 Hi, everyone. This is Carol Hinkle, president of triple E. I'd love to welcome you today to our second video lecture. This is very exciting. And I'd now like to ask Beth Wood, our program chair to please introduce today's speaker, Beth. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's lecture by Dr. Amy Morseman. Dr. Morseman earned her undergraduate degrees at Wake Forest University and her PhD in history at the University of Virginia. She is a professor of history at Middlebury College and she specializes there in American history. Last fall, Dr. Morseman curated an exhibition at the Middlebury College Museum of Art called votes for women. And I attended the opening and got to view this excellent exhibition and heard her speak there, which is what prompted me to invite her here today. Amy has also been involved with developing programs in Vermont regarding women's suffrage in preparation for this centennial year. So it's a great pleasure to welcome Dr. Morseman to triple E. Thanks, Beth. It's so nice to be here with all of you. And I'm going to share my screen because that's what I'm supposed to do. So just give me a second to do that. Let's see. Does that work? I'm hoping that that works and that everybody can see my slides. I've got some slides that I want to show you. And here we go. I'm looking forward to your feedback. To any questions that you have, I'll do my best to answer them. As Beth said, I have been here at Middlebury for a while. I just want to tell you a little bit more about myself. I've been teaching at Middlebury College since 2001. I arrived here as sort of the 19th century Americanist in our history department. My teaching interests and experience center on the Civil War and Reconstruction period and on gender and American history more broadly. And I had the pleasure of meeting Beth as she said last September. She came down to Middlebury for the opening of this exhibition in which I was the curator on this subject of American women's suffrage. And I was asked to curate the exhibit because of the anniversary that we know is upon us now the hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment. Now I don't know about you, but when I was a younger student of history and I see this with my own kids who are 14 and 16. Nothing sounded more dry and dull than talking about constitutional amendments. I mean snooze around. There's actually a lot of good history, good drama and powerful messages that come out of legal changes such as constitutional amendments, but conveying that good stuff to people can be challenging. So instead of focusing on the actual ratification of the 19th amendment, I want to share some stories of how the country got there with real people asking hard questions, confronting dilemmas and being very human in their actions and reactions. And the stories I will tell today about the question, the movement and the legacies of women's campaign for the right to vote build off of some that we chose to highlight and the exhibit that I curated last fall. So Middlebury College's Museum of Art regularly puts on art exhibitions, but a few years ago, the director of the museum Richard Saunders approached me and asked me if I would consider doing a history exhibit in one of the big exhibit spaces in the museum. This was a departure for them. And it was also a departure for me. So what's interesting right now is that I don't know how to move. Sorry, I have a technical issue. I don't know how to move my slides if I'm sharing my screen. So maybe I'm going to go. Hold on one second. Let's see. Oh, there we go. Awesome. Okay, now I figured it out. Sorry about that. So Richard Saunders, the director of the museum, asked me to do this. It was a new thing for them to try. It was a new thing for me to try. And so we did it. He thought it would be a really good idea if I could make this exhibit planning part of a class, a course project. So I was slated to teach a first year seminar, a seminar for brand new Middlebury College students in the fall of 2018. Richard's request for the exhibit moved me to make the history of woman suffrage the focus for my seminar. The idea was that the students from fall 2018 could be involved in the project of developing an exhibit that would open in our museum in the fall of 2019. The consent centennial commemoration of the 19th Amendment began. The 19th Amendment was approved by both houses of Congress in June of 1919, and then it took 14 months to get it ratified by three quarters of the states. So the launch of this anniversary exhibit here at Middlebury was well timed for that anniversary with my students in the seminar. There they are in this picture. The seminar was entitled the woman question, which is with the 19th century. With Americans in the 19th Street talk to how they talked about the women's rights campaign, the woman question with the students in my seminar I got to read more deeply on the subject and to learn with them about museum exhibit design. My students were also incredibly helpful and identifying for me the elements of the woman suffered story that were most interesting perplexing and provocative to them. They served as a focus group of sorts, highlighting the dimensions worthy of our attention in the exhibit. So when this when the spring of 2019 came around and my students had moved on to different classes, and the work of actually curating the exhibit fell to me. And along with a terrific team from the Middlebury Museum kept my students ideas questions, their sense of outrage, their discoveries and their sense of wonder in mind. And I'm pleased to have had all of them involved and recognized in the public facing academic product that was displayed in the museum from September through December of 2019. So what we came up with for this museum exhibit were six thematic sections about woman suffrage. There was a section that explored the arguments for one suffrage, the strategies different groups embraced the tactics that suffrage is chose to get their point across the divisions within the movement and the legacy of the suffrage amendment. The sixth section of the exhibit gave some attention to the local scene on suffrage in Vermont and also in neighboring New York. The exhibit was called votes for women. Just a couple weeks before opening day and email arrived from the good people in the middle grade college communications office. And they were doing their part to spread the word about the exhibit and to let people know about the opening communications folks had a question about the exhibit title. Why