The Eventual Success of Women's Suffrage Rhetoric In One Half the People and Women and the American Experience, we learn th

Joe Bohn

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Prof. Thomas Jackson

The Eventual Success of Women’s Suffrage Rhetoric

In One Half the People and Women and the American Experience, we learn that women were outraged upon finding that the 15th amendment constitutionally enfranchised men of every race and ethnicity, but still excluded women. According to Susan B. Anthony, one-time president of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association, this occurrence brought women “to the lowest depths of political degradation” (Woloch 329). Women quickly realized that the governing body of white men would more quickly give freedom to uneducated and poor foreigners than to their own mothers and wives, whom were steadily beginning to make financial contributions at home, as a result of industrialization. The analysis, herein, is meant to illustrate how the frequent lack of unity in the rhetoric of the various women’s suffrage organizations postponed and often stifled women’s attainment of full constitutional enfranchisement, but eventually forced the government to give into the women’s plight.

Women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, of the NWSA, preached that “women must lead the way to their own enfranchisement and work out her own salvation” (Woloch 330). Women’s suffrage groups like this one sought to give women a political voice of representation, such that they might eventually be recognized as full-fledged citizens, thereby earning the right to vote. Each group had their own reasons for wanting such rights, but basically, they all wanted to give women the legal ability to defend their own best interests.

Lower and middle class women, for instance, sought the ability to vote on regulations regarding the sale of liquor in saloons, since alcohol abuse often led to men’s squandering of wages and domestic physical abuse. Zerelda Wallace, a long time member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, made a convincing proposal regarding this issue at a Congressional hearing in 1880, in which she stated: “Sixty percent of all crime is the result of drunkenness,” and “sixty percent of the orphan children that fill our pauper houses are the children of drunken parents” (Scott 98). Her rhetoric went on to describe how these same children would likely reach adulthood and either end up in prisons or working in prostitution houses. This was just one of many arguments that women’s suffrage groups used in trying to attain the right to vote.

The wealthier class of women, who had more leisure time on their hands, sought a voice in government, so that they could help resolve public “housekeeping” issues like pollution and poor sewage treatment, which directly affected them in the private sphere. These issues, more often than not, seemed neglected by men. Zerelda Wallace supported this cause as well. At the above-mentioned hearing, she stated that women “are deeply interested in all the social problems with which you (men) have grappled so long unsuccessfully” (Scott 97). Her rhetoric attempted to gain the sympathies of the male politicians by portraying women as ...

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In a 1910 Ladies Home Journal article, Jane Addams claimed that women had the unique ability to address public housekeeping issues from a “human welfare point of view,” claiming that such issues could not be resolved by military or business expertise (Woloch 342). Addams’ argument differs only slightly from Wallace’s. Her rhetoric appeals to men’s traditional ideas of women as nurturing creatures, mothers and wives.

Susan B. Anthony took this rhetoric even further, portraying women as highly virtuous and directly addressing women’s desire to vote. She said, “if you believe in chastity, if you believe in honesty, and integrity, put the ballot in the hands of women.” She also goes on to address the idea of women as nurturing creatures: “Motherhood has given…women a distinctive ethical development,” one of “insight” (Woloch 341). These statements were probably the most appealing, since they did not impinge on the male sphere, and they simultaneously colored the women as beings fit for social responsibility.

Carrie Chapman Catt took up the same strategies but combined a different element. In 1893, she stated “women could make a positive contribution by effecting beneficial reforms, purifying politics and outweighing the votes of less desirable voters” (Woloch 340). Zerelda Wallace conveyed the same ideas, but more aggressively, saying that “the vilest men…by the possession of the ballot, had more influence with the law-makers…than wives and mothers of the nation” (Scott 97). The rhetoric of both Catt and Wallace appealed to white males by trying to scare them with notions of possible negative political influence through the new lower classes of voters.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the NWSA also embodied the popular voice of the times, stating that black men should not be elevated over “women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement” (Woloch 331). Furthermore, she urged women to not put the fate of society in the hands of the “lower orders of men” (Woloch 329). She successfully gained much support by declaring that women should join her organization “if you do not wish the lower orders…Chinese, Africans, Germans, and Irish, with their low ideals of womanhood, to make laws for you and your daughters” (331). She even went on to say that freed blacks and foreigners “do not even know the difference between the monarchy and the republic” (330). Stanton, like Catt and Wallace, found the newly elevated classes of freedmen and foreigners to be a threat.

