Women’s Suffrage in the United States

-Chrissie

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             When the United States was founded, the idea that all citizens should have the right to vote, to be involved in governance, was considered ludicrous by most. Not even all men were deemed worthy of the vote, as property ownership was thought to be an important perquisite for civic participation. In the United States, despite its federal system, the individual states are the ones who determined voting eligibility.

            American elections have never been a truly straightforward process, because the ideals of self-determination and freedom had to be reconciled with the fact of the immense number of enslaved people in the country. This is a large part of the reason for the states to have the power to determine voting eligibility: the slaveholdings states would not allow a federal law that might enfranchise free Black men. This is also one of the reasons for the complicated process by which Americans choose a president: the Electoral College was designed to assure that the more populous and powerful states had some measure of control over the executive branch.[1] With these issues in mind, the states all started with the same basic qualifications for voting: the voter had to be a male citizen at least 21 years of age.[2] Most states also had a property ownership requirement and limited the franchise specifically to white men. The (brief) exception to the rule was New Jersey, who made property ownership a requirement but neglected to specify men only. This omission caused early elections in the state to be much more democratic than anticipated, as many property-owning women showed up to vote. It was “corrected” in 1807. Over the course of the Nineteenth Century, property requirements were reduced, and even eliminated in some states.[3]

            By the time of the American Civil War, most free adult white men in the United States could vote. Some states’ voter requirements also allowed free Black men to vote, though it was difficult for them to exercise that right. After the Civil War, the federal government had to step in to guarantee the voting rights of the formerly enslaved. Among other things, the Fourteenth Amendment established a federal right to vote for all citizen men age 21 and over.[4] However, the amendment did not do this in a direct way, rather than simply stating that all men over 21 years old could vote, it established punishments for the states who actively prevented any of that group from voting.[5] The Fifteenth Amendment was added to clarify that the previous one had intended to include former slaves and non-whites.[6] Women, however, were still not included. Nothing in the amendments specifically prohibited states from allowing women to vote, but the inclusion of the word “male” in the Fourteenth Amendment meant a state didn’t risk losing seats in the House of Representatives by excluding them.

            The language of the Fourteenth Amendment offended many of the abolitionist women who had anticipated gaining their own civic rights alongside the freed slaves. The most prominent of these were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Stanton had been instrumental in organizing the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, widely considered to be the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement and a precursor to the women’s rights movements in the last half of the Twentieth Century. She and Anthony met in 1851 and worked together advocating for temperance, the abolition of slavery, and some women’s rights issues.[7] When the work began around the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, both women refused to support it, citing the sex-exclusive language which left women out. While they were not alone in these sentiments in the abolitionist communities, there were many who disagreed: some felt they should focus on one issue at a time, arguing that once Black men were fully recognized as citizens they could then turn toward women’s suffrage; others simply felt that women should not vote. The dispute caused Stanton and Anthony to form the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869. NWSA advocated for a federal right to vote for women. Another group formed the American Woman Suffrage Foundation (AWSA), who advocated on the state level for the enfranchisement of both white and Black women. The two worked separately, not seriously at odds but also not united, until they merged in 1890 to create the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Black suffragists were not well supported in these organizations, and so created their own, most prominently the Colored Women’s Franchise Association, formed by Mary Ann Shadd Cary in 1880, and in 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), led by Mary Church Terrell. These organizations connected woman suffrage with advocacy for labor reform, expanded education opportunities, and women’s rights issues.

            In the meantime, Susan Anthony was arrested for illegally voting in the 1872 election in Rochester, New York. The trial and conviction gained national attention. Six years later, Senator Aaron A. Sargent (R-CA) presented, on behalf of NWSA, a constitutional amendment to include women in elections. It didn’t get much attention at the time, but it would become the Nineteenth Amendment forty-two years later. Also during these intervening years, AWSA successfully campaigned for women’s suffrage in Wyoming and Utah.[8]

            After the 1890 merger, NAWSA generally focused on a state-by-state strategy, adjusting their tactics according to their audience. They used personal connections to get involved with the newly popular women’s civic clubs, which were involved in advocacy around Progressive-Era social improvement issues and, perhaps more importantly, were generally run by women with money to spare. Women’s suffrage became connected with the Progressive Movement because it was expected that women would vote for their goals, such as temperance and labor reforms. In southern states they conducted an unabashedly white supremacist campaign, arguing that state-level changes maintained the state’s prerogative to determine eligibility, meaning white women could be enfranchised while Black women were not. This tactic was not in keeping with the seemingly inclusive nature of their fight to make the country more democratic and was disputed by many suffragists, both white and Black, but was defended on a basis of practicality. The need for this tactic and its success must be recognized as an effect of the racialized slavery and segregation inherent to the United States. In this conflict, the Suffrage Movement is in good company with other prominent Americans going all the way back to the Revolution and, like those who came before them, they are just as wrong.

