The Right to Vote

by Alexander Keyssar

  17 Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 163 (1874).

  18 Anne F. Scott and Andrew M. Scott, One Half the People: The Fight for Woman Suffrage (Philadelphia, 1975), 81-95; DuBois, “Beyond the Compact,” 852-860; Martha G. Stapler, Woman Suffrage Year Book 1917 (New York, 1917), 29; Griffith, In Her Own Right, 155-156; Kraditor, Up from the Pedestal, 241, 250; New York Times, 10 February 1875; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 168; Carrie S. Burnham, Suffrage—The Citizen’s Birthright (Philadelphia, 1873), 3-5, 10-11. For a retrospective analysis of these decisions, see Francis Minor, The Law of Federal Suffrage (n.p., 1889). Notably, Congress in 1871 also declined to enfranchise women in Washington, D.C.

  19 Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York, 1998), 81-112.

  20 Cf. DuBois, “Beyond the Compact,” 845.

  21 Quotes in epigraphs from New York Times, 8 March 1869; Ohio Constitutional Convention 1873, vol. 2, 1802, 1978; Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of California, 1878, vol. 1 (Sacramento, CA, 1880), 1004-1007, 1365. Ann D. Gordon, “Woman Suffrage (Not Universal Suffrage) by Federal Amendment,” in Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, ed., Votes for Women! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation (Knoxville, TN, 1995), 5; DuBois, “Beyond the Compact,” 845.

  22 DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 19, 189-190; Gordon, “Woman Suffrage,” 5-22.

  23 Gordon, “Woman Suffrage,” 3-24; Buhle and Buhle, Concise History of Woman Suffrage, 16-22.

  24 Flexner, Century of Struggle, 176-178, 228; New York Times, 26 January 1887; HWS, vol. 4, 111.

  25 Gordon, “Woman Suffrage,” 13-14; Charles Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana: A Source Book of Constitutional Documents with Historical Introduction and Critical Notes, vol. 1 (Indianapolis, 1916), cxxiii-cxxiv; Kugler, From Ladies to Women, 121, 131, 136, 143-147; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 178, 228.

  26 Gordon, “Woman Suffrage,” 13-14; the detailed story of school suffrage in Michigan, including the attainment of municipal suffrage for women followed by a court decision ruling the law unconstitutional, is recounted in Mary Jo Adams, “The History of Suffrage in Michigan,” in Publications of the Michigan Political Science Association 3 (March 1898): 33-35; Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, 442-443. For the text of a law, see All the Laws of the State of Illinois Passed by the Thirty-Seventh General Assembly (Chicago, 1891), 102; and Massachusetts, Gen. Laws (1881), chap. 6, sec. 3. For examples of court cases dealing with school suffrage laws, see People ex rel. Ahrens v. English, 29 N.E. 678 (Ill. 1892); People ex rel. Tilden v. Welsh, 70 Ill. App. 641 (Ill. App. 2 Dist. 1896); In re Inspectors of Election, 25 N.Y. S. 1063 (Sup. Ct. Suffolk County 1893); People ex rel. Dillon v. Moir, 115 N.Y.S. 1029 (Sup. Ct. Onandaga County 1908); Gould v. Village of Seneca Falls, 118 N.Y.S. 648 (Sup. Ct. Seneca County 1909); Village of Waverly v. Waverly Waterworks, 125 N.Y.S. 339 (Sup. Ct. Tioga County 1910); State ex rel. Taylor v. French, 117 N.E. 173 (Ohio 1917).

  27 Kerber, No Constitutional Right, 109, 117-118; Charles A. Beard, American City Government: A Survey of Newer Tendencies (New York, 1912), 85; Howard McBain, The Law and the Practice of Municipal Home Rule (New York, 1916), 581-583; Adams, Right to Be People, 71; Report of the Committee of the Senate Upon the Relations Between Capital and Labor, vol. 3 (Washington, DC, 1885), 635-667.

  28 The data presented in Tables A.17 and A.18 are not comprehensive. No history of any form of partial suffrage has yet been written; the existing secondary compilations of laws are inconsistent, and legal histories in many states are difficult to pin down, because court decisions, legislatures, and city councils frequently changed the laws.

