American Women Enfranchised

Newspaper article

By: International Woman Suffrage Alliance

Date: 1920

Source: International Woman Suffrage Alliance. "American Women Enfranchised." Jus Suffragii: The International Woman Suffrage News 14, 11 (September 1920).

About the Author: The Internationl Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) was founded in 1902 as an alliance of national organizations fighting for woman suffrage that were interested in working together to further the cause of woman suffrage around the world. Jus Sufragii ("The Right of Suffrage") was the organization's monthly newsletter and was published in London during the 1920s. The famed American woman suffrage activist Carrie Chapman Catt played a key role in founding IWSA and was serving as its president when this edition was published. In 1946 IWSA changed its name to the International Alliance of Women.

INTRODUCTION

The history of female voting rights in the United States did not begin with the struggles in the nineteenth century for the vote. In 1776, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire granted women the vote, though that right was withdrawn throughout the 1780s for New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, and in New Jersey in 1807. Voting became a state matter, and from 1807 to 1869 women could not vote in any state in the United States.

In 1869, Wyoming became the first territory in the United States to permit women the right to vote. By 1919, Utah, Colorado, Washington, California, Oregon, Arizona, Kansas, New York, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Idaho permitted full suffrage, with Illinois, North Dakota, Indiana, Nebraska, and Michigan giving women partial voting rights. Female enfranchisement in the United States, first introduced to the national Congress in 1878, finally passed the Congress and became part of the Constitution with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment by the state of Tennessee, the thirty-sixth state to ratify, on August 18, 1920.

While female suffrage took over fifty years to pass in the United States, other countries worldwide dealt with the issue of the women's vote as well. In 1838, the tiny British colony of the Pitcairn Islands granted women the vote, and in 1862 Sweden granted unmarried women the right to vote in local elections. In 1893, New Zealand became the first country to pass a universal suffrage law. In the twenty-seven years between New Zealand's universal suffrage law and the Nineteenth Amendment ratification in the United States, much of Australia and western Europe granted women equal voting rights or partial voting rights. The United Kingdom granted women over the age of thirty the right to vote in 1918; the legal age for men was twenty-one.

This excerpt from Jus Suffragii: The International Woman Suffrage News quotes U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby's certification of the Nineteenth Amendment, as it was announced and circulated in western Europe. The accompanying article reflect's European suffragettes' support for American women's successful struggle for the vote.

PRIMARY SOURCE

AMERICAN WOMEN ENFRANCHISED

      Secretary of State Proclaims Ratification.

              The Fight in Tennessee.

Text of the Proclamation Certifying Ratification of 19th Amendment.

Bainbridge Colby, Secretary of State of the United States of America.

To all to whom these presents shall come, greeting:

Know ye, That the Congress of the United States at the first session, sixty-sixth Congress begun at Washington on the nineteenth day of May in the year one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, passed a resolution as follows:

To wit:

Joint resolution.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution extending the right of suffrage to women.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two thirds of each House concurring therein), that the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States.

                     ARTICLE.

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

"Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

And, further, that it appears from official documents on file in the Department of Sate that the amendment to the Constitution of the United States proposed as aforesaid has been ratified by the Legislatures of the States of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

And, further, that the States whose Legislatures have so ratified the said proposed amendment, constitute three-fourths of the whole number of States in the United States.

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Bainbridge Colby, Secretary of State of the United States, by virtue and in pursuance of Section 205 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, do hereby certify that the amendment aforesaid has become valid to all intents and purposes as a part of the Constitution of the United States.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the Department of State to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this 26th day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred, and twenty.

                          BAINBRIDGE COLBY.

          Late News. U.S.A. Victory Complete.

Both Houses of Connecticut Legislature ratified the Woman Suffrage Amendment September, 14, 1920.

We print above the text of the Proclamation signed at 8 a.m. on August 26, by the Secretary of State of the United States of America, whereby is ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States of America constitution. The Nineteenth Amendment reads plainly and simply: "The rights of the citizens of the Untied States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." But the ratification of that Nineteenth Amendment has been no plain and simple task for American women.

On August 25—one day before the Proclamation was signed—the Anti-Suffrage party made a last stand against the amendment. They appeared before Justice Frederick L. Siddons in the District of Columbia Supreme Court, and asked for an injunction to restrain the Secretary of State from issuing a proclamation declaring the amendment ratified by the required thirty-six States. Justice Siddons dismissed the appeal. In the early hours of the following morning the thirty-sixth ratification—that of Tennessee—arrived in Washington. The package was taken to Secretary Colby at 3:45 a.m. by Mr. Cooke of the State Department. In an interview with the Press on August 26, Secretary Colby says:—

"There were some legal matters connected with the ratification that I wished to have examined by the chief law officer of the State Department, so I sent the papers to F.K. Nielson, the Solicitor of the State Department, with instructions to bring the papers to me at my home at 8 o'clock this morning. I have received a large number of messages asking me to act on the amendment with insistent promptitude. Fears were strong in some minds that the 'Antis' would effect some sort of injunction from the Courts to interfere with my Proclamation. While it was not my opinion that it would be becoming for me to resort to undue eagerness to avoid an opportunity for the judicial interference, I saw no reason whatever why I should conspicuously loiter."

