THE PASSAGE of the 19th Amendment was the culmination of a struggle that took decades of persistence and organization by multiple generations of women. The 19th Amendment was the largest expansion of voting rights in American History, and could have only been accomplished through the tireless work of women across the country. Women were not given the right to vote, rather they fought for it.
PREDATING the historic 19th Amendmen by 27 years, the State of Colorado adopted women's suffrage. The state became the first state in the country to do so via a popular referendum.
THIS YEAR, in 2020, marks 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This exhibit explores the history which led to women's suffrage and the women who fought for the cause. In addition, Battle for the Ballot profiles key Colorado women who were instrumental in Colorado's 1893 suffrage referendum, and also tells the stories of some of Aurora's modern voters.
WITHIN the historical context of colonial DESPITE the patriarchal constructs America, women lived within a social and subjugating women's enfranchisement, economic patriarchal structure - society women of the Early Republic played key dominated by males. This social construct was roles in shaping what America would predominantly carried over from European eventually become. A concept known as traditions and norms, especially amongst the 'republican motherhood,' pervaded American American aristocracy and economic elite. culture before, during and after the Further solidifying this social stratification was American Revolution. Republican the legal principle of 'coverture.' Coverture motherhood encouraged women to attain an dictated that upon marriage, the husband education and embody a persona embedded assumed the property and legal authority over in national pride by living and proselytizing his wife. Before marriage, coverture ruled that characters of virtue. Within the context of her father oversaw her rights. Women could the era, and in juxtaposition to their not own property or land, control their own European counterparts, republican money or sign legal documents. At the time, motherhood increased political agency for property ownership was a precondition for the American women and broadened right to vote, which all but eliminated women's opportunities outside the home. Yet when involvement in the political process. It was not evaluated from a contemporary viewpoint, until the 1830s that states began the long republican motherhood placed a large process of dismantling coverture by passing emphasis on childrearing and domestic married women's property acts. responsibility furthering a cult of domesticity. This new 'motherhood,' rooted in nationalism and patriarchy in a newly formed country, centered on the duty of women to raise the next generation of American male voters and guide the development of virtuous children. It was through this education and changing social expectations that the women of the Early American Republic began changing constructs of womanhood and redefining their culturally accepted place within society.
1795 painting of an American family exemplifies the era's concept of a woman's role in society. Here the subject is embracing her husband's arm, eyes drawn upon her children and mindfully watching over the young.
James Peale, The Artist and His Family, 1795
THE IDEALIZED "republican motherhood" along
Changes such as closing saloons, regulating with the cult of domesticity placed women at the alcohol and affirming the need to own property moral center of the home. Therefore, female and gain financial security to shield their family advocates could present themselves as the from drunken husbands. These reformers also moral conscience of the nation. This role of argued they should be able to divorce their guardians of virtue allowed many women to husbands and sought increased protection from expand their spheres of influence beyond the domestic violence. These women temperance home into public arenas focused on moral issues leaders saw a correlation between reform advocacy of the era. Campaigns to establish mental and the right to vote. To make a change, political asylums and movements to prohibit the sale of representation was key. alcohol were spearheaded by women. These advocates were legitimized by the gender
ANOTHER important reform movement in which specific social constructs of purity and women gained public agency was the anti-slavery righteousness. Alcoholism and public fight of the 19th century known as abolitionism. drunkenness by men of the early 19th century Female novelists and lecturers used their role in left many women, operating within the cult of society to propagate the immorality of slavery in domesticity, devoid of male support in relation America. It was through these reform movements, to raising children or responsibilities around the and the result of organization and public advocacy, home. Due to male alcoholism and a newly that American women began to fight for their own found public voice, women advocated for enfranchisement and began challenging social changes in society. perceptions of rights in the United States.
