Queen Essays

The Nineteenth Amendment

Christina Kulich-Vamvakas

The women's suffrage movement is really a hallmark movement in American politics for a number of different reasons.

First, it is the first significant national rights movement and it was unique in that…in its length, actually, and in the size of its organization. By the time that the 19th Amendment passed, women's suffrage organizations were by far better resourced, better organized, than any other national political movement, the national parties included, which were simply skeletons. And we're talking about, essentially, doubling…well, half…increasing significantly the size of the citizen pool, the number of available boats. Right?

So: time, organization, and resources led absolutely to the ultimate success. It was a long haul battle, right, for upwards of 80 years, but the growth of the organization and the capacity of the organization actually, I think, is probably the single most important recipe item in success.

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Journal of Women's History Volume 27, Number 4, Winter 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press

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Following the Money Wealthy Women, Feminism, and the American Su!rage Movement

Joan Marie Johnson

The fortunes donated and estates le" by wealthy women played a significant, yet controversial role in recharging the woman su!rage movement and passing the Nineteenth Amendment, a story historians have just recently begun to explore. “Following the money” traces priorities, tactics, and strategies of the movement through a focus on donors and donations and explores the resentment caused when a small number of wealthy individuals wielded the power to shape strategy and decisions. Their experience with the power of money (and its limitations) helped them understand that economic independence and political equality was crucial for all women, whether working-class wage earners, educated professionals, or inheritors of large fortunes. Their donations funded new tactics and strategies, including headquarters in New York and

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Washington, DC, salaries for traveling organizers, and a publicity blitz, as well as Carrie Chapman Catt’s “winning plan,” ultimately making passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment possible in 1920.

Calling it “the vital power of all movements—the wood and water of the engine,” the “ammunition of war,” and a “war chest,” su!ragists in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States captured the importance of money in their battle to win the right to vote for women. They were unable to change public sentiment or to lobby legislatures without funds for travel, sta!, print, or parades. The movement depended not just on grassroots activism, but also on the fortunes donated and estates le" by a handful of very wealthy women. At crucial moments their contributions sustained the western state campaigns, underwrote newspapers, or paid salaries. This article argues that the movement, which by 1900 was stalled and unable to pass su!rage in any new states, emerged from the “doldrums,” due to the infusion of money given by wealthy women. I contend that their donations shaped the trajectory—the priorities, strategies, and ultimately the success—of the movement.

This article also wrestles with the di!iculty of engaging with the essential role of wealthy women who had the ability to dominate a movement that challenged men’s political dominance. When funding came from a small number of a!luent individuals, o!icers and sta! sometimes felt pressured to shape their agendas to please donors. Therefore, resentment influenced the story told in memoirs and the History of Woman Su!rage series written by [End Page 62] o!icers, who foregrounded certain o!icers and organizations while marginalizing rich women despite their powerful impact. Historians followed suit.

Several recent historians have recently begun to write wealthy women back into the history of women’s su!rage and to explore the role funding played. Faye Dudden analyzes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s desperate need for funding in the 1860s, and Lisa Tetrault examines su!rage speakers’ ability to earn wages in the 1870s and1880s. Ellen DuBois

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demonstrates how Harriot Stanton Blatch initiated a cross-class alliance in 1908–1909 that included wealthy women as well as working-class women. Although she and Sara Hunter Graham both conclude that upper-class women exercised disproportionate influence, these women and their contributions were not the central point of their work. Building on these studies, I focus on the last fourteen years before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920 and turn the spotlight on a crucial group of donors to both the National American Woman Su!rage Association (NAWSA) and the Congressional Union (CU). By “following the money,” I argue that women’s su!rage passed when it did because of the significant influx of these enormous donations, as well as the leadership and strategies they underwrote.

The power of the purse controlled the contours of the movement in many ways. When su!ragists worked state-by-state, each state competed for financial assistance that the national organization granted, and donors, or the o!icers they funded, could direct money to the states of their choice. Wealthy contributors also prioritized such new tactics as parades and pickets, insisted on headquarters nearer to the powerful New York media or the U.S. Congress in Washington, DC, and championed (or axed) newspapers and other publicity tools. Donors could sway who held o!ice in the national organizations by paying salaries, tying donations to specific o!iceholders, and driving those who resented them or were incapable of the same bounty out of o!ice. Anonymous or bequeathed donations similarly empowered certain o!icers. Carrie Chapman Catt, for example, was only able to finance her “winning plan,” which combined a state and federal e!ort, due to a million dollar bequest from Mrs. Frank Leslie.

New tactics and strategies in the 1910s were all extremely expensive. NAWSA’s annual budget increased from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. State campaigns grew exponentially as well, with New York raising an incredible $682,500, the equivalent of over twelve million dollars today, for its successful 1917 referendum campaign.

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With so much money needed, su!ragists grew to realize that raising sizeable amounts of money from the small gi"s of large numbers of women simply was not feasible; they instead came to depend on a small number of [End Page 63] women to write large checks. A list of hundreds of CU contributors shows that fewer than sixty gave $1000 or more, approximately $20,000 in 2015, from 1913 through 1920. The vast majority gave between $1 and $50. Yet those approximately five dozen major supporters were disproportionately crucial to the financial vitality of the organization. Two women, Alva Belmont ($76,500) and Mary Burnham ($38,170), together gave 20 percent of the total amount, $561,800. The other large contributors gave approximately $213,000. Thus fewer than sixty people represent nearly 60 percent of the funding.

Moreover, su!ragists depended on other women, not men, to make large contributions. Women dominated the list, with thirty-eight women, ten couples, and only seven single men. Although su!ragist Matilda Gage had said in 1880 that “who would be free must contribute towards that freedom,” it took several decades before women began to use their financial clout to make change for themselves. Women’s giving reflected changes in American philanthropy, which was moving from “charity,” intended to ameliorate conditions for those in need, to “scientific philanthropy,” designed to foster large-scale social change and challenge the causes of su!ering. Similarly, women began to give large amounts to make change for women in society, not simply to assist poor women but rather to broaden women’s educational opportunities, as well as political and reproductive rights. Although few women had the financial wherewithal and independence to give thousands of dollars to the movement, a small but significant group of mostly widows and single women with inherited fortunes did.

Despite their race (all of these women were white) and class privilege, they were not insulated from sexism, and their demands for economic and political independence led them to embrace su!rage. Their ideas highlight a strand of su!ragism that focused on equality, rather than maternalism, or mothers’ need for the vote to protect children and clean up government.

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While the ability of su!ragists to carry out their work depended on generous donations, the largesse of the rich came with a price. Several national o!icers resigned, bitterly complaining about the “money power” in the movement. By insisting on influencing where o!ices were located, who held o!ice, and what o!icers prioritized, wealthy donors drove out long-time loyal su!ragists incapable of the same munificence and resentful of their clout. While some donors gave anonymously or through a bequest at death, leaving power in the hands of o!icers, others engendered hostility when they personally tried to influence su!rage organization leadership and strategy, and even held o!ice themselves.

This tension over the role of rich women came at a time when the country was deep in debate over “money power,” following a government [End Page 64] investigation into J. Pierpont Morgan’s banking practices. At stake was the question of how much power individuals and private enterprises should have in a democracy, and whether the dominance of the wealthy undermined the American ideals of freedom and equality. Woman su!ragists had to consider whether feminism itself, in fighting against hierarchy based on gender, should be inherently democratic or non-hierarchical across class (or race). As one newspaper noted in 1894, attracting society women meant that “parlor meetings” could have “a degree of exclusiveness . . . that seems to be incompatible with the object to be achieved.” Society’s unease associating women with wealth and power exacerbated the resentment many su!ragists directed at their wealthy donors.

Salaries, State Campaigns, and the “Winning Plan”

The need for money drove the women’s su!rage movement from its early days, leading Stanton and Anthony to compromise over whom they associated with during the 1860s. Wendell Phillips controlled two important bequests and allowed only a small amount to go to women’s rights. “Nearly driven to desperation,” Anthony needed money to pay for speakers, travel expenses, and tracts. She and Stanton thus accepted an o!er by George Train, the notoriously racist Democrat, to pay for a speaking tour and newspaper.

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Burned by her experience with Phillips, Anthony wanted wealthy women to prioritize giving to the movement. Su!ragists understood that they could not depend on men; it would take the financial support of women to make change for women. It was only a"er Anthony’s death in 1906, however, that they began to contribute enough money to turn the tide toward victory.

Sta!ing, one of the two major expenses identified by Stanton and Anthony, remained paramount until the vote was won in 1920. Lucy Stone’s observation that “there would be plenty of helpers if there was plenty of money to pay” rang true. The su!rage movement from the 1880s through the early 1910s focused on winning the right to vote state by state, which depended on local and national traveling organizers barnstorming the states, drumming up publicity, and lobbying local politicians. Traveling organizers and national o!icers worked full time, giving public speeches, planning rallies, and helping to organize local su!rage associations. They brought experience and the ability to draw a crowd.

Neither local nor national su!rage organizations had enough funding to pay the significant salaries required. The situation was exacerbated, according to Lisa Tetrault, because women could earn a living through the lyceum lecture circuit in the 1870s–1880s, a popular form of entertainment [End Page 65] and adult education featuring traveling lecturers and performers. They came to expect similar payment, typically between $10 and $100 per lecture, for an appearance at a su!rage meeting. Su!rage organizations thus had to compete with the lecture circuit when they paid speakers appearing at meetings or at their annual conventions at the state or national level.

