The Role Of Women’s Suffrage In The United States In the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, women became very active in political and social movements. Women played roles that shaped the future of the laws that prohibited women in many ways. Women’s suffrage and women’s role in prohibition are two ways in which women have shaped political and social moments in United States history. Women have never given up on fighting for rights, many times with monetary and social consequences for trying to gain rights they felt belonged to them.
Along with gaining those rights women have fought for destigmatizing women and consider them equals to men. This view has been questioned since colonial times; however, no action was taken until almost a century later. One account states that the fight women’s suffrage began in Seneca Falls, New York, the very first meeting discussing women’s rights took place (Stalcup 11). Throughout time women have had few freedoms in legal, social, and economic areas. Women were never allowed to own anything, many of their possessions were under the name of a male relative, and after they were married off, the owner became the husband.
If a married woman worked, what she was paid was not necessarily hers. Education did not hold any importance when women were involved. Girls mostly had a primary education, they were not expected to attend higher schooling, nor were women allowed to attend college, they were forbidden (Stalcup 11). By another account the struggle women’s suffrage started in the state of Oregon. This was after the Civil War had ended, it gained popularity around the Progressive Era during the early nineteen-hundreds.
Throughout this era, various groups formed to fight what they thought were unfair “social injustices and for protection of the people” (Hardy). The same groups in Oregon also formed women’s temperance movements and leagues. They wanted to show the way of having self control and not allowing drinking to surpass into a level where it led to other actions which were not proper (Hardy). When Abraham Lincoln had articulated about the word “temperance,” the people had perceived it to mean they should moderate their alcohol intake.
They also decided it was also in reference to the types of alcohol they were consuming. This led to alternatives to the harder alcohols, for example one temperance supporter and physician, Benjamin Rush, “encouraged the whiskey-riddled to consider a transitional beverage: wine mixed with opium or laudanum” (Okrent 9). Opium and laudanum are narcotics, opium comes from poppy seeds and laudanum is an alcoholic mixture made from opium and includes morphine which was once used an analgesic.
While temperance movements were seen as forces to lo alcohol consumption, some women later were against the Prohibition of alcohol. The Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, also known as WONPR, “argued that Prohibition exacerbated the evils it was designed to combat. ” While the opposing temperance group, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, WCTU, “a group that claimed to speak for all women-believed that Prohibition protected the home and family from the violence and immorality associated with alcohol” (Neumann 31).
The women in these movement groups jointly had a goal of maintaining the sanctity of the home, meanwhile the group “WONPR believed that the widespread bootlegging, smuggling, and imbibing of alcohol under Prohibition fostered an ever-increasing contempt for law,” as a result, this caused the disheartenment toward family and home life (Neumann 31, 32). Temperance movements and campaign leaders for suffrage worked hand-in-hand on many levels from local to international organizations. Although it was in good cause, temperance caused a few complications since at the time t was both a political and moral controversy. A few concepts for temperance clashed with the suffrage movement because of how exactly it aided suffrage was one of the hindrances.
Support for both causes simultaneously was not popular with everyone, for example one leader in suffrage movements, Abigail Scott Duniway, regarded that temperance was an obstruction in the efforts of women’s suffrage (Hardy). Women’s suffrage was not only involved with temperance but, it also had efforts put in other reforms that affected women. They fought for property rights, education, dress, and more open-minded laws on divorce.
The most pushed issue was women’s right to vote, suffrage was polemic just in the basic form, but adding the right to vote really made the issue more extreme. Some women were afraid that with such an extreme cause, no one would take the cause genuinely for any reforms. Without the crucial right, the right to vote, it was very difficult to swat any politician to their causes. One of the very few things they could do was to send congress petitions. Unfortunately for women, petitioning required excess amounts of time and vigor. Quite often petitioning was essentially ineffective, the results were mostly negative.
They concluded that the only way to be able to make a change, they would have to gain the right to vote (Stalcup 11). Supporters off the suffrage movement varied in many ways; some were extreme supporters and others were temperate, some were social campaigners and others were supportive of both temperance and suffrage, they all awaited change with women being able to vote. That change would result in better “women’s status and society at large” (Stalcup 12).
Stalcup states that “If the United States was founded on the ideals of equality and liberty… hen in all fairness women should not be forbidden to cast their ballots alongside men in free and open elections. ” As was mentioned earlier, there were some extreme supporters of women’s suffrage, one noted example is Susan B. Anthony. She is widely known for her efforts to bring women equality in the late nineteenth century. Susan B. Anthony had joined a meeting in New York City, it was an examination of the fifteenth amendment, the fourteenth amendment’s goal was to give African Americans equal rights, the fifteenth was to be put any place to make sure African Americans were allowed to vote.
Susan and others wanted the amendment to ensure women would have the right to vote as well, those on the rival side argued that if gender were put into the amendment no one would be open to accept it. The opposing side won and the amendme ment passed without the inclusion of gender. Susan did not give up and she set out to look for other ways to win the suffrage movement and change the inequality (Naparsteck 6). Her next plan came with the help of an attorney by the name Francis Minor, “who believed the 14th Amendment already granted women the right to vote: Attempt to register, be denied, sue, and appeal all the way up the U. S. Supreme Court, (which he believed], would agree with him” (Naparsteck 6).
Susan set forth with the proposed plan after having thought about other possible alternatives. She went out to register to vote, shockingly she was permitted and no one contradicted it. Next, she actually voted, she was very surprised as she was sure it would be allowed to happen. This was a crime, the author states that with no actual intent but she acted and there were no forces stopping her so she went with it. She was arrested and incriminated, she would have a trial to defend herself.
Not only was she going to be tried but also inspectors, they should have prevented the crime to be committed and therefore were to be tried as well. Ultimately, Susan lost, but she became an important figure in the fight for women’s suffrage (Naparsteck 6, 7). Many continued on in the fight, Marjorie Spruill Wheeler stated that “the suffragists believed that ‘enfranchisement … was essential both as a symbol of women’s equality and individuality and a means of improving women’s legal and social condition” (Stalcup 12).
Once the women were “enfranchised,” the inevitable next steps were to take part in other political and legal areas, for example jury duty or representatives in congress. Their goals of larger fairness would influence later movements, some in the 1960s (Stalcup 12). On the opposite end, there were people who wanted to separate suffrage and temperance. Abigail Scott Duniway argued for this, she said that males would not wish to vote in favor of suffragists if there was a connection between the suffragists and temperance campaigners since temperance was targeting the males.
Some thought “women would use their voting privileges to bring prohibition to the state so they voted against woman suffrage to keep prohibition from having a chance in Oregon” (Hardy). One reason some suffragists supported prohibition was to prevent abuses that stemmed from alcohol. WCTU leaders stimulated its members to support suffrage since they thought it would be effective, they also thought it would go hand-in-hand for prohibition to be approved (Hardy).