are we calling this votes for women? Question mark they asked. There are lots of other exhibits on the subject going on around the country and no one else is using that title with the question mark. Other places are using the slogan from the suffrage movement votes for women. The lovely guy who sent this email essentially was saying look this title sounds weak and weird with the question mark and the visitors aren't going to get it they're not going to understand why you have it. And he thought it would be confusing for folks coming to an exhibit that celebrates the ratification of an important, you know, national amendment. And he asked if there was any way that we might change the title for this exhibit before the publicity was done and before the museum doors opened. Well, after taking a deep breath, I vociferously defended my choice of title. And the question mark in the title matters because the question mattered. Number one, this marking of the woman's suffrage amendment is not entirely a celebration in my mind. It's an opportunity to honor a struggle for expanding our democracy, while also acknowledging the messy, complicated, controversial, incomplete and divisive parts of this story, all of which are suggested by the question, rather than the declaration. And number two, the history of woman's suffrage, even in its most conservative framing of time lasted more than 70 years. It took that long and actually longer for several segments of the female population because it was not a foregone conclusion. Americans of all walks of life, female as well as male really struggled with the idea of women being a place being in a place where they would want the vote where they would use the vote and where they would be worthy of or equipped for the vote. So I really wanted the people coming to the exhibit in Middlebury and even those like you who are just hearing about it after the fact to embrace that title and its meaning votes for women. Seriously, really, why, at what point on what level for which purpose, which ones, which women, all women, really, seriously. That's a thread and a significant starting point in the story of more than 70 years of discussion and activism on this question. Now in the weeks that followed the exhibit opening last September, I had people tell me that they had never been aware of the opposition to woman suffrage that Americans, especially American women, would go out of their way to argue against something as fundamental to a democracy as voting. And they found that section of the exhibit the most interesting. So when hearing that from museum visitors I felt vindicated with my choice of title, and I also had those comments in mind when I crafted this lecture for you today. Because in exploring what's wrong with the idea or what's questionable about the idea of women voting. We get number one a glimpse of what Americans thought of their democracy and the place of women in the society. And number two, we see how suffragists respond responded to those ideas. What emerges are some interesting points of contention, not only between suffragists and their opponents, but also within the movement among people you might think we're all in agreement and working together. And from these points of contention developed some moments of reckoning in the movement. I'll highlight just a few of them for you here today. So first, a question, votes for women. Why should women vote. There are two, maybe three primary arguments that serve as answers to that question. And you see one here at the top women deserve to vote just as men do for us citizens of this republic. They have the natural rights that other citizens enjoy, and that all citizens should practice as a democratic responsibility. We can call this the equality argument that Elizabeth Casey Stan and Lucretia Mott and articulated for as early as 1848. And then there are arguments that embrace women's difference from men. And for the 19th century, in a society where a gender division of labor largely held sway, acknowledging the differences between men and women was important and practical. So denying that women are different from men, they have different strengths and sensibilities. So the suffrage argument goes, how could men possibly speak for women who are different from them. Moreover, if women can't vote, and they can't bring to bear on their democracy, the skills and insight that they have that men do not. And this difference argument was useful in highlighting women's work for the domestic realm. And it was if women are society's keepers of the home, and they can't do that job well or protect the home without the power of the vote to keep bad influences out of it. It was also useful in making the argument that as American communities industrialized and became more urban, women's influence as homekeepers and housekeepers was needed even beyond the home to clean up the messes created by industrialization, poverty, disease, child exploitation. And you can see this reflected in the quote at the bottom. Plenty of people argued in the early 20th century that women voters would be our municipal housekeepers, putting their private strength to public use. Anti suffragists had multiple arguments opposing woman suffrage, most of which also built off of this notion of strong gender difference, and a concern about proper place and people staying in those proper social and political places. With this attention to structure and maintaining good order, many people thought that votes for women would upset the Republic would throw out of balance the system of democracy that there was. Woman suffrage would not just increase the number of people voting in this country by enfranchising half of the population, it would include a good deal of undesirable votes. And this argument lasted for decades, but it was particularly powerful at a moment of transition and American society, just after the Civil War, right after emancipation, and as some Americans, especially leading Republican figures politicians people in power, we're thinking about the future of the country with 4 million potentially new citizens in it, 4 million slaves, former chattel coming to be seen as people and potential citizens. At this time people were wondering what would happen to former slaves, what was their new status, how would they integrate into society, and what role would they play in American democracy. The outcome of the war, and the ending of slavery through the 13th amendment had put these questions squarely on the table, but a variation on these