Note:
This lesson is designed to follow discussion of the Progressive
movement, and a knowledge of the important trends and players will be assumed.
1.
Objectives
- Trace
the women’s suffrage movement from Seneca Falls
to the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
- Relate
women’s suffrage to similar themes in turn of the century
American life such as the growing temperance movement, the
rise of the Progressives, and the rights of African Americans
2.
Skill Objectives
- Diagram
an episode in history using the Episode
Diagram.
- Read
and analyze primary source documents.
3.
Essential Questions
- Why
did the 19th Amendment pass in 1920 (instead of
earlier or later)?
- How
and why did the women’s movement move from an argument for
the “natural right” of women to vote to a more pragmatic argument
for suffrage?
4.
Strategies/Methodologies (See “Description of Activities and Setting”)
5.
Appropriate Print and Non-Print Materials
·
Episode Diagram (handouts and overhead)
6.
Assignments
- The
assignment due on the day of class was to read 676-690
- The
assignment for the next day of class is to read 690-705
- Also
for the next day put the Ballinger-Pinchot Affair into Episode
Diagram
7.
Assessment
·
Collect and check Ballinger-Pinchot Episode
Diagrams. Grade with check,
check-minus and check-plus.
·
Students are assigned to bring two to three good discussion questions
from the reading.
8.
Content Outline
- During
the movement for the abolition of slavery in the 1830s women
vociferously joined their male counterparts on the most radical
arm of the movement. When
William Lloyd Garrison founded the American Anti-Slavery Society
in 1833 women made up a significant percentage of his followers. Over half of the thousands of petitions
sent to the federal government calling for the abolition of
slavery in the District of Columbia
carried the signatures of women.
- Despite
their demonstrated commitment to the cause, women were marginalized
in the movement. Even
while they were petitioning for the emancipation of slaves,
women increasingly developed a sense of the injustice of their
own position in American society. During the proceedings of the World Anti-Slavery
Convention in London
in 1840 women were barred from taking the podium and the sponsors
denied delegate seats to female members of the American Anti-Slavery
Society.
- Incensed
at this treatment Garrison’s followers withdrew from the Convention. In response to this treatment Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott drafted and delivered the “Declaration
of Sentiments” at the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca
Falls, New York.
- The
Declaration, modeled after the Declaration of Independence,
compared the unjust rule of the British over the colonies
to the unjust rule of American men over women.
In their Declaration, Mott and Stanton demanded the
right to vote, freedom from the unjust laws giving husbands
control over women, their possessions and their children.
In addition they protested laws which enforced women’s
unequal employment opportunities, unequal pay, unequal
access to education and in general women’s relegation to second-class
(at best) citizenship.
- In
response to women’s marginalization by the Anti-Slavery movement,
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded their own organization
the Women’s Loyal National League in 1863.
They gather 300,000 signatures demanding the abolition
of slavery.
- Finally
in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment passes and, with the forthcoming
Fifteenth Ammendment (1870), grants suffrage and citizenship
to African American men. Notably
absent is the granting of suffrage to women of either race. Because of this many abolitionist women,
including Stanton and Anthony, oppose the 14th
amendment creating a rift in Women’s suffrage movement between
themselves and those who supported the amendment such as Lucy
Stone. The two organizations created in this
division, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the
American Woman Suffrage Association mended their division
in 1890 and united to form the National American Woman Suffrage
Association.
- Beginning
in 1869 with the territory
of Wyoming, women’s
efforts began to pay off as Western states began to pass women’s
suffrage laws.
- Opponents
of Women’s Suffrage offered innumerable reasons for denying
women the right to vote. To
counteract suffragist’s claims that women would have a positive
influence on the moral level of the national debate, many
anti-suffragists argued that giving women the vote would damage
the moral influence women had over their proper sphere, the
home, by diverting their energies from it. Anti-suffragists argued that political
action by women violated their femininity and would lead to
a lessening respect for women by men.
Opponents to suffrage depicted suffragists as masculine
and coarse, and emphasized the neglect and degradation of
the home they thought was an inevitable result of feminism.
- The
most outspoken opponents of suffrage and feminism in general
were often women themselves.
However, these women depended on the financial support
of liquor interests who rightly feared that “women’s moralizing
influence’ could jeopardize their trade and also on the support
of big business generally which had similar fears that feminists
would join the efforts of organized labor and socialists to
increase regulation. Not least of the interests opposed to
suffrage were elements of the American Catholic Church which
opposed feminist efforts to increase women’s independence
of men through advocacy of women’s rights to birth control
and their rights within marriage.
- Ten
years after the reunification of the suffrage organizations
Carrie Chapman Catt became president of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association in 1900.
Catt’s organizational skills and peaceful lobbying
provided a nearly mainstream vehicle for women to work for
the vote. When Catt
resigned her position in 1903 Anna Howard Shaw took over leadership
of the increasingly powerful group.
- During
the first two decades of the Twentieth Century the growing
Progressive movement in American society and politics finally
provided the necessary momentum to get a women’s suffrage
amendment on the national docket. The Progressive movement’s intellectuals
and clergy encouraged government to interceded
in the moral lives of its citizenry to help people live more
moral and “human” lives. Suffragist
such as Catt used Victorian notions of women’s superior sense
of morality to convince male Progressives that giving women
the vote would bring women’s purifying and morally elevating
influence to the political realm.
- Thus,
even before receiving the franchise, women’s political voices
became increasingly prominent as reformist ideas began to
trickle up to national political leaders.
Through national organizations such as the National
Council of Jewish Women, National Congress of Mothers, the
Women’s Trade Union League and the General Federation of Women’s
Clubs women lobbied for Progressive issues, such as child
labor laws and temperance, which increasingly passed state
and federal legislatures.
- More
convinced of the positive moral influence that women could
have if given the vote, than any “natural right” of women
to the vote, Progressives finally
brought a constitutional amendment granting suffrage to women
to congress in 1918. After
two more years of lobbying states to ratify, the Nineteenth
amendment finally became law in 1920.
9.
Generalizations
- The
passing of the 19th Amendment was one climax in
a long political struggle for women’s equality that continues
today.
- The
struggle for political rights by outsiders is a constant theme
in American history.
- Power shifts like the one exemplified by the passing of the
19th Amendment do not happen just because of the
efforts of individuals, but are also found in a “social”
and “economic” context
