Stages of Movement Suffrage movement lasted 72 years Went forward in at least three stages:

2. Stages of Movement • Suffrage movement lasted 72 years • Went forward in at least three stages: • 1848-1869, 1879-1890, and 1890-1920. • The suffrage movement did not become a mass political movement until the 20th century. • It enrolled roughly: • 13,150 in 1893 • 45,507 in 1907 • 100,000 in 1915 • 200,000 in 1917

3. First Stage: 1848-1869 • • Outgrowth of abolitionism • – Frustration and marginalization within the movement • – Women’s votes will end slavery • • “The Negro’s Hour” • – Put ending slavery ahead even of arguments for women’s “natural human rights” • • Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

4. Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880) • Quaker teacher, reformer, abolitionist, suffragist, civil rights advocate • With Stanton, author of “Declaration of Sentiments” and later author of Discourse on Women (1850), key feminist text.

5. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) • Deeply involved in reform movements, and the wife of Henry Stanton, an abolitionist • With Mott, an author of the “Declaration of Sentiments” and leader of the suffrage movement to 1902. • Published The Woman’s Bible in 1895.

6. II. Early History • A. London Convention (1840) – First meeting of Mott and Stanton • World Anti-slavery convention hosted by British and Foreign Anti-slavery Society invites attendance of "the friends of the Slave of every nation and of every clime." • Garrison sends male AND female delegates (led by L. Mott), but BFAS refuses access to women. – Rescinds invitation and reissues it to “gentlemen only.” • Garrison sends women anyway, but they are denied admission to the convention. • For Mott, this is a key moment.

7. II. Early History – London Convention • Mott (53) is staying at the same place that the newly-wed Stantons are (Henry is a delegate), she meets and speaks with Elizabeth Stanton (25) at great length. • Stanton and Mott have many shared experiences of the silencing of women at abolitionist meetings and conventions. • Mott also fosters Stanton’s feminism more generally.

8. II. Early History – Birth of Stanton’s Feminism • Mott had read early feminists – esp. Mary Wollstonecraft • Mott urged Stanton to read the writings of the Grimke sisters, former slave owners from South Carolina who had become Quakers and abolitionists with the American Anti-slavery Society. – Both Sarah and Angelina Grimke made direct connections between oppression of slaves by their masters and women by men. • By the end of the World Convention, Stanton had proposed to Mott that they call together a woman's rights convention upon their return. – but they find no time to do so until 1848 (Stanton has small children to raise).

9. II. Early History – Intent of the Convention • To mobilize reform sentiment in the Seneca Falls area – They announced the meeting only in the local paper, – and expected a small attendance because it was harvest time. • They called the convention for July 19 and 20, and spent a day drawing up an agenda and a declaration of grievances. • Stanton chose the Declaration of Independence as the model for their platform.

10. Declaration of Sentiments • The Declaration of Independence listed 18 grievances, so the women in Seneca Falls worked to find 18 injustices of their own. • They did not have far to look for a list of wrongs against women.

11. List of Injustices Included: Although married women in some states had the right to their own property, they had no legal right to their earnings or their children. • They could not testify against husbands in court. • Single women could own property, but they paid taxes on it without enjoying the right to vote ("taxation without representation"). • In all occupations women were paid much less than men.

12. Early History – Tyranny • To the women of Seneca Falls, these grievances justified women to the charge men of practicing "tyranny" over women. • D. of S.: "He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.“ • In a lengthy series of resolutions, Stanton called for an end to all discrimination based on sex.

13. Early History – The aftermath • Of the 100 men and women who signed the declaration, many retracted their signatures under family pressure. – Even Stanton’s father pressed for her to remove her signature from the “scandalous document.” • Elizabeth refused to withdraw her name. • She emerged from the fray a determined individual and for the rest of the 19th century, would lead the woman's movement.