questions had already been articulated for women. Were they 19th century American women, white women were citizens of the Republic, but what did that really mean when they couldn't vote. Now suffragists, a small group at this time have been arguing for women's full citizenship and for access to the vote for decades. The leaders of the 19th century women's rights movement had grounded their arguments for the vote on the basis of natural rights, that all people had basic rights, and should be able to exercise them. And they had even moved beyond the making of those arguments in the 1840s to the organizing and crafting of a strategy for how to get those rights one. But then the civil war came, and suffragists determined that the right thing to do was to put their energies into supporting the war effort and ending slavery to essentially suspend their work for women's rights and the right to vote for shelve it for the war period. For these activists for women's rights were also abolitionists. After founding the Women's National Loyal League and organization in the north to support the war and to fundraise for it. Suffragists gathered thousands of petitions and presented to the government a strong showing up American support for emancipation. They helped the country embrace the idea of emancipating 4 million slaves, and they helped bring about the 13th amendment. They also rejoiced at the prospect of a victorious union that would expand the rights to former slaves and expand the rights to women who had worked hard for the union and who deserved the right to vote as well. When the questions surfaced about creating a political status for the freed people. The activists saw this as a natural extension of the argument they had been making, and they assumed that an expansion of political rights for freed slaves would also mean an expansion of political rights for them. They were wrong. They did not gain the right to vote after the civil war, the government when they had supported and whose efforts towards victory they had galvanized did not deliver for them, and their own friends within the abolition movement disappointed them as well. Phillips, a leading abolitionist proclaimed a month after the war that this is quote the Negro's hour that securing basic rights and the franchise for former slaves was the utmost priority and that Americans are skeptical about the capabilities of newly freed slaves, men to use the vote properly could only take so much change at one time. Phillips argued that women's suffrage would need to wait. The concern that shaped his position here was this sense of an undesirable vote that the democracy might expand, but could the people to whom it was expanding be trusted to do the right thing with it. Anti suffragists were talking about this question, and actually so were suffragists. The idea went this way. When former slaves would mean votes for lots of people who hadn't been educated, who wouldn't know what to do with the power of the franchise would votes for women mean the same thing. When Wendell Phillips told abolitionists and women's rights advocates in 1865 that quote this is the Negro's hour, and that women should wait their turn for an expansion of their rights. This is one of the founders of the women's rights movement in the 19th century responded with astonishment. It is all very well for the privileged order to look down complacently and tell us. This is the Negro's hour. Do not clog his way. Do not embarrass the Republican Party with any new issue. Be generous and Magnanimous. The Negro once safe the woman comes next. But then she went on to say, this is our opportunity to retrieve the errors of the past and mold a new the elements of democracy. The nation was with case and argued is ready for a long step in the right direction. Party lines are now obliterated, and all men are thinking for themselves. If our rulers have the justice to give the black man suffrage, women should women should avail herself of that newborn virtue to secure her rights. If not, she should begin with renewed earnestness to educate the people into the idea of universal suffrage. This is case stands said those words in 1865. When the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln pushed through the 15th Amendment in 1869 and got it ratified in 1870 that goal of universal suffrage was not realized. The 15th Amendment prevented race and previous condition of servitude from being a factor in a person's access to the franchise. In effect, it extended the vote to black men. Politicians had embraced the sentiment that Wendell Phillips had expressed just after the war. They made voting possible for black males, but for no American females. This action and this issue tore apart the community of abolitionists and women's rights activists who had been advocating together for universal rights and universal suffrage. Some abandoned earlier alliances out of anger and struck off on their own, most prominently Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Susan D Anthony. While other suffragists remained loyal to the Republican Party, they supported the 15th Amendment and decided to buy their time for the right to vote, agitating and educating in the meantime. At a significant moment of opportunity within our democracy, the women's suffrage movement was split into two rival camps with some vocal and visible members clearly arguing that if black men and all women could not enter into the electorate at the same time, then women should be the ones to get the chance first. Yikes. Here's a troubling comment made by Elizabeth Katie Stan and her frustration in the post war years. Quote, the representative women of the nation have done their utter most for the last 30 years to secure freedom for the Negro. And so long as he was lowest in the scale of being, we were willing to press his claims. But now as the celestial gate to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious question, whether we had better stand aside and see Sambo walk into the kingdom first. Ouch. Susan B. Anthony Stanton's suffrage movement partner put it another way. The 15th Amendment creates an antagonism everywhere between educated refined women and the lower orders of men, especially in the south. If you will not give the whole loaf of justice to the entire people, if you are determined to give it to us piece by piece, then give it first to women to the most intelligent and capable portion of the women at least because in the present state of government, it is intelligence. It is morality, which is