In
1840, two members of the Society of Friends,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia
Mott, travelled to London as delegates
to the World Anti-Slavery
Convention. Both women were furious when they, like the
British women at the convention, were refused permission to speak
at the meeting. Stanton later recalled: "We resolved to hold
a convention as soon as we returned home, and form a society to advocate
the rights of women."
However, it was not until 1848 that Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organised
the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls.
Stanton's resolution that it was "the duty of the women of this
country to secure to themselves the sacred right to the elective franchise"
was passed, and this became the focus of the group's campaign over
the next few years.
In 1866 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia
Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy
Stone helped establish the American Equal Rights Association.
The following year, the organisation became active in Kansas where
Negro suffrage and woman suffrage were to be decided by popular vote.
However, both ideas were rejected at the polls.
Executive
Committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association
In 1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan
B. Anthony formed a new organisation, the National Woman Suffrage
Association (NWSA). The organisation condemned the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth amendments as blatant injustices to women. The NWSA also
advocated easier divorce and an end to discrimination in employment
and pay.
Another group, the American Woman Suffrage
Association (AWSA) was formed in the same year in Boston. Leading
members of the AWSA included Lucy Stone
and Julia Ward Howe. Less militant that
the National Woman Suffrage
Association, the AWSA was only concerned with obtaining
the vote and did not campaign on other issues.
In the 1880s it became clear that it was not a good idea to have two
rival groups campaigning for votes for women. After several years
of negotiations, the AWSA and the NWSA merged in 1890 to form the
National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA). The leaders of this new organisation include Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
Carrie Chapman Catt, Frances
Willard, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Anna
Howard Shaw.
Blanche Ames,
Two Good Votes Are Better
Than One, Woman's Journal
(October, 1915)
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