14. The focus of Seneca Falls was the ending of slavery and granting full citizenship to Blacks – And allowing women to take an equal place in that fight – The emphasis on the vote was in aid of ending slavery • Because it was assumed that women voters (North and South) would vote to end slavery • Efforts from 1848 to 1865 were on the “Negroes’ Hour” – securing equality for African Americans • But in 1865, with the end of the Civil War, slavery ended – without a vote. – And the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1869 gave Black men the vote. – But what about women, both Black and white?

15. The Shift in 1869 • From 1869, movement for woman's rights went forward along several paths: – 1) the narrowing focus on suffrage, – 2) the byways of racism and xenophobia, and – 3) an increasing recourse to domestic and feminine rhetoric. • NWSA make an effort in 1870s to base women's suffrage on the guarantee of national citizenship implicit in the Constitution. – Only when courts rejected this interpretation did the suffrage movement focus on amending the Constitution. • Later, suffragists would develop another strategy. – Two groups – the National American Woman's Suffrage Association and southern suffragists – pursued a state-by-state strategy of winning vote for women, because they thought constitutional amendment was impossible

16. Second Stage: 1879-1890 • Frustration over the “betrayal” of the 15th Amendment • Belief that the “Negroes’ Hour” strategy lost women their best chance for the vote • Political realism – use any methods available to get the vote – Including playing the “race card” • Susan B. Anthony and the NWSA

17. Third Stage: 1890-1920 • Suffrage movement as a mass movement • Movement made up of mostly young women – who identify as “New Women” • Explicitly feminist: – Women deserve the vote as a basic human right – Women assume equality in their methods and arguments – Willingness to be “unladylike” in the fight • Carrie Chapman Catt and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party (NWP)

18. III. Ideology – Racism and Ethnocentricity • New emphasis on gender difference in rhetoric woman's suffrage movement joined with increasing emphasis on race, ethnic, and class differences as well. • Some historians have argued that the continued push for the vote was a reflection of the “status discrepancy” faced by the suffrage leaders. • Many, perhaps most, leaders of the movement were white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, and native-born women of educational and economic levels high above the average American. • The National Women's Suffrage Association explicitly used this fact as an attack on foreign-born, working class, Catholic men who had the franchise and increasingly exerting their own ethnic and class interests in politics end 19th century. • Remember the 19th Century is the age of the ethnic political boss and machine politics – Boss Tweed, etc.

19. • The same argument was made against Blacks as against European immigrant men. • The 1890s and 1900s were a period of rampant racism in American society. • This racism was freely and publicly acknowledged by many – and often took the form of violent attacks upon blacks and immigrants. • Suffrage leaders reflected the racial attitudes which characterized a large segment of the white middle-class.

20. • Harriet Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and leader of the Women's Political Union, staged some of the most significant. – She understood that rituals touched people as education and advertising could not and learned this from the working class women with whom associated in WPU and in Women's Trade Union League. • They were active in labor organizing and labor politics and in ethnic politics and brought strategies with them to suffrage movement. • Said Blatch: "I saw the possibilities in a suffrage parade. What could be more stirring than hundreds of women, carrying banners, marching--marching--marching! The public would be aroused, the press would spread the story far and wide, and the interest of our own workers would be stirred.” • Blatch’s strategy met at first with tremendous opposition from women and men but after tentative beginnings, it became commonplace.

21. Strategy and Political Style • They drew inspiration from Britain as much as from the old popular politics of America. – Blatch had lived many years in England and brought back the militant politics of the suffragettes. – Alice Paul also lived in England and participated in militant activity there. • So too, English militants toured America and Americans corresponded with them -- so sharing strategies.

22. Strategy and Political Style • These changes signify the broadening base of the women's suffrage movement. • Some newer suffragist activists, mostly middle class like their predecessors, worked hard to foster cross-class relationships – – they were settlement workers and trade union league participants. • Working together, despite many difficulties and miscommunications, had led to a new sense of female solidarity and power that such popular politics could express.