needed. Other voices on this question, having escaped slavery and become a central figure in the northern campaign for abolition. Frederick Douglass has something to say on this question of who deserves suffrage and when quote, I do not see how anyone can pretend that there's the same urgency in giving the ballot to woman as to the Negro. Speaking for African Americans in the late 1860s he said, with us, the matter is a question of life and death, at least in 15 states of the union. When women, because they are women are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans, when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lampposts, when their children are torn from their arms and their brains are dashed out upon the pavement. When they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn, when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads, when their children are not allowed to enter schools, then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own. Quite a response from Frederick Douglass. The scholars who have studied the positions taken by suffrage leaders, especially Stanton and Anthony in the years right after the Civil War and after slave emancipation, found that racism, frustration and financial desperation got the best of these suffrage leaders. But if we look beyond the years, if we look into the early 20th century, the picture doesn't get much better within the suffrage movement. The construction years did not resolve this problem or this disagreement about race and the undesirable vote, as understood by white Americans. This was in part because racism shaped so many of the priorities, decisions and actions of white Americans in this period, and beyond, and they affected suffragists to Frederick Douglass was a well established proponent of women's suffrage. He was the first women's rights convention in 1848, traveling down from to Seneca Falls from Rochester, New York, and not only attending but speaking up in support of the argument for women to vote when the vast majority of people who were in Seneca Falls, thought that a suffrage demand was too much too radical and too far to go. I felt that I just read to you, Douglas made a strong case for black men meeting the vote, more in a time of substantial racial violence, but his advocacy for women's suffrage and broader women's rights actually spanned decades. In fact, he remained active in women's rights organizations and meetings until the end of his life. Shortly before Douglas died in the 1890s he had planned on participating in the meeting of the newly united suffrage organization. After 20 years of rivalry, the two main suffrage organizations came together in 1890 as the National American Women's Suffrage Association. Their convention for 1895 was in Atlanta and in order to accommodate the wishes of nearby Southern suffragists, the white ones, whose base they were trying hard to grow. National suffrage leaders, including an elderly Susan B. Anthony, asked Frederick Douglass not to attend the convention in Atlanta. They accommodated instead the concerns among Southern suffragists and observers about a racially integrated meeting and what undesirable image might come with having Frederick Douglass on the dais. That was 1895, 30 years after the Civil War. It was 30 years after the pronouncement of the Negroes hour, and it was not one isolated incident. Those connections between race and democracy continued within the suffrage movement, keeping it from being fully unified. Another telling example of this issue came in 1913 when suffragists made a bold public display by holding a suffrage parade in Washington DC the day before President Wilson's inauguration. It was such a smart thing to do to capture the nation's attention when Americans were already looking to Washington for the introduction of a new president. Parade organizers had brought in suffragists and supporters of suffrage from every state and from several foreign countries. They made sure to represent women from different places, generations and professions, but they also made plans to segregate the marchers with African American suffragists marching separately at the back. White leaders requested that black women march at the very back in order to minimize as best they could the concerns that black women's presence might raise among parade spectators about the vote falling to people considered at the time, unworthy of it. Parade organizers could not control though the actions of one African American participant who took matters into her own hands. Mrs. Ida Wells Barnett, a powerful reformer from Chicago, was tremendously bothered by white planners request that she not march with her fellow members of the integrated Illinois suffrage delegation, but that she march much farther back because of the color of her skin. Instead of a seating to this request, Wells Barnett entered the parade from the sidewalk and without incident joined the Illinois delegation midway through the March. This was a moment of reckoning for her. I shall not march with the colored women Wells Barnett said to her colleagues from the Illinois delegation, either I go with you or not at all. I'm taking the stand because I personally wish for recognition. I'm doing it for the future benefit of my whole race. Now I had Wells Barnett certainly presented as a model citizen who could not only read and write, but who could argue effectively, who could spot hypocrisy when she saw it and called people out for it with strength and grace. The color of her skin she represented what too many Americans was the potential undesirable vote. She came from a group of people who had long been held down and kept intentionally ignorant and in the lowest ranks. The child of former slaves. She of course overcame these obstacles, but that did not stop people from using race and the meanings they ascribed to it as an easy dividing line among those considered worthy and those considered not. This was happening outside the suffrage movement among those vocally opposing it and inside as well among suffragists who needed to attend to that concern in order to grow their ranks. So, votes for women, which ones race was clearly a stumbling block in the movement, but it was not the only one. In fact, in some places class divides may have been more contentious. And here again the founding generation provides some rich fodder for discussion, not just for us but for other members of the suffrage movement. Let's go back to the long lived long activating suffragists founder Elizabeth Katie Stanton for an