Woman Suffrage Exhibit

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Description

“It is difficult for the young woman of today to realize changes that have taken place in regard to the position of women. The advocates of women’s rights have been slowly securing changes in the laws of state after state until now many people who are entering into the results of the labors of others forget what has been done. They think “things have always stood as they stand today.”[1]

Without knowing the source of this quote, one may be inclined to think that it is from a modern activist ruminating on a lack of awareness among young. In all actuality, however, it was Olympia Brown, an American suffragist, who wrote these words in her biography in 1911. Brown was part of an older generation of suffragists who had been fighting for the right to vote since the 1850s. Yet as the twentieth century approached, and Brown penned her autobiography, the majority of women had yet to obtain the ballot and the original founders of the movement aged into their sixties and seventies. And so a new generation of suffragists headed the movement that would culminate in the passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution that gave women the right to vote.

Part of the hope in pointing out this generational shift is to highlight how several generations of women and men fought for female enfranchisement. Approximately seventy years passed between the first women’s rights convention that focused on getting the vote and when women across the nation actually obtained ballot. Many of the founders of the movement worked for the suffrage cause for forty years or more and never lived to cast their vote. Countless women across the country, from Susan B. Anthony to average women we will never know, spoke out on behalf of women’s right to vote: giving speeches, fundraising, starting discussions in their communities, writing to politicians, and encouraging male voters to support their cause.

The goal of this website is to trace the broad history of the American woman suffrage movement, while laying out the prominent arguments for and against it, covering important ideologies of the time, and touching upon the contemporaneous temperance movement. Additionally, components such as the timeline and “further research” page are intended to help establish the larger picture and direct readers to ideal places to find more information. Central to this project are original documents housed in the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections department of the Washington State University library system. These primary documents not only help to illustrate the suffrage movement but also help to put readers within the larger historical context.

Finally, it is hoped that readers understand the importance of historical study, its relevance for today and tomorrow.

"The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit[1/4/2016 2:24:44 PM] Digital Exhibits | Summary of Woman Suffrage Exhibit spreading the light of freedom and truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future." — Abigail Scott Duniway

[1] Brown, Olympia, and Lucy Stone, Acquaintances, Old and New, Among Reformers, (Milwaukee: S.E. Tate, 1911), 19.

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History Timeline

History Item Metadata Page In tracing the history of female political involvement, there are countless examples that predate the foundation of large women’s organizations. Historian Paula Baker, for example, notes that “from the time of the Revolution, women used, and sometimes pioneered, methods for influencing government from outside electoral channels.”[1] Without and long before having access to the ballot women still had means to effect change. Participating in committees, socially interacting with others, entering into dialogues about public concerns, and having a hand in municipal affairs was a vital and legitimate form of political participation exercised separate from the ballot.

Tracing the origins of a coherent and organized suffrage movement leads one to the Seneca Falls convention of 1848. This first American woman’s rights convention was principally organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who were inspired to take action on behalf of their sex after being denied full participation at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London (1840). Guiding the convention was the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, which outlined the grievances of women and proposed eleven resolutions. Identifying inequalities in marriage, property ownership, education, and employment, the Declaration concluded, “because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”[2] Though it would take some years for an active suffrage movement to form, especially in the face of the Civil War, the seed had been planted.

The first phase of the suffrage movement, focused on equal rights, began in the Jacksonian era and lasted until the mid- 1870s.[3] This focus on equal rights insisted that women’s natural rights be recognized as no less sacred than men’s and often called for radical structural changes in marriage, the political system, and society.[4] Founded during this time were the two leading suffrage organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. The National Woman organization, formed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, had the goal of securing a Constitutional amendment. Conversely, the American Woman Suffrage Association, started by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Blackwell, “maintained its alliances with the abolitionist movement and supported Black male suffrage while vowing to work state by state for universal voting rights.”[5] All advocates of suffrage in the years immediately following the Civil War were considered rather radical, regardless of whether they were associated with the National or American organization.[6]

Earning their title of radical, early leaders, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, often cooperated with the labor movement and free love advocates like Victoria Woodhull.[7] Many of these women were not afraid of questioning dominant institutions, even “beginning to identify marriage and the family—even more than political disenfranchisement—as the basic source of woman’s oppression.”[8] Oregon suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway, for instance, was known, both in her day and for over a hundred years thereafter, as a remarkable and somewhat brazen woman. In over forty years of dedication to the suffrage movement http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/history[1/4/2016 2:25:16 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : History Duniway not only toured and lectured but spent a little over half that time serving as an editor or write for a newspaper (during a time when women only made up about one percent of all editors in the western United States).[9] In a letter written to the Post Express towards the end of her career, Duniway summarized her unfailing belief in the inevitability of equal rights: “the freaks of voters,” she said, “cannot stop-- the inevitabl [sic] triumph of human liberty, which is based, not upon sex, or gender, but the abstract principle of right and justice.”[10] Basing their arguments almost entirely upon equal and inalienable rights, these pioneers of female suffrage argued for their right of access to the ballot.

At the same time, however, that does not mean that opinions and radical viewpoints were not subject to change over time. Initially, even while most suffragists ground their arguments in the concept of equal right, there were still attempts to portray female enfranchisement as unthreatening to the family. This trend of softening the movement increased in the mid-1870s as the movement adopted a feminism of fear.[11] In this era, influenced by prohibition and Frances Willard, suffragists portrayed the vote as the chief means for home protection. The “traditional woman” had both personal and moral reasons for wanting the vote, arguments that were far less threatening than the suffragists’ feminism of equal rights.[12] Some equal rights suffragists, such as Stanton and Duniway, were more resistant to this tempering of their political action; and while both continued to advocate some radical ideas they were also pragmatic enough to reassure the public that they were not trying to abandon the conventions of their sex. On the other hand, others, such as Anthony, were more willing to dull their radicalism as more people came into the movement and suffragists began appealing to the concerns of nonpolitically active women.[13]

The final epoch of the suffrage movement, focused on personal development, began in the 1890s. At this time, a new generation of “educated, urbane suffragists” grounded themselves in the idea that “because individuals generate ideas and achieve goals, no government or custom should prohibit the exercise of personal freedom.”[14] This shift came on the heels of the controversial unification of the American and National organizations. While a handful of leading suffragists opposed this merger, it passed under Anthony’s guidance. This consolidation brought together an increasing conservative movement and marginalized radical voices in favor of “a façade of harmony.”[15] The new National America Woman Suffrage Association emphasized the personal stakes that each woman had in obtaining the right to vote, blending “Willard’s feminism of fear with a modernized concept of republican motherhood that claimed women’s votes could rectify injustices.”[16] The National American organization stressed that the modern woman was capable of having it all. As one pamphlet explained, a new role for women has emerged, “one that does not bar out the creative job of work, nor the aesthetic satisfactions of art, nor the emotional satisfaction of marriage. It may easily include all three; it often does. Women may become suffragists.”[17] It was by blending such rhetorical strategies, and creating alliances across the nation with organized labor, farmers, and progressive organizations, that the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920.

