19th Amendment and Women's Suffrage History in America

The 19th Amendment and Its Origins

Sections 1 and 2 of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution read:

"The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

"Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." (Thomson 2005)

The background of this amendment dates back to 1848, when 240 women — mostly educated and of high social status — gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss the injustices committed against women and to take action against them (Nappi 2004). Most of all, they objected to their lack of power to vote for leaders who passed laws oppressive to them. These women were mocked by the newspapers of their day, at a time when a woman's right to vote was considered as novel and odd as her keeping her own wages. A mother of seven, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, organized a convention of these women, who attended in their traditional clothing. The two other foremost leaders were Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone, and the three together exerted great influence on the movement until the 1890s. The women mostly originated from the white middle class of the North; they were not only better educated than ordinary women of the time, but also had some means of livelihood of their own (Kolmer 1996).

The Seneca Falls Convention and Early Organizing

Eight years before the Seneca Falls Convention, Stanton and Lucretia Mott had attended an anti-slavery convention during which they were denied the right to speak or even to sit in the same section as the men (Farber). Instead, they were placed in a balcony and screened from the proceedings. This experience, along with others like it, led them and fellow reformers to organize a convention to discuss women's rights. Their Declaration of Sentiments was published and quoted thus:

"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."

Three years later, 1,000 delegates attended their first National Convention for women's rights, organized by Stone and Mott. This event was followed by the publication of the first women's rights newspaper in Providence, Rhode Island. Lucy Stone married Henry Blackwell but did not take his name or promise to obey him. Their marriage contract read:

"We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited except for crime, that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership and to be recognized by law, that until it is recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws by every means in their power."

State-by-State Progress and the Road to Ratification

A women's suffrage amendment proposal emerged in Kansas in 1867, but the voters of Kansas rejected it (Farber). It was only when the Wyoming and Utah territories granted women the right to vote that the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1870. At that time, Victoria Woodhull was a candidate for president, with African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass as her running mate. In her campaigns, Mrs. Woodhull declared:

"My campaign will open a door to be shut no more forever."

The following year, she became the first woman to address members of a congressional committee on the issue of women's suffrage (Farber). Then, Susan B. Anthony voted for Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election, was arrested for voting illegally, convicted, and fined $100 (Farber).

In the case of Bradwell v. Illinois in 1873, the Supreme Court ruled that a state could prohibit a married woman from practicing law, stating: "The natural and proper timidity and delicacy, which belongs to the female sex, evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life." The Supreme Court shifted its position two years later in Minor v. Happersett, describing women as "persons" while also holding that women born in the United States belonged to "a special category of non-voting citizens" (as qtd. in Farber).

In 1876, Senator A. A. Sargent of California sponsored a women's suffrage amendment, but it was never brought to a vote. Through special congressional legislation in 1879, Belva Lockwood became the first woman lawyer certified to try a case before the Supreme Court. Eight years later, in 1887, a women's suffrage amendment was voted on and defeated by 34 to 16 in the U.S. Senate, which also voted to ban polygamy in the Utah territory. Wyoming was admitted to the Union in 1890 as the first state to grant women the right to vote. Colorado followed three years later, and Utah did so in 1896.