answer to the question who deserves to vote. Stanton in 1894 published her views on that question in the woman's journal, the most prominent suffrage newspaper, and her views reflect the change in times. She had acknowledged race as a point of contention amidst the turmoil of emancipation and reconstruction in the 1860s. Her public statements 30 years later on this question, who deserves the vote reflected the new social concern of the time, immigration and its attendant class and cultural differences. Additionally, we have not just Stanton's divisive thoughts on the matter, but another suffragist response. In December 1894 Harriet Stanton Blatch Elizabeth Katie Stanton's grown daughter, and a suffragist in her own right, wrote a public letter back to her mother on the question of who deserves the right to vote. As a historian it's so great to see a mother and a daughter hash things out publicly in old records. I love it. Of Harriet Stanton Blatch's public letter to her mother. Let's give a listen to Blatch on the class question. My honored mother. People are ever raising themselves fetishes to worship in government, as in everything else. No sooner is one golden calf torn down than another is erected. The idea of restricting suffrage to those who can read and write is another fetish. Now dear mother, you imply that if a person can read and write, he is enlightened and educated, and if he cannot read and write he is ignorant. I am sure if you will frankly appeal to your knowledge of the world, you will be forced to admit that many a person who could satisfy even you in the intelligence of his reading is lamentably ignorant. While many a man without a sign of the three Rs about him is gifted with the sterling common sense and abiding honesty, which the school of life experience teaches. I love how they write. She goes on. You call every American citizen who was born in Europe and who cannot read or write the English language and ignorant foreigner. Perhaps you forgot that the nations of Europe have their public school systems. Because you overlook the fact that the conditions of the poor are so much harder than yours or mine, you yours or mine, you are led to argue that quote, the ignorant classes do not need the suffrage more than the enlightened, but just the reverse. Every working man mother needs the suffrage more than I do, but there's another who needs it more than he does, just because conditions are more galling. And that is the working woman. Black went on to point out who was really valuable in a democracy. And she argued that class shouldn't be the measure of a citizen's value. Well, let me assure you, mother, the spirit of freedom is not a treasure hidden in America, but is everywhere throbbing in the heart of growing democracies. I do not call the man ignorant or wanting and an understanding of Republican principles, who, under the grinding economic conditions of the old world, stints himself to lay by little by little his passage money across the Atlantic, hoping to find in America a broader freedom for himself. But I do call ignorant and a real danger to the state, the educated man, born and bred in the Republic, who devotes his highest energies to money getting and neglects his every duty as a citizen. Monarchy is the true government for the lazy of a public calls for energy, and true it is the actual voters will form the government. And if the reading and writing, intelligent, enlightened, educated, wise, moral American won't soil his hands with politics. Let him at least be thankful mother that he is the he has the ignorant masses to give him that necessary thing, a government. Or is ever devotedly Harriet Stan Blatch love it. As a middle age woman Blatch came back came back to the United States from a life in England, and she created separate organization that she hoped could bring working class and middle class activists together, she created the Quality League of self supporting women later became known as the Women's Political Union. But that wasn't good enough for some working-class women who felt too invisible and too controlled by even this well-intentioned bourgeois woman. They objected to Blatch's dominance and her middle-class counterparts within the organization. They found her too condescending and stuck in her ways. And when they considered the question, who gets to control the movement and the activities in it, they decided that working-class women needed to take the reins themselves. Ro Schneiderman and fellow immigrant Leonora O'Reilly left Harriet Stanton Blatch's cross-class suffered organization and formed the Wage Earners Suffrage League in New York City, where they combined issues germane to women's rights with those essential to labor activism. Their priorities were shaped by real-life conditions in the places where they lived and worked. And a powerful example of this was the horrific Triangle Shirtways Fire of 1911. When garment workers were trapped in a workplace fire and 146 of them, mostly women, mostly young immigrants, perished. For working-class suffragists, many of them also dealing with the challenges of being immigrants in America. The ballot was a matter of necessity. They saw that political suffrage, they saw that the way that Harriet Stanton Blatch and her mother thought about political suffrage wasn't enough. And they called for an industrial democracy. And though middle-class and elite women certainly were helpful in making suffrage gains a reality across the country, working-class women brought an even greater sense of agitation when it mattered most. You can see here, this is a flyer that was passed out in New York City neighborhoods, trying to get people to come into these organizations and get them aware of the suffrage question. So they were really important at the right time. They really brought a greater sense of agitation when it mattered most, a case in point, New York, which was an incredibly important state in the history of women's suffrage. In 1915, New Yorkers rejected a statewide call for women to gain the full franchise on the state level. Two years later, New Yorkers changed their mind and granted full suffrage to women in their state. The biggest difference in the level of support between 1915 and 1917 came from voters in New York City, and it is likely that working-class voters influenced by working-class suffragists made the difference in that change of vote to 1917. As I said, our western neighbor, New York, was an incredibly important state in the women's suffrage story. It was the first state east