How American Women Won the Right to Vote

The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (informally called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment), which granted full voting rights to women across the United States of America, was adopted on August 26, 1920 -- only 144 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Happy 88th Birthday to all of the voting women in the U.S.!

This Hub is dedicated to the heroines who gave all Americans ... men and women alike ... a major reason to celebrate.

Where's the best place to party? A voting booth near you!

The first recorded woman voter in the Colonies was Lydia Chapin Taft, who voted in 3 elections between 1756 and 1768. Her husband, Josiah Taft, an important landowner and taxpayer in Massachusetts, died shortly before a local election. As Josiah's widow, Lydia Taft was given his proxy.

Voting rights, or their lack, were far from universal in the Colonies or, later, in the States. The movement to extend full voting rights to American women was born with the nation itself. In 1776, when John Adams attended the first Continental Congress, his wife, Abigail Adams, wrote to her husband, imploring him to "remember the ladies." John Adams' response was decidedly less than gallant -- "Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems."

With the honorable exception of New Jersey, women in all states lost the right to vote by 1787.

Between 1787 and 1848, sporadic women's rights efforts occurred on a local or regional scale. These efforts involved women's education, property rights and labor rights. Women were also active in the movement to abolish slavery, though their efforts were often unwelcome and unacknowledged.

The nationwide movement for women's rights and suffrage was born from the anti-slavery movement, and the two movements remained intertwined through the first quarter of the 20th Century.

Abolitionists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton met at the International Anti-Slavery Conference in London, England in 1840. Mott was "allowed to speak," but was granted no official status at the convention. This slight against women abolitionists proved inspiring. Together, Mott and Stanton resolved to hold a similar conference for women. In 1848, Mott and Stanton convened the first national women's convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York. The Convention issued the Declaration of Sentiments, based on the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration included a resolution calling for women's suffrage.

Annual Women's Conventions were held from 1850 through 1861, when the Civil War intervened. The battle for women's rights gave way to abolition actions and the stresses of war.

Annual Women's Conventions were held from 1850 through 1861, when the Civil War intervened. Despite Susan B. Anthony's protests, the battle for women's rights was suspended for the duration.

Post-Civil War Struggle

Great social change, it seems, can come only after struggle on two fronts: from within and without. The Civil War's end brought both emancipation to African American slaves, and deep divisions within the suffrage movement. Activists hotly debated the question of focus: Should the movement fight for universal suffrage for all adult citizens, black or white? Or, is it better to concentrate first on rights based on race, then on gender -- or should that go the other way around? And what about strategy -- are radical means appropriate and necessary?

In 1866, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton attempted to unite the two movements under the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), with Lucretia Mott as President. Unity did not hold. AERA disbanded during its 1869 convention. Two days later, Anthony, Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which concentrated on women's rights only and supported Victoria Woodhull in her history-making run for the U.S. Presidency in 1872 -- 48 years before women could vote for her.

Lucy Stone, Harriet Beecher Stowe and others formed a competing organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). AWSA continued the tradition of campaigning on behalf of both women and African Americans. AWSA focused on voting rights and worked closely with Republican Party, thus taking a more conservative approach -- in a campaign to achieve a more radical goal -- than that of NWSA.

In 1890, NWSA and AWSA merged to form the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

African American women were involved at high levels in NWSA and, to a somewhat lesser extent, AWSA.

New interests joined the effort. Hannah Greenbaum Solomon started the National Council of Jewish Women. (They're still going strong.) Working women founded the Women's Trade Union League of New York, which spread beyond New York and was a precursor of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

1911 brought organized opposition to suffrage, most notably in the form of the National Association Opposed to Women's Suffrage.

In 1912, Thedore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party became the first national party in the U.S. to support women's suffrage.

In 1913, Ida B. Wells-Barnett started the first African American suffrage organization, the Alpha Suffrage Club, in Chicago, Illinois. Meanwhile, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns took a leaf from the more radical elements of the British suffrage movement to organize the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CUWS).

In 1916, Representative Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first women elected to Congress.

A New War Intervenes

The advent of the Great War (World War I) once again brought suffrage efforts to a near halt. But this time, the willingness of women suffragists to suspend their efforts in the face of a more immediate crisis brought recognition and, ultimately, the right to vote, on August 26, 1920.