Source 1: The Nineteenth Amendment
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.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Source 2: The Nineteenth Amendment: Debate, Passage, and Legacy
The struggle for women's suffrage in the United States lasted more than seven decades, requiring generations of activists to lecture, organize, petition, and protest before achieving victory. The movement's origins trace to the mid-19th century, when women who had fought alongside abolitionists expected expanded rights after the Civil War. Instead, the Reconstruction Amendments added the word "male" to the Constitution for the first time, explicitly tying voting rights to men. Deeply angered, suffragists formed two competing organizations in 1869: the National Woman Suffrage Association, which pursued a federal constitutional amendment, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, which favored a state-by-state approach. The two merged in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Opposition to women's suffrage was organized and persistent. Beginning in the 1890s, anti-suffragists argued that most women did not want the burden of the vote, that suffrage would interfere with women's domestic responsibilities, and that many women were unfit to make sound political decisions. Anti-suffragists gathered petition signatures, lobbied legislators, and founded their own organizations to counter the growing movement. The public debate played out on street corners, in newspapers, and in state legislatures for decades.
Progress came through both confrontation and political strategy. Suffragists challenged voting laws in court, campaigned state by state, and employed increasingly bold tactics, including picketing the White House beginning in 1917. When New York adopted women's suffrage that same year, momentum shifted decisively toward a federal amendment. President Woodrow Wilson, who had long resisted a constitutional solution, announced his support in 1918, citing women's contributions to the war effort. Congress passed the amendment in 1919.
Ratification came down to a single vote. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, with legislator Harry T. Burn casting the deciding vote at his mother's urging. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified ratification on August 26, 1920, granting 26 million American women the right to vote. However, ratification did not deliver full enfranchisement. Discriminatory state laws continued to prevent most Black women and women of color from voting for another 45 years, until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 extended the amendment's promise to all American women.
Source 3: Excerpt from an Address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association: Speech of President Woodrow Wilson, September 9, 1916.
“... The astonishing thing about the movement which you represent is, not that it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so rapidly. No doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your honored president, it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force of this movement in recent decades, you must agree with me that it is one of the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two generations ago, no doubt Madam President will agree with me in saying, it was a handful of women who were fighting this cause. Now it is a great multitude of women who are fighting it.
...It is not merely because the women are discontented. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is something which we not only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do not wish to resist. America took its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of those who are spiritually minded in America, America comes more and more into her birthright and into the perfection of her development…”
Source 4: Excerpt from a Pamphlet Published by the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, c. 1910s.
Vote NO on Woman Suffrage
BECAUSE 90% of the women either do not want it, or do not care.
BECAUSE it means competition of women with men instead of co-operation.
BECAUSE 80% of the women eligible to vote are married and can only double or annul their husbands' votes.
BECAUSE it can be of no benefit commensurate with the additional expense involved.
BECAUSE in some States more voting women than voting men will place the Government under petticoat rule.
BECAUSE it is unwise to risk the good we already have for the evil which may occur.
Housewives!
You do not need a ballot to clean out your sink spout. A handful of potash and some boiling water is quicker and cheaper.
If new tinware be rubbed all over with fresh lard, then thoroughly heated before using, it will never rust.
Use oatmeal on a damp cloth to clean white paint.
Control of the temper makes a happier home than control of elections.
When boiling fish or fowls, add juice of half a lemon to the water to prevent discoloration.
Celery can be freshened by being left over night in a solution of salt and water.
Good cooking lessens alcoholic craving quicker than a vote.
Why vote for pure food laws, when your husband does that, while you can purify your ice-box with saleratus water?
Common sense and common salt applications stop hemorrhage quicker than ballots.
Clean your mirrors with water to which a little glycerine has been added. This prevents steaming and smoking.
Sulpho naphthol and elbow grease drive out bugs quicker than political hot air.
To drive out mice, scatter small pieces of camphor in cupboards and drawers. Peddlers and suffs are harder to scare.
Clean houses and good homes, which cannot be provided by legislation, keep children healthier and happier than any number of uplift laws.
Butter on a fresh burn takes out the sting. But what removes the sting of political defeat?
Clean dirty wall paper with fresh bread.
When washing colored hosiery, a little salt in the water will prevent colors from running.
If an Anti swallows bichloride, give her whites of eggs, but if it's a suff, give her a vote.
Votes of Women can accomplish no more than votes of Men. Why waste time, energy and money, without result?
