Objective

• All students will…• Analyze the passage of the 19th Amendment

and the changing role of women in society. • Collect the best arguments for and against

women’s suffrage made between 1870-1920.

Early Women's Suffrage Movement

Suffrage: the right to voteJuly 1848: Seneca Falls Convention. Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and

Lucretia Mott.Abolitionists fought for women’s rightsDeclaration of Sentiments written • “We hold these truths to be self-

evident: that all men and women are created equal…”– From the Declaration of Sentiments,

1848

Women’s Struggle During Reconstruction, 1868-1874

• 1868-1870: 14th and 15th Amendments + Citizenship/voting rights for men only

• 1872: Susan B. Anthony votes · Arrested for illegal voting + Supreme Court decides states can deny

women the vote • “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” -- Susan B.

Anthony after her arrest for illegal voting, 1872 • 1874: WCTU formed (Women’s Christian Temperance

Union) + Fought for temperance and suffrage +

Wanted vote to protect families

National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890-1913

1890: NAWSA formed (Nat’l American Woman Suffrage Assoc.) · Led by Stanton and Anthony

+ State by state strategy+ Some Western states give women the vote

March on Washington

1913: NWP formed (National Woman’s Party) + Alice Paul leader

NWP’s “Silent Sentinals” "The time has come to conquer or submit for there is but one choice - we have made it." -- Alice Paul, the night before her arrest.

NWP member in Prison, sentenced to 6mths

+ Wanted Constitutional Amendment

Opposition to Woman’s SuffrageWho did not want women to vote?+ Liquor Lobby: feared it would lead to Prohibition+ Industrialists: feared women would support labor reforms+ Male chauvinists: Belief that women belong in the home. (“Angle of the House” stereotype

was perpetuated by some prominent women as well).

People Against Woman’s Suffrage• Based arguments on unique nature of

women or special role they played in the home.

• Assumed differences between men and women. Physical differences in strength as well as biological difference in sex.

• Said women were too “frail” and unsuited to vote.

• Public sphere and involvement in politics was dangerous for women.

• It would threaten national security. Other countries would see U.S. as weak and attack. Women less likely to vote for hard foreign policy and less likely to be tough.

Woman’s Suffrage• Petition to U.S. Senate• Women Voters Anti-Suffrage Party of New York

World War I, ca. 1917• By 1916 almost all of the major suffrage

organizations were united behind the goal of a constitutional amendment.

• When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917 and President Woodrow Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift in favor of the vote for women.

• There was still strong opposition to enfranchising women, however, as illustrated by this petition from the Women Voters Anti-Suffrage Party of New York at the beginning of U.S. involvement in World War I.

Protesting the President

• Photograph of Suffragist with "Kaiser Wilson" Poster

• During World War I, militant suffragists, demanding that President Wilson reverse his opposition to a federal amendment, stood vigil at the White House and carried banners such as this one comparing the President to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. In the heated patriotic climate of wartime, such tactics met with hostility and sometimes violence and arrest.

Protests

19th Amendment: Women Win the Right to Vote! 1920

1920: 19th Amendment passed. - NAWSA and NWP joined forces - Prohibition already passed. - Women helped in war effort, so

many Congressmen supported it

NWP and Alice Continue Fight December 1920: proposed ERA (Equal Rights Amendment)