The National Struggle for Woman Suffrage
The Beginnings of Organization.-As women surmounted one obstacle after another,the agitation for equal suffrage came to the front.If any year is to be fixed as the date of its beginning,it may very well be 1850,when the suf-fragists of Ohio urged the state constitutional convention to confer the vote upon them.With apparent spontaneity there were held in the same year state suffrage conferences in Indiana,Pennsylvania,and Massachusetts;and connec-tions were formed among the leaders of these meetings.At the same time the first national suffrage convention was held in Worcester,Massachusetts,on the call of eighty-nine leading men and women representing six states.Accounts of the convention were widely circulated in this country and abroad.English women,-for instance,Harriet Martineau,-sent words of appreciation for the work thus inaugurated.It inspired a leading article in the "Westminster Re-view,"which deeply interested the distinguished economist,John Stuart Mill.Soon he was the champion of woman suffrage in the British Parliament and the author of a powerful tract The Subjection of Women,widely read throughout the English-speaking world.Thus do world movements grow.Strange to relate the women of England were enfranchised before the adoption of the federal suf-frage amendment in America.
The national suffrage convention of 1850was followed by an extraordinary outburst of agitation.Pamphlets streamed from the press.Petitions to legislative bodies were drafted,signed,and presented.There were addresses by favorite orators like Garrison,Phillips,and Curtis,and lectures and poems by men like Emerson,Longfellow,and Whittier.In 1853the first suffrage paper was founded by the wife of a member of Congress from Rhode Island.By this time the last barrier to white manhood suffrage in the North had been swept away and the woman's movement was gaining momentum every year.
The Suffrage Movement Checked by the Civil War.-Advocates of woman suffrage believed themselves on the high road to success when the Civil War en-gaged the energies and labors of the nation.Northern women became absorbed in the struggle to preserve the union.They held no suffrage conventions for five years.They transformed their associations into Loyalty Leagues.They banded together to buy only domestic goods when foreign imports threatened to ruin American markets.They rolled up monster petitions in favor of the emancipa-tion of slaves.In hospitals,in military prisons,in agriculture,and in industrythey bore their full share of responsibility.Even when the New York legisla-ture took advantage of their unguarded moments and repealed the law giving the mother equal rights with the father in the guardianship of children,they refused to lay aside war work for agitation.As in all other wars,their devotion was unstinted and their sacrifices equal to the necessities of the hour.
The Federal Suffrage Amendment.-Their plans and activities,when the war closed,were shaped by events beyond their control.The emancipation of the slaves and their proposed enfranchisement made prominent the question of a national suffrage for the first time in our history.Friends of the colored man insisted that his civil liberties would not be safe unless he was granted the right to vote.The woman suffragists very pertinently asked why the same principle did not apply to women.The answer which they received was negative.The fourteenth amendment to the federal Constitution,adopted in 1868,definitely put women aside by limiting the scope of its application,so far as the suffrage was concerned,to the male ***.In ****** manhood suffrage national,how-ever,it nationalized the issue.
Susan B.Anthony Sculpture by Adelaide Johnson inthe National Capitol.
"respectful consideration."
This was the signal for the advocates of woman suffrage.In March,1869,their proposed amendment was introduced in Congress by George W.Julian of Indiana.It provided that no citizen should be deprived of the vote on account of ***,following the language of the fifteenth amendment which forbade disfranchisement on account of race.Support for the amendment,coming from many directions,led the suffragists to believe that their case was hopeful.In their platform of 1872,for example,the Republicans praised the women for their loyal devotion to *******,welcomed them to spheres of wider usefulness,and declared that the demand of any class of citizens for additional rights deservedExperience soon demonstrated,however,that praise was not the ballot.Indeed the suffragists already had realized that a tedious contest lay before them.They had revived in 1866their regular national convention.They gave the name of "The Revolution"to their paper,edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.Anthony.They formed a national suffrage association and organized annual pilgrimages to Congress to present their claims.Such activities bore some results.Many eminent congressmen were converted to their cause andpresented it ably to their colleagues of both chambers.Still the subject was ridiculed by the newspapers and looked upon as freakish by the masses.