[1] Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,” (The American Historical Review 89, no. 3 (1984): 620-648), 621.

[2] CITE THE DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS

[3] Suzanne Marilley, Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996), 6

[4] Ibid.

[5] Grace Farrell, Grace, "Beneath the Suffrage Narrative," (Canadian Review of American Studies 36, no. 1 (2006): 45- 65), 47.

[6] Ellen Carol DuBois, Woman Suffrage & Women’s Rights (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 69.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid, 72.

[9] Jean M. Ward (ed) and Elaine A. Maveety (ed), Yours for Liberty: Selections from Abigail Scott Duniway’s Suffrage Newspaper (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2000), 1.

[10] Abigail Scott Duniway to editor of Post Express, 30 July 1906, Duniway Papers, University of Oregon Knight Library Special Collections.

[11] Marilley, 7. http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/history[1/4/2016 2:25:16 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : History

[12] Ibid, 8.

[13] Dubois, 70.

[14] Marilley, 8.

[15] Farrell, 52.

[16] Marilley, 9.

[17] “Twenty-five answers to antis; five minute speeches on votes for women by eminent suffragists,” (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1912?).

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Separate Spheres Women's Clubs Republican Mother

Separate Spheres

Based partially upon the language of the nineteenth century, many historians have adopted the concept of “separate spheres” which says that men had a natural, God given duty to work in the public realm while women were similarly intended to run the private sphere of home and children. While the concept of separate spheres has gone through several phases of meaning it has become historiographically understood as a rhetorical construction that changes along with societal realities, such as fluctuations in the job market, immigration, and migration.[1] Therefore, while often explained in relatively simple terms, the separate spheres ideology is a metaphor for complex gendered, classed, rhetorically constructed, racially varied, and reciprocally constructed power relations.[2] Basically, the idea of separate spheres was just that, an idea. It was not applied equally to all men and women; in fact, it was primarily people of the middle and upper classes who held most stringently to the idea. Many middle to lower class women worked outside of the home out of economic necessity. Some women worked and pursued an education simply because they wanted to. Additionally, the separate spheres ideology was not as frequently applied to women of color. Many historians have also come to understand this ideology not only as something forced upon women but something that women helped to create in a positive way, building female communities and close relationships.

However, regardless of the nuance and flexibility to the separate spheres ideology, it often had a concrete and lasting impact on the lives of many middle-class women, especially those who http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/ideologies[1/4/2016 2:25:45 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Separate Spheres found their way into reform movements. For even if women were able to transgress prescribed gender ideologies that does not mean that formulaic definition of proper womanhood was not pressed upon them. In fact, pressures about how a woman ought to behave, and explanations of how she is not equivalent to the masculine sex, are constant themes in the biographies of many suffragists.[3]

Many opposed to female suffrage believed the separate spheres of man and woman were part of a natural process. One Oregon anti-suffragist explained that, “We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties of each.”[4] Nature had provided men with the physical attributes necessary to provide for and protect a family, while women were designed to care for and continue the species. Moving such a theory into a modernized world meant that men entered the workforce while women maintained the family. Rather than defined as a confinement, woman’s assignment to the home was a blessing, a place she inhabited. A woman’s sphere, as one anti-suffragist explained, was an “atmosphere of home, of wide and intelligent sympathy, of tender charity and ministry to others, of influence beyond all computation.”[5]

And so the suffrage movement often found itself operating within this debate about separate spheres and proper behavior for men and women. Early suffragists often faced harsh criticism that charged them with wanting to become like men, saying that they ought to go back to the home. And even as the ideal of female voters became more acceptable suffragists had to reassure their audience that they were not abandoning their roles as wives and mothers, that suffrage would not destroy traditional family structures.

[1] Linda K. Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," (The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 9-39), 21.

[2] For recent histories that so complicate the separate spheres ideology see: Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000 and Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

[3] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty years and more; reminiscences, 1815-1897, (New York: Schocken Books, [1898] 1971), 21. http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/ideologies[1/4/2016 2:25:45 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Separate Spheres

[4] “An Appeal to Voters and Arguments Against Equal Suffrage Constitutional Amendment” issued by Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women (Portland: 1906).

[5] Ibid.

Note on primary documents:

The first document, an obituary from 1880, is interesting in that it praises Mrs. Sarah Greble for balancing “domestic duties” and “the worlds absorbing work,” calling her an American woman who’s life was “marked by unobtrusive deeds of love and charity.”

The remaining documents come from the Kate Faulds collection (MASC) and give a sense of home life and family relations at the turn of the twentieth century. While Kate appears to take charge of household duties she talks, on several occasions, about her husband helping around the house or making dinner.

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Against Suffrage For Suffrage

Against Suffrage Item Metadata Page

Throughout the years of the suffrage movement—from its inception in 1848 through the passage of a federal amendment in 1920—there remained a base set of arguments against female enfranchisement. Historian Suzanne Marilley, in writing about the liberal origins of the feminist movement, identifies these objections as centered around four basic ideas: (1) that God had made women to serve men; (2) that in obeying men, women received protection and therefore could never be men’s equals; (3) that if women put too much of an emphasis on their own education, careers, or political interests than the family, the basic foundation of society, would greatly suffer; and (4) that women, being “good persons,” cannot be “good citizens” because the citizen must sometimes engage in bad behavior.[1] Voiced in many different ways, and from various sources, these basic objections, nevertheless, remained central to the opposition throughout the seventy years of suffrage agitation. Attributed to the ideal of republican motherhood, as described by Historian Linda Kerber, many of these ideas emerged in the years after the American Revolution.[2] Inherent to this conception of women was the idea that wives and mothers ought to serve as counselors of virtue for their husbands and sons. Since many believed women to be morally superior, they thought that she ought to remain outside of politics, instead providing ethical guidance about political issues. (To understand how republican motherhood was used by suffragists see the section on pro-suffrage)

While the majority of antisuffragists stressed the importance of the home and family, this cannot be taken as the sum of their ideology. In fact, antisuffragists came from a wide range of backgrounds and had varying views on what women were capable of and why she should not have the ballot. This complexity, however, tends to be obscured by the fact that anti-suffragist rhetoric frequently reiterated conventional ideas about woman’s virtue as residing within the private sphere. Throughout the years, especially going into the nineteenth century, “their notions of appropriate female activities expanded…to include the role of scientific homemaker, producer of obedient workers, and even independent political actor.”[3] In her study of anti- suffragist rhetoric and ideology, historian Susan Marshall also found that even though the opposition was comprised of both genders they tended to have different tactics: male antisuffragists focused on issues of http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/arguments[1/4/2016 2:26:14 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Against Suffrage gender and the destabilization of patriarchy (producing the slanderous material most often associated with the anti-suffragist movement), while female antisuffragists tended to speak of not adding another burden to women’s shoulders.[4]

The women of the anti-suffragist movement were, indeed, often very busy. Marshall explains that the “typical anti-suffragist leader was active in her community through membership in numerous local organizations, from study clubs to art guilds, religious and philanthropic activities, and civic affairs.”[5] Many of these antisuffragists argued against suffrage because they already saw their lives as busy and chaotic, full of charity and social events. They felt that the vote was an unfair burden when women were already directing homes, looking after children, and volunteering. Marshall argues that this point of view, usually held by upper-class women, was based on a fear that enfranchisement would jeopardize their socio-economic status.[6] Whether or not this was the case, the same logic could be applied to lower- and working-class women who not only had a home and children to manage but also had to work. Those who held fast to the opinion that the ballot was a burden did not usually say they were incapable of voting, but that to do so was to take on a vitally important civic responsibility that modern women simply did not have time for.