  29 Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana, vol. 1, cxxiii; Janet Cornelius, Constitution Making in Illinois 1818-1970 (Urbana, IL, 1972), 70-71; Debates Illinois 1869, vol. 1, 129, 156, 212, 451, 472, 487, 510, 532, 560, 613, 679; ibid., vol. 2, 1077, 1277, 1392, 1397-1399, 1477, 1502, 1528, 1551, 1725-1730, 1840-1844; Debates and Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, 1872-1873, vol. 1 (Harrisburg, PA, 1873), 133, 184, 192, 348, 471, 503, 525-565, 589, 601-626, 658, 693; ibid., vol. 2, 69, 148-150, 165; Barbara Allen Babcock, “Clara Shortridge Foltz: Constitution-Maker,” Indiana Law Journal 66 (1991): 852, 880-890. See also Debates of the Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1875, vol. 4 (Columbia, MO, 1944), 122-135; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 167; James J. Kenneally, “Woman Suffrage and the Massachusetts ‘Referendum’ of 1895,” The Historian 30 (August 1968): 619; for the complex sequence of debates in Texas, see A. Elizabeth Taylor, ed., Citizens at Last: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas (Austin, TX, 1987). For a substantial (but by its own acknowledgment, not comprehensive) listing of the bills introduced into state legislatures, see Stapler, Year Book 1917.

  30 Ohio Constitutional Convention 1873, vol. 2, 1817-1820, 1969, 1979; California Constitutional Convention 1878, vol. 1, 832-834, 1004, 1009; Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, vol. 1, 557-559, 571-578; A. D. Harlan, Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention 1872 and 1873: Its Members and the Result of Their Labors (Philadelphia, 1873), 42; HWS, vol. 3, 697.

  31 Ohio Constitutional Convention 1873, vol. 2, 1828, 1843, 1874-1875; see also ibid., 1010, 1819, 1821, 1870; ibid., vol. 2, 1, 1969; California Constitutional Convention 1878, vol. 1, 1005, 1366; Harlan, Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention 1872 and 1873, vol. 1, 550-563; HWS, vol. 2, 562; ibid., vol. 3, 105; DuBois, “Beyond the Compact,” 848-852; Buhle and Buhle, Concise History of Woman Suffrage, 253.

  32 Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Texas, 1875 (Galveston, TX, 1875), 191-192.

  33 DuBois, “Beyond the Compact,” 861; Griffith, In Her Own Right, 205.

  34 Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, vol. 1, 553; Harlan, Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention 1872 and 1873, 40; Ohio Constitutional Convention 1873, vol. 2, 1862, 1866-1875; California Constitutional Convention 1878, vol. 1, 832, 1004-1014, 1366, 1370.

  35 Ohio Constitutional Convention 1873, vol. 2, 1802, 1841; California Constitutional Convention 1878, vol. 1, 833, 1004-1005, 1007, 1010, 1365; Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, vol. 1, 608-610; HWS, vol. 3, 52-53, 209; DuBois, “Beyond the Compact,” 849-850; Buhle and Buhle, Concise History of Woman Suffrage, 319, 337.

  36 Charles Francis Adams, Jr. “The Protection of the Ballot in National Elections,” Journal of Social Science 1 (June 1869): 106; Ohio Constitutional Convention 1873, vol. 2, 1802, 1830-1838, 1960-1961, 1967-1968, 1978; California Constitutional Convention 1878, vol. 1, 1004-1007, 1012, 1365; HWS, vol. 3, 202, 214-215; cf. New York Times, 26 February 1909.

  37 California Constitutional Convention 1878, vol. 1, 1367; see also ibid., 1012; Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, 540-544; Ohio Constitutional Convention 1873, vol. 2, 1831, 1833, 1838, 1863, 1962-1965; Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Delaware Commencing December 1, 1896, vol. 1 (Milford, DE, 1958), 1006.

  38 Ohio Constitutional Convention 1873, vol. 2, 1825, 1949; see also ibid., 1824-1826, 1841, 1868; California Constitutional Convention 1878, vol. 1, 1004-1005, 1011-1015; Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, vol. 1, 542, 550-552, 557-563, 566-569.