IN JULY of 1848 a delegation of women of women's disenfranchisement as well as several gathered in Seneca Falls, New York "to discuss other systematic oppressions women faced during the social, civil, and religious condition and this period. In addition to calling for voting rights, rights of woman." This gathering was organized the Declaration of Sentiments drew attention to by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and other inequities such as lack of higher education, local Quakers. The Seneca Falls Convention property and monetary subjugation, lack of attracted around 300 prominent reformers, employment opportunities, the inability to hold abolitionists and proponents of women's rights. elected office and several other male-centric The convention was one of the first public societal systems. announcements that women were asking for a whole series of rights and it laid the groundwork THE CONVENTION and resulting declaration had for the future success of women's suffrage. tremendous reach beyond Seneca Falls. In the ensuing years several similar women's rights
AT THE convention, Stanton and the Quaker conventions were organized around the country. In women presented two prepared documents, the 1850, the annual National Women's Rights Declaration of Sentiments and an accompanying Convention convened in Worcester, Massachusetts, list of resolutions. The Declaration of Sentiments where it was held until the outbreak of the borrowed language from the United States American Civil War. The National Women's Rights Declaration of Independence. This document, Convention relied heavily on the groundwork laid signed by 100 of the 300 attendees of the out at Seneca Falls. Seneca Falls Convention outlined the injustices
ONLY a few months before the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, the land which would become Colorado was brought into the United States via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (the treaty ending the Mexican- American War). The U.S. placed most of the Front Range land under the jurisdiction of the Kansas Territory. In 1861, Kansas became a state and was the first state to allow women to vote in local school board elections. In 1869, the territorial legislature of Wyoming granted universal women's suffrage and the Territory of Utah followed suit in 1870. In the following decade the territories of Washington and Montana joined the ranks of U.S. lands with gender neutral voting rights. Wyoming, followed by Colorado, is credited as the first state in the country to grant the right to vote for women. The newly forming states of the West were positioned to adopt progressive political reforms as a measure to attract settlement. Furthermore, settling the West was rugged and required nontraditional gender labor which made Western culture inherently dissimilar from the East.
WHEN Colorado became a state in 1876, activists' efforts to include suffrage in the state constitution failed, yet the constitution allowed for people of the new state to expand enfranchisement via a popular vote, known as a referendum. The state constitution did allow women to vote in local school elections, yet denied full participation in the political process. The following year, in 1877, a statewide referendum was organized to grant women the right to vote. The campaign garnered support from national suffrage leaders like Susan B. Anthony. Despite an organized grass roots campaign, support from the territorial Governor and a speaking tour that reached deep into the mountains - the referendum failed to pass. Some voters, particularly businessmen and saloonkeepers, were afraid that if women could vote, they would ban the sale of alcohol, known as temperance. Many historians contribute the temperance movement as a leading cause for the failure of the 1877 referendum.
At the next ele~tion in Colorad o an am~ndment to the constitu t ion guaran. teeing to women the ri.ght •of suffrage will be v9ted upon Only thgse wh o a re now qualified electors will be e n • titled to vote upon this q11estion. But whi le only the men will have access t o the ballot•box, the women , who con • · stitute the most interested party, areconducting the campaign w i th match• less spirit and enterprise. Already a number of women who have become more or less conspicuous as public ad • yocates of female suffrage, are on the Colorado stump, exciting the rugged mountaineers with their fervid · elo• qilence, and as the campa ign advances others are going to the _fro,n~: Susan B. A n thony will shortly place herself at the head of the ?:dva1icing hosts, and Lucy •SLone; with· Miss Lelia E. Part• r idge, of this city, a new- stump ora t or i n the suffrage cause , will aid her. Al • togethf:r· Co lorado will experience a very lively seasbri - Pl1ilatlelpltia Times.
This July 21, 1877 Colorado Springs Gazette article outlines the efforts of suffrage leaders in Colorado leading up to the October referendum.
PUB,LIBBED E VERY S,A:•l'ORDAY
E .. H .. N . PATTE.RSON. ,SATURDAY. NOVEMB,ER 17, 1rm
TH:s compl ,e,te, canvass o f tbe vot.e of 11 ,eot,orado at tbe Oct.obe1 r eleetl,oo .sbows a. 1 to tal v o te or about 22,100!•· Wom~~'e sur: II trage, bad G, 6 12 v,otes, whUe lj,053 "'°'ea ,• w ,e n ,cu 1t ,sgalost Jt:.
