Personal Argument Essay

In 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, the fight for women’s voting rights began when two women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony wanted to expand women’s rights and opportunities. They wanted to make women self-sufficient and equal with men. They were unaware that an organized meeting by wives and mothers about the rights of women would make history. This would be the beginning of a long hard struggle for the rights of women and the battle would span over a time of 70 years. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a wife and mother of three young boys, hated the day to day life of housework and living in a small town. She complained to her friends over tea about how women were not treated equally by men. Stanton and her friends decided to hold a meeting to discuss the rights of a Woman. They drafted “A Declaration of Rights and Sentiments” for their concerns. They wanted to add “and women” to “all men are created equal” to the Declaration of Independence. They also included 12 ways to foster equality for women in education, law, labor, morality, and religion, but the ninth called for women to vote. How could women change the laws if they could not vote? Stanton’s resolution for women’s voting rights passed by a slim majority, but most of the men were comfortable with the way life was. Men did not want to give women what they wanted. In 1861, the civil war broke out and the women set aside their fight and supported the war. The war ended April 9, 1865, and the women’s issue was pushed to the side to be dealt with later. The Constitution was amended several times after this, but there was no mention of gender in any of them. Stanton and Anthony did not like the newest amendments. They decided to organize the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and another woman by the name of Lucy Stone, organized the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Men were not allowed in these groups. Both groups agreed, the only way to get votes for women, is to get new laws. The Susan B Anthony Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1878. It lay there for over 40 years. Men saw no point in women voting. They felt women had no understanding of politics and they would only vote the way their men wanted them to vote. There was also the fear of women taking over the government. With this kind of thinking, the Anthony Amendment seemed like it would lie dormant forever, until a well admired Alice Paul and several other women would join the fight.
In 1913, Alice Paul helped plan a parade. It was one of the first parades in support for women voting. This parade became a turning point in their long struggle. Alice organized this parade the day before the Inauguration of the 28th President, Woodrow Wilson. She knew there would be a crowd of people there, to include the media and this would help her get attention about their event. She wanted women to gather from so many different places so that their presence would be overwhelming and no one would miss this point in the parade. Over 8,000 women came to Washington D.C. to be a part of this march. These women were courageous and full of purpose. They demanded an amendment to the Constitution. The crowd, being mostly men, did not like what they were seeing. They were intimidated by all of the women marching who were seeking their own power. The men harassed the women and did not see this as a laughing matter. The police officers, who were also male, did little to protect the women. They merely stood by and laughed at what they were seeing. The march turned into a small riot and a few National Guard troops and a group of male college students joined together and pushed the crowd back. Federal cavalry troops were called upon to help restore order. This march was projected to last only a few hours, instead, it last into the early nightfall. The next day, the newspaper coverage was just what Alice Paul had hoped for. Overnight, the right for women to vote went from a few activists to a national topic of discussion.
