During the civil war, suffragists stopped their demands for the time being hoping that after the war they will definitely be granted the right for vote both white and black. So, women engaged in many kinds of patriotic activity, some of which had clear political overtones, such as being spies and messengers, amassing provisions, or assisting military units in the field. Yet perhaps the most concerted action of a political nature was that undertaken by a group of local Philadelphia women to raise money for General Washington’s soldiers. Headed by Esther DeBerdt Reed, the wife of Pennsylvania chief executive Joseph Reed, and Sarah Franklin Bache, the daughter of Benjamin Franklin, the “ladies” of Philadelphia went about the city collecting funds for the cause. Interestingly, the attempts to women’s participation in such quasi-political projects would be similar to the justification for women’s benevolent activities in the post-war era. There was praise for women’s strength of purpose and their willingness to sacrifice. But ultimately women were seen as different from men: patriotic contributors, though unsuited for a direct political role.12
Eventually, the Republicans succeeded in passing the collective Civil War Amendments, i.e. 13th (1865), 14th (1868) and 15th (1870) amendments that gave the right to vote to the recently emancipated black slaves. This was the first change to the US constitution in 60 years yet only the black men were considered, and the fight for women’s rights continued. At this point the suffragists in America divided into two groups Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, her long-time colleague, refused to support the 15th Amendment because it did not enfranchise women, favouring passage of another constitutional amendment to do so. Consequently, in 1869 Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which accepted men as members, worked for black suffrage and the 15th Amendment, and worked for woman suffrage state-by-state. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, with Lucretia Mott, called the 1848 gathering at Seneca Falls, founded with Susan B. Anthony the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which included only women, opposed the 15th Amendment because for the first time citizens were explicitly defined as male, and worked for a national Constitutional Amendment for women suffrage.13 however, in 1890, the above two organisations joined forces as the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA). By the late 1890’s the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), under the leadership of committed feminist and socialist Frances E. Willard, constituted the majority of women suffrage activists in American West and Midwest. This act of unification and the support of the WCTU to women’s suffrage revolutionized the feminist movement. The impact resonated through many countries and similar movements emerged in Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, and Argentina.
Indeed, after the 14th and 15th amendments suffragists believed that they saw a constitutional door open to them to exercise the franchise. This was in the language of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave due process and equal protection under the law to “persons” without qualifications as to gender. Under this legal claim, some women tried to vote but were refused or their ballots were put in separate boxes and not counted. In Rochester, New York, in November 1872, Susan B. Anthony herself and her sisters succeeded in casting their votes. Acting under legal advice given by Anthony's lawyer, Henry R. Selden, they had convinced the registrars of the propriety of their claims and had been allowed to deposit their ballots. Two weeks later, they were arrested. At her arraignment, Susan B. Anthony refused to deposit bail when set. Selden deposited it for her. But when learned that if sent to jail, she could challenge the proceeding under federal habeas corpus, she belatedly attempted to have bail cancelled.
The venue was transferred to Canandaigua for trial, where the judge was less open to Anthony’s claims and Selden’s arguments. He directed a verdict of guilty and imposed a fine on Anthony -- although when she refused to pay, he shrewdly refrained from imprisoning her and therefore exposing his ruling to federal challenge. Anthony had emerged a heroine. An idealistic reformer, she had shown herself willing to submit to the unappealing and unfamiliar conditions of a nineteenth-century jail for the sake of her convictions. Her case had pointed up the need for a new constitutional amendment. These bold women continued their struggle and at last, in June 1916, 5000 women marched in Chicago to the Republican National Convention hall in a tremendous rainstorm. Their efforts convinced the convention to include a Woman’s Suffrage plank in the party platform and got Presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes to endorse the proposed constitutional amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Three years later Congress finally passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. Although Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton devoted 50 years to the woman’s suffrage movement, neither lived to see women gain the right to vote. But their work and that of many other suffragists contributed to the ultimate passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. The 19th Amendment provides men and women with equal voting rights.
