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"Created
Equal": The Movement for Women's Suffrage
Seventy-two years after Abigail Adams asked
her husband to "remember the ladies," a
group composed of two-hundred women and
forty men met in the Wesleyan Chapel in
Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the rights
of women in America. (i) Led by Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the Seneca
Falls Convention helped lay the foundation
for the nineteenth-century women�s rights
struggle. In their �Declaration of Sentiments,�
the activists called upon the rhetoric of
the Revolution, declaring that �all men
and women are created equal,� and listing
eleven resolutions. (ii) The most heavily
debated resolution asserted that women had
a �sacred right to the elective franchise.�
(iii)
Throughout the 1850�s, women continued
to meet in conventions and less formal gatherings
to discuss their economic, educational,
political, legal, and familial rights. The
women, who were mostly white and middle
class, participated in a broad spectrum
of protest movements, fighting against alcohol
and slavery, and for the rights of immigrants
and the poor. All of these movements gave
women the opportunity to develop and sharpen
organizational and ideological skills. However,
women were often discouraged or even barred
from holding positions of power equal to
those of their male counterparts. Thus,
women began to focus more and more on their
own status in America.
When the women�s movement emerged, it,
and one of its main goals, proved quite
controversial. The possibility of women�s
suffrage stirred fear in Victorian society.
According to the rules of Victorian America,
men and women were supposed to remain in
separate spheres � women in the private
sphere of home and domesticity, and men
in the public sphere of work and politics.
Women taking an interest in the rights of
other groups � slaves, poor immigrants,
and families of alcoholics � fit with Victorian
ideology because the women protested on
behalf of others. In other words, the women
protestors could be seen as simply extending
their nurturing, mothering instincts to
the public. Voting, however, was a right
claimed for women in order to aid women.
Such self-serving sentiments shocked a society
in which women were valued most for quiet
self-sacrifice and humble endurance.
Indeed, protests against women�s suffrage
often came from women. These women believed
that God had entrusted them with certain
duties, and that enfranchisement would lead
to the destruction of their sacred role
as mother and housewife. They also felt
that the proper way to exercise influence
over the public sphere was through raising
patriotic sons. (iv) Women�s suffrage was
so radical a concept that women themselves
feared it as a threat to the foundation
of American society, the family.
Ironically, the anti-suffrage women who
based their feminine ideals on morality
and piety found allies with the liquor interests,
who associated the temperance movement with
the suffrage movement. However, they allied
also with the Catholic Church and other
similarly conservative groups that clung
to traditions of inequality.
Even within the suffrage movement, divisions
emerged. Though the women had a common goal,
they did not share identical notions of
how to achieve that goal. One of the major
splits came over the Fourteenth Amendment,
which used the word �male� to refer to a
citizen�s voting rights. A number of suffragists,
led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan
B. Anthony, protested the amendment and
widened a rift between women�s suffrage
supporters and African American suffrage
supporters. Frederick Douglass was one of
the African American men alienated from
the movement, declaring that it was �the
Negro�s hour,� and that women, of all races,
would have to wait. (v)
African American women, such as Sojournor
Truth, found themselves caught between their
race and their sex. This conflict and others
led to a split in the women�s suffrage movement
in 1869. While Anthony and Stanton led a
faction still fighting for a national amendment,
others focused on winning enfranchisement
state-by-state. (vi)
By 1890, the suffrage movement was united
again. More moderate, younger women gradually
replaced the radical leadership of Stanton
and Anthony, forming the National American
Woman Suffrage Association. White, middle-class
women still dominated the movement, and
even based their claim for suffrage on the
assumption that their votes were needed
to counteract the votes of �ignorant� immigrant
men in urban slums. (vii) It was under the
leadership of these women that the movement
finally achieved its goal � in 1920, an
amendment to the Constitution guaranteed
American women the right to vote.
Though earning the vote marks a landmark
in the struggle for women�s rights, the
suffragists found that their fight certainly
did not end with the nineteenth amendment.
Economic, familial, and legal inequalities
abounded. Slowly, however, women won struggles
in courts, in legislation, and in their
homes. What the suffragists discovered,
and what we are all bound to discover, is
that while each struggle may be an exhausting
battle, each victory brings us closer to
winning the war.
Endnotes:
i. Sara M. Evans Born for
Liberty, A History of Women in America.
(New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997) pp.94-95.
ii. Mary Beth Norton and Ruth M. Alexander,
eds. Major Problems in American
Women�s History. (Lexington, MA:
D.C. Heath and Company, 1996). p.167.
iii. Mary Beth Norton and Ruth M. Alexander,
eds. Major Problems in American
Women�s History. (Lexington, MA:
D.C. Heath and Company, 1996). p.167.
iv. Jane Camhi Women Against
Women. (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing
Inc., 1994) pp.4-7.
v. Gary B. Nash and Julie Roy Jeffrey The
American People. (New York: Harper
& Row Publishers, 1986) p.544.
vi. ibid. pp.544-545.
vii. ibid. p.644.
Sources
1. Camhi, Jane Women Against Women.
Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1994.
2. Evans, Sara M. Born for Liberty, A
History of Women in America. New York:
Free Press Paperbacks, 1997.
3. Nash, Gary B. and Julie Roy Jeffrey The
American People. New York: Harper &
Row Publishers, 1986.
4. Norton, Mary Beth and Ruth M. Alexander,
eds. Major Problems in American Women�s
History. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and
Company, 1996.
Questions about this column? Please
e-mail me at [email protected].
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