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Women's Suffrage

Immediately after the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony, a strong and outspoken advocate of women's rights, demanded that the Fourteenth Amendment include a guarantee of the vote for women as well as for African-American males. In 1869, Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). These two would become the women’s movement’s most outspoken advocates. Describing their partnership, Cady Stanton would say, “I forged the thunderbolts and she fired them.” Later that year, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and others formed the American Woman Suffrage Association. However, not until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919 did women throughout the nation gain the right to vote.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, women and women's organizations not only worked to gain the right to vote, they also worked for broad-based economic and political equality and for social reforms. Between 1880 and 1910, the number of women employed in the United States increased from 2.6 million to 7.8 million. Although women began to be employed in business and industry, the majority of better paying positions continued to go to men.

At the turn of the century, 60 percent of all working women were employed as domestic servants. In the area of politics, women gained the right to control their earnings, own property, and, in the case of divorce, take custody of their children. By 1896, women had gained the right to vote in four states (Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah). Women and women's organizations also worked on behalf of many social and reform issues. By the beginning of the new century, women's clubs in towns and cities across the nation were working to promote suffrage, better schools, the regulation of child labor, women in unions, and liquor prohibition.

Not all women believed in equality for the sexes. Women who upheld traditional gender roles argued that politics were improper for women. Some even insisted that voting might cause some women to "grow beards." The challenge to traditional roles represented by the struggle for political, economic, and social equality was as threatening to some women as it was to most men.

As with any issue, there were those who supported giving women the vote and those who were opposed. The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage initially was known as the New York State Association Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to Women. The name was changed sometime between October 27, 1908 and November 4, 1908.

According to the 1902 edition of the Tribune Almanac and Political Register, there "was no open action against the granting of suffrage to women by the women of the country until the New-York constitutional convention was held [in Albany, New York] in May and June 1894. The women who favored the granting of the franchise claimed that while only a few women openly espoused the cause, all the other women silently favored it or were indifferent. For this reason they were gaining ground with legislators. In order to contradict the error, and to give the members of the constitutional convention a correct knowledge of the desires of the women of the state, an organization of women opposed to the granting of suffrage to women was founded in Brooklyn, N.Y. … [and another was founded] in Albany, N.Y. … New-York followed with an organization headed by Mrs. Francis M. Scott, Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, [and] Mrs. Elihu Root …

After the adjournment of the convention, the organizations, with the exception of the one at Albany, disbanded. Later it was believed advisable to reorganize as a state association, with headquarters at New-York. That was done" ca. April 8, 1895, when, as reported in the April 3, 1912, issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a "permanent organization to oppose suffrage was formed in New York City … at the home of Mrs. Abram Hewitt, with Mrs. Francis M. Scott as chairman and Mrs. George Phillips as secretary. The Brooklyn and Albany committees entered the organization as auxiliaries." Mrs. Scott was the first president and Mrs. Phillips was the first secretary.

The woman suffrage amendment to the New York State constitution didn't pass in 1915, losing in the election when 748,332 men said "No" and 553,348 men voted "Yes." The question was posed to the men again in 1917. This time the woman suffrage amendment was passed when 703,120 men voted "Yes" and 600,776" voted "No."

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.