In the meanwhile Tennessee—the eleventh-hour State to ratify—has proceeded to "rat," and has now definitely gone back on its ratification. According to telegrams in London papers it has actually expunged from its State Records all reference to its ratification of the Woman Suffrage Amendment. Depressing cables to this effect, prophesying the indefinite delay of Woman Suffrage in the United States as a result of Tennessee's action, have been appearing in the British Press, and your Editor, who has just returned to Headquarters after a long absence, has been plunged in the deepest gloom. For this September Victory Number, prepared by Miss Henen Ward, was already in the printer's hands. A printers' strike in Manchester, however, had prevented the setting-up of the paper; and perhaps for once such an happening has been a blessing in disguise, since it permits the addition of these late notes on the American position.

Headquarters has therefore spent a hectic morning (September 9) telephoning every available source of knowledge in London for the latest American news. We were aghast to learn from the American Embassy here that they had no authentic information later than June 21—the days of the flood as far as the Nineteenth Amendment is concerned. But the kindly London Editors of the New York Tribune and New York Herald had received Press cuttings up to August 28—one day later than the dates of the invaluable Press cuttings on this topic just received from Mrs Husted Harper—and told me that according to the latest reports American public opinion was in no doubt that the result of any Supreme Court action would be favourable to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and that Tennessee's treachery was a "back number"!

So we print our Victory Copy—and we greet our fellow Suffragists of America with a cheer as triumphant as any that must have sounded in the ears of Mrs. Catt when she returned to New York on August 27 to make a victorious procession through the City.

I end this note with a quotation from the New York World of August 27, which sums up the situation, and says a little of what we feel about the Anti-Suffragists of Tennessee:—

"To the last, Anti-Suffragists and obscure influences sympathizing with them delude themselves with false hopes. Forced to admit that the amendment was certain to be ultimately adopted, they conspired to deal the event to prevent women in many States from voting in the November elections. In the devices that they employed in Tennessee, the final fighting-ground, they showed the unscrupulousness of desperate tricksters.

"If they plan further efforts to nullify the action of the thirty-six States that ratified the amendment to the Federal Constitution, the opponents of Suffrage have but one choice. They must appeal to the United States Courts. There they may challenge in orderly manner the decision that has gone against them, on the chance of barring from the pools this year women in a number of States, but the prospects of success are not brilliant.

"In the meantime, in every State, regardless of the restrictions of local Constitutions and laws, preparations must be made by election officials for the recognition of women as qualified voters on the same terms as men. All obstacles to equal Suffrage have been swept aside at one stroke. Nowhere does any discretion remain or room or difference of opinion exist in the immediate application of the new provision of the Constitution of the United States."

                                                E. A.

September 9, 1920.

SIGNIFICANCE

Alice Paul, the founder of the National Women's Party in the United States and a strong activist for female suffrage, had begun her career as a suffragette in England, working side by side with Women's Political and Social Union founder Emmaline Pankhurst. Paul had participated in hunger strikes in England while protesting for female suffrage; prison authorities force-fed Paul and fellow hunger strikers Lucy Burns and Pankhurst, among others, creating a media storm that shocked British citizens concerning the women's treatment. When Paul returned to the United States in 1912 after earning her doctorate at the London School of Economics, she was already well-known in England and brought her experience to American women's rights groups in the fight for female suffrage.

Such relationships and connections stimulated British and European support for the women's vote in the United States but also helped further an international coalition of women fighting for broader women's rights. Women in the United Kingdom had the vote in 1918, but not until age thirty; in 1928, British women successfully lobbied to have their voting age lowered to twenty-one, on par with male voter qualifications.

Sweden followed with universal suffrage in 1921, Spain in 1931, and other European countries such as Portugal, Turkey, France, and Italy granted full or nearly full suffrage to women by the end of World War II.

The parliamentary procedures that anti-suffrage groups tried to use to block Tennessee's ratification, as noted above, were quickly negated, but the description of Europe's reaction to the last-minute challenge shows a deep appreciation for and interest in governmental and policy workings behind the achievement of women's suffrage. Activists in the United Kingdom were still working on changing the voting age, French activists fought for another twenty-five years for female voting rights, and western European women involved in efforts for the vote followed legislative efforts as part of their planning and organization. As the article notes, "And now that by the ratification of the States, Woman Suffrage, is, after long years of hope deferred, at last part of the U.S.A. Constitution, we only begin dimly to comprehend what this means for the world. It is the token of certain success to those, all the world over, who still struggle that women may be free. It brings home to them the full significance, the absolute worth-whileness of every bit of endeavour they make."

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Becker, Susan D. The Origins of the Equal Rights Amendment: American Feminism Between the Wars. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981.

The Concise History of Woman Suffrage: Selections from History of Woman Suffrage, edited by Mary Jo and Paul Buhle. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2005.

Felder, Deborah G. A Century of Women: The Most Influential Events in Twentieth-Century Women's History. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 1999.