Womens Rights Essay, Research Paper
The Women & # 8217 ; s right to vote motion in the
United States
The suffragist motion in the United States was an branch of the
general adult females & # 8217 ; s rights motion that officially began with the Seneca
Falls Convention of 1848. Several taking figures in the antislavery
motion had besides begun to oppugn the political and economic
subjection of adult females in a society that claimed to be a democracy.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C, Wright, and Mary Ann
McClintock issued a call for a convention refering the rights of
adult females. That convention met in Seneca Falls, New York on 19-20 July
1848.
The convention adopted a & # 8220 ; Declaration of Principles, & # 8221 ; intentionally
modeled on the Declaration of Independence, which stated, & # 8220 ; We hold
these truths to be axiomatic: that all work forces and adult females are created
equal. . . . & # 8221 ; In add-on to the Declaration of Principles, the Seneca
Convention besides asserted that adult females should hold the right to prophesy,
to be educated, to learn, and to gain a life. The delegates passed a
declaration saying that & # 8220 ; it is the sacred responsibility of the adult females of this
state to procure to themselves their sacred right to the elective
franchise. & # 8221 ; With these words the battle began in earnest to win full
vote rights for adult females in the United States.
The most influential leaders of the adult females & # 8217 ; s rights motion in the
2nd half of the 19th century were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
Susan B. Anthony. But the united battle for adult females & # 8217 ; s vote rights
broke into two cabals following the Civil War. Led by Anthony and
Stanton, those who believed that they should seek an amendment to
the U.S. Constitution formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in
May of 1869. Subsequently that same twelvemonth, the American Woman Suffrage
Association was formed by those who believed the most effectual
scheme would be to coerce province legislative assemblies to amend province
fundamental laws. The leaders of this group were Lucy Stone and Julia Ward
Howe.
The two organisations merged in 1890, as the National American Woman
Right to vote Association ( NAWSA ) , with the purpose of at the same time
prosecuting both schemes. Elizabeth Cady Stanton became the first
president of the new organisation ( 1890-1892 ) , followed by Susan B.
Anthony ( 1892-1900 ) , Carrie Chapman Catt ( 1900-1904 ) , Anna Howard
Shaw ( 1904-1915 ) , and so Catt once more ( 1915-1920 ) . In 1920, when
NAWSA was dissolved after accomplishing its end of adult females & # 8217 ; s right to vote, it
was replaced by the National conference of Women Voters-established in
Chicago in 1920 to educate adult females about how to utilize the freshly won
ballot. In clip the National League of Women Voters became the League
of Women Voters, which presently operates under that same name.
When the National League of Women Voters was foremost established, Carrie
Chapman Catt was elected as its honorary president.
The attempts of the adult females & # 8217 ; s right to vote organisations met with determined
opposition. By seeking a voice in political relations, adult females were disputing the
conventional belief that adult females & # 8217 ; s proper domain of influence was
domestic, while work forces decently dominated the populace sphere, including the
political procedure. Even many adult females deplored the attempt to widen the
ballot to adult females. In 1911, Josephine Dodge, the married woman of a taking New
York capitalist, formed the National Association Opposed to Woman
Right to vote. Like many other anti-suffragists, Dodge advised adult females to
influence policy from behind the scenes, through their influence on work forces.
By affecting themselves in political relations, she insisted, adult females would sabotage
their moral and religious function, every bit good as create pandemonium by tampering in
affairs that were beyond their apprehension.
The first partial right to vote was achieved when some provinces allowed
widows to vote in school board elections, which many people considered
to be a sensible extension of a adult female & # 8217 ; s concern for issues holding to
do with place and household.
The first extension of full vote rights to adult females came in 1869, in the
Wyoming Territory. When Wyoming entered the Union as a province in
1890, it was besides the first province to supply for adult females & # 8217 ; s right to vote in its
fundamental law. In 1893, Colorado extended the franchise to adult females,
followed by Utah and Idaho in 1896. Fourteen old ages subsequently, in 1910, the
province of Washington besides enfranchised adult females. One by one over the
following eight old ages, provinces began to allow voting rights to adult females:
California ( 1911 ) ; Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon ( 1912 ) ; the Alaska
District ( 1913 ) ; Montana and Nevada ( 1914 ) ; New York ( 1917 ) ;
Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Dakota ( 1918 ) .
In Illinois adult females won the right to take part at the federal degree by
vote in presidential elections ( 1913 ) . Nebraska, North Dakota, and
Rhode Island followed ( 1917 ) , so Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota,
Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin ( 1919 ) .
