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Culture August 28, 2017
Everything you need to know about women's suffrage.
The 19th amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920. But, women’s suffrage was a tough battle that wasn’t won easily.
It all started with the first women’s rights convention in 1848, held in Seneca Falls and organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
But if you’re not familiar with the women’s struggle to fight for the right to vote, then we’ve got you covered. Here’s pretty much everything you need to know about the 19th amendment.
During the 1820s and ’30s in America, the idea of the “Cult of True Womanhood” started to pop up. According to the History website, this was the idea that a true woman was a woman who was a “pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.”
At the time, a woman’s husband also owned her property and money; women weren’t afforded the privilege to own anything for themselves. And as you may already know, women didn’t have the right to vote.
But, a lot of women started to rebel against this mindset.
Around this time, women and anti-slavery movements and organizations started to rise to fight for freedom.
The movement for women’s rights began with the Seneca Falls convention. The idea of women’s suffrage also came out of this convention. Stanton drafted a treatise called the “Declaration of Sentiments,” and in this, she declared:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
This preamble took the Declaration of Independence’s preamble and changed it to declare that women deserved the same rights afforded to men, such as the right to vote.
The women’s rights movement took a major pause for the Civil War as women turned their attention to assist in the effort to free slaves.
But after the war, when the 15th amendment passed – which granted African American men the right to vote – female suffrage advocates, including Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, objected the amendment since it continued to disenfranchise women of color. To try and repeal the 15th amendment, they sided with racist Southerners who believed that if women had the right to vote, they could neutralize the votes of African-American men. They basically wanted to get rid of the 15th amendment to reinstate the 19th amendment, which would’ve given everyone the right to vote.
Ultimately, this group created the National Woman Suffrage Association to fight for universal suffrage.
But, others saw a problem in this group. They realized it was unjust to disenfranchise African-American men for women’s suffrage. This group, including abolitionists Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, created the American Woman Suffrage Association, which fought for the right to vote on a state-by-state basis.
In 1890, these two groups came together to create the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
On July 1890, Wyoming became the 44th state. And to gather as many votes as possible to admit Wyoming as a state, Wyoming was the first territory in America to give women the right to vote. Thus, their nickname became “The Equality State.”
Stanton died in 1902 and Anthony died in 1906, so neither women were alive to see their dreams become reality.
But in 1918, President Woodrow Wilson started to support women’s right to vote. He defended women’s suffrage by explaining their role in World War I. When the 19th amendment up for a vote, Wilson said, “I regard the extension of suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged.”
But the proposal failed. Then, in 1919, the proposal was reconsidered. The Senate passed the 19th amendment by two votes over its majority requirement. But, each state had to ratify the amendment. Thirty-five states had approved the amendment and they needed one last state for the amendment to pass. Since all of the Southern states already rejected it, it was up to Tennessee to be the deciding factor.
The future of the amendment didn’t look promising due to Tennessee’s senators coming to a 48-48 tie. The vote came down to 23-year-old Representative Harry T. Burn. He didn’t want to support the amendment, but his mother proved him otherwise. She wrote to him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.” It worked.
Due to his vote for the amendment, the 19th amendment was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920.
Nate Silver tweeted out maps of what 2016 would look like if only men voted or only women voted.
Upon seeing this map, Trump supporters started the hashtag #repealthe19th.
The hashtag went viral, and it was insanely ridiculous.
But, others saw the insanity in the argument.
What a lot of these #repealthe19th people don’t realize is that you can’t repeal an amendment without replacing it with another one. Also, a lot of Republican states today unanimously passed the 19th amendment when it was up for a vote.
And, this is why it’s important to know the definition of the 19th amendment and everything it stands for. Due to suffragettes and abolitionists, women are now afforded the right to vote. That’s something we should always be thankful for!
