large
Rochester Nov 5th 1872

Dear Mrs StantonWell I have been & gone & done it!!--positively voted the Republican ticket--strait this a.m. at 7 Oclock--& swore my vote in at that--was registered on Friday & 15 other women followed suit in this ward--then on Sunday others some 20 or thirty other women tried to register, but all save two were refused--all my three sisters voted--Roda De Garmo too--Amy Post was rejected & she will immediately bring action for that--similar to the Washington action--& Hon Henry R. Selden will be our Counsel--he has read up the law & all of our arguments & is satisfied that we our right & ditto the Old Judge Selden--his elder brother. so we are in for a fine agitation in Rochester on the question--I hope the morning's telegrams will tell of many women all over the country trying to vote--It is splendid that without any concert of action so many should have moved here so impromptu-- ....Haven't we wedged ourselves into the work pretty fairly & fully--& now that the Repubs have taken our votes--for it is the Republican members of the Board--The Democratic paper is out against us strong & that scared the Dem's on the registry board--How I wish you were here to write up the funny things said & done--Rhoda De Garmo told them that she wouldn't swear of affirm--"but would tell the truth"--& they accepted that When the Democrat said my vote should not go in the box--one Republican said to the other--What do you say Marsh!--I say put it in!--So do I said Jones--and "we'll fight it out on this line if it takes all winter"....If only now--all the women suffrage women would work to this end of enforcing the existing constitution--supremacy of national law over state law--what strides we might make this winter--But I'm awful tired--for five days I have been on the constant run--but to splendid purpose--So all right--I hope you voted too.

Affectionately,
Susan B. Anthony

[ Letter 2 (after SBA read in the newspaper about Sarah Huntington's attempt to vote in Connecticut):
Woman Suffrage Association Collection, Connecticut State Library]

Rochester Nov 11th 1872.

My Dear Mrs Huntington
I rejoice to see your attempt to vote in old Connecticut.... Hoped hundreds of women throughout the country would make the attempt but thus far none are reported save in Norwalk Ct. and Rochester N.Y. You will have seen that about fifty presented their names here--16 were registered in the 8th Ward--1 in the 14th and 1 in the 4th--refused in the 1st--3rd--6th--7th--10th. Our city has 14 wards--thus you see women in 8 out of the 14 wards attempted to register--& that without the slightest preconcert of action--the votes of those in the 14th and 4th wards were rejected though duly registered--only the 8th Ward received and counted the votes--no mistake--for we waited & saw them distributed in the several boxes--Our papers are discussing the pro & con every day since--

I am hope[ful] you will persevere & bring action against your inspectors & Judges of election. We shall at once do so against ours who refused... I tell them all that we me[a]n to find out if we have law enough & enforce it & if we have not already enough we mean soon to get it To vote is our wish & will....
Hastily yours--
Susan B. Anthony

[ Letter 3 (SBA letter written after her indictment for illegal voting to Martha Coffin Wright in Auburn, New York):
Garrison Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College]

Rochester Jan. 1, 1873
....
I should have said I mailed our papers to you reporting our women's "illegal voting" trial--I have sent off hundreds of papers--& still so many writing--"I should have thought you would have sent me your newspaper reports"--

I never dreamed of the U.S. officers prosecuting me for voting--thought only that if I was refused--I should bring action against inspectors-- But "Uncle Sam" waxes wroth with holy indignation at such violation of his laws!!

I shall go to New York before my days--probably--Can't tell what may demand me here--My Attorney goes to Judge Hall tomorrow with demand for writ of Habeas Corpus--the contingencies of getting our question to the Supreme Court are numerous--But I hope & trust that some of the chances will turn in our direction.

Both Henry R. & Samuel Selden are exceedingly interested in the study of our Constitutional right & say there is no room for a doubt even--if it were only possible to get a strictly judicial opinion. But that men partisan opinions are the rule....