Many antisuffragists argued that women were already extremely politically involved via their work in women’s organizations, consultants to governmental bodies, and the like. Women, the antisuffragists said, already held powerful positions within government and politics: adding the franchise, said some, would only increase the burden women bear. Some felt that the ballot was an ineffective political tool and that women’s organizations had already proven to be so successful that changes were unnecessary and possibly detrimental.[7] It is undeniable that the anti-suffragist rationale encompassed much more than preserving separate spheres, “ruminating on issues of class welfare, national character, and military strength, defending the fairness of the capitalist free market, and proffering an image of the “traditional” woman as political independent rather than submissive homemaker.”[8] Some feared that moralistic women would infringe upon the liberty of working men. Others felt that a woman would vote in line with her husband, rendering her vote irrelevant. Still others felt that a woman was more effective working within all-female organizations, creating powerful change in an arena separate from men.[9] Though they stood in opposition to what is now considered progress, antisuffragists were political actors and held a multitude of ideas about what women ought to do.

Examples of Antisuffrage Arguments:

Many opposed to female suffrage believed the separate spheres of man and woman to be part of a natural process. One Oregon anti-suffragist explained that, “We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties of each.”[10] Nature had provided men with the physical attributes necessary to provide for and protect a family, while women were designed to care for and continue the species. Moving such a theory into a modernized world meant that men entered the workforce while women maintained the family. Rather than defined as a confinement, woman’s assignment to the home was a blessing, a place she inhabited. A woman’s sphere, as one anti-suffragist explained, was an “atmosphere of home, of wide and intelligent sympathy, of tender charity and ministry to others, of influence beyond all computation.”[11] And while many antisuffragists recognized that some women had to work outside of the home it was felt that “the instinct of the normal woman is not to work for somebody for wages, not to compete with men in business or the professions, but to form a life partnership with some man and raise a family.”[12] Thus, antisuffragists expected that a woman should leave the workforce once it became economically affordable.

Another feared that there would be a “practical unsexing of men and women by destroying the sanctity and privacy of the family circle and home life, upon which depend the virtue and welfare of humanity” [emphasis added].[13] While there was a great deal of variety in antisuffrage arguments, many of them came back to these ideas of womanhood, the natural role of women, and the potential consequences of violating these norms.

In its third publication in 1916, Debaters’ Handbook Series: Select Articles on Woman Suffrage laid out the arguments for and against suffrage followed by a selection of articles and speeches from each side of the http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/arguments[1/4/2016 2:26:14 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Against Suffrage debate. Intended to be an unbiased handbook for those seeking knowledge on the subject, the text pays both suffrage proponents and opponents equal attention. The basic outline of the arguments against suffrage is revealing in that many of the points are centered around anxiety about the violation of traditional gender ideologies: “the home would suffer by the participation of women in the affairs of the state,” “the home would be neglected,” “divorce would be increased,” “they would be made less womanly,” and “they would lose the respect of men.”[14] By surveying popular antisuffrage pamphlets and independently published debate manuals, it becomes clear that many antisuffragists were painting a particular image of the dangers of female enfranchisement: if women obtained the vote they may be so distracted by their involvement in public affairs that the home would be neglected, marriage relations would suffer, and their very status as women would be compromised.

[1] Suzanne Marilley, Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996), 9.

[2] Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 235-7, 269-88.

[3] Susan E. Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 139.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, 49-50.

[6] Ibid, 4.

[7] Susan E. Marshall, 224.

[8] Ibid, 227.

[9]Manuela Thurner. Better Citizens Without the Ballot: American Anti-suffrage Women and Their Rationale During the Progressive Era. 1993. One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement. Ed. Marjorie Wheeler. Portland: Newsage Press, 1995.

[10] “An Appeal to Voters and Arguments Against Equal Suffrage Constitutional Amendment” issued by Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women (Portland: 1906).

[11] Ibid.

[12] “Woman Suffrage” National Anti-suffrage Association. Washington Government Printing Office 1916.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Edith M. Phelps, Selected Articles on Woman Suffrage (White Plains, N.Y.: The H.W. Wilson company, 1916), xv.

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Legal Struggles Suffrage Tactics

Legal Struggles

The suffrage movement took place on many levels, both national and local, and came up against many cultural and legal barriers. The proceeding articles are indicative of the legal and judicial struggles that the suffrage movement faced.

Each of these documents and the included descriptions are a part of the Washington State Women’s History Selections 1870-1950, collected from MASC as a part of the Women’s History Consortium project. See them, and other documents, at http://kaga.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm- wsuwh_whc/index.html

“The Tax Qualification”

“This article is an example of the numerous legalities the suffrage movement found itself mired in throughout its battle for voting rights. The article addresses the right of the city of Walla Walla to levy a poll tax, and whether or not the female exemption from taxing affects the legality of the 1883 legislation which gave women full voting rights.”

“Woman Suffrage Safe”

“This editorial discusses the decision made by a judge in eastern Washington which made all statures and amendments without the subject of the act http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/suffrage-hurdles-and-tactics[1/4/2016 2:26:42 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Legal Struggles

within the title void. It was widely believed that this decision would reverse the 1883 legislation which granted women full voting rights, much to the pleasure of male opponents. The author discusses a re-analysis of the decisions which ensures the safety of women's suffrage, and chastises their opponents for early celebration. In an ironic reversal the author states, "Men of Washington--that is the few of you who have been gloating over this prospective injustice--don't you feel that you have been a little previous? And aren't you afraid that the women will remember your ill-disguised glee at the prospect of their being again reduced to political serfdom?"

“A Vexed Question”

“This newspaper clipping offers a glimpse into the legal struggle associated with suffrage question in Washington State. Though a bill passed through the Territorial Legislature in 1883 granted women full voting rights, opponents and legislatures continued to quibble over legalities of the legislation including the language of the bill and taxation (as evident in this editorial). In 1887 the Territorial Supreme Court overturned the law on the basis of such technicalities.”