The lack of money available to pay speakers was complicated by the unrealistic but idealistic idea that su!ragists should volunteer their time for the cause. Quoting Wendell Phillips, Stanton claimed that “a reformer, to be conscientious, must be free from bread-winning.” Su!rage associations were traditionally willing to hire paid organizers but usually did not pay their o!icers, who were expected to cover the costs of their correspondence and travel. Well-o! o!icers could do so. Catt, president of the National American

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Woman Su!rage Association (NAWSA) from 1900 to 1904 and 1915 to 1920, and of the International Woman Su!rage Alliance in between, had money from her second husband, George Catt, a civil engineer. She did not receive a salary from either organization. Alice Paul’s mother sent Paul monthly checks while she ran the CU.

Anna Howard Shaw, however, had been earning her living on the lecture circuit and needed a salary when she became president of NAWSA in 1904. Anthony convinced Mary Garrett and M. Carey Thomas to raise a fund to cover Shaw’s salary and other NAWSA expenses. Garrett’s father, John W. Garrett, president of B&O Railroad, died in 1884 leaving Mary a six-million-dollar inheritance. Garrett supported women’s education by establishing a girls’ preparatory school with friends, donating annually to Bryn Mawr College a"er it made Thomas president, and forcing Johns Hopkins to admit women to its new medical school by tying this requirement to a large donation. An elderly, ill Anthony drew Thomas and Garrett into the movement, appealing to them to help NAWSA achieve financial stability. They committed to raising $60,000: $12,000 annually for five years, including Garrett’s $2,500 contribution. The Thomas-Garrett fund was used in large part to pay salaries: $3,500 to Shaw and $1,000 each to the secretary and treasurer. In comparison, while the national average salary in 1910 was only $750, trade unionists could earn as much as $1,200 and such professionals as doctors, lawyers, and engineers earned an average income between $2,000 and $5,000 annually, with some making far more. Typical women’s salaries were less: female schoolteachers, for example, averaged $55 a month. Such large donations, therefore, were the equivalent of an annual salary and allowed NAWSA to pay o!icers and organizers generously.

Due to the Thomas-Garrett fund and Anthony’s backing, Shaw became the first NAWSA president with a salary, although some other o!icers feared that this made her less independent and potentially beholden to donors. [End Page 66] Regional loyalties complicated the controversy. Shaw claimed that southern and western women objected to the preponderance of eastern

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o!icers who received salaries. “The fact that the money to pay these salaries was subscribed by eastern women,” Shaw sniped, “does not seem to a!ect the objectors.”

With her own salary secure, Shaw relied heavily on another significant donor, Pauline Shaw—who shared her last name but no family connections— to pay for traveling organizers. The daughter of naturalist Louis Agassiz and wife of mine owner Quincy A. Shaw, she began giving through a Boston committee founded to raise funds for western state su!rage campaigns. “One closely associated with her,” a tribute to Shaw asserted, “ventures the guess that Mrs. Shaw’s contributions probably footed up to more than one half of all that was given by the East to the Western states.”

Known as “Miss [Anna] Shaw’s special fund,” because the contributions were anonymous, Pauline Shaw’s bounty came to Anna Shaw unexpectedly to use as she saw fit on the western states. This was key to its importance: whoever controlled the fund also dictated which state campaigns received money or a paid organizer from NAWSA. Pauline Shaw sent two checks reportedly totaling $30,000 or over 75 percent of the entire NAWSA budget in 1913, but le" Anna Shaw free to spend it where she wanted, empowering the o!icer rather than herself. Anna Shaw chose to pay for organizers to travel to Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, Montana, Ohio, and Nevada.

The state campaigns were so desperate for funding that even with Pauline Shaw’s generous donation, NAWSA could not keep up with the demands. A"er Oregon lost its first campaign for a referendum in 1906, NAWSA refused to fund their request for an additional $2,000. At the 1907 convention o!icers announced that total association receipts for 1906 were $18,203 and that they had spent $18,075 on the Oregon campaign alone. Even though the organizers had raised $8,000 specifically for Oregon, the expenditure meant that NAWSA had well overspent their revenue and had to take money from their reserve fund. The results of this outlay were mixed: while states like Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, Montana, and Nevada granted full su!rage in 1912 or 1914, women in

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other states like West Virginia and Wisconsin had to wait for the Nineteenth Amendment. Catt blamed the liquor lobby for defeat in many of these states and called for greater spending to compete with it. The 1912 Ohio campaign, for example, failed when su!ragists spent about $40,000 but the liquor lobby reportedly spent $630,000. Decisions over which states merited the financial support of NAWSA were rife with tension. Regional alliances, personalities, and likelihood of success all played a role. Pauline Shaw’s funding was also integral to the early wins in the western states. [End Page 67]

The controversy surrounding funding state campaigns came to a head under Catt, who retook the NAWSA presidency in 1915 with the knowledge that Mrs. Frank Leslie had just le" her entire estate valued at over $1.7 million to Catt for women’s su!rage. The size of the bequest and the fact that it had no restrictions on how it was spent freed Catt to pay for whatever strategy or tactics she wanted and was indispensable to the passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Born in 1836 in New Orleans, Leslie, known for a series of scandalous a!airs, marriages, and divorces, was also an astute businesswoman, writer, and editor who fought to be taken seriously in the publishing world. When Mr. Leslie died, she changed her name to Frank Leslie, inherited his publishing business, and quickly turned its debt into a surplus. A"er fighting o! relatives and others who wanted a share of the fortune and paying the attorney fees and taxes, Catt netted $977,875, or the equivalent of over $22 million in 2015, out of the original bequest. Catt then established the Leslie Su!rage Commission to oversee the fund, wisely retaining control over the money rather than merging it into the NAWSA general budget.

Given the mixed record of state campaigns funded by NAWSA in the past, Catt used the Leslie bequest to abandon the state-by-state strategy and back her “winning plan” instead. The plan essentially directed the national organization to focus on winning the federal amendment through campaigns in selected states as well as through lobbying Congress. These states would give momentum to the passage and ensure ratification of the national amendment. Catt had already successfully orchestrated a constitutional change requiring all local su!rage societies to become a!iliates of NAWSA and

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to pay a percentage of their revenue to the national body. Now, a"er state associations submitted their plans to the national board, the dues they paid supported the federal amendment congressional committee lobbying force in Washington, DC or the states determined to have a good chance at winning su!rage. Catt argued that with the Leslie Commission funds focused on the “winning plan,” NAWSA would no longer be obligated to step in and assist states who pushed too soon or with ill-conceived plans. States that were not included in the “winning plan,” notably southern ones, were, unsurprisingly, not happy.

The states where su!rage was on the ballot or otherwise were prioritized in the “winning plan” did benefit from Leslie’s beneficence. Catt’s home state of New York did particularly well with $25,000, as did Oklahoma, Michigan, and North Dakota, splitting $20,000. With the influx of money, these four states all won su!rage in 1917 and 1918. States holding senatorial races also got funding as they tried to help elect pro-su!rage legislators who would vote to pass the federal amendment. In 1918, as NAWSA president, [End Page 68] Catt authorized $10,000 to several states in this situation, but because NAWSA did not have the money, she asked the commission to make the payment. Within the first two years, the Leslie Commission spent $60,000 on the states. In addition to money, NAWSA sent directives to the states, organizing their e!orts. Money transformed a grassroots movement into a professional, centralized one.

The “winning plan” also required lobbying Congress to pass a federal amendment. With the new influx of money, NAWSA could now rent a house in Washington, called the Su!rage House, for a corps of lobbyists to live and work. The Leslie Commission immediately began paying rent and expenses, and NAWSA and the commission covered around $20,000 a year for congressional committee expenses (previously run on a ten dollar budget).

With the influx of funding, both individual states and the “winning plan” strategy began to realize success. Working in more than one state at a time to win over public opinion was expensive and required strategic decisions about

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how much to spend where. Lobbying for a federal amendment was not cheap either. Catt could do both only because she had the funds available. Leslie’s bequest was essential to NAWSA and the “winning plan.”

Publicity Blitz

In addition to salaries for organizers in the states, by the 1910s the su!rage movement also required more money for publicity. Decades earlier Anthony had been desperate to fund su!rage tracts. Having a mouthpiece “so we can sauce back our opponents,” as Anthony said, was a priority for many su!ragists. They published everything from tracts to weekly newspapers to full-scale books focused on documenting the movement, organizing workers, and converting the public to the cause. Without the vote women depended on men to pass it for them, making education essential to their ability to wield any power over legislators. When Catt received the Leslie bequest, she argued that direct donations to politicians were ine!ectual because they were beholden to special interests. Rather, a campaign for su!rage education would create the kind of national sentiment for women’s su!rage that would force or entice politicians to vote for it. A"er years of struggling to fund publicity, the Leslie bequest finally provided the substantial funding necessary for a massive publicity blitz.

