FAILURE IS IMPOSSIBLE

THE MEETING TO CHANGE HISTORY

SUSAN B. ANTHONY E L I Z AB E T H S TAN T O N

SENECA FALLS, N.Y.

ANTHONY
In 1851, Anthony had met Elizabeth Cady Stanton at a temperance meeting in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Stanton had persuaded her to dedicate her life to women's rights. Anthony, a school teacher , was a brilliant organizer and a tireless orator. She would press on in the face of ridicule and indifference. During the Civil War, Anthony and Stanton set aside the suffrage issue and worked for passage of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery.

S TA N TO N
After the war, they were angry when the 15th Amendment failed to give women the right to vote. They refused to support the amendment. In 1869, they persuaded an Indiana member of Congress to introduce an amendment to establish womens suffrage. Three years later Anthony Rochester after persuading a sympathetic male voting registrar that the 14th Amendment guaranteed equal rights to all citizens.

BY A SINGLE VOTE
"It is downright mockery," she said, "to talk to women of the blessings of liberty when they are denied the only means of securing them--the ballot." Anthony was fined a hundred dollars, but she refused to pay. The judge didn't try to collect the fine to prevent her from appealing his decision. It would not be until 14 years after Anthony's death that the women's suffrage amendment would be ratified--in the Tennessee legislature, by a single vote.

72 YEARS
There were 72 years of struggle by women and their male supporters before women achieved political equality. In order to win the vote, suffragists had to engage in petitioning, lobbying, politicking, marching, and picketing the White House. They also ran campaigns to defeat anti-suffrage legislators. Proponents of women's suffrage waged 480 campaigns in state legislatures to persuade them to adopt suffrage amendments to state constitutions. There were 56 statewide referenda among male voters and 47 campaigns to convince state constitutional conventions to adopt women's suffrage provisions. There were also 277 campaigns at state party conventions; 30 at national conventions; and 19 in separate Congresses to get state parties to adopt women's suffrage planks.

THE DRIVE FOR THE VOTE BEGINS

New Jersey was the only one of the original states to allow any women to vote. Its first constitution granted single and widowed women property holders the right to vote from 1776 to 1807. In 1838, Kentucky authorized women to vote in school elections, and many other states followed suit.

In 1848, at the first Women's Rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., some 68 women and 32 men signed the first formal demand that women receive the right to vote. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton urged participants at the convention to include voting rights among their demands, many balked. "This will make us appear ridiculous," one participant cautioned. The suffrage resolution passed, but it was the only one not to receive unanimous approval. Indeed, the resolution would have been defeated if Frederick Douglass had not rallied support for it.

THE MOVEMENT SPLITS

After the Civil War, women's rights supporters split over whether they should push to include women in the 15th Amendment, which extended voting rights to African American men. In 1869, two competing organizations emerged, each with its own strategies and goals. The National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, favored a constitutional amendment giving the vote to women as well as to African American men. It sought a constitutional amendment and advocated an agenda broader than suffrage, The American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone believed that the voting rights of black men needed to receive priority. This organization welcomed men into its ranks and favored a state-by-state approach and a single-minded focus on suffrage. In 1878, Stanton persuaded Sen. Aaron A. Sargent of California to introduce a women's suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was reintroduced in every session for the next 40 years.

THE FIRST BREAKTHROUGH

In 1869, Wyoming territory was the first to give women the vote on equal terms with men. This led Wyoming to call itself the "Equality State" after its admissions to the Union in 1890. Utah territory enacted women's suffrage in 1873; and Colorado in 1893, where the movement received support from the state's coal miners, many of whom had lost their jobs during the financial panic of that same year. Idaho adopted women's suffrage in 1896. Not another state would give women the vote until 1910.

In the West, support for suffrage was intermixed with a variety of seemingly unrelated issues. Some Westerners favored women's suffrage as a way to attract settlers; others believed that it would attract women and help "civilize" the region. In Utah, suffrage was related to efforts to maintain a Mormon voting majority within the state.

NEW ARGUMENTS
In 1890 the two Associations merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Instead of arguing for suffrage in terms of equal rights, they increasingly emphasized that the vote for women was necessary to clean up politics and fight social evil.