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Prohibition, the WCTU, and suffrage

Other than conflicts over organization and tactics, one of the largest divisions among suffragists was the decision of whether or not to ally with prohibitionists. In fact, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and its eventual support of suffrage is one of the strongest examples of how those who supported female enfranchisement did so for multiple reasons. The WCTU grew out of a series of protests in the early 1870s where women in small Midwestern towns began singing and praying outside of saloons in the hopes of convincing men to spend less time and money there. It was also within the temperance movement that many of the first suffragists began their political work, faced roadblocks based on their sex, and turned to women’s rights. For some time these women remained separate from prohibition women who felt that suffrage was contrary to true womanhood.[1]

Over time, however, WCTU members gradually began to support suffrage. Then under the leadership of Frances Willard the organization truly moved beyond its initial concern to consider labor, public health, socialism, and suffrage.[2] For many people the WCTU’s endorsement of suffrage made it a much more acceptable idea because they combined “the woman’s sphere with suffrage under the rubric of ‘Home Protection,’ an argument that implied feminine values belonged within traditionally defined politics.”[3] The WCTU had long argued that its activity was done on behalf of the http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/temperance-movement[1/4/2016 2:27:13 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Prohibition, the WCTU, and suffrage home, to protect the foundation of society, and now they were backing suffrage for the same reasons. If women had the vote, many reasoned, they would be able to rid society of many ills, including the vice of drunkenness.

Regardless of how the public viewed the members of the WCTU, their turn towards advocacy of women’s rights caused disruption and rancor within the existing suffrage movement. The temperance women were a potential asset in that they were better organized than suffrage groups in rural localities, making them better suited to work for state amendments or legislation.[4] However, for suffragists to openly associate with prohibitionists was to risk alienating a large portion of the male voting population who either enjoyed spending time in the saloon or having a glass of wine after dinner. It would be virtually impossible to capitalize on WCTU popularity and aide without having anti- prohibitionists become aware of their involvement. Suffragists were split over the incorporation of prohibitionists. In South Dakota, for example, the local state suffrage association formally split when a portion of the members felt that the organization was a tool for WCTU policy.[5]

The controversy surrounding the inclusion of the WCTU in the suffrage debate highlights the differences that existed among those who were working for enfranchisement. The WCTU were able to gain a measure of success because of the popularity they garnered among a portion of the population; however, they created controversy among an already diverse suffrage movement that could not agree on whether or not the new ally was truly a help or a hindrance.

[1] Ruth Barnes Moynihan, 131.

[2] Paula Baker, 637.

[3] Ibid, 638.

[4] Giele, 83.

[5] Aileen S. Kraditor, 59.

http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/temperance-movement[1/4/2016 2:27:13 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Prohibition, the WCTU, and suffrage

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Printed Resources Online Resources

Printed Resources

Primary Sources

Many of these works can be found in major university libraries. Additionally, many have also been digitized and are available for the general public online.

Bennett, Christine. American Women in Civic Work. New York: Dodd, Mead and company, 1915.

Brown, Olympia, and Lucy Stone. Acquaintances, Old and New, Among Reformers. Milwaukee: S.E. Tate, 1911.

Burr, Hattie A. The Woman Suffrage Cook Book: Containing Thoroughly Tested and Reliable Recipes for Cooking, Directions for the Care of the Sick, and Practical Suggestions. Boston: Mrs. Hattie A. Burr, 1886.

Catt, Carrie Chapman, and Nettie Rogers Shuler. Woman Suffrage and Politics; The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement. Seattle: University of Washington Press, [1926] 1969.

Crew, Danny O. Suffragist Sheet Music: An Illustrated Catalogue of Published Music Associated with the Women's Rights and Suffrage Movement in America, 1795-1921, with Complete Lyrics. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002.

Dorr, Rheta Childe, and Carrie Chapman Catt. What Eight Million Women Want. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co, 1910.

Duniway, Abigail Scott. Path breaking; an autobiographical history of the equal suffrage movement in Pacific Coast states. New York: Schocken Books, [1914] 1971.

The Evening Chronicle (Spokane).

Friedl, Bettina. On to Victory: Propaganda Plays of the Woman Suffrage Movement. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Home: Its Work and Influence. New York: McClure, Phillips & Company, 1904.

Harper, Ida Husted. Life and work of Susan B. Anthony. 3 vols. New York: Arno, [1898-1908] 1969.

The History of Women: [Microfilm Collection]. New Haven: Research Publications, 1975.

How It Feels to Be the Husband of a Suffragette. New York: George H. Doran co, 1915

Howe, Julia Ward, and Carrie Chapman Catt. Reminiscences, 1819-1899. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co, 1899. http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/further-research[1/4/2016 2:27:42 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Printed Resources

Howe, Julia Ward, and Florence Howe Hall. Julia Ward Howe and the woman suffrage movement. New York: Arno, [1913] 1969.

Jennings, Linda Deziah. Washington Women's Cook Book. [Seattle, Wash.?]: The Washington Equal Suffrage Association, 1909.

Johnson, Helen Kendrick. Woman and the Republic A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates. New York: Guidon Club, 1913.

Kleber, L. O. The Suffrage Cook Book. Pittsburgh: Equal Franchise Federation of Western Pennsylvania, 1915.

Maule, Frances, Annie G. Porritt, and Carrie Chapman Catt. "The Blue Book"; Woman Suffrage, History, Arguments and Results. New York: National Woman Suffrage Pub. Co, 1917.

Miller, Alice Duer, and Carrie Chapman Catt. Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times. New York: George H. Doran Co, 1915.

National American Woman Suffrage Association. Anna Howard Shaw A Memorial. New York: National Woman Suffrage Pub. Co, 1920.

------. Twenty-Five Answers to Antis; Five Minute Speeches on Votes for Women by Eminent Suffragists. New York: National Woman Suffrage Pub. Co., 1912.

------. Woman Suffrage: Arguments and Results : 1910-1911. New York: Kraus Reprint, [1910] 1971.

------. Woman Suffrage, Arguments and Results. A Collection of Eight Popular Booklets Covering Together Practically the Entire Field of Suffrage Claims and Evidence. Designed Especially for the Convenience of Suffrage Speakers and Writers and for the Use of Debators and Libraries. New York: The Association, 1911.

National Anti-Suffrage Association. “Woman Suffrage.” Washington Government Printing Office, 1916.

Parkman, Francis. Some of the Reasons against Woman Suffrage: Printed at the Request of an Association of Women. Northridge: Santa Susana Press, California State University, [n.d] 1977.

Shaw, Anna Howard, D. D., M. D. The Story of a Pioneer. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1915.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Eighty years and more; reminiscences, 1815-1897. New York: Schocken Books, [1898] 1971.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper. History of woman suffrage. 6 vols. [New York]: Source Book Press, [1881-1922] 1970.

United States, Committee on the District of Columbia, Senate, Congress. Suffrage Parade: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on the. 1913.

Weekly Enterprise [Oregon City.]

Willard, Frances E. Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman. Chicago: H.J. Smith & Company, 1889.

The Woman’s Journal.

Wright, Almroth. The Unexpurgated Case against Woman Suffrage. London: Constable, 1913.

Secondary Sources

Blackwell, Marilyn S., and Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel. Frontier Feminist: Clarina Howard Nichols and the Politics of Motherhood. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010.

