Votes for Women!: American Suffragists and the Battle for the Ballot by Winifred Conkling

Author:Winifred Conkling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 19th Century, Biographies & Memoirs, History, Juvenile Nonfiction, United States, Women's Studies
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2018-02-13T03:00:00+00:00

Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressing the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, from the January 16, 1878, issue of the New York Daily Graphic

Not surprisingly, the Committee on Privileges and Elections never voted to send the Susan B. Anthony Amendment to the full Senate for consideration that year. It was reintroduced dutifully every year, but the full Senate did not vote on it until 1887, when it was defeated 16 to 34, with twenty-five senators not even bothering to vote.

Despite congressional apathy and obstruction, the suffragists remained steadfast. Year after year, the National Woman Suffrage Association held its annual convention in Washington, DC, so that its members could lobby legislators.

Anthony became the face of the women’s vote on Capitol Hill. “The members of Congress always knew when Miss Anthony had arrived in Washington,” a fellow suffragist recalled. “Other women accepted their word that they were going to do something and waited patiently at home. Miss Anthony followed up and saw that [Congress members] did it. If she could not find them at the Capitol, she went to their homes. If they promised to introduce a certain measure on a certain day, she was in the gallery, looking them squarely in the face.”

Anthony’s bright-red shawl—the only flash of color in her otherwise dark and drab wardrobe—became iconic. When she once appeared before a group of reporters wearing a white shawl, some of the journalists joked that they would not write about suffrage unless she brought back the red wrap.

“All right, boys,” she said. “I’ll send to the hotel for it.”

Someone brought it over. Anthony wrapped up in the fiery shawl, and the friendly crowd began to applaud.

Spreading the Word in the West

When not lobbying in the Capitol in the 1870s, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were usually on the lecture circuit. They crisscrossed the country for eight or nine months of the year, speaking about suffrage, as well as other feminist topics.

With her soft white curls and graceful good manners, Stanton appeared harmless, but when she was at the podium she challenged her audiences with revolutionary ideas about divorce, religion, and women’s role in society.

“Surely Mrs. Stanton has secured much immunity by a comfortable look of motherliness and a sly benignancy in her smiling eyes,” wrote one newspaper reporter, “even though her arguments have been bayonet thrusts and her words gun shots.”

No topic was off-limits for Stanton. Before her evening lectures, she often held afternoon meetings for all-female audiences about “the new science of marriage and maternity,” meaning birth control. This was important, because women had limited access to information about sex, pregnancy, and childbearing.

Stanton could think on her feet, and she refused to be intimidated by those who dared to heckle her as she spoke.

During a lecture in Nebraska, an outspoken man interrupted her speech. “Don’t you think that the best thing a woman can do is perform well her part in the role of wife and mother?” he asked. “My wife has presented me with eight beautiful children;

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