of the Mississippi to embrace full suffrage for women. Up to that point, suffragists had pursued a state-by-state approach to winning the full franchise, which was a very slow process. States in the West embraced women's suffrage first with the more established eastern states serving as the bulwark against this expansion of democracy. There were, however, suffragists who found the state-by-state approach maddeningly slow and inefficient. There was, by the 1910s, a contingent of suffragists who embraced as their sole focus the campaign for a federal amendment to the Constitution to make up for the one loss in the Reconstruction Era. But they faced an uphill battle, not only because getting a federal amendment to the Constitution is a big laborious process, but because there were plenty of other suffragists who did not want energy diverted away from the only thing that had had any success, the state-by-state plotting approach. So that's why breaking the anti-suffrage log jam in the east in New York in 1917 was a very, very big deal. This was a heavily populated, politically powerful state. And so when New York said yes to women's suffrage, people paid attention, including the president of the United States, who had been skeptical of the idea and who had been resistant to all pro-suffrage lobbying. Woodrow Wilson, a conservative politician and a member of what was at that time the state's rights democratic party, had conveniently left the question of suffrage up to the states to decide. After the 1917 vote for suffrage at the state level in New York, however, Woodrow Wilson changed his tune. He came out in favor of a federal amendment to the Constitution allowing women to vote. Wilson realized that at that point, suffrage was no longer simply a Western phenomenon. It was coming east. And he could see the tide turning and did not want to be on the wrong side of history. In 1918, Woodrow Wilson went to Congress to make his case for why the country should support women's suffrage. And his argument to stubborn senators brings us to another interesting point of contention within the suffrage movement. How to describe women's role and value in society? How do they fit in this democracy? Here are Wilson's words in 1918 in the midst of World War I. Here are Wilson's words on that subject. So he's addressing, gentlemen of the Senate. The unusual circumstances of a world war in which we stand and are judged, not only by our own people and our own consciences, but also by all nations and peoples. Will, I hope, justify in your thought the message I have come to bring to you. The extension of the suffrage to women is vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged. It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it. This is a people's war, Wilson went on to say, and the people's thinking constitutes its atmosphere and morale. If we wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions. Through many channels, I have been made aware what the plane is struggling, workaday folk are thinking, upon whom the chief terror and suffering of this tragic war falls. They are looking to the great, powerful, famous democracy of the West to lead them to the new day. And they think in their logical simplicity that democracy means that women shall play their part in affairs alongside men and upon an equal footing with them. If we reject measures like this in ignorance or defiance of what a new age has brought forth of what they have seen but we have not, they will cease to believe in us. They will cease to follow or to trust us. Wilson said, we have made partners of the women in this war. But then he asked, shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right? We shall not only be distrusted, but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise them with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the other great free nations will enfranchise them. We cannot isolate our thought or our action in such a matter from that of the rest of the world. We must either confirm or deliberately reject what they propose and resign the leadership of liberal minds to others. Wilson went on to say, quote, I tell you plainly that this measure is vital to the winning of the war. And not to the winning of the war only. It is vital to the right solution of the great problems which we must settle and settle immediately when this war is over. We shall need women in our vision of affairs as we have never needed them before. The sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the women of the world. I for one believe that our safety in those questioning days as well as our comprehension of matters that touch society to the quick will depend upon the direct and authoritative participation of women in our councils. Without their counselings, we shall be only half wise. Very interesting speech, hopefully capturing Wilson's actual personal thoughts. Speechwriter did a good job, I think. Now, some people see in Wilson's address to the Senate an argument that women were deserving of the vote because of their support during the national emergency of World War I. This interpretation is in keeping with the view of women as helpmates to the men in charge. And by couching his argument in the context of World War I, it makes me wonder if Wilson would have ever come around to embrace women's suffrage on the federal level had it not been for this unusual occurrence of full-scale global conflict. His speech definitely reflects the approach that many mainstream suffragists took during the war. Show patriotism, help out, show how vital you are in supporting your country even when your country doesn't think you need a voice. But it's also quite clear from Wilson's speech that the true meaning of democracy was being considered by lots of people outside as well as inside the United States. Here was the man who coined the slogan, make the world safer democracy. While the world was watching with the most successful democracy was doing, what kind of model would it be? Was there any room for hypocrisy there? And that is an argument that Wilson did not come to on his own. It's impossible to tell, of course, where exactly Wilson took his cues, but he did not have to look far to find women reminding him of the country's democratic hypocrisy. In fact, every time he left his house, the White House, he passed suffragists picketing at the gates with big bold signs pointing out not only the country's undemocratic practices, but also this particular president's complicity. Was he the leader of the largest free