Writing For Woman’s Suffrage – The Final Days Of Success

10 comments

There were many people fighting for the rights of women for decades leading up to the women suffrage movement and the creation of The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA).  In the year following the ratification of the 15th amendment, the NWSA sent a voting rights petition to the Senate and House of Representatives.

They were requesting that suffrage rights be extended to women and that women be granted the privilege of being heard on the floor of Congress. Women wanted the right to vote; moreover, they sought equal access to education and employment, equality within marriage, and a married woman’s right to her own property and wages, custody over her children and control over her own body. Things every individual has a natural right to have in the world.

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in May of 1869 – they opposed the 15th amendment because it excluded women. In today’s post, I am sharing a couple letters  written by Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, and an address made by President Wilson to Senate in support of Women’s suffrage. These women accomplished a lot after a long fight to bring about necessary changes.

DOCUMENT ONE:

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were best friends and close colleagues in the woman’s suffrage movement. In the below October 1902 letter to Stanton, Anthony acknowledges that neither of them would live to see victory, but she nevertheless remains confident that the campaign will succeed. Stanton died days after receiving this letter, and Anthony died four years later. In the letter Anthony praises the women standing up for their rights and is full of hope that women will be able to get an education, have careers, and live their lives happily how they choose.

“My Dear Mrs. Stanton, 

It is fifty-one years since first we met and we have been busy through every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of women. The older we grow, the more keenly we feel the humiliation of disfranchisement and the more vividly we realize its disadvantages in every department of life and most of all in the labor market. We little dreamed when we began this contest, optimistic with the hope and buoyancy of youth, that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women. But our hearts are filled with joy to know that they enter upon this task equipped with a college education, with business experience, with the fully admitted right to speak in public—all of which were denied to women fifty years ago. They have practically but one point to gain—the suffrage; we had all. These strong, courageous, capable young women will take our place and complete our work. There is an army of them where we were but a handful. Ancient prejudice has become so softened, public sentiment so liberalized and women have so thoroughly demonstrated their ability as to leave not a shadow of doubt that they will carry out cause to victory. And we, dear old friend, shall move on to the next sphere of existence—higher and larger, we cannot fail to believe, and one where women will not be placed in an inferior position but will be welcomed on a plane of perfect intellectual and spiritual equality.

Ever lovingly yours, Susan B. Anthony”

Citation: A Letter, Susan B Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, October 1902 Contributed by Carol Hall From the book Letters of the Century: America 1900-1999 edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler. 1999.  https://www.lwvlincolncounty.org/post/a-letter-susan-b-anthony-to-elizabeth-cady-stanton-october-1902-contributed-by-carol-hall

(Susan B. Anthony (Left) & Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Right) 

DOCUMENT TWO: 

While radical suffragist chained themselves to the White House fence, and went on hunger strikes, others followed more traditional political channels – methodically gathering petitions, lobbying legislation, building alliances, and rounding up votes. Mary Garret Hay, vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), reports her efforts with New York state legislators in a letter to fellow activist and supporter, a Mrs. Maud Wood Park.

“New York City, N.Y

March 19th, 1919

Mrs. Maud Wood Park 

1626 Rhode Island Avenue

Washington, D.C 

Dear Mrs. Park, 

… I kept in very close touch on the telephone and telegraph wire with New York Congressmen and they reported to me, really twice a day what was going on, as far as Speaker, Floor Leader, and Suffrage Committee was concerned. I can do more in the House than in the Senate, and I have asked Mr. Hays on the long distance telephone to try and see that things are perfectly straight for our Cause there. Things will be alright, I believe, but I have made up my mind not to trust either Democrats or Republicans, until the Suffrage Amendment is passed; however, I do not say this to men, only to you, and I shall keep my eyes and ears open and busy, and on the job all I can. “

Citation: Roark, J. L., Johnson, M. P., Furstenberg François, Cohen, P. C., Stage, S., Hartmann, S. M; Igo, S. E. (2020). The American promise: A history of the United States. Bedford/St. Martin’s, Macmillan Learning.

(Mrs. Maud Park)

DOCUMENT THREE: 

Although some people urged suffragist to muffle their demands during the war, so the nation could concentrate on victory in Europe, Carrie Chapman Catt, president of NAWSA since 1915, pressed on. She recognized that war presented a special opportunity. Catt Prodded President Woodrow Wilson quietly but persistently, and On September 30th, 1918, Wilson finally intervened directly. He urged the Senate to pass legislation for Suffrage in the below Speech.

“September 30, 1918

Gentlemen of the Senate:

The unusual circumstances of a world war in which we stand and are judged in the view not only of our own people and our own consciences but also in the view of all nations and peoples will, I hope, justify in your thought, as it does in mine, the message I have come to bring to you. I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged. I have come to urge upon you the considerations which have led me to that conclusion. It is not only my privilege, it is also my duty to apprise you of every circumstance and element involved in this momentous struggle which seems to me to affect its very processes and outcome. It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it.

I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the amendment because no disputable principle is involved but only a question of the method by which the suffrage is to be extended to women. There is and can be no party issue involved in it. Both of our great national parties are pledged, explicitly pledged, to equality of suffrage for the women of the country. Neither party, therefore, it seems to me, can justify hesitation as to the method of obtaining it, can rightfully hesitate to substitute federal initiative for state initiative, if the early adoption of the measure is necessary to the successful persecution of the war and if the method of state action proposed in the party platforms of 1916 is impracticable within any reasonable length of time, if practicable at all. And its adoption is, in my judgment, clearly necessary to the successful prosecution of the war and the successful realization of the objects for which the war is being fought.