Brammer, Leila R. Excluded from Suffrage History: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Nineteenth Century American Feminist. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Broomfield, Andrea. “Toward a More Tolerant Society: ‘Macmillan’s Magazine’ and the Women’s Suffrage Question.” Victorian Periodicals Review 23, no. 3: 120-126.

Buechler, Steven M. The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850-1920. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986. http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/further-research[1/4/2016 2:27:42 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Printed Resources

Burkhalter, Nancy. “Women’s Magazines and the Suffrage Movement: Did They Help or Hinder the Cause?” The Journal of American Culture 19, no. 2: 13-24.

Corbett, Mary Jean. Representing Femininity: Middle-Class Subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian Women's Autobiographies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Dennison, Mariea Caudill. “Babies for Suffrage: ‘The Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by Women Artists for the Benefit of the Woman Suffrage Campaign.’” Woman’s Art Journal 23, no. 2: 24-30.

Deutsch, Sarah. Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

DuBois, Ellen Carol. Woman Suffrage & Women’s Rights. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

Enstad, Nan. Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Farrell, Grace. "Beneath the Suffrage Narrative". Canadian Review of American Studies 36, no. 1 (2006): 45-65.

Finnegan, Margaret Mary. Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture & Votes for Women. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Gilmore, Leigh. Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women's Self-Representation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Goggin, Maureen Daly, and Beth Fowkes Tobin. Women and Things, 1750-1950: Gendered Material Strategies. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009.

Graham, Sara Hunter. “The Suffrage Renaissance: A New Image for a New Century, 1896-1910.” In One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, edited by Marjorie Wheeler. Portland: Newsage Press, 1995.

Griffin, Charles J. G. “Movement As Motive;: Self Definition and Social Advocacy in Social Movement Autobiographies." Western Journal of Communication 64, no. 2 (2000): 148-64.

Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. ""You Must Remember This": Autobiography As Social Critique". Journal of American History 85, no. 2 (1998): 439-465.

Hogan, Lisa Shawn. "The Politics of Feminist Autobiography: Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Eighty Years and More as Ideological Manifesto." Women's Studies 38, no. 1 (2009): 1-22.

------. "Wisdom, Goodness and Power: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the History of Woman Suffrage." Gender Issues 23, no. 2 (2006): 3-19.

Hogan, Lisa S., and J. Michael Hogan. "Feminine Virtue and Practical Wisdom: Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "Our Boys." Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6, no. 3 (2003): 415-435.

Hutton, Frankie, and Barbara Straus Reed. Outsiders in 19th-Century Press History: Multicultural Perspectives. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1995.

Huxman, Susan Schultz. “Perfecting the Rhetorical Vision of Woman’s Rights: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Howard Shaw, and Carrie Chapman Catt.” Women’s Studies in Communication 23, no. 3: 307-336.

Jensen, Kimberly. “Neither Head nor Tail to the Campaign: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and the Oregon Woman Suffrage Victory of 1912.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 3 (2007): 350-383.

Johnson, Nan. Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 1866–1910. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.

Joseph, Maia. “Mass Appeal(s): Representations of Women’s Public Speech in Suffrage Literature.” Canadian Review of American Studies 36, no 1: 67-91.

Kerber, Linda K. No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.

------. "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History." The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 9-39.

Kraditor, Aileen S. The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965. http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/further-research[1/4/2016 2:27:42 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Printed Resources Kulba, Tracy and Victoria Lamont. “The Political Press and Western Woman’s Suffrage Movements in Canada and the United States: A Comparative Study.” Women’s Studies International Forum 29: 265-278.

Lindsey, Shelley Stamp. “Eighty Million Women Want – ?: Women’s Suffrage, Female Viewers and the Body Politic.” Quarterly Review of Film & Video 16, no 1 (1998): 1-22.

Marilley, Suzanne M. Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820-1920. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996.

McCammon, Holly J. “‘Out of Parlors and into the Streets’: The Changing Tactical Repertoire of the U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movements.” Social Forces 81, no. 3 (2003): 787-818.

McCammon, Holly J. and Karen Campbell. “Winning the Vote in the West: The Political Successes of the Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866-1919.” Gender and Society 15, no. 1 (2001): 55-82.

McCammon, Holly J., et all. “How Movements Win: Gender Opportunity Structures and U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866- 1919.” American Sociological Review 66, no. 1 (2001): 49-70.

McCracken, Grant David. Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

Mead, Rebecca J. How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914. New York: New York University Press, 2004.

Million, Joelle. Woman's Voice, Woman's Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003.

Nicolosi, Ann Marie. “‘The Most Beautiful Suffragette’: Inez Milholland and the Political Currency of Beauty.” Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3 (2007): 286-309.

Norquay, Glenda, and Sowon S. Park. "Mediating Women's Suffrage Literature." Women's Studies International Forum 29, no. 3 (2006): 301-6.

Ross-Nazzal, Jennifer. “Emma Smith DeVoe: Practicing Pragmatic Politics in the Pacific Northwest.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 2 (2005): 76-84.

Scanlon, Jennifer. Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies' Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Sheppard, Alice. Cartooning for Suffrage. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.

Solomon, Martha. “Autobiographies as Rhetorical Narratives: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anna Howard Shaw as ‘New Woman.’” Communication Studies 42 (1991): 83–92.

Stowell, Sheila. A Stage of Their Own: Feminist Playwrights of the Suffrage Era. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.

Trodd, Zoe. American Protest Literature. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.

Watson, Martha. A Voice of Their Own: The Woman Suffrage Press, 1840-1910. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991.

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Earning their title of radical, early leaders, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, often cooperated with the labor movement and free love advocates like Victoria Woodhull.[7] Many of these women were not afraid of questioning dominant institutions, even “beginning to identify marriage and the family—even more than political disenfranchisement—as the basic source of woman’s oppression.”[8] Oregon suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway, for instance, was known, both in her day and for over a hundred years thereafter, as a remarkable and somewhat brazen woman. In over forty years of dedication to the suffrage movement http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/history/history[1/4/2016 2:28:10 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : History Duniway not only toured and lectured but spent a little over half that time serving as an editor or write for a newspaper (during a time when women only made up about one percent of all editors in the western United States).[9] In a letter written to the Post Express towards the end of her career, Duniway summarized her unfailing belief in the inevitability of equal rights: “the freaks of voters,” she said, “cannot stop-- the inevitabl [sic] triumph of human liberty, which is based, not upon sex, or gender, but the abstract principle of right and justice.”[10] Basing their arguments almost entirely upon equal and inalienable rights, these pioneers of female suffrage argued for their right of access to the ballot.

[1] Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,” (The American Historical Review 89, no. 3 (1984): 620-648), 621.

[2] CITE THE DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS

[3] Suzanne Marilley, Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996), 6

[4] Ibid.

[5] Grace Farrell, Grace, "Beneath the Suffrage Narrative," (Canadian Review of American Studies 36, no. 1 (2006): 45- 65), 47.

[6] Ellen Carol DuBois, Woman Suffrage & Women’s Rights (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 69.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid, 72.

[9] Jean M. Ward (ed) and Elaine A. Maveety (ed), Yours for Liberty: Selections from Abigail Scott Duniway’s Suffrage Newspaper (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2000), 1.