[

Letter 4 ( SBA letter written to U. S. Senator Benjamin F. Butler):]

Rochester April 27/73

Hon B. F. Butler Dear Sir
Will you give me your word on the decision of the Supreme Court of the U.S. on Mrs. Myra Bradwells [the U. S. Supreme Court decision holding that an Illinois law prohibiting women from becoming lawyers did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment] case-to be read at out coming convention May 6th in New York?

The whole Democratic Press is Jubilant over this information interpretation of the amendments-while not a Republican paper that I have seen has dared to declare the amendments mean just what they-say all persons & c- It is virtual concession of all we fought for in the late War-the supremacy of the National Gov't to protect the rights of all persons-all citizens-against the states attempts to deny or abridge-opinion of the decision-whatever it is-

My trial is to be the 13th of May-the week following the N.Y. meeting-I have just closed a canvass of this county-from which my jurors are to be drawn-and I rather guess the U.S. District Attorney-who is very bitter-will hardly find twelve men so ignorant on the citizen's rights-as to agree on a verdict of Guilty....

The right word spoken at our Convention-will greatly help my trial the week following- I find Judges & Courts are influenced by popular opinion-not a little-Hoping for the letter-sure-
Respectfully yours
Susan B. Anthony
Diary Entries
[SBA Diary Entry for Tuesday, January 21, 1873:]

U. S. District Court at Albany--Judge N. K. Hall--Hearing in P. M.--Judge Selden's arg't vastly improved--Hall denied petition for Habeas Corpus & remanded me back to Marshall Keeney--

[SBA Diary Entry for January 23, 1873:]

Grand Jury not yet brought in indictment against us women--Judge Selden telegraphed home to have his cases there put over--so he could stay & give my bail--

[SBA Diary Entry for January 24, 1873:]

Judge Selden bailed me $1000--terrible snowstorm--trains delayed west & south--got proofs of Judge Seldens arg't at 9--& took ten train for N. Y.

[SBA Diary Entry for March 4, 1873:]

In Rochester--Voted at city election--Mrs. Pulver & Mrs. Hebbard--only three of us--Inspectors wanted all to vote again--but the rest of women frightened lest fine & imprisonment come

[SBA Diary Entry for Wednesday, June 18, 1873:]

Circuit Court-- Judge Hunt refused Judge Selden to address Jury--& instructed Jury to bring in verdict of guilty--& refused to poll jury-- Inspectors convicted & Van Vhooris denied address to jury-- The greatest outrage History ever witnessed--

[SBA Diary Entry for June 19, 1873:]

New trial moved by both Selden & Van--hearing at 2 P.M.--Masterly statements of cause by both S & V--Judge Hunt denied by case at once--deferred inspectors until morning--Att. moved my sentence--Judge asked reason why Sentence should not be--I answered--I have much to say--a sublime silence reigned in court while I declared every right stricken down--

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Letters & Diary Entries of Susan B. Anthony Concerning Her Casting a Vote in the 1872 Federal Election

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Note: Letters writers of the time commonly used a "--" where modern writers would use "."] [ Letter 1 (SBA letter to her close friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton): Ida Harper Collection, Huntington Library] Click on the image to view it large Rochester Nov 5th 1872 Dear Mrs StantonWell I have been & gone & done it!!--positively voted the Republican ticket--strait this a.m.

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Play this game to see how much vocabulary you remember from yesterday.

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Start studying Women Rights. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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Make a prezi about what all you have learned so far about women's sufferage.

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Take this test

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Start studying Women Rights. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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Review for the test at the end of the day.

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Start studying Women Rights. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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read about Seneca falls convention, then choose either Elizabeth cady Stanton or Lucretia Mott to further research. turn in a brief biography of one of those women.

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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 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.

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 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 woman-suffrage advocates, among them Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, 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, this faction formed a group called the National Woman Suffrage Association and 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.

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 Women'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 special focus on those recalcitrant regions.

Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Women's Party 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 26, 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.

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Women's Rights Movement Begins Seneca Falls Convention Civil War and Civil Rights The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage 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.

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watch this video