On this day in New York · May 15, 1869
Anthony and Stanton Found the National Woman Suffrage Association
Furious that the Constitution might soon promise the vote to Black men and still say nothing about any woman, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton walked out of their own movement and started a new one aimed straight at Washington.
The facts
- Founded
- May 15, 1869, in New York City
- Cause of the split
- Disagreement over ratifying the Fifteenth Amendment without also enfranchising women
- First president
- Susan B. Anthony
- Strategy
- Pushed for a federal constitutional amendment, unlike the rival American Woman Suffrage Association's state-by-state approach
On May 15, 1869, two days after a bitter fight inside the American Equal Rights Association, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed a rival group in New York City: the National Woman Suffrage Association. The break came over the proposed Fifteenth Amendment, which would extend the vote to Black men but not to women of any race. Anthony and Stanton refused to treat that as a win worth waiting behind and demanded the ballot for everyone, all at once. Where other suffragists were willing to grind it out state by state, the NWSA set its sights on a single federal constitutional amendment. Anthony became the new organization's first president.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
secure STATE and NATIONAL protection for women citizens in the exercise of their right to vote.
the stated goal of the NWSA constitution, adopted at the group's May 1869 founding
Source: History of Woman Suffrage, via Crusade for the Vote -
Men, their Rights and Nothing More; Women, their Rights and Nothing Less.
motto of The Revolution, the newspaper Anthony and Stanton ran out of the same New York office
Source: Crusade for the Vote
Why it still matters
The federal-amendment strategy Anthony and Stanton insisted on that week is the same road that led to the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and the split they opened in the movement wasn't healed until the two suffrage groups merged back together in 1890.
Sources
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