Nineteenth Amendment To The United States Constitution - Background

Background

The United States Constitution, adopted in 1789, left the boundaries of suffrage undefined. This authority was implicitly delegated to the individual states, all of which denied voting rights to women (with the exception of New Jersey, which initially carried women's suffrage but revoked it in 1807).

While scattered movements and organizations dedicated to women's rights existed previously, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New York is traditionally held as the start of the American women's rights movement. Suffrage was not a focus of the convention, however, and its advancement was minimal in the decades preceding the Civil War. While suffrage bills were introduced into most state legislatures during this period, they were generally disregarded and few came to a vote.

The women's suffrage movement took hold after the civil war, during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877). During this period, women's rights leaders advocated for inclusion of universal suffrage as a civil right in the Reconstruction amendments (the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments). Despite their efforts, these amendments did nothing to promote women's suffrage.

Continued settlement of the western frontier, along with the establishment of territorial constitutions, allowed the issue to be raised continually at the state level. Through the activism of suffrage organizations and independent political parties, women's suffrage was established in the newly formed constitutions of Wyoming Territory (1869), Utah (1870), and Washington Territory (1883). Existing state legislatures began to consider suffrage bills, and several even held voter referenda, but they were unsuccessful. Efforts at the national level persisted through a strategy of congressional testimony, petitioning, and lobbying.

Two rival organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), were formed in 1869. The NWSA, led by suffrage leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, attempted several unsuccessful court challenges in the mid-1870s. Their legal case, known as the New Departure strategy, was that the Fourteenth Amendment (granting universal citizenship) and Fifteenth Amendment (granting the vote irrespective of race) together served to guarantee voting rights to women. Three Supreme Court decisions from 1873 to 1875 rejected this argument, so these groups shifted to advocating for a new constitutional amendment.