Votes for Women: The Battle of August 1920

As is being widely publicized this month, women in the U.S. were given the universal right to vote 100 years ago this week, on August 18, 1920, when Tennessee became the 36^th state to ratify the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

June posing as a 1920 suffragist

Women’s Voting Rights before 1920

Women in most of the U.S. states did not have the right to vote in presidential elections before 1920.

For example, my paternal grandmother was born in 1881, so she turned 21, the voting age for men back then, in 1902. In the presidential election of 1904, though, she could not go to the polls with her husband George, whom she had married earlier that year.

Grandma Laura Seat was also unable to vote in the elections of 1908, 1912, or 1916. In the Declaration of Independence, the words “all men are created equal” still meant men instead of people 140 years later.

At the July 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton adopted the motto, “All men and women are created equal,” and they demanded the right to vote. That still hadn’t happened 68 years later when Grandma Laura was not legally permitted to vote in 1916.

But the situation changed in August 1920.

The Suffs and the Antis in 1920

The U.S. Congress passed the 19^th Amendment on June 4, 1919—but it had to be ratified by 36 of the 48 states in order to become part of the Constitution. The battle for and against ratification in Tennessee, the 36^th state, was fiercely fought in August 1920.

That battle between the “Suffs” (those for women’s suffrage) and the “Antis” (those opposing suffrage, which included many women) is engagingly told in Elaine Weiss’s 2018 book The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. And what a battle it was!

The strong women Antis emphasized several dangers the 19^th Amendment posed, including the dismantling of “white supremacy, states’ rights, and cherished southern traditions” (Weiss, p. 44).

Somehow, I had not previously realized how so much of the opposition to women’s suffrage was by southerners, still indignant over the outcome and effects of the Civil War and adamantly opposed to Black women gaining voting rights.

The Antis also included many women who were part of the conservative Christian evangelicalism of the South and linked with the fundamentalism that was growing in strength throughout the 1910s.

Among many other things, the Antis attacked the Suffs because of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible (1895, 1898).

On the other hand, the Suffs were single-minded in their advocacy for women’s suffrage—and, regrettably, because of that single-mindedness they compromised on other matters of social justice, especially with regard to the rights of African Americans.

But, could the 19^th Amendment have been ratified otherwise? Perhaps not. Thankfully, it was ratified by Tennessee on August 18 and took effect on August 26, 1920. Surprisingly, though, most women didn’t vote in the November election that year.

What About 2016 & 2020?

It is reported that in the 2016 presidential election, 63.3% of eligible women voters went to the polls but only 59.3% of eligible men voters did.

Given the 72-year struggle (from 1848 to 1920) for voting rights, though, why would nearly 37% of women not vote in the last presidential election? Perhaps some of them still agreed with the Antis of 1920, although surely almost all women today think they should have the right to vote.

If just a small percentage of those women who didn’t go to the polls had done so, the 2016 election would likely have turned out differently, for of those women who did vote, 54% of them voted for Clinton whereas 53% of men voted for Trump.

In this centennial year of women’s suffrage, many of us are hoping that a far greater number of women will vote on November 3. “Votes for women” didn’t elect a woman president in 2016, but voting women can (and probably will!) make Senator Kamala Harris the first female vice president in U.S. history.

In Honor of Susan B. Anthony, Persistent Agitator

Born 200 years ago, on February 15, 1820, for nearly sixty years before her death at the age of 86, Susan B. Anthony was an active agitator for change. In a letter she wrote in 1883, Anthony (SBA) said, 

SBA: Agitator for Temperance 

Because of her concern for abused women and children, Anthony’s first public activity as an agitator was in the temperance movement, which was the effort to outlaw alcohol. (Many of you saw my related 2/9 blog article about Prohibition.)

In 1848 when she was 28 years old, Susan’s first public speech was given for temperance. In her book Susan B. Anthony (2019), Teri Kanefield wrote about how Anthony “spoke passionately about ‘the day when our brothers and sons shall no longer be allured from the right by corrupting influence’ of alcohol so that ‘our sisters and daughters shall no longer be exposed to the half-inebriated seducer’” (p. 40).