British women were using civil disobedience to gain voting rights. Holding demonstrations, breaking windows, cutting phone wires, vandalizing train cars and burning down buildings to name a few. They were labeled as “Suffragettes”. Many of these women were arrested and jailed for their actions and the police would show brutal force. But some of the other women were just the opposite. They would picket in front of the White House. One of these women was Alice Paul. She knew how the women should picket in front of the White House. The women were to be “silent sentinels”. Instead of yelling out their requests, they would write them down on cloth banners for him and everyone to see. Eventually over 2000 women would take turns at picketing. Picketing was unheard of in 1917 that no one knew what to do. Woodrow Wilson would tip his hat to the women as he passed and had the guards offer them coffee. Wilson’s patience with the picketers had worn thin by his second Inauguration. Offers of free coffee were over. Paul’s army not only was picketing the White House, but they were also picketing the U.S. Capitol. World War I became top priority at this time for the President and the suffragists set aside work on enfranchisement, just like what they did during the Civil War. Alice Paul on the other hand did not. She felt “votes-for-women-first” policy should be first priority. These women were labeled as unwomanly, unpatriotic, dangerous, undesirable and treasonable. The newspapers made a “gentleman’s agreement” to minimize their coverage of the picketers thinking the decrease in publicity would prompt them to stop. The chief of police warned Alice Paul that future pickets would face arrests if they did not stop. Paul did not stop. The first arrests began in June 1917 for obstructing traffic. At first, all the women got were fines and a few days in jail. It escalated too many arrests and longer jail time. By July, the police were more concerned with disciplining the women than the behavior of the crowd. The picketing continued and even stiffer penalties were implemented. This did not deter the picketers. Occoquan prison became full of the women suffragists. The women would protest the treatment they were receiving and started to go on hunger strikes. The conditions inside the jails were deplorable and miserable. The food was rotted meat, corn bread with green mold, grits containing worms, rat droppings and dead flies. They had no access to medical attention and it was an almost total isolation. This near starvation diet left the women too weak to stand and move from their beds. One of the women (Paul) was told to stop the hunger strike or she would be taken to an unfortunate place. This was the prisons way of threatening them. After three days of refusing food, Paul was taken to a psychiatric ward and subjected to force feedings three times a day. Alice Paul and Rose Winslow were going through the torture of gagging and swallowing six inches of stiff rubber tubing forced down their throat while liquids were poured through them and the pain of a parched, burning throat for a period of fourteen days. The women wondered how people of this nation could let this be done. The suffrage inmates were denied regular access to legal counsel and visitors, so they smuggled out secret accounts of their treatment with prisoners that had completed their sentences. President Wilson sent a prison commissioner to verify conditions firsthand. The commissioner reported back that there was nothing wrong in the jail. Suffrage lawyers arrange a hearing for the Occoquan prisoners before a Virginia judge on November 23. Reporters packed the court room to get a look at the prisoner’s condition. They witnessed the women as haggard, red eyed, slender and weak. Some were stretched out on the benches too weak to sit up. The judge pardoned the women from this horrifying experience. Alice Paul’s seven month jail sentence ended after five weeks. She spent three of those five on a hunger strike. The women were convinced that they were jailed without reason and sued the government for damages and sought to have their records cleared. Why were they charged with “obstructing sidewalk traffic” when it was the mobs who actually disrupted the scene? Why didn’t the police discipline violent crowds? Eventually, the Appeals Court agreed and overturned all of their arrests and convictions.
On January 9, 1918, President Wilson finally gave the suffragists what they wanted-his support. He saw the hard work the women had done during the war time and it influenced him to speak. Exactly one year after picketing, the House of Representatives began considering the Susan B Anthony amendment. The representatives cast their second vote in three years on the federal amendment for women suffrage. This time it passed 274 votes to 136. This was only half the battle. Next came the senate. Preliminary tallies showed the amendment II votes shy of Senate passage. They thought that it would be easy to recruit the needed votes. They were wrong. Suffragists made several trips to Washington D.C. to lobby senators for support. They asked recruits beyond the nation’s capital to stir up local pressure in the home states of wavering senators. Suffragists describe Alice Paul’s influence over people as giving people courage, physical strength and mental strength to make decisions we made. Senate support grew, but by midsummer they were still projected as two votes short. Alice returned to her familiar weapon. Her arsenal of protest banners. August 6, the National Woman’s Party suffragists staged a demonstration in the front yard they shared with the President. Lafayette Square. No sooner than the women speak, the police started arresting them. Alice Paul was one of them even though she only watched empty handed with other bystanders. 48 suffragists were whisked off to court. Others continued in the following days. By this time all of the 1917 suffrage arrest and convictions had been overturned. Prosecutors struggled over how to charge these new detainees. What could they be charged with? They were charged with “holding a meeting on public grounds” and “climbing on a statue”. The women refused to pay the fines. The judge was forced to the pattern of 1917 and sent the women to jail. This time he gave them shorter sentences so the hunger strikes would not be so dramatic. Authorities reopened a condemned workhouse at the District Jail in order to accommodate the overflow of inmates. The jail had unhealthy water, damp cells, air tainted with sewer gas, and rats. The women once again went on a hunger strike. An outcry from the public over these conditions forced officials to release them after five days.
