Case:                          Seneca Falls, women and voting rights

 

Theme:                       Growth of Democracy

                                               

Time Period:              Antebellum Expansion (1815-1859)

 

I.          Overview of Case Topic:

 

Woman suffragists first demanded equal political rights for American women at the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848.  In antebellum U.S. society, however, a belief in the innately superior morality of women was at odds with a view that electoral politics and partisanship were immoral and thus uniquely suited to men.  After the Civil War ended, woman suffrage leaders were disappointed when “sex” was omitted from federal prohibitions on disfranchisement due to “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” in the Fifteenth Amendment.  The National Women Suffrage Association led by Cady Stanton advanced the argument that women’s right to vote was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.  However, the Supreme Court found  in Minor v. Happersett (1875) that although women were citizens, they would not be allowed to vote, as voting was a privilege, not a right.

 

Woman suffrage advocates won important victories in western states in the last decades of the 19^th century, including in the territories of Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870).  In the context of the Progressive reform movement in the early 20^th century, suffrage strategy shifted from the state to the federal level.  Suffragists concentrated on passing an amendment to the Constitution.  Radical protesters were arrested and jailed for picketing President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 while more moderate suffragists lobbied members of Congress.  In 1920, seventy years after the Seneca Falls Convention, women finally won the right to vote in the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.        

 

 

II.  Connection to Theme/Time Matrix: 

 

The growth of democracy is one of the most complex facets of American political historical culture.  Throughout U.S. history, groups of Americans have rallied against political disfranchisement based on gender, race and class.  While unpropertied white men achieved voting rights early in the 19^th century, and the Seneca Falls convention should be seen in the context of 19^th century democratic growth, it was not until 1920 that white women gained the right to vote.  African American women were finally guaranteed the right to vote in a political process that lasted almost 50 years beyond that of white women. 

III.  Historical Questions:

 

How were the Abolitionist and Suffragist movements closely related?

 

Were all Quakers in favor of extending the right to vote to women?

 

Did other documents influence the Declaration of Sentiments? 

 

What is the relationship between the supposed innate moral superiority of women and the denial of the right to vote? 

 

In Minor v. Happersatt, on what basis did the Supreme Court find women’s right to vote was not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment? 

 

How was citizenship differentiated from the franchise in Minor v. Happersatt?

 

How did the forces of democratic populism affect women’s right to vote in the territory of Wyoming?

 

What are the arguments against allowing women to vote in Oregon in 1900?

 

Did Abigail Scott Duniway refute any of the anti-suffrage arguments in her speech to Oregon women in 1913?

 

What characteristics did the Woman Suffrage movement take on in the Progressive era?

 

To what extent were suffragists in 1919 radical?   What kinds of tactics did they use and where had they learned those tactics?

 

 

 

IV.  Resources:

 

A.  Secondary:  Monograph Books

 

Dunaway, Abigail Scott.  Path Breaking:  An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States.  New York:  Shocken Books, 1971 (orig. 1911).

 

Lewis, Jane.  Before the Vote Was Won:  Arguments For and Against Women’s Suffrage.  New York:  Routledge, 1987.

 

Mead, Rebecca.  How the Vote Was Won:  Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914.  New York University Press, 2004.

 

Morgan, David.  Suffragists and Democrats:  The Politics of Woman Suffrage in America.  East Lansing, MI:  Michigan State University Press, 1972.

 

Vacca, Carolyn.  A Reform Against Nature:  Woman Suffrage and the Rethinking of American Citizenship, 1840-1920.  New York:  Peter Lang, 2004.

 

 

B.  Primary:  Edited Compilations

 

Crow, Barbara, ed.  Radical Feminism:  A Documentary Reader.  New York University Press, 2000. 

 

Keetly, Dawn and John Pettegrew, Public Women, Public Words:  a Documentary History of American Feminism.  Madison, WI:  Madison House, 1997.

 

Rakow, Lana and Cheris Kramerae.  The Revolution in Words:  Righting Women, 1868-1871.  New York:  Routledge, 1990.

 

Russo, Ann and Cheris Kramerae.  The Radical Woman’s Press of the 1850s.  New York:  Routledge, 1991.

 

 

C.  Primary:  Archival (Available locally and through the TAH Website)

 

MICROFILM HQ1111 .H5 ser.1 reel 947.  University of Oregon.  Angie French Newman, Woman Suffrage in Utah, “Petition of Angie F. Newman to the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives,” Washington, D.C.:  Government Printing Office, 1886.  

 

MICROFILM HQ1111 .H5 ser.1 reel 948.   University of Oregon.  Bettina Boorman Wells, America and Women Suffrage.  Wyoming.  Colorado.  Utah. Idaho.  1911.       

 

SFM 81, University of Oregon.  Abigail Scott Dunaway.  “A Stirring Appeal, Speech 1913.”  Speech given to women voters of Oregon urging them to vote “yes” on two proposed measures by H.J. Parkinson on the special election ballot of November 4, 1913. 

 

MICROFILM HQ1111 .H5 ser.1 reel 951.  University of Oregon.  Alice Heustis Wilbur.  “Woman Suffrage Not Wanted in Oregon.”  Outline of a talk given by Mrs. R.W. Wilbur at a parlor meeting of the Oregon State Association, opposed to the suffrage of women, on March 10, 1900.

 

 

D.  Primary:  Websites

 

Library of Congress American Memory.  Declaration of Sentiments, Resolutions from “The first convention ever called to discuss the civil and political rights of women, Seneca Falls, N.Y., July 19, 20, 1848.”  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/

 

Call to the Convention, Session by Session guide to Proceedings, Letters to the Convention, Elizabeth Blackwell’s critique of the convention, Contemporary newspaper accounts.  http://www.assumption.edu/whw/

 

Selections from the National American Women Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921, Library of Congress.  The NAWSA Collection consists of 167 books, pamphlets and other artifacts documenting the suffrage campaign. They are a subset of the Library's larger collection which includes works from the libraries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice Stone Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Mary A. Livermore.  http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/naw/