  39 Susan E. Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign Against Woman Suffrage (Madison, WI, 1997), 4-12, 19-23, 55-56, 91, 139, 180, 220-221; Kraditor, Up from the Pedestal, 15; Buechler, Transformation, 115-117, 141, 143; Evans, Feminists, 23-29, 44, 90-91.

  40 Flexner, Century of Struggle, 311-312; Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood, 55-56, 91, 180, 221; HWS, vol. 4, 21.

  41 Elna C. Green, Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997), xiii-xv, 6-8, 10-14, 23-32, 52, 80-98; HWS, vol. 4, 98.

  42 Gosnell, Democracy, 52; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 166, 181; Evans, Feminists, 27; Beverly Beeton, Women Vote in the West: The Woman Suffrage Movement 1869-96 (New York, 1986), 1-7, 15-19, 31-48, 111-113, 127-130; Madsen, Battle for the Ballot, vii-ix, 6-25; Richard White, “It’s Your Misf
ortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West (Norman, OK, 1991), 353-387; Alan P. Grimes, The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage (New York, 1967); HWS, vol. 4, 509-518; Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 124-158; Jean B. White, “Woman’s Place Is in the Constitution: The Struggle for Equal Rights in Utah in 1895,” in Nancy Cott, ed., History of Women in the United States: Historical Articles on Women’s Lives and Activities , vol. 19, part 1 (Munich, Germany, 1992), 69-94 (hereafter cited as HWUS); Rebecca Edwards, “Pioneers at the Polls: Woman Suffrage in the West,” in Jean H. Baker, ed., Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited (New York, 2002), 90-101.

  43 Buechler, Transformation, 8; HWS, vol. 4, 509-518, 994-998; Rebecca J. Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 (New York, 2004), 12, 67-68, 95, 99, 101 135, 170-172. Mead also argues that advocates of suffrage used innovative organizing tactics and took advantage of the small size of territorial legislatures. That political battles over suffrage often were closely fought in the East during this period is made clear by the listing of legislative actions in Stapler, Year Book 1917, 27-42: in Michigan, for example, both houses of the legislature approved a women’s suffrage amendment as early as 1870, but it was vetoed by the governor (p. 33); in Rhode Island, a suffrage amendment was passed by both houses in 1885, but failed through a technicality; and in 1897, a constitution that included women’s suffrage was drafted but rejected on other grounds.

  44 Epigraphs from Debates Delaware 1896, vol. 1, 436; HWS, vol. 5, 270; New York Times, 28 April 1910; New York Times, 7 October 1893. For an example of a later editorial against suffrage, see New York Times, 6 December 1908.

  45 Sara H. Graham, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven, CT, 1996), 6-7, 37-52; Buhle and Buhle, Concise History of Woman Suffrage, 32-33.

  46 Philip N. Cohen, “Nationalism and Suffrage: Gender Struggle in Nation-Building America,” Signs 21 (Spring 1996): 712-716; Ellen C. DuBois, “Working Women, Class Relations and Suffrage Militance: Harriot Stanton Blatch and the New York Woman Suffrage Movement, 1894-1909,” Journal of American History 74 ( June 1987): 37.

  47 For early examples, see HWS, vol. 2, 779-780; ibid., vol. 3, 293-294, 804.

  48 Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 164-167; HWS, vol. 4, 148; Kraditor, Up from the Pedestal, 257-261.

  49 Green, Southern Strategies, 8-18, 85-97; Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 167-178; Gordon, “Woman Suffrage,” 15-16; on the role of African-American women, see Terborg-Penn, African American Women; Graham, Woman Suffrage, 22-23; Eileen L. McDonagh, “The Significance of the Nineteenth Amendment: A New Look at Civil Rights, Social Welfare and Woman Suffrage Alignments in the Progressive Era,” in Naomi Lynn, ed., Women, Politics, and the Constitution (New York, 1990), 64; Kraditor, Up from the Pedestal, 253, 263.

  50 Buechler, Transformation, 43, 99, 117; HWS, vol. 4, 317; ibid., vol. 5, 32, 329-330; Griffith, In Her Own Right, 129, 155, 205-206; New York Times, 6 February 1898; McDonagh, “Significance of the Nineteenth Amendment,” 63-64; Kraditor, Up from the Pedestal, 260; DuBois, “Working Women,” 34-58.

