Suffrage's Abolitionist Roots and Internal Divisions

In the antebellum years, abolition of slavery was the paramount cause for Northern reformers, and suffrage for women was not on the agenda of most reformers. After attending the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, which banned women from participation, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott began to consider women’s rights more seriously. In 1848, the two held a convention in Seneca Falls. Attendees crafted a list of resolutions—the most controversial of which was women’s right to vote, successfully argued for by prominent abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Two years later, the movement had gathered enough steam for abolitionist Lucy Stone put together the first national convention on women’s rights, held in Worcester, Massachusetts.

After the Civil War, with slavery abolished, many reformers focused on securing the franchise for the newly emancipated. Here the two factions split over the question of whether to advocate for women, or whether to insist on universal suffrage. Some prominent suffragists, like Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone pushed for African-American male suffrage first, but others, including Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, were deeply committed to women’s suffrage, and willing to stoop to racist appeals to make their case.

Black women found themselves in the difficult position of having to prioritize either their race or their sex in their advocacy. Sojourner Truth, for example, worried that enfranchising black men first would enable them to dominate black women, while Frances Harper wished black women would not “put a single straw in the way, if only the men of the race could obtain what they wanted” (AERA minutes, quoted in History of Women’s Suffrage, v.2).

Another area of differing views among suffragists was whether to pursue a national amendment or focus on state campaigns. As the constitutional amendment—first introduced in 1878—languished in committee, women fought at the state level via local organizations. By the turn of the century most resources were directed to those battles, and Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, supporters of the national amendment, were given only reluctant permission by their organization to work in Washington, D.C. They took that lukewarm support and put together the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, complete with marching bands, tableaux, floats, and mounted brigades, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.

This more direct, confrontational strategy eventually led Alice Paul and others to split from NAWSA to form the more militant National Women’s Party (NWP). Their actions, while less violent and destructive than suffragettes in Britain, alienated many, but also achieved higher visibility. Once the United States entered World War I, mainstream suffragists suspended suffrage efforts and dedicated themselves to war work, but not the NWP. Its members continued to picket the White House as “Silent Sentinels” for more than two years until Congress passed the 19th Amendment.

Though the White House initially reacted to Silent Sentinel protests with only minor annoyance, crack-downs on so-called unpatriotic dissent at home became common after the United States entered World War I. Repercussions progressed from simple arrest-and-release to months-long sentences at a workhouse, and swept up eldery society women along with young dissidents. The incarcerated women demanded political prisoner  status—demands that were repeatedly denied. They continued to protest through hunger strikes and refusals to wear prison garb, and would not perform manual labor. To the  prison guards, the activists had abandoned the privileges of middle-class womanhood by  refusing to behave like proper women. They were subjected to beatings, forced to stand for hours at a time, and manually force-fed.

After a particularly brutal episode on November 14, 1917, known as the “Night of Terror,” word of their treatment leaked out and the women were released. Public shock at the brutality became a powerful source of support for the suffrage movement. The women were viewed as martyrs in the movement, a status which they marked by wearing a “Jailed for Freedom” pin, and by going on a speaking tour (the “Prison Special”) to recount their suffering.