The early advocates of woman’s suffrage all began their activist careers as abolitionists in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked together with Frederick Douglass to win the freedom of enslaved Americans and secure the rights of women. They helped grow two historic movements.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the bright, courageous daughter of a wealthy New York family. As a young woman, she traded the cliquey, elite social world around her for the rough-and-tumble of activism. It was her cousin Gerrit Smith who lured her in. Gerrit was a fierce abolitionist. His country manor hosted radicals and fugitive slaves (it was even a station on the Underground Railroad). Elizabeth spent many visits there as she grew up, listening to debates on politics and religion.
Abolitionists were antislavery activists who fought for the freedom of enslaved people.
She recalled that once, as a little girl, in a fit of rage, she had decided it was up to her to destroy the laws that oppressed women. So she planned to take a pair of scissors and snip all the sexist laws out of her father’s law books. When her dad got wind of her silly plan, he explained that a pair of scissors was not an effective way to change the law; when she grew up, she would have to convince Congress and state legislatures to change the discriminatory laws.
So that’s just what Elizabeth did. She joined forces with like-minded men and women in the American Anti-Slavery Society and then the suffrage movement, fighting for equality. The American abolitionist leaders William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips had always insisted on gender equality in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Women in the group had just as much say as the men. Together they organized, raised money, and spoke freely in debates. But outside of their feminist-leaning group was a different story. Women were excluded from other abolitionist meetings and debates.
It made Lucretia and Elizabeth furious. How could abolitionist men promote freedom but not even allow women to speak in their meetings? The nerve! One day, the women decided, they’d gather their own meeting. A meeting specifically dedicated to demanding equality for women.
Elizabeth was by then married to Henry Brewster Stanton, a progressive abolitionist. They lived a quiet life in Seneca Falls, a small town in the Finger Lakes district of New York. Housework was a bore to Elizabeth—but it was the perfect time to dream of rebellion.
In 1848, she, Lucretia, and three other friends decided to finally do it: to call that meeting about women’s rights. The Woman’s Rights Convention would be held at the Methodist Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls.
Elizabeth made a list of the women’s main principles. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, this Declaration of Sentiments pointed out the “different code of morals for men and women.” It demanded women receive equal pay for equal work. It raised issues ranging from divorce and giving mothers custody rights of their children to allowing women to own property. And it declared that women and girls should have the right to attend college, to have professions and interests of their own.
But there was one issue Elizabeth listed that was considered the most controversial: the right to vote. Women couldn’t have any real power until they had a say in politics, Elizabeth felt. She’d talked about the issue a lot with her friend Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass had escaped slavery just a decade before. In that time, he’d made a name for himself as an activist, writer, and publisher of an abolitionist newspaper. And he was an unabashed “Woman’s Rights Man.” Slaves, free blacks, and women were—to varying degrees—all shackled by American laws, Frederick said. And so it was time to change them. Elizabeth couldn’t have agreed more. She was thrilled that Frederick would travel to Seneca Falls for the convention.
The scene outside the Wesleyan Chapel was bursting with energy. Hundreds of women and men arrived on horseback and on foot—far more people than the suffragists had ever dreamed would attend. The chapel was packed. A hushed awe swept the crowd as the passionate talks and debates began.
The meeting stretched over two days, from mornings till late nights. On the second day, Elizabeth Cady Stanton stood to read aloud the Declaration of Sentiments. Her proud voice rang through the chapel. The crowd was electrified, nodding and murmuring admiringly at each of her points. Until she declared the need for woman’s suffrage, that is. Gasps arose throughout the chapel.
Frederick Douglass stepped forward then, ready to defend his friend. The vote, he agreed, addressing the crowded chapel, was the only way for women and black people to be heard. It was the key to freedom. Yes, it was a big step, but now was the time to be bold.
Word of the Seneca Falls meeting spread. Newspapers condemned it with angry headlines. Journalists mocked it in opinion pieces. Ministers delivered scolding sermons, warning of the suffragists’ sinfulness.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton couldn’t help but laugh as she flipped through the newspapers in the following days and weeks. “That is just what I wanted,” she gleefully wrote to Lucretia Mott. “It will start women thinking, and men too; and when men and women think about a new question, the first step in progress is taken.”
By 1850, the women’s rights crusade was growing. Activists like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, and Sojourner Truth all joined the Cause.