government or was he like the enemy? Was he like Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany? The suffragists most actively pursuing a federal suffrage amendment to the Constitution were also those who decided to target the president and the party in power. They were the first Americans to picket the White House and they did so for weeks on end through all kinds of weather in 1917, 18 and 1919. And they did so during wartime, which made some passersby very unhappy, unhappy enough to attack the suffragists, to tear up their banners and then to get them arrested on trumped up charges of obstructing traffic or creating a public nuisance. Suffragists were arrested and imprisoned for protesting outside the White House in Washington in 1917 and 1918. They were held for weeks and treated as common criminals, though they had not broken any laws. When their requests to be treated as political prisoners were rejected, some of these more radical suffragists went on hunger strikes and had to be forcibly fed. One suffragist, a working class immigrant named Rose Winslow who endured that ordeal of force feeding multiple times said this about the leader of American democracy. Quote, I'm waiting to see what happens when the president realizes that brutal bullying isn't quite a statesman like method for settling a demand for justice at home. Man, we could just lift these phrases right out of 1918, 1917 and apply them to today, I think. Wilson faced some criticism for the treatment of suffrage protesters and they were ultimately released from prison. That injustice and the media attention around it in and of itself did not lead the president to change his mind about a federal suffrage amendment, but I do think it's likely that their messages outside the gates sunk in in some way. The picketing of the White House was a bold move, one which ran the risk of backfiring on women advocating for the vote. And there was deep disagreement within the suffrage movement about the use of such tactics. How would the country react to women who acted so audaciously? Where was the respect, the grace that women could claim naturally? Were the actions of radical suffragists taking away women's moral high ground? Would they suggest by their actions that the vote and even the agitation for the vote would unsex women? The effect of blurring boundaries or the actual reversing of gender roles was a prominent anti-suffrage claim. No suffragists believed that to be the case, but they had to be careful as to how they presented themselves. Tactics were open to debate and criticism, which contributed to divisions and contentiousness. How might men in power or other women react when suffragists were this in your face? Was that womanly? What might that portend for women in public roles in the future? Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1919 and 36 state legislatures voted to ratify the amendment, making it part of the Constitution by the end of August 1920. Women were successful in their movement for the vote, though not all women got it right away. Women of color, including Native Americans, African Americans, Latinas, and Asian Americans were largely overlooked and pushed away from the polls for decades to come until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 rectified that. And it would take years for Americans to come around to seeing women as full citizens with an equal voice and active in all areas of the public sphere. Part of the reason why that took so long is that women themselves were not united. Perhaps that's too unregulated to expect, but divisions remained. What would women's suffrage do to the country? What would women's suffrage do to women? These were questions that animated the movement before the 19th Amendment as well as after it. And I think that while suffrage or the right to vote is no longer an issue for most people, you could substitute any other word or phrase in there and have this question be totally relevant for today. And I'm going to leave it here and I'm going to pause here for questions. These are wonderful anti-suffrage postcards that we have here at Middlebury and that you can see lots of other places too, including the Vermont Historical Society, that speak to some of the questions that people were struggling with at the time about gender conventions, gender difference, and what would happen if women got the vote and beyond. And I'll leave it there. I welcome your questions. Okay, so there we go. So we have first a comment and then a question. So the comment is, I love the enthusiasm for the human stores of the suffrage movement. Thank you for making this subject. And then there is a question. What were some of the reasons why Western states, such as Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho were among the first in the nation to approve women's right to vote and to elect women to Congress? Great question. Yeah, so Western states and territories, there were a variety of reasons, but the main ones were that the leaders there were wanting settlement. They were wanting to entice people to move to these sparsely populated areas. They wanted to develop. They wanted to develop economically. They wanted to develop politically. They wanted to form state governments, territorial governments, state governments. And they needed families. They needed women. And they thought that one of the reasons that one of the ways to make settlement in these Western new lands enticing for white women was to say, hey, you come out here and we'll give you the vote. Utah is also an interesting example. The Mormon Church was very much behind the extension of the right to vote to women early on because they wanted even more votes. They wanted to double the power of the Mormon Church's votes for the Mormon community's votes at a time when the Mormon Church was sort of under siege from the federal government. So it felt like they were under attack, especially around the depressive polygamy. And so they wanted as much political power as they could get and they thought that they could get it through their women. So it was really sort of the unsettled reality of the West and also the roles that women played in those less established communities where it was all hands on deck and you got to do a lot of things for women's value as workers and as supporters of community and also as bringers of order and morality to these sort of wild places were really clear. And so for a lot of even Western men, they realized the importance of women in a way that I think women in the East, it