In 1851 Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became her lifelong friend and colleague, and the following year they founded the Women's New York State Temperance Society. (In 1999, Ken Burns produced “Not For Ourselves Alone,” a splendid, 210-minute  documentary about Anthony and Stanton; June and I enjoyed watching it last year on PBS.)

The next year, 1853, after being denied the opportunity to speak at a temperance convention because she was a woman, Anthony realized that no one would take women in politics seriously unless they had the right to vote. Thus, the seeds of her most important work as an agitator for women’s rights were planted.

SBA: Agitator for Abolition

For the next twelve years, however, Anthony worked for the abolition of slavery. In 1849, while still in her 20s, Susan met Frederick Douglass, who was two years older than she, and they were friends and colleagues—and antagonists—in the fight for equality until his death in 1895.

As a Quaker, Anthony believed that all people were of equal worth and should be treated equally. That belief undergirded her work for the rights of women. But in the 1850s and early 1860s, she was focused primarily on eradicating slavery in the U.S.

In 1856 Anthony became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, which William Lloyd Garrison had co-founded in 1833. Drawing a small salary from the Society, Susan began touring the country and making speeches about the evils of slavery.

After Lincoln’s election as President in 1860, Anthony faced terrible opposition to her work against slavery—even in New York. But she didn’t give up or quit being an agitator. In 1863 Anthony and Stanton formed the Women’s National Loyal League. In the largest petition drive in the nation's history up to that time, the League collected nearly 400,000 signatures on petitions to abolish slavery and presented them to Congress. 

That indefatigable work by Anthony and Stanton significantly assisted the passage in 1865 of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery in the U.S.

SBA: Agitator for Suffrage

The next fight was for the right for women, both black and white, to vote. In the early 1860s, white abolitionist men, such as William Lloyd Garrison, and black men, such as Frederick Douglass, were all for black men obtaining the right to vote. But they did not support the vote for women. Anthony and Stanton were outraged.

Anthony managed to register and even to vote in the election of 1872. She was subsequently arrested and convicted—but refused to pay her fine of $100 plus costs. Even though she was a Quaker woman, in 1893 she exclaimed. “Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry!”

Anthony spent the last forty years of her long life working for women’s right to vote. Sadly, she never succeeded during her lifetime. But just a month before her death in 1906, she gave her last speech concluding with the rousing phrase, "Failure is impossible!”

Nicknamed the "Anthony Amendment" in honor of Susan, who had worked so long and so persistently, the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote was finally ratified on August 18, 1920.

Now, 100 years later, there will be far more women than men who will vote (and vote in the right way!) in the presidential election of 2020.

*****

In 2019, the city of Liberty (Mo.), where I live, erected a life-size statue of Susan B. Anthony on the southeast corner of the historic square. Toward the end of their successful football season, she was sporting Chiefs’ apparel, as you see in the picture.

.

The Case against "Demon Rum"

Many of the great 19th-century women leaders in the U.S. were against what they considered three great evils: slavery, discrimination against women (including no voting rights), and alcohol. The first two evils have largely been eradicated. But not the third.

Jane Addams, the subject of my 9/5/15 blog article, was active in the temperance movement, as was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the main subject of my 11/10/15 article, and her close friend Susan B. Anthony.

One of the main 19^th century opponents of alcohol was Frances Willard. She is best known as the first national president of the Women’s Christian Temperance League, serving in that position from 1879 until her death in 1898.

In addition, Willard was a strong advocate of women’s suffrage, and her vision included federal aid to education, free school lunches, unions for workers, the eight-hour workday, work relief for the poor, municipal sanitation and boards of health, national transportation, strong anti-rape laws, protections against child abuse, etc.

Willard was a strong suffragette partly because she thought it would take women’s votes to pass laws against liquor. Consequently, fear that alcohol would become illegal was one of the reasons for much male opposition to giving women the right to vote.

In spite of women not being able to vote nationally, though, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the production, transport, and sale of alcohol was ratified in January 1919 and went into effect a year later.  

Interestingly, the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified 19 months later.

Last Dec. 22, 2015, the Washington Post published an article titled “Americans are drinking themselves to death at record rates.” According to that article, in 2014 “more than 30,700 Americans died from alcohol-induced causes,” a 35-year high.

