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"An important contribution to the history of women and the intellectual history of the United States." —Carl N. Degler, Stanford UniversityWhat united and moved millions of women to seek a right that their society denied them? What were their beliefs about the nature of the home, marriage, sex, politics, religion, immigrants, blacks, labor, the state? In this book, Aileen S. Kraditor selects a group of suffragist leaders and investigates their thinking—the ideas, and tactics, with which they battled the ideas and institutions impeding what suffragists defined as progress toward the equality of the sexes. She also examines what the American public believed "suffragism" to mean and how the major events of the time affected the movement. ... Read more

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A long struggle
Kraditor underscores two fundamental facts of the suffrage movement. First, women strove for gender equality over an extended period of time and secondly, during the course of the struggle the nation changed dramatically.To achieve suffrage women adapted their ideas and arguments to the conditions. For both the nation and for women it was an evolutionary process. What had begun as an idealized democratic vision of justice and equality was out of necessity denigrated to the expediency of political compromise. The fight for the ballot was won, not completely from the guarantees afforded by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but from the alliance of diverse interests in pursuit of compatible political agendas. During this protracted period, the country was transformed from a predominantly rural society and economy into an urbanized industrialized nation. Paralleling this profound metamorphous, the suffragist strategy evolved concomitantly from the pursuit of "natural rights to expediency" as a means for women to win the vote.

The struggle for women's suffrage spanned a period of seventy years. In 1848 women first met in Seneca Falls, New York and drew up the "Declaration of Sentiments" that included a controversial demand for women's right to vote. However it was the opposition to slavery that gave roots to the suffrage movement. "The founders of the women's movement were all abolitionists, although not all abolitionists believed in equal rights for women."(1) This dichotomy created a problem. "One who studies the women pioneers for women's rights in the United States cannot easily decide at all times whether the desire for their own emancipation or for the desire for the emancipation of the slave motivated them more strongly." (2) Throughout its history the movement was never completely in accord. Not all women agreed with the goal of women's suffrage and not all leaders of the suffrage movement always agreed on policy and strategy. Undoubtedly this is one of the reasons the struggle took so long.

The United States of 1848 was a very different country from the United States of 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. The development of factories, the growth of cities and changes in society dramatically transformed the country. In pre-industrial America, home and work places were shared. Some specialized shops permitted workers to congregate and share tools but products were still custom built.In time workshops became powered from a central plant, but specialized factories had not yet developed. As industrialization progressed the bringing together of machinery and labor in new factories increased the efficiency of production. The concentration of capital in industry and profits that accrued to the benefit of a few wealthy industrialists, such as Carnegie, did not help the majority of workers. As a result of industrialization there was crowding and poverty in urban areas as people came to the cities to work.

It was the social implications of America's industrialization that both drove and stymied the women's suffrage movement. When people congregated in the cities the home was no longer a place of work but rather became a place of leisure. The home became the focus of both pro and anti-suffrage arguments. As women entered the work force, working conditions were an issue and class divisions developed. Gender confusion and stress resulted from the new concepts of home, work and who should do what. The gender conflict dispute sprang from an idealized concept of the home. Women were expected to stay home and look after the family and hearth, but as workers they threatened men's jobs. Some jobs, such as schoolteachers, secretaries and nursing, were all right. Indeed, in these positions women demonstrated that they were now better educated than previously and were deserving of respect. Not until much later in the movement, when "suffragists in large numbers began publicly to identify themselves and their cause with workingwomen as workers...[did] labor began to support suffrage with more than formal endorsements." (146) Women were stymied from criticism for abandoning the home, but then driven to seek protection in the workplace.

Nothing symbolizes American industrialization more than the machine. Prior to the civil War, people optimistically thought technological innovation would foster greater democracy and equality The Gilded Age had on its surface a reflective sheen, but underneath the material progress of the era resulted in a widening gap between the haves and have-nots.

Other factors which characterize America's evolution as the country industrialized were the continuing issue of the black vote and large foreign immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While women abolitionists supported the black vote, following the Civil War blacks in the South were effectively disenfranchised through the poll tax and literacy requirements. Black women just as white women didn't have the vote. As large numbers of immigrants entered the country, "native" American men began to look for ways to restrict the immigrant vote. Enfranchised white Anglo-Saxon women could tip the scales to counter the "ignorant" immigrant voter. Immigration and the vote for black women were issues that percolated within the suffrage movement and effected suffrage strategy.

Several facets of the suffragist movement are unique and fascinating. One is that the movement was not always unified in its tactics and strategy. More remarkable is the fact that not all women even wanted the ballot. Some women participated in the movement for other reasons such as black emancipation or economic and social equality for women. Nor, as the nation evolved, was there a consistent argument. As Kraditor explains suffragist's arguments shifted from an emphasis on "natural rights" to "expediency." How women finally succeeded is a testament to their dedication and commitment. Despite disunity and lack of focus, the movement persisted and adapted over time. While maintaining its fundamental argument for justice, the movement became more practical in learning how to appeal to the power structure on a national level. Suffrage was a long sought goal whose ultimate success rested upon an accommodation with other interests.

When Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others met at Seneca Falls in 1848 seeking equal rights and the vote for women, it seemed logical that political equality should rest on the same foundation as it did for men. "If all men were created equal and had the inalienable right to consent to the laws by which they were governed, women were create equal to men and had the same inalienable right to political liberty." (44) Men and women by their "common humanity" (44) should share the same natural rights, it was argued. This appeal for justice persisted until suffrage was finally granted by the Nineteenth Amendment. But by then it had been subordinated to more "expedient" arguments in pushing the movement onward in opposition to anti-suffrage responses.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton's speech, "The Solitude of Self," best describes the meaning of the natural right argument. She highlighted each person's individual responsibility and right to determine their own destiny. All citizens should be afforded the same rights as guaranteed by the government and therefore to have the same responsibilities of citizenship as well. Only finally does she say that a woman's gender may involve some special obligation. "If the principles of the Declaration of Independence applied to men, they must also apply to women in those respects in which women were the same as men." (49) The antis countered that what natural right meant was that women remain in their customary roll, not a broadened one.

It is difficult to understand how women could have been put off so easily by those in power who granted slaves their freedom and black men, but not black or white women the right to vote after the Civil War. What seems the most reasonable explanation, is that the movement was largely a movement of middle class women, which lacked the ability to mass support. Today, with the concentration of power in Washington and better communication, advocacy groups energize their base in support of stated objectives, In any event, the natural right argument was not enough to garner a ground swell of support for the suffragists at that time.

Rather than arguing how men and women were the same, suffragists began to argue how they were different. "When even Mrs. Stanton acknowledged the right of legislatures to define the electorate by barring illiterates from the polls, the natural right argument for women suffrage lost much of its cogency." (53) The expediency argument becomes evident when women claimed the need for the vote in order to protect themselves from the hazards of factory work. Women became vocal against child labor, long working hours, and in the temperance the fight. "Some suffragists used the expediency argument because social reform was their principal goal and suffrage the means. Other suffragists used the same expediency argument because the link of women suffrage to reform seemed to be the best way to secure support for their principal goal: the vote." ( 45)

In another way women argued that they were best suited to clean up a lot of the problems in the cities, government and society. Slums, sanitation, crowded conditions in homes and work combined with the corrupt political machines that controlled local and national politics permitted women to stress that their vote would be in favor of necessary reforms. In addition their vote as "native" Americans would counter the immigrants votes. However this argument did not last. "Anti-foreignism never vanished completely from the suffragist rationale, but toward the end of the long struggle it had to give ground to the immigrant woman's own argument for woman suffrage." (145)

That political parties react to expediency was not lost on the movement, though different factions had their own ideas on how to deal with the national parties. "The WP [Woman's Party] sought to use party interests to the advantage of the suffrage cause while the NAWSA [National American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Susan B. Anthony] largely ignored parties and preferred to convert individuals who might respond to principle." (247) For women however, influencing politicians was more a function of propaganda than coercion. Throughout the struggle, women never resorted to the use of force to achieve their goal. It was always a peaceful movement.

In summary, the woman's suffrage movement was a protracted struggle that evolved and adapted over the course of the nation's transformation from a rural to an industrial society. The two main arguments for suffrage were based, first of all, simply and pragmatically on the justice and rights enumerated in our nation's fundamental documents. This argument persisted, but as conditions in the nation changed the movement ultimately learned to focus its attention on the centers of power in seeking to influence the outcome. Today it seems patently unfair that women were denied the right to vote for so long. But then, the nation and the views of its citizens have evolved and changed dramatically since the founding fathers first wrote the governing charters

Foundational Text
For scholars of the women's suffrage movement, this book by Kraditor remains a central text.Although her politics appear to influece her analysis and her focus is on the East Coast, her work is solid, influential, and a wonderful jumping off point for anyone studying the different strains of thought in the suffrage movement. ... Read more

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Very Detailed
This book was was very good in my search for information about women rights.In school I am writing a 5 page (typed) research paper and this helped a lot!It was a great source of information. ... Read more

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Chronicles the history of the women's rights movement, from the battle for suffrage to the pursuit of equal opportunity in education and employment, to ending sexual violence, and improving the status of women worldwide. ... Read more

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Excellent!
This book is written for young adults and easy to understand.It covers the fight for women's rights in the U.S., the ground covered in the past and the ground that still needs to be covered.It gives factualinformation about violence against women, reproductive rights and theplight of women around the globe.Extremely informative and containingmany pictures-it neither codones nor condemns women's choices.It simplygives the facts.Much talk about laws pertaining to women's issues.Ithink high school libraries should make this book available to studentswishing to read about these issues. ... Read more

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Traces the history of the women's rights movement in the United States which culminated in 1920 with the passage of the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. ... Read more

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Excellent reading about a very important ammendment.
The 1st amendment deals with freedom of speech, press, assembly. The 2nd is for the right to bear arms. We all know what the 5th amendment is used for and the 13th ended slavery. Some know that the 15th amendment gave blacks the right to vote. But do you know what the 19th Amendmentdid?