wasn't as clear. Good question, thanks. Okay, another question. What factors made Frederick Douglass a proponent of suffrage? He understood the importance of not only freedom but of equality and he was just an incredibly enlightened guy. And as long as he was talking about race, he recognized that there were other elements, other factors in society that kept people unequal. And he was against the hypocrisy that others embraced of, well, you know, black men should be able to vote the black women know or other women know. And he as an abolitionist worked alongside many women who were abolitionists. Women were probably not the most publicly visible abolitionists because the men took those jobs. The men took those roles in abolitionist societies, running abolitionist papers, organizations, et cetera. But the women were the people on, but they were the boots on the ground. And so Frederick Douglass worked alongside many women. And so he saw them in action and he wasn't about to embrace the hypocrisy of, well, black men should get this, but women shouldn't. Okay, next question. Does the suffrage movement have lessons that could be applied to voter suppression today? Oh, yes. Every time I read these quotes that I found from these people in the past, I'm struck by how useful they are for today, how timely all this stuff is. And yeah, I mean, I think the ability to rise above division, the ability to rise above the things that fracture a movement and to be able to look beyond identity and be able to say, what do we all care about? And what's the best way to get there? And the ability to suspend ego and to really ask, you know, for whom am I working? And am I working just for myself? Which is what, unfortunately, what a lot of the key suffrage leaders in the 19th and the 20th century, suffrage organizations that were the largest and the most prominent, these were white women running these organizations. And they mainly thought about benefits for themselves and for other white women. And I think we need to learn that lesson and we need to open our eyes and open our hearts to everyone and thinking about how can we raise, you know, the water for all ships and not just for our own. That's hard though, to get beyond identity politics. And it's hard to get lots of people in the same room agreeing on something, but it needs to happen. Next question, was the suffrage movement the first major opportunity for women to develop, organize and exercise leadership skills outside of the home? You guys, great questions. The answer is no. As I had said, women were terrifically involved in abolition. And one of the other key 19th century reform movements where women really thrived in fact, where they actually did lead was the temperance movement. And by that, I mean the anti-alcohol and the anti-alcohol abuse movement. And this is where Vermont is actually a great example. Usually we can see this sort of pattern in many states and even the territories of women see a problem in their community and they organize probably through their churches or their community organizations to try to address that problem. Abolition was one of those temperance or intemperance was another one. And, you know, they would see the abuse that happened when men drank too much, when men drank away the paycheck for the family, when men came home drunk and abused their wives or their children. And they wanted to do something about it. And they could invoke their, you know, sort of the principles of what many, for many of them was Christianity and say, this is our moral, the root of our moral identity as women to say we are the ones who should fight against this. And so the temperance movement was incredibly successful movement for women and they became leaders of it. And they were the ones who actually could link up the sort of the power of women in the home and protecting the home from the dangers of intemperance outside the home and then linking that with suffrage. And so you could have some very sort of tradition-minded women who were church women who were all about protecting the home begin to say, you know, we really need the vote to do this well. And so there were temperance advocates who then became suffragists because they saw the need to be able to press the lever and get people to pay attention to their concerns and to be able to vote their candidates into office. Now in Vermont, temperance held sway. There were plenty of female Vermonters who were engaged in the temperance organizations. They were not as effective. In fact, many of them did not see that connection to suffrage and they did not make the big jump to saying we are suffragists too. And so unfortunately in Vermont we've got sort of conservatism ruling the day and though Vermont could have been and there were plenty of attempts at bringing women's suffrage on the municipal level and on the state level to Vermont in the late 1890s and early 1919s, they, most of them were squelched because there wasn't enough of a groundswell of women who were involved in other reform organizations to really make the push for suffrage. And they were facing a rather entrenched opposition among male politicians in the state house and a governor who ultimately vetoed a suffrage bill for women of the state house. So I think we can do two more questions. Next one, was the suffrage parade before Wilson's inauguration the first large demonstration to be held in DC? From what I remember reading, I think this was the first large women's suffrage demonstration to be held in DC. There were other demonstrations in other large cities but I think this was the first one to be held in DC. I could be wrong about that, but I think that's correct. And the last one that's being asked here by the audience, what factors cost people in the West to embrace suffrage first? Well, so I wanna go back a little bit to my other comment about the West. Some of it had to do with, it was self-interest, right? It was in the case of the Mormons, it was protecting themselves and having more Mormon voters to be able to count to support issues that were important to the Mormon communities. And so for them, it was, let's just grow our numbers within our own community and enfranchise half of our population. But for others, it was a desire to encourage settlement and it was also a desire to bring order to the Wild West and they believe women could do that. Amy, this has been wonderful. Thank you so, so much. You've really opened our eyes. Thank you again. Happy to do it. All right, see you all next week. Take care. You too.