Notably, su!ragists continued to prioritize a newspaper even as they developed other new publicity tactics. Although considered essential, publishing a newspaper was also expensive. In 1910 NAWSA signed a contract with Alice Stone Blackwell, editor of the Woman’s Journal, a decades-old su!rage newspaper, to make it NAWSA’s o!icial organ. The journal, however, [End Page 69] had been running at an annual deficit, which NAWSA exacerbated by increasing spending in order to drive up the paltry circulation, which remained under 20,000 in 1912.

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NAWSA quickly realized that they could not a!ord the money-losing Woman’s Journal. Anna Shaw admitted in despair, “we are confronted with financial disaster unless something is done at once.” Noting that Thomas was unable to raise funds because she was busy caring for an ill Garrett and that donor Alva Vanderbilt Belmont had begun cutting her contributions, Shaw concluded, “all hope of raising money is gone and we can no longer run up bills honestly which we have no prospect of paying.” The board organized an informal drive for donations and asked the new treasurer Katharine McCormick and others to confer regarding borrowing money. Contemplating the $9,000 debt NAWSA had incurred due to Woman’s Journal expenses, McCormick “reported that it seemed to her impossible for the National to carry the responsibility of an organ which it did not own and, therefore, could not control” and recommended dropping the journal. Discussion of the newspaper at the 1912 convention caused a commotion among the delegates, many of whom sympathized with Blackwell. Despite the controversy, NAWSA and Blackwell terminated the contract and established the Literature Company, a separate stock company (with 5,000 shares of stock to be sold at $10 each) to run the newspaper. The Woman’s Journal remained in business, although it was no longer NAWSA’s o!icial organ.

Despite the failed experiment in running the Woman’s Journal, Catt kept her eye on it. Although she knew that it had been losing between $8,000 and $20,000 annually since 1912, she still thought it crucial to have a mouthpiece for women. The Leslie Commission therefore finally bought the Woman’s Journal in 1916 and merged it with the Woman Voter and National Su!rage News into the Woman Citizen. The total cost for the new journal was approximately $75,000 in the first year, including salary, rent, manufacture, printing, and postage. Because advertising and sales only brought in $25,000, the Leslie Commission paid the remaining $50,000 in expenses. Still publishing a"er the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, and a"er spending approximately $400,000 on the Woman Citizen in twelve years, Catt finally recommended ceasing publication in 1929.

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The newspaper was only one part of the overall vision Catt had for publicity. Literature and press were the biggest expenses funded by the Leslie bequest. The commission created a bureau of su!rage education with a sta! of twenty- five trained publicity experts and journalists taking over the fi"eenth floor of the headquarters building, all paid with Leslie money. Catt originally proposed a press bureau to send free stories for reprinting to newspapers around the country, free literature (pamphlets, speech reprints, [End Page 70] and tracts) to “clergy, politicians, club women and other groups,” and a su!rage newspaper. Other departments were to help organize parades and events; produce propaganda films, cartoons, and “intelligence” (statistical information and legislative updates); and work with a network of organizers reaching out to local papers. Although over time the departments were reorganized and consolidated, the essence of the plan remained the same.

The broad approach of the su!rage education bureau reflected an influx of new publicity tactics that began around 1908. A more public strategy that placed su!ragists on street corners, in cars, on trains, and wherever else they could gather a crowd soon eclipsed the private “parlor” meetings, whose respectable nature had drawn only wealthy women. While some e!orts cost little—for example, soapbox speakers who needed little more than a box to stand on—elaborate parades required planning, costumes, and other expenses. Donors provided the funding that NAWSA and the CU needed for these tactics, including the Leslie bequest through its stunts department and motion picture service.

Su!ragists struggled for years to produce a newspaper and other publicity materials necessary to create public sentiment in favor of votes for women. The million-dollar bequest from Leslie finally freed Catt to create a publicity machine unlike anything su!ragists had been able to achieve for decades. The money allowed su!ragists to compete, coming closer to the $2.5 million that the Democratic and Republican parties each spent on national political campaigns.

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Dictating with Dollars

Although wealthy women’s donations were critical to financing new tactics and strategies undergirding passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, NAWSA and the CU paid a price for the money they received. The in-fighting among NAWSA o!icers over funding grew dramatically with the influence of outsized donations by extremely wealthy su!ragists in the 1910s, in part, because they did not give anonymously like Pauline Shaw. While she gave Anna Shaw a free hand to determine which states to fund, and the Leslie bequest imposed no restrictions on Catt, other new donors wanted the requisite power that they thought their he"y contributions should command. They had ideas about how the money should be spent and who should lead, engendering fights over who controlled the money: the donors or the organization?

One of the movement’s largest contributors, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, was also one of its most demanding. Born in 1853 in Mobile, Alabama, Alva and her family moved to New York, where she married William K. [End Page 71] Vanderbilt. Given the social stigma attached to divorce in Belmont’s society, she risked condemnation when, angry with Willie’s sexual indiscretion, she demanded a divorce. In 1896 Belmont married Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, a marriage that lasted until his death in 1908. Angry with the control men had over women’s lives and used to having her own way, she had a coercive philanthropic style.

Now a wealthy widow, in 1909 Belmont o!ered to pay the rent for a new headquarters for NAWSA—then headquartered in Warrenton, Ohio, home of treasurer Harriet Taylor Upton—but only if it moved to New York. She promised $7,200 for two years to cover rent for the headquarters and an expanded national press bureau (separate o!ices on the same floor of 505 Fi"h Avenue, alongside the New York State headquarters) as well as other expenses including salaries. Although the move to New York was strategic—the movement would get more newspaper coverage there than in Warrenton—the strings that Belmont attached to her donation caused an insurrection at NAWSA.

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Belmont also stipulated that Ida Harper, her first contact with NAWSA leadership, remain chair of the press bureau, threatening to lower her contribution unless Harper stayed. Harper admitted that if she le" “the money given would be reduced by $173.33 a month” (her salary). But in a convention report, with her salary dependent on Belmont, Harper wrote, “Mrs. Belmont never attempts because of her financial assistance to exercise any supervision over the bureau, never dictates to it in the slightest degree, and never asks the smallest favor. . . . Her large donations are purely a freewill o!ering to the cause.” Harper concluded, “Mrs. Belmont’s contribution was most enthusiastically received by the convention” and denied newspaper reports of dissension. Despite Harper’s claim, Belmont specified these conditions, the move to New York and Harper’s employment, in a letter and contract. Furthermore, they were contentious issues among convention goers and the NAWSA board.

A dramatic newspaper article in 1909 claimed that “a crisis [was] imminent” due in large part to the overwhelming “dominance” of Belmont. While admiring her political abilities, the article asserted that NAWSA was receiving letters from women all over the country who believed that Belmont, “whose social position and wealth, together with a close knowledge of the political field and amazing talent for making propaganda,” might buy her way into o!ice in NAWSA.

Because the movement had been long dominated by middle-class women, su!ragists feared the appearance of control by the wealthy would squeeze out traditional supporters. Upton thought the attention to Belmont [End Page 72] meant that ordinary women no longer felt compelled to send small contributions. Others complained that the movement had begun to keep out “the rabble,” including those associated with socialism.

Inside NAWSA, dissension reached a fevered pitch. The move to New York displaced Upton. She bitterly complained that although coverage increased under the new press bureau, NAWSA was paying five times as much in expenses and that press releases were highlighting Belmont in favor of the

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other loyal su!ragists. She and other southern and western women resented the growing influence of Belmont and the New York su!ragists, with Upton writing to Thomas to complain that “New York women seem to think they own the National.” Thomas, however, thought that Belmont’s “ten thousand dollars” contribution “entitled her to express her opinion.” The Daily Oklahoman reported that Shaw “is strongly in favor of having prominent society women and women of wealth identified actively with the su!rage work, while the two ‘insurgents’ it is said, are opposed to this policy, believing in the long run the movement will su!er more than it will gain by such help.” Upton and vice president Rachel Avery were so angry that they ultimately resigned from NAWSA.

O!icers also feared that Belmont’s celebrity could undermine the movement. Secretary Frances Squire Potter objected to patronage that would cause NAWSA to “lose its own and other people’s respect.” Auditor Laura Clay feared that Belmont was not sincere about her commitment to women’s su!rage, which would cause the public to take NAWSA less seriously. She worried, “the chief impression we are making on the uninformed public is that we are a protégé of Mrs. Belmont, and the public are [sic] amused in calculating how long she will be pleased with her toy.”

Notably, Belmont’s agreement to donate money for rent only lasted two years, and in 1911, when the lease was up two months before the convention, she announced that she would no longer foot the entire bill herself, cutting her share of the rent payment. While NAWSA o!icers Clay and others were ready to leave New York, the New York State association was eager to keep headquarters there, as was Thomas in her role as president of the College Equal Su!rage League. Thomas o!ered an additional $1,400 to make up the di!erence (in exchange for secretarial help for the league). Even though Clay preferred to leave New York, she extended $150 just to prevent Belmont from having her demands met. Having earlier insisted that Harper retain her position, Belmont now required Shaw to remain president, further antagonizing Clay and others who wanted Shaw gone.