Most people will tell you that this amendment to the Constitutionwas one of the most important, it gave women the right to vote, andunderstand this is has only been 80 years since that amendment was passed.In this day of equal right, this is simply amazing that women have onlybeen voting since 1920.

The book covers the founders of women's rightsmovement, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, to Susan B.Anthony tireless efforts to get the Congress of the United States to passlegislation to give women the right to vote.

You'll read about thesuffragetts to marches on Washington to how the 19th amendment effects ourlives even to the present day. The book took just over 1 hour to finish andit was easy reading filled with little facts I was unaware of concerningthe 19th amendment. Overall a very good book to have as a reference. ... Read more

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"With a foreword by A. Elizabeth Taylor Laura Clay was the daughter of abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay and an important and controversial figure in the woman's rights movement. Paul E. Fuller traces this remarkable woman's career, from her early successes in Kentucky to her emergence as the most prominent southern suffragist. He devotes particular attention to the problems encountered by the suffragists in organizing the South, to the strategy of their alliance with the Woman's Christian Temperence Union, and the to peculiar dilemma of southern suffragists and race. Clay's many important contributions to the struggle for women's rights have been overshadowed by her brief apostasy, when in the final months of the suffrage struggle, her states' rights convictions caused her to withdraw from NAWSA and support state rather than federal enfranchisement. Though she remained active in politics until her death in 1941, she is remembered most for her participation in the attempt to block ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. This new edition balances the record on Laura Clay and her accomplishments.

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Suffrage History
This was a selection for my book club and there were two of us who really enjoyed the book and several who didn't read it.It was written more as a research paper which perhaps would turn some people off.I found that it was very readable but perhaps some chapters were a bit detailed. I was glad to fill in this area of history and find out who carried the banner of suffrage forward after Susan B. Anthony and other well known names died in the early 1900's. Women's suffrage was not passed as a federal amendment until 1920 so Alice Paul was one of the key figures at this time.Her tenacity and non-violent methods were exemplary and I would recommend this book to broaden your understanding of America's history. ... Read more

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Wisconsin is known as the home of the Progressive party.But, in the words of a suffragist as late as 1912, "the last thing a man becomes progressive about is the activities of his wife."

In On Wisconsin Women, Genevieve McBride traces women’s work in reform movements in the state’s politics and especially in its press.Even before Wisconsin became a state in 1848, women’s news and opinions appeared in abolitionist journals and "temperance sheets," if often anonymously.But the first paper in Wisconsin published under a woman’s name, however, was boycotted by Milwaukee printers and failed in 1853.

From the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 to the state’s historic ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, Wisconsin women were never at a loss for words nor a newspaper to print them.Among women who would be heard were Mathilde Fransziska Anneke, Emma Brown, Lavinia Goodell, Emma Bascom, Olympia Brown, Belle Case La Follette, Ada L. James, and Theodora Winton Youmans.McBride brings their voices vividly to life, in their own words on their lifelong work for woman’s rights.

Nowhere was "the struggle" fought for so long and so hard as in Wisconsin.While women elsewhere sang suffrage hymns, women in the Badger State marched to a "fight song" with a familiar tune but sung in their own words—lyrics too long forgotten until now. ... Read more

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On a summer day in 1846--two years before the Seneca Falls convention that launched the movement for woman's rights in the United States--six women in rural upstate New York sat down to write a petition to their state's constitutional convention, demanding "equal, and civil and political rights with men." Refusing to invoke the traditional language of deference, motherhood, or Christianity as they made their claim, the women even declined to defend their position, asserting that "a self evident truth is sufficiently plain without argument." Who were these women, Lori Ginzberg asks, and how might their story change the collective memory of the struggle for woman's rights?

Very few clues remain about the petitioners, but Ginzberg pieces together information from census records, deeds, wills, and newspapers to explore why, at a time when the notion of women as full citizens was declared unthinkable, too dangerous to discuss, six ordinary women embraced it as common sense. By weaving their radical local action into the broader narrative of antebellum intellectual life and political identity, Ginzberg brings new light to the story of woman's rights and of some women's sense of themselves as full members of the nation itself. ... Read more

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A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York
This was especially interesting to us as it mentioned several women we had been researching for genealogy. ... Read more

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A biography of the leader of the women's suffrage movement in Oregon. ... Read more

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By a Notable Suffragist

Claflin, Tennie C. [1845-1923].
Constitutional Equality a Right of Woman; or, A Consideration of the Various Relations Which She Sustains as a Necessary Part of the Body of Society and Humanity; with Her Duties to Herself - together with a Review of the Constitution of the United States, Showing That the Rights to Vote is Guaranteed to All Citizens. Also a Review of the Rights of Children.

New York: Woodhull, Claflin & Co., 1871. 3 p. l., 148 pp. front. (port.). Reprint available August 2008 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 978-1-58477-911-7. ISBN-10: 1-58477-911-X. Paperback. $34.95.

* Reprint of the first edition. Written by one of the more radical women's rights activists of the nineteenth century, covers a wide range of topics concerning the role of women in American society. It also includes a chapter on the rights of children, that focuses on the question of prenatal care. ... Read more