Digital Exhibits | Summary of Woman Suffrage Exhibit A-Z Index Statewide myWSU WSU Home WSU Libraries Digital Exhibits Browse All Items Browse Collections Browse Exhibits About Browse Timelines Give To The Libraries Hours & Locations Advanced Search > Ask a Question Woman Suffrage Exhibit Research About the Libraries Services History News & Events Ideologies Arguments Suffrage Hurdles and Tactics Temperance Movement Further Research 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. Credits Sections History Ideologies Arguments Suffrage Hurdles and Tactics Temperance Movement Further Research WSU Libraries, PO Box 645610, Washington State University, Pullman WA 99164-5610, 509-335-9671 Contact Us | Website Feedback © 2016 Washington State University | Accessibility | Policies | Copyright http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/woman-suffrage-exhibit[1/4/2016 2:24:44 PM] Digital Exhibits | Woman Suffrage Exhibit : History A-Z Index Statewide myWSU WSU Home WSU Libraries Digital Exhibits Browse All Items Browse Collections Browse Exhibits About Browse Timelines Give To The Libraries Hours & Locations Advanced Search > Ask a Question Woman Suffrage Exhibit Research About the Libraries Services History News & Events Ideologies Arguments Suffrage Hurdles and Tactics Temperance Movement Further Research 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