On September 16, senators threatened recess without voting on the Anthony amendment and suffragists returned to Lafayette Square. The same day Wilson had pledged to urge the passage of the amendment by an early vote. Influenced by this protest, senators agreed to vote on the amendment after all. When senators voted on October 1, the amendment failed to pass by two votes. Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt chose another plan of action. It too failed and the net result of election gains and losses left suffragists two votes short again. February 2, 1919, a senator from South Carolina announced he would vote for suffrage. The Anthony amendment was one vote away from passing, and a new Senate vote was set for February 10. As expected, the Senate vote on February 10 came up short by one man. Congress adjourned its session on March 3, 1919 without reconsidering the Anthony amendment. The house support of 1918 would no longer count. Two months later, President Wilson recruited the missing vote for woman suffrage, a new senator from Georgia. Wilson used his executive powers to call Congress into special session. Legislators convened on May 19. By May 21 the House had taken the required action of again approving the Anthony amendment. This time there were 42 “yes” votes to spare. The senate held its fifth and final vote on June 4, 1919. It passed with two extra votes.
It had taken from 1878 until 1919, 41 years, for the Anthony amendment to be approved by Congress. The work in the nation’s capital was finally done. Now the voting rights of women were up to the states.
NAWSA and the National Woman’s Party were ready for battle. Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul had their troops stationed at branch offices in most states and were well acquainted with local leaders. Antis were ready too.
Timing for a ratification fight could not have come at a worse time. Legislatures were out of session in June 1919. They would not reconvene until fall or even next year. Suffragist could not afford delays. Catt and Paul started their campaigns by telegraphing state governors. They were urged to bring the amendment before their legislatures, in special session if necessary. Some governors opposed the amendment and refused to call their legislatures into session. The ratification momentum died.
Suffragists were running out of states. Out of 48 states, 6 had now rejected the amendment. Only seven states had yet to weigh in on the issue and most of these lay in or near the antisuffrage South. By Monday, August 9, the senate had approved the amendment 25 to 4. The fate was now up to the house. They have 351/2 states. The amendment came to a vote in the Tennessee House on August 18. Harry Burn cast his vote in favor of ratification in order to bring credit to his republican party and also because of his mom. He said mom knows best.
Antisuffragists tried to discredit the Tennessee vote. They attempted to overturn it and maneuvered to keep the governor from certifying the results. It took six days before the Tennessee governor signed the “certificate of ratification” needed to prove the state’s vote.
When the certificate reached Washington, D.C., in the early morning hours of August 26, the U.S. secretary of state was roused from his sleep as he requested. After confirming the document was in order, he signed papers that declared the completed ratification of the 19th Amendment. His action ended the quest for women’s voting rights that had begun 72 years and five weeks earlier at an arranged meeting in Seneca Falls, New York. Women now had the power to vote on their side.
By the election of 1920, 27 million women had full suffrage rights. Not all these women chose to vote. Nine more presidential elections would come and go, over 36 years, before as many women went to the polls as men.

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[ 1 ]. Ann Bausum, National Geographic, “Winning the fight for a woman’s right to vote”, (2004), 17-25.
[ 2 ]. Stephen B. Oates, Charles J. Errico, “Portrait of America”, volume 2: From 1865, Tenth Edition, 117.
[ 3 ]. Ann Bausum, National Geographic, “Winning the fight for a woman’s right to vote”, (2004), 49-51.
[ 4 ]. Stephen B. Oates, Charles J. Errico, “Portrait of America”, volume 2: From 1865, Tenth Edition, 120-121
[ 5 ]. Ann Bausum, National Geographic, “Winning the fight for a woman’s right to vote”, (2004), 56-59
[ 6 ]. Ann Bausum, National Geographic, “Winning the fight for a woman’s right to vote”, (2004), 61-69
[ 7 ]. Ann Bausum, National Geographic, “Winning the fight for a woman’s right to vote”, (2004), 71-81
[ 8 ]. Ann Bausum, National Geographic, “Winning the fight for a woman’s right to vote”, (2004), 83