The New Ipswich Library hosted Votes for Women: A History Of The Suffrage Movement to a full house Tuesday night.
The talk, given by League of Women Voters New Hampshire president Liz Tentarelli, is one of many being held throughout the state this year to mark the 100th anniversary of the federal ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which took place Aug. 18, 1920.
The 19th Amendment declared, “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” and became law on Aug. 26, 1920.
Now this doesn’t mean some women in the U.S. didn’t have the right to vote before 1920. Many Western states had already given women the right to vote by the time the 19th Amendment was ratified, Tentarelli said Tuesday night in New Ipswich. In fact, Wyoming was the first territory or state in our nation history to grant women the right to vote with its 1869 Wyoming Suffrage Act. Tentarelli said the Act was likely a strategic move on behalf of Wyoming men to attract women to the western territory of Wyoming. At the time that act was passed the men to women ratio in that state was 6 to 1, she said.
In September of 1919, New Hampshire was the 16th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. However, Granite State women could not vote till the amendment had been ratified by 36 states, which took place in August 1920 when the Tennessee legislature passed it. One young legislator, 24-year-old Rep. Harry Burn who was counted as one of those voting against ratification, changed his vote after receiving a note from his mother, Tentarelli said.
“Hurrah, and vote for suffrage,” the note read. “Don’t keep them in doubt. I notice some of the speeches against, they were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything. Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt.”
Mrs. Catt, Carrie Chapman Catt, was an American women’s suffrage leader who was campaigning in Tennessee for the 19th Amendment at the time. She was one of many women in the United States to fight for a women’s right to vote, Tentarelli said. A movement that dated back before the Civil War.
“The movement for suffrage was a very long one,” she said. “And the call for women’s rights to vote didn’t spring from any one moment. It came out of a more general movement for greater equality for women. It came out of a changing role of women in society.”
Women’s Suffrage went hand and hand with the Abolition movement before the Civil War.
“Many of the people who were early movers were also part of the Abolition movement,” she said, such as South Carolina sisters Sarah and Angelica Grimke.
Many woman were inspired by the women’s Suffrage movement in England in the 1840s. Then in 1848, U.S. women gathered in Senaca Falls, New York, and held the first Women’s Rights Convention for women’s rights in social and civil endeavors. One article proposed and eventually passed at the convention was to give women the right to vote, a right that local Native America women had in their tribe. While 300 men and women passed the numerous articles for rights for women including to vote, the convention didn’t make a dent on U.S. voting laws at that time.
Then the Civil War started in 1861, many women set the women’s rights movements aside so that the focus could be on freeing those in slavery.
World War I, however, didn’t slow down women’s Suffrage, however, in fact so many women entered the work force while men were away fighting in Europe it gave much needed validity to the movement.
The League of Women Voters is a non-partisan organization also celebrating its centennial in 2020 as it was established to replace the National American Woman Suffrage Association upon ratification of the 19th Amendment, Tentarelli said.
These events are being sponsored by NH Humanities To Go. You can find more at https://www.nhwomenvote100.org/