Preamble
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.
This series is about love of country, our flag and our Constitution and as such at each cache in this series from the GZ you will be able to spot an American flag. May she forever wave!
Amendment 19
Women's Suffrage
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.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Achieving the important milestone of the women’s right to vote required a long and arduous struggle; victory took place only after decades of agitation. Beginning in the mid-19th century, woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered radical change.
Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly. Suffrage laws were passed in some states as a result; nine western states had adopted suffrage acts by 1912. Male-only voting laws were challenged in courts and there were parades, silent vigils and hunger strikes. Supporters were heckled, jailed and sometimes physically abused.
The 1776 New Jersey constitution provided that “all inhabitants” of legal age who met the property and residency requirements were entitled to vote. It is unclear whether this was originally intended to include women. But a 1790 state election law used the phrase “he or she,” thus clarifying the law.
Alas, New Jersey’s early experiment with women’s suffrage didn’t last. After a few hotly contested elections in which rampant voter fraud was alleged, there were calls to tighten voter qualifications. In 1807, amid allegations that men dressed as women had been going to the polls to cast a second ballot, the right of women to vote in New Jersey was withdrawn.
The Wyoming Territory’s constitution was the first to guarantee women the right to vote. When Wyoming applied for statehood, Congress initially balked. But the Wyoming legislature stood its ground and cabled back to Congressional leaders, “We will remain out of the Union one hundred years rather than come in without the women.” Congress eventually relented, and before the turn of the century, there were four women’s suffrage states—Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho.
Members of Congress who worried Wyoming’s example would be difficult for other states to resist were right. By 1916, most of the major suffrage organizations united behind the goal of a constitutional amendment. When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917, and President Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift.
Ratification was nevertheless hard fought. Tennessee was the state that put the Amendment over the top in a 49-47 nail-biter vote in the Tennessee House of Representatives. The decisive vote was cast by 24-year old Harry Burn, who had intended to vote against, until he received his mother’s letter urging him to “be a good boy” and vote for ratification.
On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment, and two weeks later, the Senate followed. When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920, the amendment was adopted. While decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained, the face of the American electorate had changed forever.
FTF: philbeer and leeny_c!
Resource: National Archives, https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-xix/interps/145