The 19th Amendment: Women Fight for Rights (1848-1877)

Throughout the women's rights movement, advocates invoked the Declaration of Independence (1776), encouraging America to live up to its founding ideals. In 1787, the U.S. Constitution would create the world’s largest experiment in representative democracy—while letting states determine who could vote. Generations of diverse women and men embarked on a decades-long journey to ensure that all men—and women—would be treated equally.

In the early 1800s, some women pursued a variety of rights, including the right to inherit property and speak in public—challenging the notion that they belonged in the home. After the Civil War, women focused on voting as the key to securing equal rights. They petitioned Congress and turned to the 14th and 15th Amendments to justify their right to vote, but their work was just getting started.

An outgrowth of anti-slavery activity, the pre-Civil War women’s movement focused on a broad range of equality issues. It was small and consisted primarily of educated white women.
 
By the 1850s, the movement assumed a distinct shape. Americans began referring to—and debating—the new women’s rights campaign. As free Black women joined these small circles of reform activity, biracial coalitions developed in the Northeast. Reformers organized conventions and lectures, circulated ideas in newspapers, and petitioned state governments to recognize their rights.

In 1848, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (pictured here) organized a convention in Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss women’s issues. The local gathering attracted nearly 300 people. Stanton prepared a manifesto known as the Declaration of Sentiments—a rewriting of the Declaration of Independence—to draw attention to the inequalities and oppressive laws that women endured. Although the Declaration of Sentiments included a suffrage resolution, voting was only one demand among many.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), women’s rights advocates paused their campaign to focus on the war effort and the ongoing fight to end slavery. The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in 1865, pushed equal rights to the center of American politics. After the war, women resumed their campaign during the period known as Reconstruction (1865-1877) and emphasized voting as the key to securing broader rights and reforms. Black and white reformers united around a vision of universal suffrage—one that promoted voting rights for both women and African American men.

In 1866, Congress passed the 14th Amendment, expanding the rights of equal protection and due process of the law to all persons living in the United States. While the amendment promoted equal citizenship, it also introduced gender into the Constitution for the first time. Some suffragists fought against this discriminatory language, but the amendment was ratified by the states in 1868. Fissures started to form over how to secure rights—and for whom.

During the Reconstruction era, some suffrage leaders developed a plan that relied on the Constitution’s text to get women to the polls. They argued that voting was a “privilege” of American citizenship protected by the 14th Amendment. From 1868 to 1875, hundreds of women—both Black and white—embraced this argument. Some women successfully voted, while most were turned away, arrested, or fined. Discover some of their stories in the next few slides.

In 1867, the universal suffrage movement campaigned for two referenda in Kansas. Advocates sought to secure suffrage for women and Black men, but both proposals ultimately failed. Suffragists ramped up their efforts after 1875, when the Supreme Court ruled in Virginia Minor's case that voting was not a right of citizenship. Women campaigned for different levels of voting rights—from full suffrage (in all elections) to partial suffrage (in local or state elections). They believed that if enough states allowed women to vote, national change might follow. These state campaigns continued for the rest of the movement.

Women fought for a variety of rights in the early 1800s. When the Civil War ended in 1865, the movement embraced universal suffrage but eventually split over race and strategy—utilizing different tactics to pursue the vote. Some women focused on a constitutional amendment, while others concentrated on suffrage at the state level. Their efforts followed separate tracks but fed into one common goal: national voting rights for women. As a new century dawned, the next generation of suffragists would pick up the fight, experimenting with new tactics and securing the 19th Amendment in 1920. However, many women continued their fight beyond 1920 to ensure equal access to the ballot box.