This bit-by-bit form of right to vote achieved to changing grades, province
by province, was a slow and unsure procedure. The leaders of the
suffragist motion understood that even as they pursued such
state-by-state tactics, they must besides force for full right to vote at the
national degree, which could merely be achieved through an amendment to
the U.S. Constitution. Just such an amendment, called the & # 8220 ; Anthony
Amendment, & # 8221 ; was introduced in the Senate in 1878, but was defeated
by a ballot of 34 to 16. The Amendment read, & # 8220 ; The right of citizens of
the United States to vote shall non be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any province on history of sex. & # 8221 ; The same amendment was
reintroduced in each wining Congress, but made no advancement until
1914, when NAWSA presented Congress with a request signed by more
than half a million people. The amendment was defeated in the Senate
by a close ballot of 35 to 34 in 1914, and in the House the following twelvemonth by a
ballot of 204 to 174. Though both ballots fell abruptly of the necessary
two-thirds bulk, they were much closer than past ballots had been.
In an effort to beat up national support for the Anthony Amendment,
Alice Paul organized a immense parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on the
twenty-four hours before President Woodrow Wilson & # 8217 ; s first startup. But the
peaceable parade degenerated into a public violence when 1000s of hostile male
witnesss broke into the ranks of the marchers and tried to barricade their
transition. Basically, the adult females had to contend their manner down
Pennsylvania Avenue, with the aid of work forces who supported the adult females & # 8217 ; s
right to vote motion. Troops had to be called in to reconstruct order, and
100s of people were hospitalized.
Subsequently in 1913 Alice Paul organized the Congressional Union, subsequently called
the Woman & # 8217 ; s Party, to buttonhole Congress on behalf of a constitutional
amendment allowing the ballot to adult females. Paul modeled her organisation
after the more hawkish suffragists in Great Britain. The Woman & # 8217 ; s Party
straight confronted those in power with the disagreement between
America & # 8217 ; s supposed ideals and the world that more than half of its grownup
citizens were non enfranchised. In 1917 the Woman & # 8217 ; s Party embarrassed
President Wilson by picketing the White House around the clock. When
many of the demonstrators were arrested and jailed, they went on a
hungriness work stoppage and were force-fed.
In both cases-the 1913 parade and the barbarous force-feeding of captive
adult females in 1917-the maltreatment suffered by respectable middle-class adult females
outraged public understanding and elicited understanding for the suffragist
cause. Such understanding was reinforced by a displacement in the tactics used by
some of the motion & # 8217 ; s leaders. They began to reason for adult females & # 8217 ; s
right to vote within the model of traditional positions about adult females & # 8217 ; s proper
function in society. Rather than concentrating on issues of justness or equal rights,
they argued alternatively that adult females would convey their moral high quality and
maternal inherent aptitudes into the frequently barbarous spheres of political relations. Thus the image
of the right to vote motion began to be softened for public ingestion.
Suffragists were no longer seen simply as groups who wished to interrupt
the natural societal order, but instead as agents for widening female
benevolence outward from the household to society as a whole.
This image was besides helped by the fact that in the 1890s the suffragists
had allied with the Women & # 8217 ; s Christian Union ( WCTU ) . Although the
WCTU & # 8217 ; s chief aim was to ordain restrictive spirits Torahs, the group
besides agitated for societal reform on many other foreparts. The WCTU came to
back up the cause of adult females & # 8217 ; s right to vote on the evidences that without the
ballot adult females lacked the power to protect place and household and to support
morality.
The active engagement of adult females in the state & # 8217 ; s war attempt from 1917
to 1918 besides helped to win support for a constitutional amendment
affranchising adult females. By a ballot of 274 to 136 the amendment was
passed by the House on 10 January 1918. On 4 June 1918, it was
passed in the Senate by a ballot of 66 to 30. On 18 August 1920
Tennessee became the 36th province to sign the amendment, and
it officially became portion of the U.S. Constitution on 26 August 1920, as
the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Although adult females had eventually won full vote rights, they did non truly
Begin to hold entree to most political offices until good into the 19702,
and even today, at the start of a new millenary, adult females are found in
political office at a rate far lower than one would anticipate from a group
that represents one-half of the state & # 8217 ; s population. Furthermore,
adult females & # 8217 ; s entree to the highest and most powerful political offices is still
badly limited, both by bias and by the deficit of female
office-holders at all degrees, for it is from the ranks of such lower-level
office-holders that the campaigners for the highest offices are recruited.
While many other states have accepted the leading of adult females, the
United States is still improbable to accept the thought of a adult female as
president-at least for now.