That judgment I take the liberty of urging upon you with solemn earnestness for reasons which I shall state very frankly and which I shall hope will seem as conclusive to you as they seem to me.

This is a peoples’ war and the peoples’ thinking constitutes its atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing room or the political considerations of the caucus. If we be indeed democrats and wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they wish to be led nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions. Our professions will not suffice. Verification must be forthcoming when verification is asked for. And in this case verification is asked for—asked for in this particular matter. You ask by whom? Not through diplomatic channels; not by Foreign Ministers. Not by the intimations of parliaments. It is asked for by the anxious, expectant, suffering peoples with whom we are dealing and who are willing to put their destinies in some measure in our hands, if they are sure that we wish the same things that they do. I do not speak by conjecture. It is not alone the voices of statesmen and of newspapers that reach me, and the voices of foolish and intemperate agitators do not reach me at all. Through many, many channels I have been made aware what the plain, struggling, workaday folk are thinking upon whom the chief terror and suffering of this tragic war falls. They are looking to the great, powerful, famous Democracy of the West to lead them to the new day for which they have so long waited; and they think, in their logical simplicity, that democracy means that women shall play their part in affairs alongside men and upon an equal footing with them. If we reject measures like this, in ignorance or defiance of what a new age has brought forth, of what they have seen but we have not, they will cease to believe in us; they will cease to follow or to trust us. They have seen their own governments accept this interpretation of democracy—seen old governments like that of Great Britain, which did not profess to be democratic, promise readily and as of course this justice to women, though they had long before refused it, the strange revelations of this war having made many things new and plain, to governments as well as to peoples.

Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson? Are we alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can give—service and sacrifice of every kind—and still say we do not see what title that gives them to stand by our sides in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right? This war could not have been fought, either by the other nations engaged or by America, if it had not been for the services of the women—services rendered in every sphere—not merely in the fields of effort in which we have been accustomed to see them work, but wherever men have worked and upon the very skirts and edges of the battle itself. We shall not only be distrusted but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise them with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the other great free nations will enfranchise them. We cannot isolate our thought or our action in such a matter from the thought of the rest of the world. We must either conform or deliberately reject what they propose and resign the leadership of liberal minds to others.

The women of America are too noble and too intelligent and too devoted to be slackers whether you give or withhold this thing that is mere justice; but I know the magic it will work in their thoughts and spirits if you give it them. I propose it as I would propose to admit soldiers to the suffrage, the men fighting in the field for our liberties and the liberties of the world, were they excluded. The tasks of the women lie at the very heart of the war, and I know how much stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show our women that you trust them as much as you in fact and of necessity depend upon them.

Have I said that the passage of this amendment is a vitally necessary war measure, and do you need further proof? Do you stand in need of the trust of other peoples and of the trust of our own women? Is that trust an asset or is it not? I tell you plainly, as the commander-in-chief of our armies and of the gallant men in our fleets, as the present spokesman of the people in our dealings with the men and women throughout the world who are now our partners, as the responsible head of a great government which stands and is questioned day by day as to its purposes, its principles, its hopes, whether they be serviceable to men everywhere or only to itself, and who must himself answer these questionings or be shamed, as the guide and director of forces caught in the grip of war and by the same token in need of every material and spiritual resource this great nation possesses—I tell you plainly that this measure which I urge upon you is vital to the winning of the war and to the energies alike of preparation and of battle.

And not to the winning of the war only. It is vital to the right solution of the great problems which we must settle, and settle immediately, when the war is over. We shall need them in our vision of affairs, as we have never needed them before, the sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the women of the world. The problems of that time will strike to the roots of many things that we have not hitherto questioned, and I for one believe that our safety in those questioning days, as well as our comprehension of matters that touch society to the quick, will depend upon the direct and authoritative participation of women in our counsels. We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system of life as well as to discover just what it is that ought to be purified and reformed. Without their counsellings we shall be only half wise.

That is my case. This is my appeal. Many may deny its validity, if they choose, but no one can brush aside or answer the arguments upon which it is based. The executive tasks of this war rest upon me. I ask that you lighten them and place in my hands instruments, spiritual instruments, which I do not now possess, and which I have daily to apologize for not being able to employ.”

Citation: Woodrow Wilson, Address to the Senate on the Nineteenth Amendment Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/329326

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA!

FACEBOOK PAGE:TheChroniclesOfHistory
TWITTER: SamanthaJJamesx
INTAGRAM: sammyloveshistory
PINTEREST: thechroniclesofhistoryblog
TUMBLR: samanthajameswriter

JOIN THE HISTORY TABLE GROUP:

Share in a love of history, writing, books, or just reading! Everybody can join who love history. The rules are pretty relaxed. The main ones are to be civil towards each other and keep modern politics out of the discussion.

JOIN OUR GROUP BY CLICKING HERE

BOOKENDS OF LITERATURE GROUP:

Authors and readers alike come share your books, writing, book reviews, and love for all things book! This is a community for writers and readers alike to find a home. Just like the history group, the rules are relaxed. We just ask for civility and kindness towards each other.

JOIN OUR GROUP BY CLICKNG HERE

10 comments

Leave a Reply