THE ABOLITION of slavery in 1865 prompted a
The Amendment affirmed the new rights of national debate about citizenship and voting freed black women and men in 1868. The law rights. During the drafting of the 13th, 14th and stated that everyone born in the United States, 15th Amendments, women's rights advocates including former slaves, was an American lobbied-unsuccessfully-to enshrine women's citizen. No state could pass a law that took suffrage in the Constitution. Many crafters of away their rights to "life, liberty, or property." these provisions were supporters of women's The Amendment also added the first mention right to vote in principle, yet feared that the of gender into the Constitution. It declared that political coalitions that had been created during all male citizens over twenty-one years old the abolition movement would fracture if should be able to vote. The insertion of the women's suffrage was added to the movement's word "male" into the Constitution and the agenda. Despite the work done by women in the enfranchisement of African American men abolition movement, it would be another 55 presented new challenges for women's rights years before women's inclusion in the American activists. For the first time, the Constitution political process would be realized. asserted that men-not women-had the right to vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote at the A SETBACK in the fight for women's right to time, "If that word 'male' be inserted, it will vote was the inclusion of the word "male" inthe take us a century at least to get it out." 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
AFTER the failure of the 1877 referendum,
IN ADDITION to a statewide campaign, other Colorado women would have to wait another 16 factors changed the political tide. In 1893, the years before realizing enfranchisement. Efforts for U.S. government stopped minting silver suffrage between 1877 and 1893 were sparse and currency and the silver producing mining towns mass public support never materialized. Yet there of Colorado experienced a severe economic were efforts such as an 1881 bill for municipal depression. Displaced miners came to Denver suffrage which failed in the state legislature. and set up a large tent camp downtown, where However, during that time, many grassroots suffragists passed out soup-and voting rights organizations were still holding meetings and flyers. Additionally, organizers such as Minnie advocating for women's rights. Reynolds Scalabrino, convinced three-quarters of the state's newspaper editors to support IN 1893, the Ninth General Assembly passed a voting rights for women. motion to put the question of women's suffrage up for election. As a result, many groups such as
THE CAMPAIGN culminated in the successful the Colorado Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage passage of the referendum by a total of 35,798 Association organized and campaigned around the voting in favor and 29,551 voting against. state. These grassroots women's organizations, Colorado became the first state in the nation to churches, political parties, charity groups, uni?ns adopt women's suffrage via popular referendum. and farmers alliances toured the state spreading the word about the fall referendum.
THE FIGHT
AT THE dawn of the 20th century, women were for women's suffrage at the realizing increased societal agency, yet were still beginning of the 1900s was a fight being fought denied the many defining rights of full citizenship beyond America's borders. In other democracies such as the ability to vote. In 1900, 1 out of 5 around the world, like Great Britain, suffragists paid laborers in America were female. The organized thousands of women to publicly thousands of American women working in demonstrate against their disenfranchisement. factories, textile mills or in shops saw a system The patriarchal system fervently fought back fundamentally built against them. These women against these suffragists by jailing leaders of were subject to hazardous working conditions and marches, mocking their cause and belittling were unable to negotiate with their employers. these activists by labeling them suffragettes. Many working women argued the only means to Several American women became active in the counteract the predatory labor system was fight for British suffrage, such as Alice Paul. through the democratic process. Despite These American allies witnessed the opposition increased participation in the labor market and an faced by their British counterparts, and gained expanded role in social movements, women of the valuable insight into strategies being utilized in early 20th century were limited in their ability to the Great Britain. enact change while disenfranchised. It was during this period in which new coalitions of women
ALTHOUGH most of Western nations would not organized and again demanded participation in adopt women's suffrage until the 1910s and the American political process. 1920s, Finland granted women the right to vote in 1906 and served as an example for other European countries in the years to come.
