The Development of a Campaign For Women's Suffrage After 1870

Women were trying to get the vote for many years before 1900, however this was not a serious concern and they were not doing much to achieve this. However in 1900 this all changed. The NUWSS (Suffragists) and the WSPU (Suffragettes) were set up in the early years of 1900; their goal was to allow women to get the vote. Their reason was that women were already allowed to work on city councils and become doctors, some notable ones too such as Florence Nightingale. The NUWSS believed that if women were house owners and had respectable jobs they should be allowed to vote. This is because men who were allowed to vote could be white slave owners and lunatics so why could these men vote and

In the 1890's though they called it "Woman's Era," yet they were not allowed to vote. By the 1900's they began to hold jobs about 5 million women began to work. (Foner 663). Three years after the 19th Amendment finally guaranteed a woman's right to vote everywhere in the country (Bolden 203). Congress didn't pass it until 1972 then it had to be approved by 38 state legislatures within seven years.

In the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s, women played a significant role in social reforms. During this time, women fought for women’s voting rights. It took almost two years for the 19th amendment, women’s voting rights, to get passed. The 19th amendment was later passed in 1920. Once the amendment was passed, it unified suffrage laws across the United States. Because these women fought for what they wanted and stood up for what they believed in, they made history.

Did you know that women haven’t always been able to vote? They also haven’t always had the same rights as men. The U.S is a democracy but women knew that a democracy meant all the people could vote but in 1848 women were not allowed to vote. The U.S. was not respecting minority rights. Some women decided to take a stand.

Since the early 1800’s women began to fight for their rights. They began to get tired of their everyday life and decided to change things up. They began with wanting to be seen as equals with the men. They wanted to work and make their own money. But most of all they wanted to vote.

As the years progressed from the 1700s into the 1800s, women started to see that they were not treated as equal as men even though they could do anything men could. During the late 1800s was when women first started to fight for more rights and equality. They started forming more and more women groups, and even went on labor strikes to protest the diversity. Although it seemed that as hard as they tried to gain this equality, the harder it was for them to obtain it. They were treated horribly and unequally to men. While African American men received the power to vote in 1870, women still did not have a chance at that right. Even though many people disagree that women were treated fairly, the studies show that they were discriminated against. The treatment of women in the late 1800s was discriminatory because they

Women’s rights were not always a part of society as it may seem in today’s world. Suffrage can date all the way back to 1776. Women had to fight for their rights and privileges, hard and for many years. In the late 1800’s women were seen as much less than a male and had no voice. Women were arrested, prosecuted and put down for wanting more freedom and power for their gender. As you see in many suffrage ads, women were desperate and wanted so badly the same equality as men. A few women in particular stood up for what they believed was right and fought hard. Although it took far too long and over 100 years, in 1920 women were finally given the opportunity to share the same voting rights as men. History had been made.

In the 1800s, women were not allowed to have a say in what was perceived to be a “man’s world.” They were expected to be mothers and housewives. Nothing more, nothing less. Women tried to get legislation to pass a reform, but they refused to listen. Because of this, they felt they needed to gain the right to vote.

Women’s suffrage, or the crusade to achieve the equal right for women to vote and run for political office, was a difficult fight that took activists in the United States almost 100 years to win. On August 26, 1920 the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified, declaring all women be empowered with the same rights and responsibilities of citizenship as men, and on Election Day, 1920 millions of women exercised their right to vote for the very first time.

Women in America never felt equally to the men. They never felt as if they had the same potential or freedoms the men had. Women, like men, felt they were entitled these rights. This lead to many campaigns, protests, etc. Women fought for these rights for years with little to show for it. But, on August 26th, 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment was passed giving women the right to vote. In the 1920’s women wanted equality, which fueled the suffrage movement that allowed key women to lead the charge and fight for reforms.

Women reformers adopted the arguments that they could bring moral and maternal instincts to political matters if they were granted the right to vote. This new approach was highly effective in gaining support towards woman suffrage because women showed that they could bring certain things to politics that men could not. Therefore, a well-rounded political system sounded appealing to the public and seized their support. The moral and maternal approach to woman suffrage showed the public why female input in political matters would be advantageous to the overall political system. As a result, different states began to recognize what they were missing out on and eventually approved woman suffrage. While the trend was in motion, women reformers wanted to take the movement a step further. Even though they were participating in political and social matters, they still did not have the right to vote. Therefore, women still did not have the political power that they truly desired. Without the legal right to vote in politics, their power was still very limited. As a result, women reformers campaigned for a national constitutional amendment to gift all women with the official right to vote. Finally, in 1920, Congress approved the 19th amendment and it was ratified by the states. “The Nineteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution declares that ‘The right of

“Remember the ladies”, wrote boldly by the soon to be First Lady Abigail Adams to her husband John Adams in March 1776. Abigail Adams’s words were one of the first noted mentions in the United States foreshadowing the beginning of a long suppressed battle towards women’s suffrage. The fight for women suffrage was a movement in which women, and some men included, pleaded for equal rights regarding voting and women’s voice within the political realm. Women’s suffrage was not a matter of instant success; it endured a prolonged time to achieve. It was not until August 1920, about 14 decades later after Abigail Adam’s words, that the 19th amendment which had provided everyone the right to vote regardless of a person’s “sex”, had passed. Although the 19th amendment nationalized equal voting rights in the country in 1920, many states ratified this amendment in even later years. The lengthy period and long complex battles towards victory were the result of many obstacles between suffragists and anti-suffragists; obstacles which hindered the movement’s progress and which are not limited to: traditionally accustomed values, religion, split arguments within the movement, and other national political setbacks. If these setbacks were handled differently in a more urgent manner, women suffrage might have achieved earlier than 1920 or in a shorter amount of gruesome activism period.

What if you’ve been given a million dollars to spend, what would yo do with it? During the Progressive Era(1900), there were a lot of issues with Conservation, Women’s suffrage, Child Labor, and Food Safety where people were upset with the U.S. and the way they had to live, So on 1913 there is an opportunity to distribute $1,000,000 amongst three sectors. There’s an opportunity to distribute/donate to Conservation since the U.S. would pollute their land and cut trees which cause major environmental/natural issues. To add on there’s a chance to distribute/donate to women’s suffrage since during the 1900’s the U.S. had unequal rights for women, and women weren’t able to vote which causes major issues/Civil Unrest between the women of the U.S.

For decades, women struggled to gain their suffrage, or right to vote. The women’s suffrage movement started in the decades before the Civil War, and eventually accomplished its goal in the year of 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified into the U.S. Constitution. After the U.S. Civil War, the women’s suffrage movement gained popularity and challenged traditional values and sexism in the country; the increase of progressive social values benefited the women suffragists by allowing them to succeed in passing the 19th Amendment which changed the role of women in society, guaranteed them a voice in politics, and encouraged future generations to struggle for women’s equal rights.

Back in the 1900s there were limits on what women were able to do. The life of a wife and a mother back then was to clean, cook, and tend to the every need of the husband and/or children. There was very little say in the matter of what women could do especially in the government or community. At this point in the United States Women Suffrage was knocking on the door of Washington D.C by Susan B. Anthony in 1871 but little was really accomplished on paper until later in the 1900s around 1915 or so, (Stevenson).