[10] Abigail Scott Duniway to editor of Post Express, 30 July 1906, Duniway Papers, University of Oregon Knight Library Special Collections.

[11] Marilley, 7. http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/history/history[1/4/2016 2:28:10 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : History

[12] Ibid, 8.

[13] Dubois, 70.

[14] Marilley, 8.

[15] Farrell, 52.

[16] Marilley, 9.

[17] “Twenty-five answers to antis; five minute speeches on votes for women by eminent suffragists,” (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1912?).

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Timeline 1840

World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London. After much debate, organizers formally excluded female abolitionists from the event.

Writing in her autobiography over fifty years later, Elizabeth Cady Stanton described the event as one where she had to listen to “narrow-minded bigots, pretending to be teachers and leaders of men, so cruelly remanding their own mothers, with the rest of womankind, to absolute subjection to the ordinary masculine type of humanity.” (ECS, 80y+)

1848

Seneca Falls Convention, New York. Woman’s rights convention hosted by Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who bonded after being excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention either years earlier. Two days worth of meetings, presentations, and debate produced the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, which was modeled after the Declaration of Independence, and demanded that women be granted all the rights and privileges that men possessed.

Looking back on the days following the convention Stanton described the reaction of the press:

“No words could express our astonishment on finding, a few days afterward, that what seemed to us so timely, so ration, and so sacred, should be subject for sarcasm and ridicule to the entire press of the nation. …It seemed as if every man who could wield a pen prepared a homily on “woman’s sphere.” …All the journals from Maine to Texas seemed to strive with each other to see which could make our movement appear the most ridiculous.” (ECS, 80y+ 149)

1851

Amelia Bloomer publishes a description of what would soon come to be known as the “Bloomer” costume, http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/history/timeline[1/4/2016 2:28:38 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Timeline consisting of a short skirt over loose pantaloons. While a handful of women adopted this outfit because of greater mobility and health benefits, they were sharply criticized for attempting to dress like men.

Amelia Bloomer, for instance, explained that: “many have put on the short dress who have never taken any part in the woman’s rights movement and who have no idea they are going to be any less womanly by such a change. I feel no more like a man now than I did in long skirts, unless it be that enjoying more freedom and cutting off the fetters is to be like a man.” (Harper vol 1 114)

Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivers her “Ain’t I a Woman Speech” at a women's convention, Akron, Ohio.

1855

Elizabeth Cady Stanton makes an unprecedented appearance before the New York State Legislature to speak in favor of expanding the Married Woman's Property Law.

1866

At the Eleventh National Woman’s Rights Convention the the American Equal Rights Association is founded with the purpose of securing civil rights for all Americans regardless of race, color, or sex.

1868

Stanton and Anthony launch their women's rights newspaper, the Revolution, in New York City.

1869

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), formed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, had the focused goal of securing a Constitutional amendment that would grant women the right to vote.

The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), started by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Blackwell, similarly sought to advance women’s rights but maintained its alliances with the abolitionist movement and supported African-American male suffrage while working state by state for universal voting rights.

Wyoming Territory grants suffrage to women.

1870

Utah Territory grants suffrage to women.

The 15th amendment to the U. S. Constitution is adopted. There is much controversy as former male African-American slaves, but not women, are given the right to vote. The NWSA strongly opposes the amendment, which for the first time explicitly restricts voting to “males.” The AWSA, more closely allied with the earlier abolitionist movement, support the legislation.

1872

Susan B. Anthony attempts to vote in Rochester (NY) but is arrested: she is not allowed to testify on her own behalf, found guilty, and fined $100.

http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/history/timeline[1/4/2016 2:28:38 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Timeline

1874

In Minor v. Happersett the Supreme Court rules that citizenship status does not confer the right to vote.

1878

The "Anthony Amendment" to extend the vote to women was introduced into the United States Congress.

1880

New York state grants school suffrage to women.

1887

The first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage—edited by Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—are published.

1890

In an internally controversial move, after several years of negotiations, the NWSA and the AWSA merge to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone as officers.

Wyoming, having already given women the right to vote as a territory, joins the union and becomes the first state with voting rights for women.

1892

Susan B. Anthony becomes president of the NAWSA.

1893

Women in Colorado gain the right to vote.

1895

Elizabeth Cady Stanton publishes The Woman's Bible, a critique or religion and the role of women in the Bible. Many leading suffragists, including the NAWSA, oppose The Woman’s Bible and its radical views.

1900

Anthony resigns as president of the NAWSA and is succeeded by Carrie Chapman Catt.

1903

Carrie Chapman Catt resigns as president of the NAWSA and Anna Howard Shaw becomes president.

1910 http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/history/timeline[1/4/2016 2:28:38 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Timeline

Women in Washington gain the right to vote.

1911

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is founded.

Women in California gain the right to vote.

1912

Women in Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon gain the right to vote.

1913

Alice Paul organizes a suffrage parade in Washington, DC, the day of Woodrow Wilson's inauguration.

1914

Montana and Nevada grant voting rights to women.

1915

Carrie Chapman Catt is elected president of the NAWSA.

1917

The National Woman’s Party, formed by Paul the previous year, adopt some of the more radical tactics used by British suffragists and begin picketing the White House. Paul and ninety-six other suffragists are arrested and jailed under the charge of obstructing traffic. In order to protest their arrest and treatment, Paul goes on a hunger strike and is force-fed.

Women win the right to vote in North Dakota, Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Michigan, New York, and Arkansas.

1918

House of Representatives passes a resolution in favor of a woman suffrage amendment. The resolution is defeated by the Senate.

1919

The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution granting women the vote is adopted by Congress and sent to the states for ratification

1920

Henry Burn, of Tennessee, casts the deciding vote that ratifies the Nineteenth Amendment. Women of the United States are enfranchised. http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/history/timeline[1/4/2016 2:28:38 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Timeline

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Separate Spheres Women's Clubs Republican Mother

Separate Spheres

However, regardless of the nuance and flexibility to the separate spheres ideology, it often had a concrete and lasting impact on the lives of many middle-class women, especially those who http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/ideologies/separate-spheres[1/4/2016 2:29:07 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Separate Spheres found their way into reform movements. For even if women were able to transgress prescribed gender ideologies that does not mean that formulaic definition of proper womanhood was not pressed upon them. In fact, pressures about how a woman ought to behave, and explanations of how she is not equivalent to the masculine sex, are constant themes in the biographies of many suffragists.[3]

[1] Linda K. Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," (The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 9-39), 21.

[3] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty years and more; reminiscences, 1815-1897, (New York: Schocken Books, [1898] 1971), 21. http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/ideologies/separate-spheres[1/4/2016 2:29:07 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Separate Spheres

[4] “An Appeal to Voters and Arguments Against Equal Suffrage Constitutional Amendment” issued by Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women (Portland: 1906).

[5] Ibid.