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The controversy grew more heated over a proposal to require the board to meet once a month at headquarters, a burden for southern and western o!icers who already resented New York’s seeming dominance. [End Page 73] Thomas’ suggested travel fund for those o!icers caused a commotion at the convention. The proposal further infuriated Clay who sniped, “We would be unworthy su!ragists to accept money with a string attached to it, and I wouldn’t think so much of it, if it were the first time this kind of appropriation had been made to us,” alluding to Belmont’s first gi". The board reached a compromise—bimonthly meetings and the removal of Belmont’s condition that Shaw remain president—and Belmont provided funding for an additional six months, but discontent with Belmont’s ability to dictate with her dollars grew louder.

With tension over Belmont mounting, NAWSA gained a new o!icer, Katharine McCormick, whose donations lessened Belmont’s impact. McCormick was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate and the wife of Stanley McCormick, the millionaire son of the McCormick International Harvester family. Shortly a"er their marriage Stanley su!ered a mental breakdown that resulted in his confinement in a family home in California until his death decades later. Still married but now living with her mother in Boston, Katharine joined the Massachusetts Woman Su!rage Association, where she was one of the four original “Open Air” speakers who gave outdoor speeches around the state in 1909. The strong-willed and smart McCormick became auditor, treasurer, and then vice president of NAWSA.

The controversy surrounding McCormick’s first national o!ice reveals more of the resentment many voiced against the powerful role of Belmont and other rich women. It took two rounds of voting by the other NAWSA o!icers to confirm McCormick’s nomination as first auditor in March of 1912. Secretary Mary Ware Dennett resented McCormick’s presence at the board meeting where the voting took place. Dennett thought that by attending McCormick made the election pro forma. Although it was not Thomas who had invited McCormick, Dennett referred to “Thomas’s control of ‘the machine.’” Dennett particularly regretted that NAWSA was beholden to Thomas “for her courtesy

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and hospitality—and to Mrs. McCormick for her generosity.” In fact, Thomas had approved of McCormick among other reasons because she thought McCormick might be willing to make a substantial donation.

McCormick immediately began a series of large donations to NAWSA: $6,000 to pay o! debt from the Woman’s Journal and $1,000 or $2,000 contributions annually, with her mother matching her contribution and doubling her impact. She moved to New York where she could attend all board meetings and o!ered to move her o!ice to NAWSA headquarters (shared with the Literature Company) while continuing to pay her share of the rent, $600, in order to cut costs for the newspaper. [End Page 74]

As treasurer, McCormick was responsible for raising funds as well as tracking expenditures and revenue for the annual budget. If raising enough revenue to meet expectations was too di!icult, a wealthy treasurer like McCormick could simply donate the money herself. But if the treasurer felt obliged to supply the treasury personally, this severely circumscribed who could hold o!ice. Women without the fortunes of McCormick and Belmont resented the perception that the two could buy their way into NAWSA leadership.

Tension grew between McCormick, Dennett, and the board, resulting in Dennett’s resignation. Dennett harshly criticized the “money influence” and “money power” in NAWSA, arguing that wealthy women had too much influence. Shaw complained to Thomas that Dennett insinuated that “I am entirely controlled by money that I sold the organization out to you two years ago at Philadelphia, and that this year I had sold out the association and the cause to Mrs. Stanley McCormick.” Later, Shaw, who had accepted dresses and donations from McCormick and her mother, complained that she resented their contributions because they supported Catt as president of NAWSA over herself, concluding they did not give freely.

Shaw was correct to an extent: McCormick did use the weight of her contributions to back her ideas. She wanted NAWSA to divest itself of the Woman’s Journal and paid o! the debt when it did. She also tried to engineer

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moving Anna Shaw out of the presidency and Catt into a more prominent role, although Catt refused the presidency at that point in time. McCormick also asked Thomas to ask Shaw to step aside.

The outspoken McCormick also played a significant role in forcing Alice Paul and the CU out of NAWSA. Focused on the federal amendment, Paul had a militant approach to su!rage, which included such tactics as parades and the White House picket campaign, as well as the political strategy of punishing the party in power. Appointed the new chairman of the NAWSA congressional committee in 1912, Paul created a separate Congressional Union for Woman Su!rage (CU) five months later, as a “body of women in all parts of the country who want to aid in the work of getting through the Federal amendment.” Initially she ran both the NAWSA congressional committee and the CU, but the CU then split apart from NAWSA entirely, eventually becoming the National Woman’s Party (NWP).

McCormick’s role in the conflict between the two groups highlights the part that money played, in addition to the ideological di!erences usually stressed between the two groups. Put simply, in 1913 the CU bested NAWSA at soliciting donations. The CU succeeded in raising over $12,000 in contributions, in addition to ticket and literature sales, for a total of over $25,000 in funding, which went into its co!ers and control, rather than NAWSA’s. [End Page 75]

In her convention report as treasurer and in a statement she prepared a"erwards, McCormick focused on the CU’s fundraising and criticized their lack of accountability to her as NAWSA treasurer. A"er Catt questioned why the CU had raised over $25,000 and not passed it through the national treasury, McCormick proclaimed herself “seriously embarrassed” by their lack of reporting to her. Significantly, McCormick also noted NAWSA supporters were mistakenly sending money to the CU headquarters intended instead for NAWSA. In response, Paul accused McCormick of insinuating that Paul was guilty of financial irregularity, produced documents to show that the CU had in fact been in touch with McCormick, and called it “past reprehensible” that McCormick’s only response was that she needed to check her files for the

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documents. Paul later recalled that the problem also stemmed from their di!erent views of how funds should be spent: according to Paul, McCormick wanted all the money raised to go to the state campaigns, rather than be used on a parade in Washington to promote the national amendment.

With Paul and the CU cutting ties to NAWSA, it was only a matter of time before Belmont withdrew as well. She was growing frustrated with resistance to her demands, feeling that her donations were not providing the requisite power she thought she deserved. She wanted NAWSA to consider more militant tactics, which they refused. Belmont also now insisted that NAWSA should move headquarters again, this time to DC, to be nearer to Congress. Furthermore, she believed that she had been treated poorly at the conventions given her generosity to the organization when her two proposed resolutions—for non-partisanship and for the headquarters move—failed.

Once assured a place on the CU executive committee, Belmont switched her allegiance from NAWSA to the CU with a $5,000 check and a direct statement to the press in January of 1914. A"er “the National Association did not see fit to agree” with her demand that national headquarters be moved from New York to DC, she stated bluntly, “I decided to swing my influence where I thought it would prove more e!ective.” Meanwhile, many o!icers at NAWSA were glad to see her go. Although Shaw was originally her supporter, she now wrote, “I certainly think that the Congressional Union will pay dearly for the ‘unlimited financial backing’ which, I have no doubt, they can have if they will put Mrs. Belmont in the forefront and let her name stand as the great leader of the su!rage movement in this country.” Having McCormick, who seemed able and willing to make the donations that Belmont had, probably made it easier for Shaw to see Belmont go.

The CU accepted Belmont and her money with eyes wide open. They knew that her donations came with strings attached. Board member Mary [End Page 76] Beard told Paul that she was willing to “tackle Mrs. Belmont” for money for the CU to publish its own paper because the CU also prioritized having a newspaper. While acknowledging that the prominent Belmont “loves the

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limelight” and that a contribution from Belmont might have a “possible ugly string” attached to it,” Beard concluded that she was a “risk worth taking.” She predicted “every swell” would attend an event if Belmont planned it, admitting “our committee can’t reach that element as she can and we need its money and support.” Fellow board member Crystal Benedict Eastman admitted that Belmont “says quite frankly that she won’t give money unless she has some representation on [the CU’s] board. . . . I don’t think Mrs. B would want to interfere or dictate. She just doesn’t like to be made a baby of to be used just for money and not for work or advice.” They took the money and gave Belmont a seat on the board.

It was not always easy dealing with Belmont. Belmont had a temper and was determined to have her way. She wanted a new headquarters in Washington DC, and insisted that the CU take the top floor of a building while her Political Equality Association took the ground floor. Despite their objections, Paul and Eastman could not change “Mrs. Belmont’s opinion in the slightest.” Belmont made it clear that she would withhold funding if she was made unhappy, leaving CU o!icers to handle her carefully.

Notwithstanding the di!iculties she posed, the CU benefitted from Belmont’s fame, her money, and her ideas, as had NAWSA earlier. Already experienced in garnering headline-grabbing attention for her marriages and divorce, her daughter’s marriage, her extraordinary mansions, and her extravagant balls, Belmont now extended her celebrity to the women’s su!rage movement. She accomplished this both through her person—the newspapers were eager to capture the radical pronouncements of a society woman—and through her ideas for novel events. The press and the public showed new interest. For many su!ragists, the attention was welcome. Tired of being scorned as “manly” women, it was exciting to be thought of as fashionable.

Belmont did more than garner headlines, however. Her financial assistance and activism were invaluable. The CU treasury was down to seven dollars in June of 1914 and only her donations kept it solvent. In 1914 she helped

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organize a fundraising ball in Washington, DC, a convention of social reform and society leaders at her home to raise funds and publicity, and a working conference of CU leaders to plan strategy. The CU decided to hold the political party in power responsible, campaigning against those Democrats in power who had not passed women’s su!rage. Belmont pledged half of the $10,000 for the campaign. O!icer Doris Stevens credited Belmont with pushing the CU to embrace this political strategy. Belmont [End Page 77] also paid the rent on the new headquarters for the CU in Washington, DC. She gave another $5,000 donation to support the controversial White House pickets adopted in 1917. Furthermore, Belmont was responsible for the CU combining with the Woman’s Party and changing its name to the National Woman’s Party. Paul remembered that Belmont preferred the new name and “Belmont was so pleased . . . and so full of interest that she . . . pledged . . . [a] tremendous sum of money.” Thus Belmont agreed with and funded the CU’s most significant tactics and strategies, helping to enable it to adopt such new tactics as the parades and pickets and underwriting its political strategy of working for the federal amendment and punishing the party in power.