            Suffragist efforts in the first decade of the Twentieth Century were not terribly successful in gaining the vote for more women (as of 1910only four states allowed women to vote) but were successful in destigmatizing the idea and the efforts in favor of it. They seemed to be at an impasse: more people thought favorably about women voting, but that feeling was not working its way into state or federal legislation. Fresh tactics were needed, and they arrived in the person of Dr. Alice Paul in 1912.[9]

            Alice Paul was given leadership over NAWSA’s nearly non-existent Congressional Committee in 1912 and immediately set about publicizing their efforts in ways not done in decades. She believed a large public demonstration was needed to reassert the movement in people’s minds and pave the way for a constitutional amendment with the weight of public opinion behind it. She saw their opportunity in the form of a parade conducted down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. on 3 March 1913, in the hours before President-Elect Woodrow Wilson was to arrive for the inauguration the next day. The parade was organized by groups, with delegates from suffrage organizations all over the country represented. The few Black suffragists involved were required to march at the end of the parade, separate from their local groups. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, creator of the first Black woman suffrage club in Illinois, requested of Paul that she be able to march with her fellow suffragists from Chicago and was refused. She did it anyway, staying in the crowd until the Chicago group appeared, then moving to march with them for the rest of the demonstration. The Woman Suffrage Procession was successful in gaining the movement a great deal of attention. The spectators, who had gathered both for Procession and to see Wilson, had many supporters of women’s enfranchisement; however, there was a sufficiently large and violent element that was allowed to interfere with the parade, attacking many of the marchers without response from the D.C. police. 200 people treated for injuries at local hospitals got those injuries at the parade, likely many more were injured less gravely and so did not end up in the hospital records. Paul and the other organizers were able to use the lack of police protection to their advantage: they had been physically attacked while peacefully demonstrating in accordance with their First Amendment rights. Support and donations poured in. Within a month of the Procession, the amendment for women’s suffrage was again introduced into the Senate and House, and again defeated.

            Paul believed the best way to gain the vote for women was through a constitutional amendment, rather than working on a state-by-state basis. This, alongside a few other issues, put her into conflict with NAWSA, and so she left to start her own organization, the National Women’s Party. They did not generally conflict with each other as they tended to work toward the same goal from different directions, but Paul’s NWP was much more militant in its pursuit of the vote.

            Beginning in January 1917, the NWP organized women to picket the White House with the idea of getting President Wilson’s attention and, hopefully, support. Though they had a great deal of backing they were seen as unpatriotic by many, especially after the United States got involved in World War I. The picketing continued until 4 June 1919, when the Nineteenth Amendment was approved by both the House and the Senate and sent to the states for ratification. In that time, over two hundred of these demonstrators, who came to be called Silent Sentinels, were arrested and convicted on very loosely related charges, mostly “obstruction of traffic.” The women were given the option to pay a small fine or spend time in prison; they generally chose the latter, arguing that to pay the fine would be to admit guilt.

            Paul was arrested while picketing on 20 October 1917. She was tried, convicted, and sentenced to seven months in the Occoquan Workhouse. She was placed in solitary confinement because the prison staff feared she would rally other inmates (many of whom were her fellow suffragists) to rebel. In response she began a hunger strike and was joined by many of the other women there. Prison officials, fearing the public reaction if the women died while in their custody, took to force-feeding them. They were strapped down, had tubes pushed into their throats and were given a mix of raw eggs and milk, which the women rarely kept down. This action, as well as reports of beatings ordered by the warden, became known through newspaper coverage, which only increased support for the women and their cause. Under public pressure, and with Wilson indicating a change of heart on the issue, the women were released from the prison on 28 November. Shortly thereafter, President Wilson voiced his support for women’s suffrage, encouraging Senators to vote in favor of the Amendment (it had already passed the House). The Senate voted on the bill in October, it was defeated by two votes.

            The Silent Sentinels resumed their places in front of the White House, and the NWP campaigned against the anti-woman suffrage Senators and Congressmen who were up for reelection. They were successful; the Senate and House seated in January 1919 both had majorities in favor of allowing women to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment was approved in the House on 21 May 1919 and in the Senate on 4 June. Ratification took just over a year; Tennessee was the last to ratify, with a margin of one vote. The ratification was certified on 26 August, just in time for women to vote in the upcoming Presidential election.

[1] The Electoral College has been subjected to a great deal of debate in the last two decades, as two presidential elections in that time have returned a president who did not win the popular vote. The 2000 election was essentially decided by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, which ended the recount in Florida, awarding that state’s electoral votes to George W. Bush, despite the fact that Al Gore had a larger number of votes overall. The 2016 election also saw an electoral victory at odds with the popular vote victory: Donald Trump won by electoral votes however, Hilliary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote. The system is widely seen as outdated and unnecessary in the modern world, where votes can be counted much more quickly than they could in the late Eighteenth Century. As of this writing, fifteen states have joined together in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, agreeing to direct their electors to vote for the overall popular vote winner.

[2] The minimum voting age was reduced to 18 years with the ratification of the 26th Amendment in 1971.

[3] A financial obligation when voting was not fully removed until poll taxes were outlawed by the 24th Amendment in 1964. The issue has recently gained attention with the adoption of voter ID laws in many states, states which charge to get the required identification.

[4] With some exceptions, such as participation in a rebellion against the US government.

[5] Despite the flagrant violations of the voting clauses of the 14th Amendment in the late 19th and throughout the 20th century, the punishment of reduced representation in Congress has never been enacted.

[6] For an extensive discussion on the compromises involved in the writing of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, see The Second Founding by Eric Foner.

[7] Stanton was a staunch proponent of equality of the sexes, advocating for women to be able to initiate divorce, have custody of their children, be educated and granted university degrees, and have access to birth control devices.

[8] Wyoming’s motto is “The Equality State” because they were the first to allow women to vote. It was not entirely altruistic, however: the territorial legislature thought that allowing women to vote and giving them the same property rights as men would encourage women to move there and thereby improve the sex ratio, which was about 5 men to 1 woman.

[9] Paul earned a PhD in Sociology from University of Pennsylvania, her dissertation was entitled “The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania.” She returned to university in the 1920s and earned a second PhD with a focus on Civil Law from American University in 1928.