At times, some suffrage supporters made the ugly argument that giving the vote to women would guarantee that white, native-born voters would outnumber immigrant and non-white voters linking the issue of race.
In the North, some suffragists questioned why women could not vote while illiterate and immigrant men could.

DYNAMIC DUO: CATT & PAUL

After 1900, the suffrage campaign developed a new, broader constituency, drawing support from many women who had received a college education or who held white collar jobs. Beginning in 1910, a new wave of states adopted women's suffrage. As in the past, all the states were in the West, including Arizona, California, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. By 1916, eleven Western states had given women the right to vote.

In 1915, Carrie Chapman Catt developed a new political strategy to win the vote. Called the "Winning Plan," it involved fighting on two fronts: for state laws that would give women the vote and for ratification of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Her strategy called for referenda campaigns in six states east of the Mississippi River, the defeat of several key senators, and the identification of supporters ready to lobby in every state legislative district in the country.

MARCH ON WASHINGTON
A new group of impatient women by Alice Paul formed the National Woman's Party. Its strategies included picketing, marches, outdoor rallies, and hunger strikes in jail. On the day of Woodrow Wilson's inauguration in 1913, Paul organized a protest of 5,000 women, who marched up Pennsylvania Avenue while 100,000 spectators watched. Opposition blocked their path but the cavalry was called to allow Pauls march. In 1915, some 40,000 women and men marched in a suffrage parade in New York, the largest parade that had ever been held in the city.

In January 1917, Paul and her supporters began to picket the White House. Six days a week, picketers marched in front of the White House, regardless of the hour or the weather. They carried banners that read: "How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty" and "Mr. President, What Will You Do for Woman Suffrage."

MARCH ON WASHINGTON

A WIN IN COURT
The picketers were physically attacked. In June 1917, some 168 picketers were arrested for obstructing traffic and sentenced to up to six months in jail. When 30 prisoners went on hunger strikes, they were force-fed three times a day with tubes. In 1918, an appeals court struck down the convictions.

WHAT WOULD WILSON DO

The combination of Catt's careful organizing and Paul's militant tactics, which included publicly burning copies of speeches by President Wilson, helped to make suffrage an inescapable issue. By 1916, a million American women already had the vote in national elections and were an influential force.

OPPONENTS TO SUFFRAGE
Liquor manufacturers and saloon owners opposed suffrage out of fear that women would vote to ban alcohol sales. The suffrage amendment was not ratified until a year after the country adopted prohibition. Some business interests opposed suffrage out of fear that women would vote against the use of child labor and for limitations on work hours. Many opponents of suffrage argued that politics would debase, defeminize, and destroy the family. At an 1894 state convention, Kansas Democrats said the vote for women would "destroy the home and family. Some arguments against suffrage reflected simple gender bias. President William Howard Taft said that he opposed suffrage because women were too emotional. "On the whole," he wrote, "it is fair to say that the immediate enfranchisement of women will increase the proportion of the hysterical element of the electorate."

THE FINAL PUSH

In January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support for a women's suffrage amendment. That year Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Dakota gave women the vote. Additionally, the House of Representatives ratified a suffrage amendment by the precise two-thirds vote needed for passage. Ratification was repeatedly defeated in the Senate. It was not until 1919, when Republicans had a majority, that the Senate finally passed what would become the 19th Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. To become part of the Constitution, the amendment had to be ratified by 36 states. In March 1920, West Virginia, by a single vote, became the 34th state to ratify. Washington State quickly followed. All eyes turned to Tennessee, which seemed to be the most likely remaining state to ratify the amendment.

RATIFICATION!
The decisive vote was cast by the assembly's youngest member, Harry Burn, who was just 24 years old and had earlier opposed ratification. He said that he changed his vote after receiving a letter from his mother, urging him to be a good boy and "help Mrs. Catt put rat in Ratification. The measure passed 49 votes to 47 votes. On August 26, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. In 1920, the United States became the 27th country to give women the vote, after countries such as Denmark, Mexico, New Zealand, and Russia. In fact, most of these countries adopted women's suffrage during or immediately after World War I.