Paul’s strategy, according to Belmont’s biographer Sylvia Ho!ert, was to allow Belmont to work on the projects she was most interested in, such as a su!rage rally at Belmont’s mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and hope that she would not interfere with the rest of the CU agenda. Belmont more than satisfied Paul’s goal, for she gave at least some monetary support to the rest of Paul’s plans as well as used her fame to help drive publicity. The “strings” she attached to her giving and her demanding personality were relatively minor problems as long as she supported Paul’s agenda. More significant problems did not arise until a"er su!rage was won, when Belmont became NWP president and pushed it into international directions at odds with Paul’s new focus on the Equal Rights Amendment.

Paul was also able to assuage Mary Burnham, the CU’s second most significant donor, who gave over $38,000, approximately half of what Belmont gave in the same time period. The unmarried daughter of George Burnham, a co-owner of Baldwin Locomotive Works, belonged to the Equal Franchise

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Society of Philadelphia, which shi"ed allegiance from NAWSA to the CU in 1914. While she did not seek o!ice or attach demands to her gi"s the way that Belmont did, Burnham was potentially just as di!icult because she questioned some of Paul’s strategies. A"er Burnham complained about Paul’s policy of working against the party in power, Paul sent someone to talk to Burnham, who she described as “very wealthy” and therefore needing to be convinced “we were on the right track.” Despite dutifully giving $1,000 to support the White House pickets, Burnham complained, “I do not see in this activity any push for National Su!rage. I find in any discussion of these arrests and jailings that the Cause is lost sight of in general comment on ‘police powers’ ‘free speech’ etc.” The pickets, she thought, were “a tangent,” distracting the campaign and turning the focus on the su!ragists rather than the cause. Panicked o!icers asked her to “hang on out of sheer loyalty to the cause,” which she did, donating approximately [End Page 78] $2,000 a year.” Despite disagreeing with Paul, she continued to write checks. Perhaps this ability to foster loyalty among her donors was Paul’s real genius.

Paul and her fellow o!icers had little choice. Despite the costs associated with wealthy women’s donations—the resentment and controversy, the o!icers who resigned, the middle-class women who felt unnecessary, the socialists who felt unwelcome—Burnham, Belmont, McCormick, and other women had to be cultivated. Leaders in NAWSA and the CU were explicit: they were desperate for money. Although it was easier to recruit donors whose ideas aligned with theirs, who were willing to finance new strategies and tactics, or who gave freely, empowering the o!icers, su!rage leaders could not a!ord to turn down funds from donors with demands like Belmont. Their role in the movement reveals the power of philanthropy for women as well as the problems it could cause.

Following the Money

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Foregrounding the role of wealthy white women in the movement also o!ers further insight into su!rage ideology. They questioned their role as women in society, privileged in race and class but still subject to sexism. Experience with failing marriage, divorce, or widowhood made them understand the importance of economic independence. As widows or single women in charge of a large fortune, they demanded the political rights that they believed were necessary to sustain that independence.

Although she was not an activist, Mrs. Frank Leslie demonstrated by her life choices and business acumen that women were capable of economic independence. Like Leslie, Mary Garrett also sought the same respect that men of means had. Despite her fortune, Garrett’s lack of education compared to her brothers and feud with family members over control over the estate fueled her desire that women gain access to education, professions, and political independence. McCormick’s feminist beliefs stemmed from the support of her mother and her education at MIT, where she became one of the first woman to graduate with a biology degree. With her mentally ill husband confined in California, McCormick fought his family for control over his treatment and estate. At the same time, she was free to move to New York to work for NAWSA. She argued that women without the vote were denied their “political freedom” and access to all “human aims and the highest human ideals.” Alva Vanderbilt Belmont’s unhappy marriage fed her anger with the way men treated women. Belmont proclaimed women’s equality and blasted the lack of power that most married women had. [End Page 79]

Not surprisingly given these beliefs, these wealthy women called for su!rage so that women could obtain education, careers, economic independence, and power in society. Few espoused the maternalist argument that women needed the vote as mothers to care for children and the community. Thomas, her biographer claims, “was not interested in women reforming society but in women attaining their rights.” Placing wealthy su!ragists’ demands for the vote alongside those of maternalist reformers, thus underscores the diversity of convictions among su!ragists and should

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push historians to reassess su!ragists’ feminist ideology. Further research on donors’ ideological influence on members of su!rage organizations as well as on the public is necessary.

Because they believed in women’s independence and equality, wealthy women gave generously. In particular, they paid for two main drivers of the movement: traveling organizers in the states (including states in the “winning plan”) and the campaign to change public sentiment. They also financed new and more dramatic tactics for the CU, such as parades and pickets, and enabled NAWSA and the CU to move headquarters to more influential sites where they garnered press, lobbied for a federal amendment, and punished the party in power. Following the money demonstrates how the donations and bequests from wealthy women were essential to the movement’s success.

The women who wielded financial power also caused dissension among su!ragists when they sought power commensurate with their donations. Ideally a movement that sought equality and independence for women would not have been beholden to a few women who could “buy” their way into o!ice, decide where headquarters should be located, or otherwise tie their gi"s to demands, empowering themselves or a select o!icer. American society’s historic discomfort with women wielding economic power exacerbated the tension. So did national debates over “money power” in a democracy. Women in particular had to consider whether fighting against sexism implied a goal of equality across class (and race) as well. Their historical lack of power due to gender sensitized them to the disproportionate voice of rich women due to their wealth.

Women would not have gained the ballot in 1920 without Catt’s “winning plan” and Paul’s White House pickets. But behind Catt and Paul stood Shaw, Garrett, Leslie, McCormick, Belmont, and other wealthy women who provided the necessary funding. Given the recent changes in campaign finance law, access to political power is even more dependent on access to funding now than a century ago. Despite the growth of organizations like Emily’s List, which fundraises for women political candidates, women are outnumbered in

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political o!ices and are still fighting for such issues [End Page 80] as reproductive freedom and equality in the workplace. Feminists today have much to learn from this story of the women’s su!rage movement. It is clear that women will have to continue to fund women’s continued fight for equality and political power.

Joan Marie Johnson JOAN MARIE JOHNSON is the author of Southern Women at the Seven Sister Colleges: Feminist Values and Social Activism, 1875–1915 (University of Georgia Press, 2008) and Southern Ladies, New Women: Race, Region and Clubwomen in South Carolina, 1898– 1930 (University Press of Florida, 2004). She also co-edited a three volume historical anthology on South Carolina women, South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times (University of Georgia Press, 2009–2012), and has published articles on Southern women, race, reform, and education. She is currently writing a book on women philanthropists who funded women’s rights causes including woman su!rage, higher education, and reproductive rights. Johnson teaches history at Northeastern Illinois University and is the co-founder and co-director of the Newberry Seminar on Women and Gender at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

NOTES

1. Susan B. Anthony quoted in Faye E. Dudden, Fighting Chance: The Struggle over Woman Su!rage and Black Su!rage in Reconstruction America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 8; Mary Garrett to Phoebe Hearst, 30 August 1906, Phoebe Apperson Hearst Papers, reel 21, Bancro" Library, University of California, Berkeley; and Mary Beard to Alice Paul, 21 August 1914, National Woman’s Party Papers, 1913– 1974, reel 1, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (herea"er NWP-II). The author gratefully acknowledges funding for the research for this article from a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend.

2. On women and philanthropy, see Kathleen D. McCarthy, Women’s Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991) and Lady Bountiful Revisited: Women, Philanthropy, and Power (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Ruth Crocker, Mrs. Russell Sage: Women’s Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America (Bloomington: Indiana

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University Press, 2006); and Kathleen Sander, Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). This article is drawn from my manuscript, Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1880–1960.

3. Ida Harper et al., History of Woman Su!rage, 6 vols. (Various, 1881–1922)(herea"er HWS); Aileen Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Su!rage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981); Eleanor Flexner, A Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959); Ellen DuBois, Feminism and Su!rage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978); Steven Buechler, Women’s Movements in the United States: Woman Su!rage, Equal Rights, and Beyond (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990).

4. Dudden, Fighting Chance; Lisa Tetrault, “The Incorporation of American Feminism: Su!ragists and the Postbellum Lyceum,” Journal of American History 96, no. 4 (March 2010): 1027–56; Ellen DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Su!rage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 106; and Sara Graham, Woman Su!rage and the New Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

5. Rose Young, The Record of the Leslie Woman Su!rage Commission, Inc., 1917–1929, Minutes, Leslie Woman Su!rage Commission, vol. 3, NAWSA Papers, reel 45 (herea"er LWSC).