Note on primary documents:

http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/ideologies/separate-spheres[1/4/2016 2:29:07 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Separate Spheres

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Separate Spheres Women's Clubs Republican Mother

Women's Clubs

Popular for many middle and upper class women at the turn of the twentieth century were women’s clubs. These clubs were primarily a way for women to gather together, socialize, and share interests. Such clubs could focus on a number of things: art, reading and literature, religious affiliation, philanthropic activities, and civic affairs.[1]

Interestingly, women’s clubs could bring women to the suffrage movement or lead them to be opposed to it. Many antisuffragists, for instance, argued against suffrage because they already saw their lives as busy and chaotic, full of charity and social events. They felt that the vote was an unfair burden when women were already directing homes, looking after children, and volunteering.

Conversely, women’s clubs were sometimes the stepping stone by which women began to engage themselves in public affairs and gained an increasing interesting in reform movements (such as suffrage). Additionally, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) sometimes explicitly utilized women’s clubs. After the turn of the twentieth century, the NAWSA began to implement the Society Plan, which called for enlisting the support of middle to upper class women. To gain the support of such women was to obtain their time, money, and, more importantly, respectability. By 1910, thanks to the Society Plan http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/ideologies/women-s-clubs[1/4/2016 2:29:37 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Women's Clubs

and other changes, the radical image of those who pioneered the movement was replaced by a safe, respectable program ran via middle class club meetings. This stage of development comfortably brought a wealthy, ‘respectable’ class of women into the movement, and was seen by NAWSA leaders as a necessity for a movement that would eventually win the vote.[2]

[1] Susan E. Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/ideologies/women-s-clubs[1/4/2016 2:29:37 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Women's Clubs 49-50.

[2] Sara Hunter Graham, The Suffrage Renaissance: A New Image for a New Century, 1896-1910. In One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement. Ed. Marjorie Wheeler (Portland: Newsage Press, 1995), 176.

Note on primary documents:

These two newspaper clippings, from the Tannatt scrapbooks (MASC), demonstrate a few conceptions of the importance and role of women’s clubs.

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Republican Mother

In the years after the American Revolution there emerged a new understanding of the ideal American woman, that has been described by historian Linda Kerber as “republican motherhood.”[1] Inherent to this conception of women was the idea that wives and mothers ought to serve as counselors of virtue for their husbands and sons. Since many believed women to be morally superior, they thought that they ought to remain outside of formal politics. Rather, it was understood that women influenced politics and public life through their relationships with their husbands and by providing ethical and moral guidance for sons that were future voters. By exercising this type of republican motherhood women were believed to have a sufficient and, in fact, important role, in public political life.

This conception of women’s relation to political affairs continued strong into the 19th century. In fact, much antisuffrage rhetoric not only invoked separate spheres ideology but also maintained that women had ample power from within the home. Interestingly, many suffragists, especially at the turn of the twentieth century, co-opted this idea of republican motherhood by arguing that women, possessing moral fortitude, were ideal political voters. While suffragists did not fully abandon older arguments based on equal rights, there was a new emphasis on the ability of women to “clean up” politics and bring a maternal specialty to the political process (especially when it came to legislation about food, sanitation, and proper housing). Often this new focus was about emphasizing how the modern woman was capable of having it all. As one pamphlet explained, a new role for women has emerged, “one that does not bar out the creative job of work, nor the http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/ideologies/republican-mother[1/4/2016 2:30:05 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Republican Mother

aesthetic satisfactions of art, nor the emotional satisfaction of marriage. It may easily include all three; it often does. Women may become suffragists.”[2]

[1] Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 235-7, 269-88.

[2] “Twenty-five answers to antis; five minute speeches on votes for women by eminent suffragists,” (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1912?).

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Against Suffrage For Suffrage

Against Suffrage Item Metadata Page

While the majority of antisuffragists stressed the importance of the home and family, this cannot be taken as the sum of their ideology. In fact, antisuffragists came from a wide range of backgrounds and had varying views on what women were capable of and why she should not have the ballot. This complexity, however, tends to be obscured by the fact that anti-suffragist rhetoric frequently reiterated conventional ideas about woman’s virtue as residing within the private sphere. Throughout the years, especially going into the nineteenth century, “their notions of appropriate female activities expanded…to include the role of scientific homemaker, producer of obedient workers, and even independent political actor.”[3] In her study of anti- suffragist rhetoric and ideology, historian Susan Marshall also found that even though the opposition was comprised of both genders they tended to have different tactics: male antisuffragists focused on issues of http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/arguments/against-suffrage[1/4/2016 2:30:33 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Against Suffrage gender and the destabilization of patriarchy (producing the slanderous material most often associated with the anti-suffragist movement), while female antisuffragists tended to speak of not adding another burden to women’s shoulders.[4]

Examples of Antisuffrage Arguments:

In its third publication in 1916, Debaters’ Handbook Series: Select Articles on Woman Suffrage laid out the arguments for and against suffrage followed by a selection of articles and speeches from each side of the http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/arguments/against-suffrage[1/4/2016 2:30:33 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Against Suffrage debate. Intended to be an unbiased handbook for those seeking knowledge on the subject, the text pays both suffrage proponents and opponents equal attention. The basic outline of the arguments against suffrage is revealing in that many of the points are centered around anxiety about the violation of traditional gender ideologies: “the home would suffer by the participation of women in the affairs of the state,” “the home would be neglected,” “divorce would be increased,” “they would be made less womanly,” and “they would lose the respect of men.”[14] By surveying popular antisuffrage pamphlets and independently published debate manuals, it becomes clear that many antisuffragists were painting a particular image of the dangers of female enfranchisement: if women obtained the vote they may be so distracted by their involvement in public affairs that the home would be neglected, marriage relations would suffer, and their very status as women would be compromised.

[1] Suzanne Marilley, Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996), 9.

[2] Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 235-7, 269-88.

[3] Susan E. Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 139.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, 49-50.

[6] Ibid, 4.

[7] Susan E. Marshall, 224.

[8] Ibid, 227.

[10] “An Appeal to Voters and Arguments Against Equal Suffrage Constitutional Amendment” issued by Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women (Portland: 1906).

[11] Ibid.

[12] “Woman Suffrage” National Anti-suffrage Association. Washington Government Printing Office 1916.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Edith M. Phelps, Selected Articles on Woman Suffrage (White Plains, N.Y.: The H.W. Wilson company, 1916), xv.

