If someone says women were given the vote, just slap ‘em

In a let­ter dat­ed March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her hus­band John (who was meet­ing with the Continental Congress at the time and who would become the sec­ond pres­i­dent in 1797) encour­ag­ing him on behalf of the women of America.

She wrote: “I long to hear that you have declared an inde­pen­den­cy.  And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I sup­pose will be nec­es­sary for you to make, I desire you would remem­ber the ladies and be more gen­er­ous and favor­able to them than your ances­tors.  Do not put such unlim­it­ed pow­er into the hands of the hus­bands.  Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.  If par­tic­u­lar care and atten­tion is not paid to the ladies, we are deter­mined to foment a rebel­lion, and will not hold our­selves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

Apparently, John had lit­tle influ­ence on the pro­ceed­ings which for­mu­lat­ed the Constitution, or he was one of the tyrants that Abigail had tak­en note of, because the resul­tant doc­u­ment con­tained noth­ing which stip­u­lat­ed who was enti­tled to vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, espe­cial­ly women.  So why were women excluded?

Article IV, Section 2 states:  “The Citizens of each State shall be enti­tled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the sev­er­al states.”  There appears to be no exclu­sion of women here unless they were not, for some rea­son, con­sid­ered “cit­i­zens.”

The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1 appeared to have clar­i­fied the def­i­n­i­tion of “cit­i­zen,” but then again, made no ref­er­ence to sex: “All per­sons born or nat­u­ral­ized in the United States, and sub­ject to the juris­dic­tion there­of, are cit­i­zens of the United States and of the State where­in they reside.  No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the priv­i­leges or immu­ni­ties of the cit­i­zens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any per­son of life, lib­er­ty, or prop­er­ty with­out due process of law; nor deny to any per­son with­in its juris­dic­tion the equal pro­tec­tion of the laws.”

Just two years after rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth was rat­i­fied, stat­ing: “The right of cit­i­zens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, col­or, or pre­vi­ous con­di­tion of servi­tude.”  But not on account of sex.

All this ref­er­ence to “cit­i­zens” and yet it was anoth­er 133 years before full cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus was rec­og­nized for women.  It seems a bit of a mys­tery as to why the sta­tus of women as cit­i­zens was not suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged in Supreme Court cases.

It was near­ly three-quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry fol­low­ing Mrs. Adams’ let­ter that the real push for uni­ver­sal wom­en’s suf­frage began, in the years before the Civil War even though, in some few states, women were allowed to vote for local or state issues.  Wyoming was the first to rec­og­nize the rights of women to vote, even before it was admit­ted to the union.

But the fight for full vot­ing rights for women con­tin­ued through the 19^th cen­tu­ry and into the first two decades of the 20^th as women’s suf­frage groups moved from try­ing to gain vot­ing sta­tus in the indi­vid­ual states to get­ting a Constitutional amend­ment passed that would grant them their rights nationwide.

Women’s groups seek­ing the vot­ing fran­chise mor­phed dur­ing the years and sev­er­al emerged, some seek­ing to pla­cate the sen­si­bil­i­ties of leg­is­la­tors, some being more mil­i­tant in their approach.

Finally, dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of Woodrow Wilson, efforts inten­si­fied as women became more bold in approach­ing and admon­ish­ing mem­bers of Congress and the President, even resort­ing, for a peri­od of time, to dai­ly pick­et­ing the White House, much to the dis­tress of Wilson and his wife Edith, who was decid­ed­ly anti-suffragist.

Eventually Wilson, who had been essen­tial­ly unco­op­er­a­tive in pro­mot­ing a suf­frage amend­ment, became more con­cil­ia­to­ry and asked his par­ty (the Democrats) to sup­port the amend­ment.  Regrettably, his ulti­mate sup­port appears to have been the result of polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions rather than a true com­mit­ment to the propo­si­tion.  It was dur­ing this peri­od that the most heinous actions against women seek­ing enfran­chise­ment took place, as they were arrest­ed for trumped-up charges such as imped­ing traf­fic and cre­at­ing a pub­lic nui­sance.  During many of their pick­ets at the White House they were derid­ed, spit on and even phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed, even while police looked on and did nothing.

Initially, the arrests result­ed in fines, which they uni­ver­sal­ly refused to pay, and sus­pend­ed sen­tences.  Later, judges, faced with their con­tin­u­ing activ­i­ties, sen­tenced them to lengthy terms, many in work­hous­es under hor­ren­dous con­di­tions.  When they resort­ed to hunger strikes, they were sub­ject­ed to force-feed­ing, a painful and bar­bar­ic pro­ce­dure, some­times with tubes through the nose.

In 1919, the U.S. Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment and sub­mit­ted it to the states for rat­i­fi­ca­tion, but the bat­tle for suf­frage was only in its infant stage, as it now fell to 36 states to rat­i­fy it before it could become law — 36 being the ²⁄₃ required of the 48 states which were in the union at that time. Many women asso­ci­at­ed with the suf­frage move­ment remained active in the move­ment their entire adult lives, and many died before real­iz­ing their dream of enfranchisement.

Kentucky became the 23^rd state to rat­i­fy, on its first day in ses­sion on January 6^th, 1920 with a vote of 30 to 8 in the Senate and 75 to 25 in the House (obvi­ous­ly some still-recal­ci­trant males around since the leg­is­la­ture was total­ly male at the time).  Women had been vot­ing in Kentucky since 1838 in some rur­al coun­ties in the state for local offices.

Interestingly, the Kentucky Constitution, Section 145, orig­i­nal­ly rat­i­fied in 1891 states: “Every cit­i­zen [there’s that word again] of the United States of the age of eigh­teen years who has resided in the state one year, and in the coun­ty six months, and in the precinct in which he offers to vote six­ty days next pre­ced­ing the elec­tion, shall be a vot­er in said precinct. . .”

Tennessee became the 36^th state to rat­i­fy in August of 1920, by a vote of 49 to 47. The swing vote came from a young leg­is­la­tor in his first term who was alleged­ly swayed by a let­ter from his wid­owed moth­er ask­ing him to sup­port the amend­ment.  Had the vote result­ed in a tie, the amend­ment would have failed in the state; sev­er­al attempts were sub­se­quent­ly made to rescind the ratification.

A num­ber of states wait­ed many years to rat­i­fy the amend­ment, with Mississippi being the last to do so, in 1984!

So, if some­one is heard to exclaim that women were “giv­en” the right to vote, a resul­tant swat on the side of the head is deserved because women were nev­er “giv­en” some­thing which they ini­tial­ly deserved and for which they fought so vig­or­ous­ly and so long, the result of which just about dou­bled the num­ber of qual­i­fied vot­ers in the country.

Suggested read­ing:  Suffrage by Ellen Carol Dubois and Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? By Tina Cassidy.