6. “Annual Report of the New York State Woman Su!rage Party,” 1917, National American Woman Su!rage Association Records, reel 72, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (herea"er NAWSA papers). Conversion to 2015 values were obtained [End Page 81] on www.davemanuel.com/inflation-calculator.php, accessed July 20, 2015. Entering an amount and year in the past provides an equivalent for today.

7. “List of Contributors from Beginning of Organization to Dec. 31, 1920,” NWP-II, reel 126. The alphabetical list cuts o! a"er Stoddard. Lists from 1915–1917 provide donors from the end of the alphabet but not the exact total number of donors. Belmont’s donation would be worth approximately $1.5 million and Burnham’s $800,000 in 2015. The 1917 New York State e!ort was similar: eighty-eight donors contributed more than half the money.

8. “List of Contributors,” NWP-II, reel 126.

9. The National Citizen and Ballot Box, August 1880, 4.

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10. Robert A. Gross, “Giving in America: From Charity to Philanthropy,” in Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History, eds. Lawrence Jacob Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 29–48.

11. Kraditor, Ideas of the Woman Su!rage Movement, 43–74.

12. Susie J. Pak, Gentlemen Bankers: The World of J. P. Morgan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013); Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, “Introduction,” in Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy, eds. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 1–26.

13. Susana A. Ostrander, “Moderating Contradictions of Feminist Philanthropy: Women’s Community Organizations and the Boston Women’s Fund, 1995–2000,” Gender and Society 18, no. 1 (February 2004): 29–46. On race, see Dudden, Fighting Chance and Roslyn Terborg-Penn, African-American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).

14. Crocker, Mrs. Russell Sage, 161–62.

15. Susan Yohn, “Crippled Capitalists: The Inscription of Economic Dependence and the Challenge of Female Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century America,” Feminist Economics 12 (January/April 2006): 85–109.

16. Dudden, Fighting Chance, 8–12, 20–23, 51, 68–70, 90–94, 105–8, 139, 176.

17. Tetrault, “The Incorporation of American Feminism,” 1052.

18. Ibid., 1027–52.

19. Ibid., 1027.

20. Amelia Fry, Conversations with Alice Paul: Woman Su!rage and the Equal Rights Amendment (University of California, Berkeley, Regional Oral History O!ice, 1976), 87– 88.

21. Anna Howard Shaw, Anna Howard Shaw: The Story of a Pioneer (1915; repr., Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1994), 194–95 and Anna Shaw to M. Carey Thomas, 22 March 1909, M. Carey Thomas Papers, reel 57, Special Collections, Bryn Mawr College (herea"er Thomas papers). [End Page 82]

22. Sander, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, 1–7. The inheritance would have been almost $143 million in 2015.

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23. Ibid., 247–48.

24. Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1845 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1949), 68; Thomas Goebel, “The Uneven Rewards of Professional Labor: Wealth and Income in the Chicago Professions 1870–1920,” Journal of Social History 29, no. 4 (Summer 1996): 749–78; New York Times, April 17, 1911.

25. The average is across eight states. Courtney Ann Farr and Je!rey Liles, “Male Teachers, Male Roles: The Progressive Era and Education in Oklahoma,” Great Plains Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1991): 234–239.

26. Trisha Franzen, Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Su!rage (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2014), 11–12, 96–102, 106.

27. Anna Shaw to M. Carey Thomas, 13 May 1910, Thomas papers, reel 159.

28. Maud Wood Park, “Mary Hutcheson, Supplementary Notes,” Mary Hutcheson Page Papers, Woman’s Rights Collection (herea"er WRC), folder 653, Schlesinger Library, Radcli!e Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (herea"er Schlesinger).

29. Pauline Agassiz Shaw: Tributes paid her memory at the Memorial Service held on Easter Sunday April 8, 1917, at Faneuil Hall Boston (Boston, MA: n.p., 1917).

30. HWS, vol. 5, 404; Shaw, Anna Howard Shaw, 296–97; Anna Shaw to Thomas, 24 July 1914, Thomas papers. The donation would have been worth over $700,000 in 2015.

31. HWS, vol. 5, 211.

32. Lara Dunn Eisenbraun, ed., Harriet Taylor Upton’s Random Recollections (Warren, OH: Harriet Taylor Upton Association, 2004), 133.

33. Madeline Stern, Purple Passage: The Life of Mrs. Frank Leslie (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953).

34. Rose Young, The Record of the Leslie Woman Su!rage Commission, Inc., 1917–1929, 58–60 and “Statement of Income and Expenses,” Minutes, LWSC. The original bequest is almost $40,000,000 in 2015 dollars and the amount received over $22,000,000.

35. Harriet Upton to Paul, 5 September 1914, NWP-II, reel 1.

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36. Sharon Hartman Strom, Political Woman: Florence Luscomb and the Legacy of Radical Reform, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 93.

37. [Carrie Chapman Catt], “To the incorporators of the Leslie Woman Su!rage Commission, Inc., endowed by Mrs. Frank Leslie,” [1917], Minutes, LWSC, vol. 1, NAWSA papers, reel 44. [End Page 83]

38. Minutes, LWSC, vol. 1, NAWSA papers, reel 44.

39. Minutes, 7 November 1918 and 31 May 1919, LWSC, vol. 2 and Minutes, 29 June 1929, LWSC, vol. 3, NAWSA papers, reel 45; “Annual Report of the New York State Woman Su!rage Party,” 1917, NAWSA papers, reel 72.

40. Graham, Woman Su!rage and the New Democracy, 92–94.

41. Quoted in Margaret Finnegan, Selling Su!rage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 147.

42. [Catt], “To the incorporators.”

43. Anna Shaw to Mary Dennett, 17 August 1912, Mary Ware Dennett Papers, reel 10, Schlesinger.

44. M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, 14 April 1912, Thomas papers, reel 25.

45. Minutes, NAWSA Board, 5 June and 29 June 1912, NAWSA Papers, reel 58.

46. Minutes, NAWSA Board, 5 June 1912, NAWSA Papers, reel 58; Clipping, 24 November 1912, Maud Wood Park Papers, WRC, scrapbook 1, Schlesinger.

47. Minutes, NAWSA Board, 29 June 1912, NAWSA Papers, reel 58 and Woman’s Journal, December 6, 1913.

48. Agnes Ryan to Carrie Chapman Catt, 5 August 1916, NAWSA Papers, reel 12.

49. Young, Leslie Commission, 73–74, 89–94 and “Statement of Income and Assets,” Minutes, LWSC, vol. 3, NAWSA Papers, reel 45; and Agnes E. Ryan, The Torch Bearer: a Look Forward and Back at the Woman’s Journal, the Organ of the Woman’s Movement (Boston: Woman’s Journal and Su!rage News, 1916), 12–13.

50. Minutes, 17 July 1929 and “Statement of Income and Assets,” LWSC, vol. 3, NAWSA Papers, reel 45; Young, Leslie Commission, 89–94.

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51. [Catt], “To the incorporators.”

52. “Leslie Woman Su!rage Commission Services,” Minutes, LWSC, vol. 1, NAWSA Papers, reel 44.

53. Graham, Woman Su!rage and the New Democracy, 94.

54. Sylvia Ho!ert, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women’s Rights (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 39–40.

55. Peter Geidel, “Alva E. Belmont: A Forgotten Feminist” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1993), 82–83.

56. New York Times, August 20, 1909.

57. Geidel, “Alva E. Belmont,” 88–93, 174–5. [End Page 84]

58. Clippings, Boyer Scrapbooks, NAWSA Papers, reel 63, vol. 6, 74.

59. Geidel, “Alva E. Belmont,” 88.

60. New York Times, March 27, 1908.

61. Geidel, “Alva E. Belmont,” 88.

62. M. Carey Thomas to Harriet Upton, 16 December 1909, Thomas papers, reel 149.

63. Clippings, Boyer Scrapbooks, NAWSA Papers, reel 63, vol. 6, 74.

64. Clippings, Boyer Su!rage Scrapbooks, NAWSA Papers, reel 63, vol. 6, 74.

65. New York Times, November 7, 1909 and Clippings, Boyer Scrapbooks, NAWSA Papers, reel 63, vol. 6, 69.

66. Geidel, “Alva E. Belmont,” 87.

67. [Catherine McCulloch?] to M. Carey Thomas, 4 July 1911, Jessie Ashley to Catherine McCulloch, 18 July 1911 and Catherine McCulloch to the O!icial Board, 22 July 1911, Catherine McCulloch Papers, Mary Earhart Dillon Collection, series 6, folder 102, Schlesinger.

68. Geidel, “Alva E. Belmont,” 91–92, 177–78.

69. New York Times, October 24, 1911.

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70. Strom, Political Woman, 71 and Minutes, 1910–1912, Massachusetts Woman Su!rage Association Papers, WRC, vol. 97–98, Schlesinger.

71. Minutes, NAWSA Board, 13 March 1912, NAWSA Papers, reel 58.

72. M. Carey Thomas to Anna Shaw, 12 February 1912, Thomas papers, reel 123; Dennett to Jane Addams, 16 March 1912, and Jane Addams to Mary Ware Dennett, 20 March 1912, MWD papers, reel 10.