  51 DuBois, “Working Women,” 37-40; Griffith, In Her Own Right, 194; Buechler, Transformation, 121, 137-142; Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 9-10, 13-14, 159-186.

  52 Flexner, Century of Struggle, 230, 256, 271; Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, 457-458; Sharon H. Strom, “Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts,” Journal of American History 62 (September 1975): 299-300; James J. Kenneally, “Woman Suffrage and the Massachusetts ‘Referendum’ of 1895,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 1, 52-68. On municipal suffrage between 1890 and 1920, see Arthur Holcombe, State Government in the United States (New York, 1926), 89; Maureen A. Flanagan, Charter Reform in Chicago (Carbondale, IL, 1987), 83-86; People ex rel. Ahrens v. English, 29 N.E. 678 (Ill. 1892); People ex rel. Tilden v. Welsh, 70 Ill. App. 641 (Ill. App. 2 Dist. 1896); Scown v. Czarnecki, 106 N.E. 276 (Ill. 1914); People ex rel. Jurgensen v. Czarnecki, 107 N.E. 184 (Ill. 1914); Franklin v. Westfall, 112 N.E. 974 (Ill. 1916); State ex rel. Taylor v. French, 117 N.E. 173 (Ohio, 1917). For a listing of legislative proposals on full and partial suffrage, their disposition by state legislatures, as well as gubernatorial vetoes and court actions, see Stapler, Year Book 1917, 27-42.

  53 Debates Delaware 1896, vol. 1, 1002, 1025; for other examples of constitutional debates, see Joseph H. Brewer, Charles H. Bender, and Charles H. McCurren, eds., Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Michigan, Convened in the City of Lansing, Tuesday, October 22, 1907, vol. 2 (Lansing, MI, 1907), 966, 1021, 1068-1079; for more positive views, see ibid., vol. 1, 418-421; Ronald Schaffer, “The Problem of Consciousness in the Woman Suffrage Movement: A California Perspective,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 368; regarding the Pope and suffrage, see New York Times, 22 April and 23 April 1909.

  54 DuBois, “Working Women,” 39; HWS, vol. 5, 6; Debates Delaware 1896, 427; Kraditor, Up from the Pedestal, 198; Kenneally, “Woman Suffrage,” 63-64; Graham, Woman Suffrage, 11-21; Adams, “Suffrage in Michigan,” 48; William H. Steele, Revised Record of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York, May 8, 1894-September 29, 1894, vol. 2 (Albany, NY, 1900), 433-436.

  55 Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, CT, 1987), 26-29, 32-33, 53; DuBois, “Working Women,” 47-48; Graham, Woman Suffrage, 33-37; Strom, “Leadership,” 399.

  56 Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 192-194.

  57 DuBois, “Working Women,” 34-36, 44-45; New York Times, 11 January 1909; HWS, vol. 4, 311-313; Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 195, 200-201, 205, 208-209; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 197, 225-226, 255; Susan Englander, Class Coalition and Class Conflict in the California Woman Suffrage Movement, 1907-1912 (San Francisco, 1992), 119; Buhle and Buhle, Concise History of Woman Suffrage, 367-368; cf. DuBois, Stanton , 98-99, 142; HWS, vol. 4, 71.

  58 Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 24, 29-31, 33, 55; Nancy S. Dye, As Equals and Sisters: Feminism, the Labor Movement, and the Women’s Trade Union League of New York (Columbia, MO, 1980), 8, 18, 125-127; for examples of arguments regarding social reform and women as workers, see E. S. Nichols, ed., Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Ohio, 1912, vol. 1 (Columbus, OH, 1912), 603, 614, 618, 620.

  59 Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 22-24, 30-31; Dye, As Equals and Sisters, 3-4, 13, 122-125, 132-135, 139-140; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 248; DuBois, “Working Women,” 46-48; Buechler, Transformation , 157-158; Buhle and Buhle, Concise History of Woman Suffrage, 374-379; Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York, 1984), 129.

