The Powerful Influence of Women's Suffrage Movement in American History

Lydia Taft was a wealthy widow, allowed to vote first time in the town meeting in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, in 1756. In the colonial era, no other women are known to have voted. The New Jersey constitution of 1776 emancipated all adult residents who owned a specified amount of property. Many laws approved in the years 1790 and 1797 referred to voters as “he” or “she,” and women routinely voted. This law passed in 1807; however, women were excluded from voting in the State of America. Since New Jersey repealed their woman suffrage rights in 1807, Kentucky progressed the first statewide woman suffrage law in the New Republic Era-allowing any widow or feme sole over 21 who paid their property taxes for the new county 'common school' system. This partial suffrage rights for women were not expressed as for whites only.

Women Suffrage Movement

The women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long brawl to triumph the entitlement to vote for women in the United States of America. It took militancy and reformers almost 100 years to achieve that right, and the campaign for that was not easy: disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. Nevertheless, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Chater was ultimately endorsed, enfranchising all American women and proclaiming for the very first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Beginning of Women’s Right Moment

Before the Civil War, the campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades. During the 1820s and 30s, most of the states had enlarged the franchise to all white men, nevertheless of how much money or property they had. At the same time, all types of reform groups were increasing across the United States temperance leagues, religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti-slavery organizations—and in many of these, women played a prominent role. At that time, many American women were starting to abrade against the words of historians “Cult of True Womanhood”. That is the plan according to which, only “true” woman was a religious, humble wife and mother concerned entirely with home and family.

Seneca Falls Convention

In early 1848, a class of emancipationist, mostly women with the contribution of some men, congregated in Seneca Falls, New York, to talk about the problems related to women’s rights. All the women were invited there by two leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Most of the delegates there agreed on one point that 'American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.” “We grasp these truths to be self-evident,” manifested the Declaration of Sentiments that envoys produced that, “all men and women are molded equal, that their creator presents them with certain inviolable rights, that among these are life, freedom of rights, and the pursuit of happiness.” What this actually means, among all of these, it means that they believed women should have the right to vote.

Civil War and Civil Rights

The women’s rights movement gathered steam during the 1850s, but it lost momentum when the Civil War began. When the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution highlighted familiar pros and cons of suffrage and citizenship. The 14th Amendment was reformed in 1868—and defines “citizens” as “male.” The 15th Amendment was amended in 1870, guarantees black men the right to vote.

At that time, two reformers Stanton and Susan B. Anthony felt the need to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, both of them refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with anti-Semitic Southerners who argued that white women’s votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African-Americans.

In 1869, they formed a group named the National Woman Suffrage Association. The founder of the Association was Lucy Stone. They started fighting with the US Constitution and demanded universal suffrage amendment. This Association fought for the equal rights of women in the United States of America.

The Progressive Campaign

In 1890, the two groups consolidated to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the first president (head) of the organization. After the foundation of the organization, the objectives had changed. Instead of proclaiming that women deserved equal rights and responsibilities as men because men and women were “created equal,” the newly formed Association argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men.

This altercation served many political agendas: abstinence reformers, for example, desired women to have the vote because they believed it would muster up an extensive voting alliance on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were oscillated once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would “ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained.”

Protest and Progress for Rights

On the eve of the establishment of President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, protesters marched a massive suffrage parade in the nation’s capital, and hundreds of women were injured. That same year, Alice Paul formulated the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which later became the National Woman’s Party. The corporation mounted several affirmations and regularly surrounded the White House, among other militant tactics. As a consequence of these actions, some group members were apprehended and granted jail time.

In 1918, President Wilson diverted his stand on women’s voting rights from protestation to support through the impact of Catt, who had a less-antagonistic behavior than Paul. Wilson also fettered the proposed suffrage amendment to America’s involvement in World WarIand the improve title role women had played in the war struggle. Wilson addressed suffrage the Senate in favor of suffrage when the Amendment came up for a vote. As demonstrated in The New York Times on October 1, 1918, Wilson said, “I regard the augmentation of suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged.”

On May 21, 1919, the US. Representative James R. Mann, a Legislator from Illinois and chairman of the Suffrage Committee, suggested the House resolution to authorize the Susan Anthony Amendment permitting women the right to vote. The initiative passed the House 304 to 89—a full 42 votes above the needed two-thirds generality. After two weeks, on June 4, 1919, the US. Senate streamed the 19th Amendment by two votes over its two-thirds majority, 56-25. The amendment was delivered to the states for ratification. Within six days of the authorization cycle, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin each authorize the amendment. Kansas, New York, and Ohio accompanied on June 16, 1919. In March of the following year, a total of 35 states had approved that Amendment, one state bashful of the two-thirds recommended for approval. Southern states were stubbornly resisted to the Amendment, however, and seven out of the—Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia—had already refused it before Tennessee’s vote on August 18, 1920. It was up to Tennessee to point the lamina for woman suffrage.

The point of view appeared desolate, given the results in other Southern states and granted the position of Tennessee’s state reformers in their 48-48 tie. The state’s commitments came down to 23-year-old Representative Harry T. Burn, a Legislator from McMinn County, to cast for the vote. Although Burn averses the amendment, his mother persuaded him to approve it. Mrs. Burn reportedly noted down to her son: “Don’t neglect to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.” With Burn’s vote, the 19th Amendment was fully ratified.

August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was attested by U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, and women finally pulled off the long-sought right to vote through the whole United States of America. On November 2 of that year, approximately more than 8.5 million women throughout the U.S. voted in referendums for the very initially. It took over 60 years for the surviving 12 states to approve the 19th Amendment. Mississippi was the last who did that on March 22, 1984.

Results of the 19th Amendment

The 19th Amendment (1920) to the Constitution of the United States gives identical voting rights to men and women. The amendment expresses that the power of citizens to vote 'shall not be refused or abridged by the United States of America or by any State based on sex or gender.' Although this fairness was implicated in the 14th Amendment (1868), most of the states pursued to restrict or preclude women's suffrage movement.

Conclusion

The women's suffrage movements, which started as early as the 1830s and became convoluted with the struggle to put an end to slavery, developed in the proposal for the 19th Amendment, which was introduced in Congress in 1878. This proposed amendment endured a controversial issue for over 40 years, during which the women's suffrage movement became strongly belligerent, conducting campaigns and exhibitions for congressional movement of the amendment and then for authorization by the states. This political action, strengthened by the service of women in industry during World War I, resulted in the assumption of the Amendment.