Primary Source: Women Win the Right to Vote
“We insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”
“TENNESSEE COMPLETES SUFFRAGE VICTORY,” the New York Times blared one hundred years ago on August 19, 1920. The day before, Tennessee’s lower legislative house voted 50–46 to approve the “Susan B. Anthony” Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote across the country.
Women had been able to vote in American elections before. Many of the pre-revolutionary colonies permitted it, but after 1776, all except New Jersey passed constitutions barring women the vote. New Jersey followed suit in 1807.
Women could also vote starting in the late 1800s in certain territories in the west, Wyoming being the first. By the time Congress passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment and sent it to the states, twenty states and territories had already recognized women’s right to vote. But universal suffrage was still the goal.
How did women win the right to vote, and what does it reveal about the American democratic process? Were any women excluded from this hard-fought-for right? What is the state of universal suffrage in the United States today?
Women and men declare and resolve in Seneca Falls. (1848)
Women began agitating on a small scale for more political participation in the early 1800s, such as in the slavery abolition movement. One fateful event came in 1840, when Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled with their husbands to London for the first World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. Stanton and Mott were hoping to participate fully in the debates and voting, but they were relegated to the gallery to only listen. The two became friends and planned to organize their own convention to advance women’s rights, and in the late 1840s, energy built for a women’s convention. Seneca Falls, New York was chosen as the site due to its high population of Quakers, who long advocated abolition and women’s equality.
At the two-day convention from July 19 to July 20, 1848, Stanton presented a Declaration of Sentiments. In the concluding paragraph, the authors raise a battle cry for women to press for their rights.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation — in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States. In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.
At the same convention, members voted on resolutions to propel the movement forward. The most controversial was the ninth proposed resolution, calling for the right to vote. Some feared that the resolution would make the convention a laughingstock and all of their demands would be disregarded. However, one of the most famous attendees, Frederick Douglass, stood up and spoke, “In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.”
The resolution passed.
Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.
Reactions pour in from across the country. (1848)
After the Seneca Falls Convention, the press had a field day. From across the country, newspaper editors either lauded or lambasted the proceedings.
The National Reformer:
[The convention] forms an era in the progress of the age; it being the first convention of the kind ever held, and one whose influence shall not cease until woman is guaranteed all the rights now enjoyed by the other half of creation — Social, Civil and POLITICAL.
The Oneida Whig:
This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of womanity. If our ladies will insist on voting and legislating, where, gentleman, will be our dinners and our elbows? Where our domestic firesides and the holes in our stockings?
The New York Tribune:
When a sincere republican is asked to say in sober earnest what adequate reason he can give, for refusing the demand of women to an equal participation with men in political rights, he must answer, None at all. However unwise and mistaken the demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right, and such must be conceded.
The Lowell Courier:
. . . the lords must wash the dishes, scour up, be put to the tub, handle the broom, darn stockings.
A famous suffragist tells off a judge. (1873)
The decades after the Seneca Falls Convention were arduous for women’s rights. Reformers picked up support for their cause but hit wall after wall of opposition. The movement also suffered a split after the Civil War when some reformers thought it politically prudent to wait until after the passage of the 15th Amendment — which granted African American men the right to vote — to push for women’s suffrage. Others, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, wanted to push forward immediately.
In the 1872 presidential election, Anthony did just that. She forced the Rochester, New York registrar’s office to register her, then voted to reelect Ulysses S. Grant. “Well I have been & gone done it!” she wrote to Stanton. “Positively voted the republican ticket — strait — this A.M. at 7 o’clock & swore my vote in at that.”
She was arrested weeks later and put on trial which, by all accounts, was a farce by Judge Ward Hunt. After he directed the jury to find her guilty, Hunt asked Anthony if she had anything to say.
Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called Republican government.
After many attempts at silencing her, Judge Hunt announced that Anthony would be fined $100. Anthony responded.
May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. . . . not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
A California senator introduces an amendment. (1878)
In January 1878, California Senator Aaron Sargent, husband of leading voting rights advocate Ellen Clark Sargent, introduced the amendment. Several suffragists were invited to testify before the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, but the bill didn’t make it out of committee until 1887. Every year from 1878 to 1918, the amendment bill would be unsuccessfully introduced.
