Women’s Rights Movement

The Womens Rights Movement Womens Suffrage is a subject that could easily be considered a black mark on the history of the United States. The entire history of the right for women to ballot falls some(prenominal) twists and turns but yettually turned out alright. This paper will take a look at some of these twists and turns along with some of the study figures involved in the ballot fecal matter. The first recorded instance in Ameri sack up history where a woman demanded the right to vote was in 1647.Margargont Brent, a property owner in Maryland wanted deuce votes in the newly formed colonial assembly to represent her vote and the vote of Lord Balti more than whom she held power-of-attorney. (Pleck, 2007) The governor eventually turned down her demands. The 1790 establishment of New Jersey allowed women property owners the right to vote by a loophole that stated that all inhabitants that met property and residence requirements could vote.This loophole was closed in 1807 by a state legislator that had almost lost an election due(p) to a womens pick out bloc. Other than these isolated incidents the first organized womens vote movementcan be traced back to the mid 1800s with theSeneca FallsConvention. The organized movement started at Seneca Falls, NY with a meeting called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. ( matter Womens memoir Museum, 2007) Both women received their start in the womens suffrage movement by organism active in the abolitionist movement.Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an big element of the Womens Rights Movement, but not many people be intimate of her significance or contributions because she has been overshadowed by her long date associate and friend, Susan B. Anthony. However, I olfactory perception that she was a woman of great importance who was the driving force crumb the 1848 Convention, played a leadership role in the womens rights movement for the next fifty years, and in the words of Henry Thomas, She was the architect and designer of the movements most important strategies ad documents. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in 1815 into an affluent family in Johnstown, New York.Now, while Stanton was growing up, she tried to practise her brothers academic achievements due to the fact that her parents, Daniel and Mary Livingston Cady, preferred their sons to their daughters. In trying to copy her male siblings, she got an extraordinary discipline she went to Johnstown academy and studied Greek and mathematics she learned how to ride and manage a horse she became a skilled debater and she attended the Troy young-bearing(prenominal) Seminary in New York (one of the first women s academies to offer an advanced education equal to that of male academies) where she studies logic, physiology, and natural rights philosophy.However, it wasnt her education, but watching her father, who was a judge and lawyer, handle his cases, that cause her to become involved in diverse women rights movements. Stanton a nd Mott attended the Worlds Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 and were refused seating for being women. After this incident the two women started seeing a connection between the plight of slaves and the treatment of women in the United States. The womens movement took a back seat to the slavery movement during the American Civil War as the women turned their attention to working through the war.However, after the war was over the womens movement thought they were in a good position to win some key battles due to their war work and the attention being paid to equal rights at the time. This was not to be so as the Re prevalentans in power believed that womens suffrage would hurt their chances to push forth rights for freed slaves because of the widespread unpopularity of womens rights. ( guinea pig Womens record Museum, 2007) After the war the womens movement split into rival factions with Stanton and Susan B.Anthony forming the National Womans Suffrage Association and Lucy S tone and Julia Ward Howe forming the American Womans Suffrage Association. The NWSA did not support the conk outing of the fifteenth amendment because the amendment did not extendress the giving of equal rights to women as well as blacks and fought against the passing of the amendment as a result. The AWSA supported the 15th amendment and wanted to react for womens rights in the states separately. Pleck, 2007) The two movements eventually reunited in 1890 to become the National American Woman Suffrage Association led by Susan B. Anthony until 1900 when Carrie Chapman Catt took over. Catt was constitutional in the strategy to work for womens suffrage on two the federal and state level upon her re-election to president of the NAWSA in 1915 which led to other faction split between the NAWSA and a group led by Alice Paul who believed that the major push of the fight needed to be concentrate at the federal level. About. com, 2007) Finally all the strenuous work of the womens move ment paid off in the summer of 1920 with the ratification of the nineteenth amendment. This was not an easily won victory however. Congress first took up the fill out in 1915 but the bill lost in the voting and was shelved for almost three years. (Womens Suffrage, 2007) On the eve of the vote President Wilson do a widely publicized appeal for the passage of the bill and this time the bill barely passed with the need two-thirds majority.However, the bill failed to gain the necessary votes to pass the Senate even with another of President Wilsons appeals for the passage of the bill. The bill would be voted down twice over the following year before eventually gaining enough votes to pass due to Congress interest in having the issue solved prior to the presidential elections slated for 1920 and on June 4, 1919 the Senate voted to pass the bill to add the amendment to the constitution securing womens rights. The effects of the 19th amendment on the United States can be seen everywhere .More women now hold public office and the United States even has a woman running for the Democratic nomination for president. The womens voting block is one politicians cannot forget close to and still have hopes of being successful. The ability of women to vote, even though sparsely used until the 1980s, changed how companies did business and what commandment was passed for respect of the potential voting power of women. More women friendly policies exist, some(prenominal) in the workplace and in general life, which can be attributed to the hard work of the pioneers in the womens movement.Knowing that men controlled the ability of women to vote and that a way of life would be drastically changed makes the gains of women to vote even more amazing. I can stand back now and admire the courage of the women who fought for what was and is rightfully theirs and for the bravery of the men to do the right thing by allowing women equal rights. You can just reflect about todays life and affairs to see that the shift from legal rights to suffrage was successful.Our public offices consist of many great female leaders, and the future for America is brighter with collaborationism of men and women alike. The efforts of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were indeed not in swollen as they rallied up people to protest in unison and the results are evidenced by the American political structure today. References About. Com. (2007). Womens History about Carrie Chapman Catt. Retrieved November 25, 2007, from About. com Web Site http//womenshistory. about. com/library/bio/blbio_catt_carrie_chapman. htmNational Womens History Museum. (2007). Womens Suffrage exhibition. Retrieved November 25, 2007, from National Womens History Museum Web Site http//www. nwhm. org/exhibits/tour_02-02d. html Pleck, E. (2007). Womens Suffrage. Retrieved November 24, 2007, from Scholastic Web Site http//teacher. scholastic. com/activities/suffrage/history. htm Womens Suffrage. (2007, November 26). In Wikip edia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 26, 2007, from http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/History_of_womens_suffrage_in_the_United_States