Woman s Right The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution
Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and August 18, 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but strategies for achieving their goal varied. Some pursued a strategy of passing suffrage acts in each state; nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. ... In 1648, Margaret Brent became the first women ever to demand the right to vote in America. Since that time, thousands of women have united to support their petitions for equality, including Susan B. ... Progression became evident in 1850 when the First National Woman’s Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. Shortly after the convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an active abolitionist, effective writer, married woman, and mother to a number of children, met with Susan B. ... The combination of Stanton’s talents as a powerful writer and Anthony’s ability as an electrifying speaker made their success together inevitable. At the end of the Civil War, Stanton and Anthony collected signatures on petitions asking Congress to include women’s suffrage in the Fourteenth Amendment, since the Amendment never directly excluded women from voting, but left the overall decision up to the states. ... Anthony saw this as an improvement for woman suffragists because it was the first time that women’s suffrage was being debated in Congress. Shortly after, the Fifteenth Amendment was introduced to Congress which would give African-American men the right to vote. Stanton and Anthony wanted to challenge this Amendment to include all US citizens regardless of race or gender, and also asked that women oppose this amendment until it was changed to include all citizens. Due to their protest over the Fifteenth Amendment, there was much disagreement with the beliefs of other women suffragists and resulted in two competing suffrage groups. The National Woman Suffrage Association, founded by Anthony, Stanton, and Martha Wright in 1869, was outspoken on a broad range of issues and wanted all discrimination against women stopped. ... The American Woman Suffrage Association was formed in response to the NWSA, by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and many other women. The AWSA consented to men in their association, and focused solely on gaining the right to vote for women, compared to the NWSA’s broader views of reform. Also, the AWSA decided on a gradual adoption of women’s suffrage on a state-by-state basis, where the NWSA pressed for a national women’s suffrage law and fought for a Constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage. ... Because she knowingly voted, without the right to do so, the government considered her actions as violations of state voting laws. Though Anthony worked toward gaining rights for women for most of her life, she believed the right to vote, suffrage, was most essential in providing equality to all United States citizens.