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.
The Silent Sentinels picket the White House. (1917–1919)
With the proposed amendment going nowhere in Congress, Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party decided to bring the issue to the White House. The suffragists had met with President Woodrow Wilson in January 1917 but he declined to support them, telling them instead to “concert public opinion on behalf of women’s suffrage.” The next day, the women brought signs and protested the president, saying nothing vocally and letting their signs convey the message. They became known as the Silent Sentinels and their picket in front of the White House would last two and a half years, enduring sharp criticism, mob violence, arrests and torture. They won over, however, many Americans and eventually the president himself.
The president announces he is finally convinced. (1918)
With the suffragists pushing the amendment and the Silent Sentinels in his face every day, President Wilson gradually recognized the importance of supporting women’s suffrage. He voiced his support in a speech to the Senate on January 9, 1918. This was a turning point in the fight for suffrage, but the Senate refused to debate it until that October. To keep the pressure on, the Silent Sentinels burned Wilson’s image in effigy, and the next year Congress finally voted to pass the amendment.
This is a peoples’ war and the peoples’ thinking constitutes its atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing room or the political considerations of the caucus. If we be indeed democrats and wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they wish to be led nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions. Our professions will not suffice. Verification must be forthcoming when verification is asked for. . . .
We shall not only be distrusted but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise [women] with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the other great free nations will enfranchise them. We cannot isolate our thought or our action in such a matter from the thought of the rest of the world. We must either conform or deliberately reject what they propose and resign the leadership of liberal minds to others.
A “good boy” listens to his mother. (1920)
After the proposed amendment passed Congress, it was on its way to the states for ratification. By the end of 1919, 22 states had ratified the amendment, and by spring of 1920, 35 of the necessary 36 state approvals had been secured. The next states to take up the question — Delaware, Louisiana and Mississippi — rejected it. Up next was Tennessee, and a vicious lobbying battle between suffrage supporters and opponents played out in front of the state capitol.
The State Senate had already voted to ratify but the vote in the General Assembly promised to be much tighter. On August 18, Assembly Speaker Seth Walker twice tried to table the resolution but twice failed with a 48–48 vote. With the resolution still alive, Walker then called for a vote on the resolution, knowing that a tie vote would defeat it.
Republican Harry Burn, in his first term at age 22, had voted twice to table the resolution and wore on his lapel a red rose, the symbol of the opponents. But having just received a letter from his widowed mother, Febb Burn, he felt compelled to switch his vote. The resolution passed 49–47. (The official tally became 50–46 when Speaker Walker, in a failed procedural attempt to reconsider and vote again, switched his vote to “yes.”)
Mrs. Thomas Catt refers to the noted suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, and “Rats” refers to those in favor of ratification.
Dear Son . . .
Hurrah, and vote for suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt. I noticed Chandlers speech, it was very bitter. I’ve been watching to see how you stood but have not noticed anything yet. . . .
Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. “Thomas Catt” with her “Rats.” Is she the one that put rat in ratification, Ha! No more from mama this time.
With lots of love,
Mama
Burn was vehemently ridiculed for his changed vote; a vocal anti-suffragist labeled him a “traitor to manhood’s honor,” newspapers claimed he’d been bribed, and his mother was pressured by some suffrage opponents to disavow her letter. She refused. Burn defended himself by inserting a personal statement in the House Journal.
I want to state that I changed my vote in favor of ratification first because I believe in full suffrage as a right; second, I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify; third, I knew that a mother’s advice is always safest for a boy to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification . . .
A senator explains how his state disenfranchised Blacks. (1900)
Not all women could vote after the 19th Amendment passed. In 1870 the United States ratified the 15th Amendment, which prohibited voter discrimination “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” yet in the late 1800s the Supreme Court interpreted that amendment narrowly. Southern states took advantage and passed their own laws, making suffrage for Black Americans nearly impossible. Black women in the south after the 19th Amendment could technically vote, but in reality were disenfranchised due to repressive Jim Crow laws. In a speech to the US Senate, South Carolina Senator Benjamin Tillman unveils his state’s attitude toward Black suffrage.
