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Women’s Suffrage Movement (1840-1870)

“While the muscle and color and wool of the Blacks

Is the chief stock in trade of your old party hacks,

My mission to Kansas breaks the White Woman’s chains,

Three cheers then for Virtue and Beauty and Brains.”

-George Francis Train, Women’s Suffrage activist

“Woman’s first great, and all-embracing right, without which all talk of other rights is but mockery and nonsense, is the Right to Herself.”

-Western Women’s Emancipation Society, 1874

Inspiration

A lot of the feminist ideas that inspired the Women’s Suffrage Movement can be traced back to the work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by the UK author Mary Wollstonecraft. American suffragettes embraced Wollstonecraft’s ideas 50 years later during their movement.

The Seneca Falls Convention of Seneca Falls, New York took place in 1848 in the beginning stages of the suffrage movement. It was at this convention that the Declaration of Sentiments was drafted, revised, and signed. In addition to working on the Declaration of Sentiments, the attendees were also focused on discussing the woman’s right to vote. The convention included men and women, mostly from the northeastern United States, that were women right’s advocates. There were people of varying ages at the convention, (14-68 years old), but it was ethnically not diverse; Fredick Douglass was the only signer of the Declaration of Sentiments that was not white. The Seneca Falls Convention was a catalyst for the women’s suffrage movement because it produced the Declaration of Sentiments which was the basis for many American suffragist texts.

Definition

The Women’s Suffrage Movement was an initiative lead by women that fought for women’s rights and equality. Women were focused on topics such as: gaining the right to vote, obtaining property rights, and having independence from their husbands.

Prominent Figures

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) - Stanton was the driving force behind the Seneca Falls Convention. She and her husband were abolitionists and passionate about the women’s rights movement. Stanton lived in Seneca Falls, thus it being the location of the influential convention.

Susan B Anthony (1820-1906) – A prominent figure while the suffrage movement was gaining momentum, Anthony championed civil and voting rights. In 1890, she was elected the first president of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. Anthony’s impressive organization of conventions, lectures, and demonstrations contributed to her status as a founding figure in the fight for women’s suffrage.

Alice Paul (1885-1977) – Paul was a suffragette with an advantaged background that founded the Congressional union (later named the National Women’s Party). She and her followers believed they needed support of President Woodrow Wilson, which required mass participation in strikes and protests. Gaining the attention of the federal government, Paul forced the topic of women’s suffrage into political conversation, then into law.

Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797-1883) – In spite of Truth’s illiteracy and social status as a black woman, the activist and preacher often spoke about the rights of women in America. Most relevant to the Suffrage Movement, her speech “Ain’t I a Woman” details the hypocrisies of men to define women as weak or simple while we endure many of the same struggles.

Frederick Douglass (ca.1817-1895) – Douglass was a revolutionary speaker and writer that often advocated for the Women’s Suffrage Movement, as well as black men’s right to vote. In 1838 he liberated himself from enslavement though the capital earned from his writings, including Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

Issues to Consider

Some members involved in Women’s Suffrage Movement were fighting solely for the rights of white women. The quote from George Francis Train exemplifies such views from the members. Susan B. Anthony aligned herself with Train in order to gain support whilst touring Kansas. This showed the movements willingness to prioritize the needs of white women instead over the needs of all women. (Tetrault 41).

When asked by George T. Downing at the second annual meeting of the American Equal Rights Association whether women or African American men should be granted voting rights first, Elizabeth Cady Stanton replied with “I say, no; I would not trust him [black men] with all my rights; degraded, oppressed himself, he would be. . . despotic.” (Tetrault 36).

Women began seeing marriage and the lack of option regarding profession was becoming an issue when fighting for equality. These women realized that a large portion of the inequality they were facing remained in their own private relationships. Women were forced into marriage as their means of survival. (Tetrault 107).

The idea of the “sex-radical” became apparent after the start of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Women began to challenge the archaic sexual standards they were held to and deviate into cultivating their sexual passion rather than suppressing it.

Textual Influences/Questions

Why did the members of the Seneca Falls Convention structure their Declaration of Sentiments in a format that mirrors the Declaration of Independence? What did this achieve?

Even though Sojourner Truth argued for equality on grounds of race and gender, African Americans were mostly excluded from the Women’s Suffrage Movement. How does this hinder the advancement/equality of the movement?

Why do you think men were prominent in the Women’s Suffrage Movement? What purpose did they serve?

When looking back on the long-enduring Women’s Suffrage Movement, during the time of the fight for civil rights amongst women, the number sexual-radicals (women challenging the sexual standards they were held to) began to rise as women were fighting for the right to their selves and their bodies. If the women yearning for autonomy and equality from men would have dialed back their rebellion to keep it socially respectable and appropriate for the times, would they have had an easier time gaining what they were fighting for?

Bland, Sidney R. “New Life in an Old Movement: Alice Paul and the Great Suffrage Parade of 1913 in Washington, D. C.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., vol. 71/72, 1971, pp. 657–78. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40067792.

Dumenil, Lynn. “The New Woman and the Politics of the 1920S.” OAH Magazine of History, vol. 21, no. 3, 2007, pp. 22–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162125.

Miller, Joe C. “Never A Fight of Woman Against Man: What Textbooks Don’t Say about Women’s Suffrage.” The History Teacher, vol. 48, no. 3, 2015, pp. 437–82. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24810524.

Rupp, Leila J. “Reflections on Twentieth-Century American Women’s History.” Reviews in American History, vol. 9, no. 2, 1981, pp. 275–84. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2701999.

Tetrault, Lisa. The Myth of Seneca Falls Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898. The University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

Wellman, Judith. “The Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention: A Study of Social Networks.” Journal of Women’s History, vol. 3, no. 1, Spring 1991, pp. 9–37. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0101.