Though all of these ideas were largely agreed upon, the concept of enfranchisement quickly split into two approaches: that of social feminist rhetoric and that of equal rights rhetoric. Social feminists were more eager to illustrate the kinds of contributions that women could make to society as a result of attaining enfranchisement, while equal rights feminists like Victoria Woodhull insisted that women should already be allowed to vote, since it was implied in the constitution.

Woodhull went so far as to imply that women play a more vital role than men, saying that women “bear, rear and educate men; they train and mold their character” and “inspire” their thoughts (Woloch 311). This rhetoric gave women credit for men’s innovations by inferring that they originate in the domestic sphere, traditionally thought of as the women’s sphere. With notions like these, it is of no wonder why men found the social feminist rhetoric more favorable, since it at least gave the impression of maintaining long-held patriarchal tradition.

One of the more outspoken social feminists, Frances Willard, went so far as to imply that women had a higher evolutionary status than men and urged women to civilize and socialize them (Woloch 346). The following statement by Elizabeth Stanton lightly implies her opinions of men’s incompetence in governing the United States: “The history of American statesmanship does not inspire me with confidence in man’s capacity to govern the nation…” (Scott 67). So, we see that even the social feminist rhetoric was sometimes taken too far.

Susan B. Anthony, in her equal rights rhetoric, stated that “women are (already) citizens, and no state has the right to make any law or enforce any old law, which shall abridge their privileges or immunities” (Woloch 332). Furthermore, she stated that women’s indifference was the primary problem, which stood to keep women from being enfranchised. Her campaign efforts primarily focused on increasing membership. She said, “In the indifference, the inertia, the apathy of women, lies the greatest obstacle to their enfranchisement” (Woloch 328). In order to increase the membership, she allowed the discussion of a broad range of issues. She never considered that the diversity of interests within the organization might inherently postpone women’s enfranchisement.

In 1917, the National Women’s Party, a militant organization composed of dissenting former members of the NAWSA, took Anthony’s rhetoric to a more radical extreme, and—in an unexpected move—decided to picket the White House. Anthony and her fellow NAWSA members largely denounced this act of passive resistance, unaware of the positive impact that the NWP’s move would actually soon prove.

Alva Belmont, one of the NWP picketers, told the press that they “quietly, peacefully, lawfully and gloriously” meant to protest the “party in power” (Woloch 352). Anthony saw this move as a potential hindrance to any successes that her organization had been making, potentially alienating the sympathetic support of democrats. It had been Anthony’s opinion that the immense membership of the NAWSA would ultimately be enough to persuade the government

Fortunately, the NWP’s militant tactics caused President Wilson—already a sympathizer to the cause—and congress, to get nervous and side with the seemingly more reasonable NAWSA, which had been patriotically supportive throughout the war effort. So, with the NAWSA’s aims in mind, legislation was finally endorsed, but only as a result of the NWP’s more militant tactics. In conclusion, the general disunity in rhetoric of the various women’s suffrage organizations postponed and often stifled women’s attainment of full constitutional enfranchisement, but eventually, this same disunity forced the government to give into the women’s plight.

Works Cited

Scott, Anne F. and Scott, Andrew M. One Half the People: The Fight for Woman

Suffrage. NY: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1975.

Woloch, Nancy. Women and the American Experience, Volume Two: From 1860.

NY: McGrawHill, Inc.,1994