Women, Their Rights, and Nothing Less

Seneca Falls

The Women's Rights Movement was born on July 20th, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York.  This was where the Declaration of Sentiments was presented- the document that started the uproar.  All of the things that women asked for in that document where agreed upon.  All except whether  women should be given the right to vote.  The first women's rights convention was held in Syracuse, New York, in 1852, by Susan B. Anthony.

Western states were more open to giving women the right to vote.Wyoming, where Ross hailed from, gave women the vote in 1896.  By 1915, all of the western states except for New Mexico had given women the right to vote.

Anthony began getting widespread women's attention on the matter of women's suffrage by telling women that if they got the vote, they could get a say in important issues. This got a little bit of reaction, but before it could really go anywhere, the suffragists were sidetracked by the Civil War.  They battled on at the beginning of the war, but put their fight on hold to aid their armies.  Instead of distributing pamphlets, they distributed blankets.  Instead of making speeches, they knit blankets.

But after the war, Anthony plunged back into the fight for women's rights.  On November 5th, 1872, Anthony, three of her sisters, and Rhoda De Garmo set off to a barber shop turned polling place.  They where going to vote.  When they reached the counter, they were told by the three men running the booth that they couldn't be registered.  Anthony retorted, quoting the Declaration of Independence at the men.  She raised a good point- she was a citizen of the United States of America, and had lived in New York for the 30 days required to vote in the state.  The men took a vote amongst themselves, and two to one, they registered Anthony.  She cast her ballot for Ulysses Grant, and 21 days later, she was arrested by E.J. Keeney, a US Marshal, at her parent's house.  Her crime?  Illegally voting, of course.  The Marshal offered to escort her to the carriage.  Anthony asked if he treated all of his prisoners like that.  The Marshal said no, so Anthony said that the only special treatment she would ask of him would be to go upstairs and change her dress.  That done, she returned downstairs and told the Marshal to handcuff her.  He told her that he hadn't brought any handcuffs.  The two of them went to the carriage, where Anthony demanded loudly enough for the entire carriage to hear that the Marshal need pay her five cent fare because she was a prisoner of the United States of America.  Embarrassedly, they arrived at the jail.  Anthony hired a pair of lawyers to work on her case, John Van Voorhis and Henry R. Selden, and went to court.  She wasn't allowed to actually say anything in the courtroom, however, because she was female.  It didn't help that there was an all male jury, and that Judge Hunt instructed the jury to find Anthony guilty, either.  Anthony dignifiedly said that she would pay the 1,000 dollars for the use of the courtroom, but that she would never pay the 100 dollar fine for voting.  Using that remark, Hunt managed to trick Anthony into closing the case.  Voorhis paid Anthony's bail without telling her.  Now Anthony couldn't go to jail.  When she found out on the steps of the courthouse, Anthony ran back inside to retract the bail.  It was too late, though.  When Anthony asked Voorhis if he knew what the consequence of his action was, he said, "Yes.  But I could not see a lady I respected put into jail."  Anthony came away more determined than ever to make a fuss about women's suffrage.

Anthony, her sisters, and De Garmo inspired at least a hundred women.  How do we know that?  Because in 1872 alone, one hundred women tried to vote.

The 15th Amendment was put up for discussion.  Anthony and Stanton asked women to oppose the  Amendment.  Why?  The Amendment granted suffrage to black men.  Only black men.  Stanton and Anthony wanted women's suffrage to be included in the Amendment.  In that, they failed.  The 15th Amendment passed, granting suffrage to black men.

The suffragists began to hold demonstrative parades in the late 1800s.  Most of these where small.  But in one of the biggest ones, over a thousand white women, dressed in white and suffrage flags, marched at the head of the parade, followed by men and black women.  They said that this was to keep the parade about gender, and not race.  Ida Wells Barnett, the journalist spoken of earlier, went renegade, and marched near the head of the parade, among the white women.  At the very front of the parade, a woman rode a white horse.  When the parade reached its destination, the US Treasury Department, some of the women staged a tableau.  In the middle, there was a woman dressed like the Lady of Columbia.  Standing around her where four other women, each one wearing a crown with an ideal on it- Hope, Liberty, Equality, and Peace.  Not all of the marchers reached the Treasury safely, however.  Rowdy men in the crowd pelted the women with lit cigars, shoved marchers, and, in the instance of one elderly woman, trampled her.  

In 1895, Elizabeth Cady Stanton published The Woman's Bible, which was an argument about how women should not be subservient to men, even though they were so in the Bible.  None of her fellow suffragists wanted her to publish the book, but she did.  It became a bestseller.  

In the early 1900s, things started to finally progress.  But things also started to get ugly.  Political cartoons for women's suffrage were replaced with anti-suffrage ones.  The anti-suffrage posters that were common in England made their way to America, and covered walls.  Newspapers made fun of women's suffrage, and buttons for and against women's suffrage were made.  Even some cereal boxes where voicing their opinions.  Women who didn't want to vote also began to make their move.  They held anti-suffrage tea parties, where they spoke about how evil suffrage was, and how any reasonable lady should not vote.  It was at one of these meetings where a person became so indignant at what was being said that they wrote a 10,000 dollar check for the suffragists.  It was the largest amount given to the suffragists by any single living person.  

By the 1880s, women were allowed to vote in school and city elections in a select few cities/states.