I want to call the Senator’s attention to one fact. He said that the Republican party gave the negroes the ballot in order to protect themselves against the indignities and wrongs that were attempted to be heaped upon them by the enactment of the black code. I say it was because the Republicans of that day, led by Thad Stevens, wanted to put white necks under black heels and to get revenge. . . .
We did not disfranchise the negroes until 1895. Then we had a constitutional convention convened which took the matter up calmly, deliberately, and avowedly with the purpose of disfranchising as many of them as we could under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. We adopted the educational qualification as the only means left to us, and the negro is as contented and as prosperous and as well protected in South Carolina to-day as in any State of the Union south of the Potomac. He is not meddling with politics, for he found that the more he meddled with them the worse off he got. As to his “rights” — I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will.
Congress and the president pass the Voting Rights Act. (1965)
Ninety-five years after the passage of the 15th Amendment and forty-five years after the 19th Amendment, the leaders and participants of the Civil Rights Movement pressured Congress into passing landmark legislation. The Voting Rights Act, coming on the heels of the Civil Rights Act, enforces the 15th Amendment and uses special provisions to ensure equitable voting access, especially in areas with a history of disenfranchisement. The law has been amended several times, often strengthened but sometimes weakened. The law ensured that Black women had universal suffrage.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act shall be known as the “Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.
A district court rules against a voter ID law in Texas. (2014)
Despite the passage of the Voting Rights Act, some advocates believe there are still efforts underway to limit voting access. In 2011 Texas passed Senate Bill 14, requiring all voters to present official identification before casting a vote. Opponents of the law claimed that this mandate constituted a burden on lower-income citizens — which disproportionately represent Latinos and Black Americans — and was thus discriminatory. They pressed their case in court and District Court Judge Nelva Ramos ultimately agreed. Although Judge Ramos’s ruling was backed up by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court stayed her ruling. Texas passed a subsequent voter ID law in 2017, which has been allowed to remain in place due to its increased accommodations for those who have difficulty securing an ID.
The unconstitutionality of SB 14 lies not just in the fees the State charges for birth certificates, although that is part of it. It is not just about causing people to make extra trips — in many cases covering significant distance — to county and state offices to get their photo IDs, although that is part of it. It is not just about making people figure out the requirements on their own and choose whether to go to work or go get a photo ID, although that is part of it. It is not just about creating a second class of voters who can only vote by mail, although that is part of it. And it is not just about placing the administration of voting rights in the hands of a law enforcement agency, although that, too, is part of it.
The unconstitutionality of SB 14 lies also in the Texas Legislature’s willingness and ability to place unnecessary obstacles in the way of a minority that is least able to overcome them. It is too easy to think that everyone ought to have a photo ID when so many do, but the right to vote of good citizens of the State of Texas should not be substantially burdened simply because the hurdles might appear to be low. For these Plaintiffs and so many more like them, they are not.
A Pennsylvania woman looks forward to women’s new role in politics. (1920)
Three days after Tennessee voted to ratify the 19th Amendment in 1920, the Pottsville Republican in Pennsylvania ran an article with reaction from women across the political spectrum. One of them was Edith Hodge, age 43, who ruminated on women’s new role in politics.
Some men seem to think that if a woman gets into politics she will lose all her charm and home loving principles. I differ with them, as I am sure the women most active in politics will be those who have their families raised, or those who have none at all. I believe in votes for women and I will vote among the first. I pay taxes, why not vote. I am sure that woman will not sell her vote for a drink of whiskey as many men do at the polls and will take more care to vote for better office holders than a man. I believe a steady woman will earn the money and put more time to business when elected to an office than most men do now. I get around and know a lot of office holders that do not devote nearly the time they ought to, to their business.
Of course some women would fritter away the time just the same but I am talking about the steady business woman. A good woman will do well and make things go both in the home, politics, or church affairs or in fact anywhere you put her in my opinion.
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