73. Minutes of the Annual Convention, NAWSA, 1913, MWD papers, reel 11, 139–42 and New York Times, December 25, 1915.

74. Mary Ware Dennett to the O!icial Board, 4 April 1914, MWD papers, reel 11.

75. Anna Shaw to M. Carey Thomas, 13 May 1910, Thomas papers, reel 159.

76. Mare Ware Dennett to Anna Shaw, 1 September 1914, MWD Papers, box 12, folder 214; Anna Shaw to M. Carey Thomas, 14 August 1914, Thomas papers, reel 57; and Anna Shaw to M. Carey Thomas, 3 November 1914, Thomas papers, reel 160.

77. Anna Shaw to M. Carey Thomas, Easter 1914, 2 December and 12 December 1916, Thomas papers, reel 57.

78. Katharine McCormick to Laura Morgan, 13 November 1915, Laura Morgan and Ethel Howes Papers, box 1, folder 13, Schlesinger. [End Page 85]

79. “Miss Paul then presented her report,” [December 1913], NAWSA papers, reel 33.

80. Christine A. Lunardini, From Equal Su!rage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–1928 (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 4–5, 21–22 and Fry, Conversations, 63–64.

81. “Miss Paul . . . report”; Harriot Blatch to Lucy Burns, 22 December 1913, NWP-II, reel 1.

82. “Miss Paul . . . report” and Fry, Conversations, 98.

83. Katharine McCormick, “Statement by Treasurer N.A.W.S.A. in regard to financial a!airs between National Association and Congressional Committee during year 1913–1914,” NAWSA Papers, reel 33.

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84. “Random Notes taken . . , February 12, 1914,” NAWSA Papers, reel 33; Alice Paul to Katharine Hepburn, 14 February 1914,National Woman’s Party Papers: The Su!rage Years, 1913–1920, reel 6, Library of Congress (herea"er NWP-I).

85. Fry, Conversations, 309.

86. Ho!ert, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, 93 and Geidel, “Alva E. Belmont,” 404.

87. Alva Belmont to Alice Paul, 23 January 1914, NWP-I, reel 6.

88. Rebecca T. Keeler, “Alva Belmont: Exacting Benefactor for Women’s Rights” (MA thesis, University of South Alabama, 1987), 23.

89. Mary Beard to Alice Paul, December 1913, 8 January and 4 February 1914 and Mary Beard to Lucy Burns, 9 January 1914, NWP-I, reel 6.

90. Crystal Eastman to Lucy Burns, 9 January 1914, NWP-I, reel 6.

91. Alva Belmont to Miss Whittemore, August 31, 1915, NWP-II, reel 113; Lucy Burns to Alice Paul, 12 March 1914; Alva Belmont to Lucy Burns, 3 March 1914, NWP-I, reel 8.

92. Mary Beard to Lucy Burns, 15 March 1914 and Lucy Burns to Mary Beard, 16 March 1914, NWP-I, reel 8.

93. HWS, vol. 6, 445.

94. DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch, 108–9.

95. Geidel, “Alva E. Belmont,” 501.

96. Keeler, “Alva Belmont,” 25–26 and Geidel, “Alva Belmont,” 124–26.

97. Fry, Conversations.

98. Ho!ert, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, 98–99.

99. Ibid., 145–74. [End Page 86]

100. Henrietta Louise Krone, “Dauntless Women: The Story of the Woman Su!rage Movement in Pennsylvania,” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1946), 169.

101. Sander, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, 206–10.

102. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 397–405; M. Carey Thomas to Ida Porter-Boyer, 25 September

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1902, NAWSA papers, reel 19; and HWS, vol. 5, 171–72.

103. HWS, vol. 5, 325 and Clipping, Boston Globe, Blanche Ames Ames Papers, WRC, vol. 119, Schlesinger.

104. Horowitz, The Power and the Passion, 402.

105. Although Kraditor argued that su!ragists began to utilize maternalism as an expedient argument in addition to the earlier natural rights or equality argument, her attention to maternalism resulted in the undue prominence of this line of thinking in the scholarship that followed. NAWSA documents contain a variety of arguments. See examples throughout the collection of Printed Matter, NAWSA Papers, reels 69–73. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Su!rage Movement, 43–74. [End Page 87]

Copyright © 2015 Journal of Women’s History

Additional Information

ISSN 1527-2036

Print ISSN 1042-7961

Pages 62-87

Launched on MUSE 2015-12-22

Open Access No

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The Women’s Rights Movement, 1848–1917

Historical Essays (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/Historical-Essays/)

Women in Congress: An Introduction (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical- Essays/Introduction/Introduction/)

I'm No Lady; I'm a Member of Congress (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/No- Lady/Introduction/)

The Women's Rights Movement, 1848-1917 (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical- Essays/No-Lady/Womens-Rights/)

The House Supports Women’s Suffrage, 1917–1919 (/Exhibitions-and- Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/No-Lady/House-Supports-Suffrage/)

The Nineteenth Amendment, 1919–1920 (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical- Essays/No-Lady/Nineteenth-Amendment/)

Early Congresswomen's Backgrounds (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical- Essays/No-Lady/Backgrounds/)

The Widow and Familial Connections (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/No- Lady/Widow-Familial/)

Media Curiosities (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/No-Lady/Media- Curiosities/)

Legislative Interests and Achievements (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical- Essays/No-Lady/Legislative-Interests/)

Crafting an Identity (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/No-Lady/Crafting- Identity/)

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Onto the National Stage (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/National- Stage/Introduction/)

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Assembling, Amplifying, and Ascending (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical- Essays/Assembling-Amplifying-Ascending/Introduction/)

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The fight for women’s suffrage in the United States began with the women’s rights movement in the mid- nineteenth century. This reform effort encompassed a broad spectrum of goals before its leaders decided to focus first on securing the vote for women. Women’s suffrage leaders, however, disagreed over strategy and tactics: whether to seek the vote at the federal or state level, whether to offer petitions or pursue litigation, and whether to persuade lawmakers individually or to take to the streets. Both the women’s rights and suffrage movements provided political experience for many of the early women pioneers in Congress, but their internal divisions foreshadowed the persistent disagreements among women in Congress that emerged after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

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Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives About this object (/Collection/Detail/25769818947)

Manufactured by the Whitehead & Hoag Company in Newark, New Jersey, this dime-sized button announces support for women’s voting rights. The phrase “Votes for Women” was one of the suffrage movement's main rallying cries.

The first attempt to organize a national movement for women’s rights occurred in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a young mother from upstate New York, and the Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott, about 300 people—most of whom were women—attended the Seneca

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Falls Convention to outline a direction for the women’s rights movement.2 Stanton’s call to arms, her “Declaration of Sentiments,” echoed the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self- evident: that all men and women are created equal.” In a list of resolutions, Stanton cataloged economic and educational inequities, restrictive laws on marriage and property rights, and social and cultural norms that prevented women from enjoying “all the rights and privileges which belong to them as

citizens of the United States.”3 Stanton also demanded for women the “sacred right to the elective franchise”—despite objections from Mott and others who considered this provision too radical. The convention eventually approved the voting rights resolution after abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke

in support of it.4

Like many other women reformers of the era, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a Massachusetts teacher, had both been active in the abolitionist cause to end slavery. After first meeting in 1850, Stanton and Anthony forged a lifetime alliance as women’s rights activists. Following the Civil War, they helped build a movement dedicated to women’s suffrage and pushed lawmakers to guarantee their rights during

Reconstruction.5

After the emancipation of four million enslaved African Americans, Radical Republicans in Congress proposed a constitutional amendment extending citizenship rights and equal protection under the law to all “persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Whether those rights would include women was unclear, and debates in both houses of Congress focused on defining citizenship. Many Members praised the virtues of “manhood suffrage” and expressed concern about the inclusive language in early drafts of the proposed amendment. Ultimately, the Fourteenth Amendment went as far as to define voting rights as the exclusive privilege of “male citizens”—explicitly adding gender to the Constitution for

the first time.6

During the debate over the Fourteenth Amendment, Stanton objected to the use of “that word, ‘male,’”

and sent to Congress the first of many petitions supporting women’s suffrage.7 On January 23, 1866, Representative James Brooks (/People/Detail/41526) of New York read into the official record Stanton’s petition along with an accompanying letter by Anthony. Some Members, including George Washington Julian (/People/Detail/16050) of Indiana, welcomed the opportunity to enfranchise women. In December 1868, he proposed a constitutional amendment to guarantee citizens the right to vote “without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded on race, color, or sex.” Julian’s resolution never came to a vote, and even Congressmen who favored expanding the electorate were not willing to support women’s

suffrage.8

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Image courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration About this record (/HouseRecord/Detail/15032436231)

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Signed by Frederick Douglass Jr., son of the famous abolitionist, and his wife, Virginia Hewlett Douglass, this 1878 petition for woman suffrage asks the House and Senate to amend the Constitution and allow women to vote. The Douglasses topped the petition signed by many other African-American residents of the Uniontown neighborhood of Washington, DC, in what is today Anacostia.

In 1869 Congress ignored renewed calls to enshrine women’s suffrage in the Constitution while working to pass an amendment guaranteeing the voting rights of African-American men. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified by the states in 1870, declared that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” That year, Hiram Rhodes Revels (/People/Detail/20291) of Mississippi was elected to the Senate and Joseph Hayne Rainey (/People/Detail/20095) of South Carolina won election to the House. They were the first African-American lawmakers to serve in Congress.

