History of Woman Suffrage, a chronological narrative with documents, comprises six volumes averaging one thousand pages apiece. The broad purpose of this massive work was to lend intellectual and moral support to feminists, and their
male allies, in their struggles between 1881 and 1920 to extend the
franchise to women. Universal white manhood
Suffrage had all but been accomplished by the mid-1840’s, an area in which Americans then led the world. In 1870, as a part of post-Civil War Reconstruction, ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited denial of the
vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; thus the franchise was extended to African American males, including those who had been freed from slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
The great discontinuity in such extensions of the franchise in the extension of democracy was the general preclusion of voting by women. Despite the fact that in some localities a few
women had participated in voting during Colonial days and a few subsequently enjoyed voting rights during the first half of the
nineteenth century, though still only locally, these were insignificant exceptions to the prevailing practices of a male-dominated society. Whatever the opinions the majority of women may have held regarding the value of the franchise to them during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—and these are unknown—many thousands of educated and articulate women certainly considered their denial of the vote a rank injustice. Abigail Adams had reminded her husband, John, of that fact during the drafting of the Constitution, and others like her had gained notoriety during each of the nation’s nineteenth and early twentieth century cycles of reform. For example, the principal authors-editors of
History of Woman Suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, had organized and led the famous gathering of feminists at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Another author-editor, Matilda Joslyn Gage, had been an active participant in the agitations following it from the 1850’s into the 1900’s. Each advocated a wide range of women’s rights, chief among them the right to the vote.
Not until 1879, late in their long careers as feminist reformers, did Stanton and Anthony decide to compile
History of Woman Suffrage. Division between the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), headed by Lucy Stone, and their own National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) lent impetus to the project. They sought primarily to establish the greater significance of their association, to emphasize the priority of suffrage reform over other feminist objectives, to provide subsequent generations of suffragists with documentation of their movement, and not least to make it more difficult for male historians (there were scarcely any other kind) to overlook their lifetime of struggle for all forms of feminine equality.
History of Woman Suffrage was an intensely collaborative effort. To further their work, the principal authors-editors lived together for months at a time. Anthony, who for years had been collecting documents, continued to do so, while Stanton assumed general responsibility for writing most of the connective narrative passages. The somewhat younger Gage wrote three chapters of volume 1. Both Stanton and Anthony labored in unison over the tedious editing required for the three initial volumes, while Ida Husted Harper was browbeaten into superintendence over the latter three. Overall, the work includes references to and excerpts from newspapers, journals, and speeches and the writings of scores of outstanding feminists and female suffragists, as well as contributions by some of their male colleagues. There are reminiscences, notably by Stanton and Anthony; detailed reports of suffragists’ efforts in many states, along with the legislative results thereof; records and proceedings of state and national woman suffrage conventions; documentation on the complex political and gender divisions over suffrage during Reconstruction; and accounts of the activities of woman suffrage organizations and the actions of state legislatures that led to the drafting and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, granting women the vote.
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