  60 Strom, “Leadership,” 303; Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920 (Urbana, IL, 1981), 205, 216-235; Kraditor, Up from the Pedestal, 19; New York Times, 5 July 1908; ibid., 1 March 1909, 15 September 1915; see also ibid., 2 February, 10 February, 11 February, 21 February, and 25 February 1909; and ibid., 28 February and 24 April 1910; Juliet S. Poyntz, “Revolution and Suffrage,” Justice 1 (29 March 1919): 6. Regarding Socialists and the Industrial Workers of the World and their ambivalent relation to the movement, see Meredith Tax, The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880-1917 (New York, 1980), 179-183; DuBois, “Working Women,” 57; Dye, As Equals and Sisters, 135.

  61 Englander, Class Coalition, 2, 6-7, 95-97, 110, 115, 119, 122, 128, 131, 136-141; Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 230; Wilda M. Smith, “A Half Century of Struggle: Gaining Woman Suffrage in Kansas,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 1, 135-141; T. A. Larson, “The Woman Suffrage Movement in Washington,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 1, 319-349; Ronald Schaffer, “The Montana Woman Suffrage Campaign, 1911-14,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 1, 352-366; Ronald Schaffer, “California Perspective,” 368-390; Marilley, Woman Suffrage, 206-207, 210; Graham, Woman Suffrage, 27; Stapler, Year Book 1917, 28.

  62 New York Times, 9 January, 16 January, 30 January 1910; ibid., 14 April 1910, 7 February 1915; HWS, vol. 5, 27
0; J. Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s (Urbana, IL, 1973), 3.

  63 Joseph F. Mahoney, “Woman Suffrage and the Urban Masses,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 417-429; John D. Buenker, “The Urban Political Machine and Woman Suffrage: A Study in Political Adaptability,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 437-441, 449-451; Ronald Schaffer, “The New York City Woman Suffrage Party, 1909-1919,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 460-466; Doris Daniels, “Building a Winning Coalition: The Suffrage Fight in New York State,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 489-490; Eileen L. McDonagh and H. Douglas Price, “Woman Suffrage in the Progressive Era: Patterns of Opposition and Support in Referenda Voting, 1910-1918,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 576-578; Patricia O’Keefe Easton, “Woman Suffrage in South Dakota: The Final Decade, 1911-1920,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 617-634; Louise L. Stevenson, “Women Anti-Suffragists in the 1915 Massachusetts Campaign,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 647-648; Thomas G. Ryan, “Male Opponents and Supporters of Woman Suffrage: Iowa in 1916,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 2, 655-663; Marilyn Grant, “The 1912 Suffrage Referendum: An Exercise in Political Action,” in HWUS, vol. 19, pt. 1, 291-315; Graham, Woman Suffrage, 70-73; Paul B. Beers, Pennsylvania Politics Today and Yesterday: The Tolerable Accommodation (University Park, PA, 1980), 65-66; New York Times, 4 September and 5 September 1912; Flexner, Century of Struggle, 269, 280, 306-307, 310-313; Dye, As Equals and Sisters, 136; Buechler, Transformation, 15. Manuela Thurner points out that many antisuffrage women argued (and likely believed) that women would be more effective advocates of social and political causes without the vote; it seems unlikely, however, that this line of thinking greatly influenced the votes of men who voted against enfranchisement. See Manuela Thurner, “‘Better Citizens Without the Ballot’: American Antisuffrage Women and Their Rationale During the Progressive Era,” Journal of Women’s History 5 (Spring 1993): 33-60.

  64 E. S. Nichols, ed., Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Ohio, 1913, vol. 2 (Columbus, OH, 1913), 600-639, 1853-1857; quotations from ibid., 604-607, 629, 632-635; cf. Stevenson, “Women Anti-Suffragists,” 638-651; and Graham, Woman Suffrage, 11-21. On the outcome in Ohio, see C. L. Martzloff, “Ohio: Changes in the Constitution,” American Political Science Review 6 (November 1912): 573-576; Robert E. Cushman, “Voting Organic Laws,” Political Science Quarterly 28 (June 1913): 207-229; Frank G. Bates, “Constitutional Amendments and Referred Acts, November Election, 1914,” American Political Science Review 9 (February 1915): 101-107. The examples in Ohio of delegates stating that they opposed suffrage but supported a referendum suggests that the string of referendum defeats between 1912 and 1915 may in fact have been a sign of the movement’s growing strength.