During the congressional battle over the Fifteenth Amendment, Stanton and Anthony had led a lobbying effort to ensure that voting rights for women were included in the legislation. With increasing frequency, Stanton denounced the extension of voting rights to African-American men while restrictions on women remained. She praised the virtues of “educated white women,” and warned that new immigrants and African Americans were not prepared to exercise the rights of citizens. Stanton’s rhetoric alienated African-American women involved in the fight for women’s rights, and similar ideas about race and

gender persisted in the women’s suffrage movement well into the twentieth century.9

In the wake of these setbacks in Congress, women’s rights reformers responded by focusing their

message exclusively on the right to vote.10 But the women’s movement fragmented over tactics and broke into two distinct organizations in 1869: the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Stanton and Anthony created the NWSA and directed its efforts toward changing federal law. Eventually, the NWSA began a parallel effort to secure the right to vote among the individual states with the hope of starting a ripple effect to win the franchise at the federal level. The NWSA, based in New York, largely relied on its own statewide network. But with Stanton and Anthony giving speeches across the country, the NWSA also drew recruits from all over. Although California Senator Aaron Sargent (/People/Detail/21214) introduced a women’s suffrage amendment in 1878, the NWSA campaign stalled. Meanwhile, Lucy Stone, a one-time Massachusetts

antislavery advocate and a prominent lobbyist for women’s rights, formed the AWSA.11 As former abolitionists, the leaders of the AWSA had mobilized state and local efforts to flood Washington with anti-slavery petitions, and they applied that same tactic after the Civil War to advance women’s rights, mostly at the state level. During the 1880s, the AWSA was better funded and the larger of the two groups, but it had only a regional reach.

When neither group attracted broad public support, suffrage leaders recognized their division had become an impediment to progress. Historian Nancy Woloch described early suffragists’ efforts as “a crusade in political education by women and for women, and for most of its existence, a crusade in

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search of a constituency.”12 The turning point came in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when the nation experienced a surge of volunteerism among middle-class women—activists in progressive causes, members of women’s clubs and professional societies, temperance advocates, and participants in local civic and charity organizations. The determination of these women to expand their sphere of activities further outside the home helped the suffrage movement go mainstream and provided new momentum for its supporters.

By 1890, seeking to capitalize on their newfound constituency but still without powerful allies in Congress, the two groups united to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Led initially by Stanton and then by Anthony, the NAWSA drew upon the support of women activists in organizations such as the Women’s Trade Union League, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the National Consumers League. For the next 20 years, the NAWSA worked as a nonpartisan organization focused on gaining the vote in the states as a precursor to a federal suffrage

amendment.13

Image courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol

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Carved by Adelaide Johnson and on display in the United States Capitol Rotunda, this monument was given to Congress in 1921. It commemorates three founders of America’s women’s suffrage movement: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott.

But the suffrage movement was only so welcoming. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, civil rights and voting rights came under constant attack in large sections of the country as state policies and court decisions effectively nullified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. As the system of segregation known as Jim Crow crystallized in the South, African Americans saw protections for their civil and political rights disappear, and few Members of Congress or suffrage advocates were willing to fight for any additional federal safeguards. In an 1898 address to the NAWSA, African-American activist Mary Church Terrell decried these injustices, while remaining hopeful “not only in the prospective enfranchisement of my sex but in the emancipation of my race.” African-American suffragists like Terrell continued to struggle to expand access to the ballot. Their voices, however, could only be heard outside of Congress. In the House and Senate, those voices had fallen silent: from 1901 to 1929 no African- American legislator served in Congress. The promise of the Reconstruction Era—that American democracy could be more just and more representative—was undermined by an organized political movement working to restrict voting rights and exclude millions of Americans from the political

process.14

West of the Mississippi River, the new activist climate and the creation of the NAWSA bore fruit. Women had won complete voting rights in Wyoming in 1869, but almost 25 years had elapsed without another victory. After launching the NAWSA in 1890, however, women secured the right to vote in three other western states—Colorado (1893), Utah (1896), and Idaho (1896).

“Why the West first?” remains an enduring puzzle. Some scholars suggest that the West proved to be more progressive in extending the vote to women, in part, in order to attract women westward and to boost the population. Others suggest that women played nontraditional roles on the hardscrabble frontier and were accorded a more equal status by men. Still others find that political expediency by territorial officials played a role. All agree, though, that western women organized themselves effectively

to win the vote.15

Between 1910 and 1914, the NAWSA’s intensified advocacy lead to successes at the state level in Washington, California, Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon. In Illinois, future Congresswoman Ruth Hanna McCormick (/People/Detail/17791) assisted as a lobbyist in Springfield where the state legislature adopted women’s suffrage in 1913, the first such victory in a state east of the Mississippi. Women won the right to vote the next year in Montana, thanks in part to the efforts of another future Congresswoman, Jeannette Rankin (/People/Detail/20147).

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Despite this momentum, some reformers pushed to quicken the pace of change. In 1913 Alice Paul, a young Quaker activist who participated in the militant British suffrage movement, formed the Congressional Union, later named the National Woman’s Party (NWP), as a rival to the NAWSA. Paul’s group adopted the British tactics of picketing, mass rallies, marches, and civil disobedience to raise awareness and support. The NWP’s more confrontational style attracted a new generation of women to the movement and kept it in the public eye. As part of their campaign, the NWP relentlessly attacked the Democratic administration of President Woodrow Wilson for refusing to support a women’s suffrage

amendment.16

In 1915 Carrie Chapman Catt, the veteran suffragist and former NAWSA president, returned to lead the organization. An adept administrator and organizer, Catt authored the “Winning Plan” that called for disciplined and relentless efforts to achieve state referenda on women’s suffrage, especially in

nonwestern states.17 Key victories followed in 1917 in Arkansas and New York—the first in the South and East. The 1916 election of Jeannette Rankin of Montana to serve in the 65th Congress (/Congressional-Overview/Profiles/65th/) (1917–1919) crowned the “Winning Plan” campaign.

Catt’s “Winning Plan” and Paul’s protest campaign coincided with the United States’ entry into World

War I.18 Catt and the NAWSA eagerly embraced the war, believing that women would quickly prove themselves in their support for the cause overseas and that extending the franchise at home would be an important step for national readiness and morale. Moreover, leading suffrage advocates insisted the failure to extend the vote to women might impede their participation in the war effort just when they were most needed as workers and volunteers outside the home.

Next Section (/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/No-Lady/House-Supports-Suffrage/)

Footnotes

2 David Roediger, Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All (New York: Verso, 2014): 129; David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018): 196. Standard biographies of these two women include Lois W. Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Women’s Rights (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1980); and Margaret Hope Bacon, Valiant Friend: The Life of Lucretia Mott (New York: Walker Publishing, 1980).

3 “The Declaration of Sentiments,” Seneca Falls Convention, 1848. For more on the convention at Seneca Falls, its participants, and the larger movement it spawned, see Ellen DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in the U.S., 1848–1869 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978).

4 Laura E. Free, Suffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015): 43; History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1 (1848–1861), ed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881): 70–73,

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https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28020/28020-h/28020-h.htm. For an overview of the period from the Civil War through 1920, see Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994): especially 326–363.

5 Sylvia D. Hoffert, When Hens Crow: The Women’s Rights Movement in Antebellum America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995): 75–90; Free, Suffrage Reconstructed: 43.

6 On the origins and passage of the Reconstruction Amendments in general, see David E. Kyvig, Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776–1995 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), and Richard Bernstein with Jerome Agel, Amending America: If We Love the Constitution So Much, Why Do We Keep Trying to Change It? (New York: Times Books, 1993).

7 Free, Suffrage Reconstructed: 105.

8 Free, Suffrage Reconstructed: 115; Blight, Frederick Douglass: 488.

9 Roediger, Seizing Freedom: 153, 156.

10 See, for example, DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: 21–52; Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011): 327.

11 For more on Lucy Stone, see Andrea Moore Kerr, Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992).

12 Woloch, Women and the American Experience: 329–336.

13 Woloch, Women and the American Experience: 334–335; Roediger, Seizing Freedom: 334–335.

14 Mary Church Terrell, The Progress of the Colored Women (Washington, DC: Smith Brothers, Printers, 1898), https://cdn.loc.gov/service/rbc/lcrbmrp/t0a13/t0a13.pdf.

15 See, for instance, Beverly Beeton, Women Vote in the West: The Woman Suffrage Movement 1869–1896 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1986); David E. Kyvig, Explicit and Authentic Acts: 227; and the Women of the West Museum, “‘This shall be the land for women’: The Struggle for Western Women’s Suffrage, 1860–1920,” https://web.archive.org/web/20070627080045/http://www.museumoftheamericanwest.org/explore/exhibits/suffrage /index.html.

16 For more on Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, see Inez Haynes Gillmore, Up Hill with Banners Flying (Penobscott, ME: Traversity Press, 1964).

17 For a biography of Catt, see Robert Booth Fowler, Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986); Kyvig, Explicit and Authentic Acts: 233.

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18 Woloch, Women and the American Experience: 353.

Office of the Historian: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) Office of Art & Archives, Office of the Clerk: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]), [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

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