Woodrow Wilson and 19th Amendment

Woodrow Wilson and 19th Amendment

The 19th Amendment says simply: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." It took effect 85 years ago in August after a dramatic ratification battle in Tennessee in which a 24-year-old legislator cast the deciding vote. The amendment was a long time coming. At various times, women could run for public office in some places, but could rarely vote. (Mulder, 1978) (As far back as 1776, New Jersey allowed women property owners to vote, but rescinded that right three decades later.) The campaign for women's rights began in earnest in 1848 at a Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., organized by 32-year-old Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other advocates. Stanton had drafted a "Womanifesto" patterned on the Declaration of Independence, but the one resolution that shocked even some of her supporters was a demand for equal voting rights, also known as universal suffrage. "I saw clearly," Stanton later recalled, that the power to make the laws was the right through which all other rights could be secured. (Leary, 1967)

Stanton was joined in her campaign by Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, and other crusaders who would become icons of the women's movement. Some were militant. Many were met with verbal abuse and even violence. Already active in the antislavery movement and temperance campaigns (which urged abstinence from alcohol), women often enlisted in the fight for voting rights too.

Wyoming Is First

They staged demonstrations, engaged in civil disobedience, began legal challenges, and pressed their case state by state. In 1869, the Wyoming Territory gave women the vote, with the first permanent suffrage law in the nation. ("It made sense that a place like Wyoming would embrace women's rights," Gail Collins of The New York Times wrote in her recent book America's Women. "With very few women around, there was no danger that they could impose their will on the male majority.") In 1878, a constitutional amendment was introduced in Congress. The legislation languished for nine years. In 1887, the full Senate considered the amendment for the first time and defeated it by about 2-to-1.

But the suffrage movement was slowly gaining support. With more and more women graduating from high school, going to college, and working outside the home, many Americans began asking: Why couldn't women vote too? Plenty of opposition existed, according to Collins: Democrats feared women would vote for the more socially progressive Republicans. The liquor industry, afraid of prohibition, also opposed women's suffrage, as did many people in the South, where blacks had been largely disenfranchised since Reconstruction. In 1918, after much cajoling and picketing by suffragists, President Woodrow Wilson changed his mind and backed the amendment. The next year, both houses of Congress voted to amend the Constitution. Suffrage advocates predicted quick ratification by the states. (By 1919, 28 states permitted women to vote, at least for ...