Moreover, that number “excludes deaths from drunk driving, other accidents, and homicides committed under the influence of alcohol. If those numbers were included the annual toll of deaths directly or indirectly caused by alcohol would be closer to 90,000.”

From that and many other sources, it seems indisputable that the consumption of alcohol has a direct causal relationship to health problems, fatal and disabling accidents, homicides, domestic violence, rapes, and other negative issues, such as financial problems for those with limited means.

Of course, some will quickly say, “But that is only when alcohol is drunk excessively or irresponsibility.” While that is probably true, who ever starts drinking with the intention of doing so excessively (except maybe temporarily) or irresponsibly?

Proponents of stricter gun control repeatedly point out that guns cause some 33,000 deaths each year in this country. But if the figure of 90,000 deaths caused by alcohol is correct, guns are not nearly as much of a problem as alcohol is. Moreover, alcohol is a worldwide program.

Even though I am a strong advocate of greater gun control, perhaps the NRA and its friends are correct: it is not guns that kill people, it is people who kill people. Is that really any different from saying that alcohol does not cause problems, it is the people who use alcohol excessively or irresponsibly who cause problems?

What is the solution to the alcohol problem? Probably not more laws. But maybe a long-term educational program such as there has been against tobacco. The detrimental effects of tobacco has been widely disseminated, including in public schools. As a result, smoking in this country has decreased drastically.

No doubt the nineteenth-century women who were opposed to the three big problems of slavery, discrimination against women, and “demon rum” would be pleased if society now took the latter problem much more seriously.

Another Good Candidate for the New $10 Bill

A couple of months ago I suggested (here) that Jane Addams would be a good choice for the new $10 bill, which will have a woman’s picture on it. This article is about another woman who is also a strong candidate for the proposed new bill to be released in 2020.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an outstanding 19th-century woman who perhaps is not widely known today. But she was a woman of considerable ability and significance, so she certainly would not be a bad choice for the woman to appear on the new $10 bill.

Elizabeth Cady was born 200 years ago this week, on November 12, 1815. She died in 1902, less than three weeks before her 87^th birthday. Her autobiography, Eighty Years and More, was published five years before her death and tells much about her remarkable life.

At the time of her birth, Elizabeth’s father, a lawyer in New York, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. As a young woman, discussing legal matters with her father and reading his law books caused Elizabeth to realize how disproportionately the law favored men over women—and particularly over married women.

Seeking to change such laws became one of her main goals in life.

In 1840, Elizabeth married Henry Stanton, a journalist who later studied law under his father-in-law and who also became a lawyer. The Stantons became the parents of seven children between 1842 and 1859.

In spite of having a large family—and she seems to have been a good mother—Elizabeth Stanton spent much of her life working for social causes. She was an abolitionist and also a very active member of the temperance movement, working against what she saw as the evils of alcohol.

But she became best known as a leader in the women’s suffrage movement.

Elizabeth’s first involvement in the women’s movement was in 1848. The Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention, was held in July of that year. It was organized by Quaker women in Seneca Falls, New York, and by Elizabeth who was not a Quaker. (She and Henry had moved to Seneca Falls, New York, in 1847.)

She was the main author of “Declaration of Sentiments,” a document presented to that convention. It includes these words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal” (emphasis added).

Elizabeth met Susan B. Anthony in 1851, and they became lifelong friends and staunch colleagues in the women’s movement. (Anthony might be even a stronger candidate than Stanton for the new $10 bill, but her image already appears on the little-used one dollar coin, first minted in 1979.)

The Woman’s Bible is a two-part book written by Elizabeth and a committee of 26 women. The first volume was published in 1895, the year Elizabeth turned 80, and the second volume in 1898. It was written mainly to challenge the traditional position of religious orthodoxy that women should be subservient to men.

Elizabeth wrote the first essay, which was about Genesis 1:26-28. Her conclusion: “The above texts plainly show the simultaneous creation of man and woman, and their equal importance in the development of the race” (p. 8).

To this day most people seem to emphasize the second chapter of Genesis, where Eve is created from Adam’s rib and considered his “helpmeet” (from a misunderstanding of Genesis 2:20).

What a shame that so many today do not have as good an understanding of the Bible as Elizabeth Cady Stanton had 120 years ago!