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For Suffrage

The majority of women who first advocated for female suffrage did so based on justice and equal rights. Women, they said, share a common humanity with men and ought to have just as much right to politically govern their lives. Though gender and sexual differences were often acknowledged, they felt that one sex “could not legislate justly for the other.”[1] These ideas were based on liberal individualism wherein every person was thought of as an individual who was entitled to a degree of self- reliance and autonomy. At the beginning of the suffrage movement, especially before the turn of the century, it had been common to refer to the franchise as a natural right. A popular strategy was to turn to founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the struggle that men in the US waged for their inalienable rights: “If all men were created equal and had the inalienable right to consent to the laws by which they were governed, women were created equal to men and had the same inalienable right to political liberty.”[2] To call men and women not only equal but also identical was to push the boundaries that separated men’s and women’s spheres.[3]

As the movement approached the twentieth century franchise advocates began to rely less on justice arguments and instead began to use expedience arguments. Mainly espoused by the later generations of suffragists, the expediency argument said that women ought to have the vote because they are the ones best able to address issues that were related to the home— education, sanitation, health codes—but were, none the less, legislated by men. Political rights that women held before suffrage often pertained to the home, but more and more frequently the home was a basis for political action.[4] This http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/arguments/for-suffrage[1/4/2016 2:31:02 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : For Suffrage argument was an effective one because it utilized changing definitions of domesticity. By the turn of the twentieth century, to fight against liquor (which produced abusive husbands and fathers), demand food standards (to protect children), or even to write for a woman’s magazine (which spread important information among women) was considered acceptable because they were areas in which women were believed to have a special stake and knowledge. Historian Paula Baker explains that by the twentieth century “suffrage was no longer a radical demand or a challenge to separate spheres, because the concerns of politics and of the home were inextricable.”[5]

To say that women ought to have the right to vote because they were “the nurturers of society” and more able to solve society’s ills was far less threatening to the status quo.[6] This shift to expediency was likely a change in ideology as well as tactics: “Suffragists learned that they could link their arguments to existing beliefs espousing women’s fitness for roles in the private or domestic sphere.”[7] Sociologist Holly McCammon has even argued that the use of expediency arguments was an important factor in western states giving women the right to vote long before eastern states. In her study of suffrage literature and tactics from across the country McCammon found that western suffragists were more likely than suffragists elsewhere to employ expediency arguments.[8] And while there were other factors at play, this tactic resonated, rather than clashed, with widely held beliefs about gender roles, which may help explain the West’s early achievement.

[1] Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 54.

[2] Ibid, 44.

[3] Holly McCammon, et all, 57.

[4] Paula Baker, 624.

[5] Ibid, 642.

[6] Holly McCammon and Karen Campbell, 74.

[7] Holly J. McCammon, et all, 57.

[8] Holly J. McCammon and Karen Campbell, 74.

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Legal Struggles Suffrage Tactics

Legal Struggles

“The Tax Qualification”

“Woman Suffrage Safe”

“This editorial discusses the decision made by a judge in eastern Washington which made all statures and amendments without the subject of the act http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/suffrage-hurdles-and-tactics/legal-struggles[1/4/2016 2:31:48 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Legal Struggles

“A Vexed Question”

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Legal Struggles Suffrage Tactics

Suffrage Tactics

In the early years of the movement the most common tactics used to advocate female suffrage were lectures, small meetings and discussion groups, conventions, and the publication of letters and articles in newspapers. Lectures would often be held in public buildings (court houses and town halls) or local churches and were open to the public. At the same time, in the later half of the nineteenth century, suffrage was not only gaining more attention in national and regional papers, but many suffrage organizations were creating their own newspapers. Additionally, many leaders at the time worked stringently to gain the support of other activists, business leaders, and major politicians.

The turn of the twentieth century, and the creation of the National Woman’s Party, also saw an increase in very public displays and demonstrations. Inez Milholland, for instance, became a national figure as “the most beautiful suffragist.” Milholland’s beauty functioned as a commodity, something to present and sell to the public as the face of suffrage. Milholland was among a generation of women’s advocates who began to truly sell their ideas to the public consumer. According to historian Margaret Finnegan, suffragettes used their status as female consumers to move into the public space, first as department store customers and later as lecturers, and incorporate themselves into traditionally male- http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/suffrage-hurdles-and-tactics/suffrage-tactics[1/4/2016 2:32:16 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Suffrage Tactics

centered rituals of active citizenship.[1]

Similarly, parades became a way to garner public attention. A writer with the Woman’s Journal, a leading suffrage newspaper, tried to explain that the parade provided “a chance to show that woman’s method of accomplishing a purpose may be distinctively and instinctively her own.”[2] Though a woman may lack political experience, the author asserted she could contribute by becoming one of many marching along the parade route. Though the movement may not always have women trained to march, “we have women who are trained to teach, who are trained to appeal, who are trained to think...who are gifted with beauty or graciousness.” The parade was, to a certain extent, an acknowledgment of the differences between men and women and an assertion that, although women may be of a different nature, they could be brought (beautifully) into the public sphere.

[1] Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1999).

[2] Glenna Smith Tinnin. “Why the Pageant?” The Woman’s Journal (15 Feb 1913): 50.

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Prohibition, the WCTU, and suffrage

Over time, however, WCTU members gradually began to support suffrage. Then under the leadership of Frances Willard the organization truly moved beyond its initial concern to consider labor, public health, socialism, and suffrage.[2] For many people the WCTU’s endorsement of suffrage made it a much more acceptable idea because they combined “the woman’s sphere with suffrage under the rubric of ‘Home Protection,’ an argument that implied feminine values belonged within traditionally defined politics.”[3] The WCTU had long argued that its activity was done on behalf of the http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/temperance-movement/prohibition-and-the-wctu[1/4/2016 2:32:54 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Prohibition, the WCTU, and suffrage home, to protect the foundation of society, and now they were backing suffrage for the same reasons. If women had the vote, many reasoned, they would be able to rid society of many ills, including the vice of drunkenness.

[1] Ruth Barnes Moynihan, 131.

[2] Paula Baker, 637.

[3] Ibid, 638.

[4] Giele, 83.

[5] Aileen S. Kraditor, 59.

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Printed Resources Online Resources

Printed Resources

Primary Sources

Many of these works can be found in major university libraries. Additionally, many have also been digitized and are available for the general public online.

Bennett, Christine. American Women in Civic Work. New York: Dodd, Mead and company, 1915.

Brown, Olympia, and Lucy Stone. Acquaintances, Old and New, Among Reformers. Milwaukee: S.E. Tate, 1911.

Catt, Carrie Chapman, and Nettie Rogers Shuler. Woman Suffrage and Politics; The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement. Seattle: University of Washington Press, [1926] 1969.

Dorr, Rheta Childe, and Carrie Chapman Catt. What Eight Million Women Want. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co, 1910.

Duniway, Abigail Scott. Path breaking; an autobiographical history of the equal suffrage movement in Pacific Coast states. New York: Schocken Books, [1914] 1971.

The Evening Chronicle (Spokane).

Friedl, Bettina. On to Victory: Propaganda Plays of the Woman Suffrage Movement. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Home: Its Work and Influence. New York: McClure, Phillips & Company, 1904.

Harper, Ida Husted. Life and work of Susan B. Anthony. 3 vols. New York: Arno, [1898-1908] 1969.

The History of Women: [Microfilm Collection]. New Haven: Research Publications, 1975.

How It Feels to Be the Husband of a Suffragette. New York: George H. Doran co, 1915

Howe, Julia Ward, and Carrie Chapman Catt. Reminiscences, 1819-1899. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co, 1899. http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit/further-research/printed-resources[1/4/2016 2:33:40 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : Printed Resources