“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.”14
The demand for the Rights of Woman in the late eighteenth century provided the basis and the framework for modern feminism. In Britain, its emergence was closely bound up with the broad range of social and economic changes brought by industrialization and urbanization in the later eighteenth century, the expansion in wealth and power of the middle class, and the new emphasis on individualism and economic independence which accompanied it. But it was the political upheaval of the French Revolution and the debates about political rights and citizenship which surrounded it that brought the first extensive discussion of women's emancipation, the central concern of modern feminism.15
A strong wave to get citizenship or equal rights for women came in the early 1860s in Great Britain. Although Women were not granted with full citizen rights, however, a few individuals had called for the vote but principally, women still did not have the right to cast their vote equal to men. Additionally, the parliamentary franchise was still perceived as a privilege, not a right16 and in the early 1960s in Britain, some of the rights were given to women but these were conditionally not independently as Martin Pugh has described in two steps: (1) “Parliament was held to represent not individuals but communities . . . so in a family a father or husband might represent the interests of his daughter or wife”; (2) “possess the economic self-sufficiency, the education, the knowledge to be an independent and responsible voter.”17
The first British woman suffrage committee was formed in Manchester in 1865. In 1866 Elizabeth Garrett, a physician, collected more than 1,500 petition signatures demanding suffrage for women. John Stuart Mill, a philosopher and the husband of Harriet Taylor Mill, was elected to Parliament on a platform of woman's suffrage in 1865. The next year he attached an amendment to enfranchise women to the Reform Bill, but his amendment was soundly defeated. In May 1867, Mill introduced an amendment to Benjamin Disraeli's reform bill to substitute the word “people” for the word “man.” There were seventy-three votes for Mill’s amendment and 196 against it. Although women were not included in the extension of the franchise in 1867, they continued their arguments and organized woman suffrage societies, many of which had both male and female members.18As the new suffrage organisation was formed, women from Edinburgh, Bristol, and Birmingham became its members and from London Lydia Becker, Elizabeth Wolstenholme, and Jacob Bright got its membership. Some other suffrage groups were also organised afterward. Many women who were active in the suffrage movement during the next decades were members of these new suffrage committees. An excellent example is the Committee of the London Society whose membership included Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Frances Power Cobbe, Margaret Lucas, Emily Davies, Clementia Taylor, and Caroline Ashurst Biggs. In Edinburgh, the suffrage society elected as its first president, Priscilla Bright McLaren, the sister of John and Jacob Bright and the wife of Duncan McLaren, an Edinburgh MP. Priscilla McLaren has been described as the life and mainspring of the movement in Scotland for many years.19
In Manchester in April 1868, Lydia Becker made a resolution at the first public meeting held in support of woman suffrage: That the exclusion of women from the exercise of the franchise in the election of members of Parliament, being unjust in principle and inexpedient in practice, this meeting is of the opinion that the right of voting should be granted to them on the same terms as it is, or maybe granted to men.20 The demand that women should receive the vote on the same terms as men remained the objective of the major British suffrage organizations until 1914.21
Women in Britain received the municipal franchise in 1869, a fact that American women used repeatedly in their arguments for the franchise. During the next decades, bills and resolutions on woman suffrage were brought before the House of Commons with debates taking place for many years. There was much debate again at the time of the 1884 Reform Bill. When woman suffrage was not included in the 1884 bill, interest in woman suffrage waned in some quarters, although as a reform, it remained important to some groups. Since it was believed that mothers should take an interest in their children's education and in local charities, local suffrage was more acceptable than national suffrage. In 1869 unmarried women householders could vote in municipal elections.
The national movement became more active around 1905. It engaged in mass public demonstrations that generated publicity and attracted the interest of educated middle-class women, women textile workers, and poor women, notably in the East End of London. The moderate National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, expanded membership, publicized the issue, organized speaking tours, and distributed a journal.22