The next year, Elizabeth met a thirty-year-old teacher turned Anti-Slavery Society organizer named Susan Anthony. Susan was tall, proper, and always disciplined when it came to her work. The chatty and mischievous Elizabeth instantly clicked with her. On the outside, they might have seemed like opposites, but their personalities balanced each other out perfectly. They became close friends and collaborators. “I forged the thunderbolts, and she hurled them,” was the way Elizabeth described her political partnership with Susan.
In May 1863, Elizabeth and Susan started an activist group called the Women’s National Loyal League. It proudly mixed feminist and abolitionist views. “There can never be true peace in this republic until the civil and political rights of all citizens of African descent and all Women are practically established,” the league asserted.
Their plan was clear: to push President Abraham Lincoln to abolish slavery forever. So they recruited thousands of women to go door-to-door, collecting the signatures of women and men, white and black, demanding an end to slavery.
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, an ardent abolitionist, presented these petitions to Congress. It’s no coincidence that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery soon passed. The work of these women activists is credited with helping to convince Lincoln and Congress to push through the Thirteenth Amendment.
Elizabeth and Susan had just built the very first national women’s political organization in the United States. And they had seen firsthand the power of women in action.
After the Civil War, the United States Congress passed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to give black men the rights of citizens and the right to vote. But the amendments left women—of all races—out.
Susan and Elizabeth were furious. Frederick Douglass was also upset that the laws would not include women. But as he pointed out to Susan and Elizabeth, life in America for black men—who had been enslaved, who were being lynched and attacked regularly—was significantly more dangerous than for white women like themselves. In order to help protect his fellow black men, Frederick had to make an excruciating choice, against his wishes, to support amendments that excluded women.
Some suffragists agreed with Frederick Douglass. But Susan and Elizabeth were still outraged and even fought against the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments because the laws didn’t include voting rights for women. Nonetheless, Douglass continued to fight for woman’s suffrage and remained friends with Susan and Elizabeth until his death.
In 1869, Susan and Elizabeth formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (the very group that Carrie Catt would eventually lead). Though they tried other strategies first, they eventually decided their goal was to add a woman’s suffrage amendment to the United States Constitution. Their proposed amendment boiled it down to one simple sentence, leaving no room for confusion: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
Senator Aaron Augustus Sargent of California, a friend of the Suffs, introduced the amendment into the Senate on January 10, 1878. The lawmakers could barely contain their laughter. Votes—for women? Dream on, the men chuckled, shaking their heads in disbelief.
That one sentence-long amendment sat in Congress for the next forty years—every time it was brought up for a vote, it wouldn’t pass. Lawmakers wouldn’t touch it. It would ruin their careers, they reasoned.
During those forty long years, the suffrage movement grew and spread across the whole country. And it changed hands, too. Susan Anthony passed the NAWSA torch on to Carrie Catt. Women who’d been little girls when the movement first started were now suffrage warriors.
It wasn’t until January 1918 that the U.S. House of Representatives finally passed the amendment. Over a year later, in June 1919, the Senate followed. It squeaked through with a margin of votes you could count on one hand.
When Carrie Catt heard that news, she broke into a wild dance, stomping all over the house, whooping and singing. But she knew this was only the first step. There was still hard work to be done.
Next, the amendment would go on to the states. Thirty-six states had to ratify it. The first votes rolled in effortlessly. Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. New York whisked ratification through in less than three hours.
Within the first three months, seventeen states ratified the amendment. Then the trouble began. More and more states were rejecting the amendment.
Both NAWSA and the Woman’s Party headquarters had sent their women on the road to get the word out, get people excited about ratification. Marjorie Shuler and Sue White had both hit the trails, giving talks and meeting with other activists across the country. Carrie herself had jumped on a train on a tour of western states—she gave pep talks and negotiated with politicians. She encountered women she’d worked with in her very first campaigns, in the horse-and-buggy days. The women were old and stooped but still fighting, and they traveled far to see Carrie again.
Still, by the end of 1919 only twenty-two states had ratified. It wasn’t until spring 1920 that the thirty-fifth state ratified. The Suffs needed thirty-six. But since March, nothing had moved forward. The governors of Connecticut, Vermont, and Florida refused to call special sessions to consider the amendment. They wouldn’t budge.
And now Tennessee was the suffragists’ very last chance to secure a thirty-sixth state and make their dreams of voting in the 1920 elections come true. Victory was so close, they could taste it.
Everything was riding on this moment in Nashville.