Published in 2021 by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.
Copyright 2021 by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher.
Names: Van Meter, Larry A., author.
Title: Votes for women! : the fight for womens suffrage / Larry A. Van Meter.
Description: New York: Rosen Publishing, 2021 I Series: Movements and moments that changed America I Audience: Grades: 6-12. I Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019018316 I ISBN 9781725342217 (library bound) I ISBN 9781725342200 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Women--Suffrage--United States--History--Juvenile literature.
CPSIA Compliance Information: Batch #BSR20. For further information contact Rosen Publishing, New York, New York at 1-800-237-9932.
INTRODUCTION
The word suffrage means the right to vote. It comes from the Latin noun suffragium, meaning both a vote and the stone or wood tablet on which a vote was cast in the ancient world.
For most of human history, governmental power was exercised by ruling families, or monarchies: a king ruled his country, and his heir (most often his oldest son) would rule after he retired or died. But families are small: how is an individal going to rule an entire country if there are only so many family members to go around? The answer is to make friends with other families and grant them powers as well. In ancient Rome, which exerted a strong influence on the rise of global democracy (government by the people), these ruling families were called the nobilitas, the ruling classes. Words such as class, rank, aristocracy, and nobility descend from this term. Governmental power lay in the hands of these wealthy families, and their children inherited that power.
In 510 BCE, the Roman nobilitas had gained enough power to overthrow the king, Tarquinius Superbus, who was an evil, brutal despot, and they instituted a republic, a government by representatives instead of a single monarch. But like the kings before them, members of the nobilitas kept their power within their own families. In ancient Rome, if someone was not in the nobilitas, that person was a plebeian (meaning commoner or working class) and didnt get a say in governmentor in most anywhere else either.
Rome had one of the first democratic governments. Male citizens could vote, regardless of their station in life. However, women were not involved.
It wasnt until the 1900s that women were allowed to vote in the United States. Prior to that, women protested and demonstrated in the streets for the right.
At first, only those within the ranks of the nobilitas held political power, but over time, plebeians, who were the soldiers fighting in the nobilitass many wars and the laborers doing all the nobilitass work, earned political positions. In 367 CE, the Licinian Laws were passed, which eliminated the distinction between members of the nobilitas and plebeiansthey were now equal in the eyes of the law. A pleb could now cast a suffragium alongside his noble neighbor.
However, although the rise of the plebeians and the passing of the Licinian Laws were major steps forward in the history of democracy, those developments still didnt apply to half the population: women. As a woman, it didnt matter if she were nobilitas or plebeian: suffrage was reserved for men only. And that fact wouldnt change for more than two thousand years.
Many young people in the twenty-first century have grown up in a United States where everybody has the same rights, regardless of their gender, race, or religion. But it hasnt always been that way. The reality is that its only been that way for a relatively short time, especially regarding suffrage.
The history of how women gained the right to vote is a story of courage and heartbreak, fearlessness and betrayal, hope and frustration, and wisdom and cruelty. Ultimately, though, it is a story of victory.
1
THE WYOMING EXPERIMENT
In 1869, American women did not have the right to vote. That fact wasnt controversial because no woman anywhere in the world had the right to vote in 1869. But that year, two events occurred that would prove to be important in the struggle for womens voting rights.
The first was that in Washington, DC, the nations capital, a new constitutional amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, was being introduced to grant suffrage to African American men. It was an important step in healing the wounds of the Civil War, which had ended four years earlier, and in overcoming the racism that had marked American history. And womens rights activists, who had for many years worked tirelessly to gain the right to vote, were hoping to add womens suffrage to the new law.
The second event was Wyomings desire for statehood.
The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, granting African American men the right to vote. This was a victory but only a partial victory. Unfortunately, womens rights advocates were unsuccessful in adding womens suffrage to the amendment.
However, unlike the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, Wyomings desire for statehood would initiate a chain reaction that ultimately resulted in womens suffrage.
At the center of events in Wyoming was Esther Morris, a saloon owner in South Pass City, one of the largest towns in the territory.
In 1869, there were thirty-seven states in the United States. As was true for many areas in the American West, Wyoming was a territory, a geographic area that did not yet have statehood status. Like many people in Wyoming, Morris wanted Wyoming to become a state. She had been working with many others to organize a legislature, a governing body that makes laws, for the Wyoming Territory. The Wyoming territorial elections were to take place on September 3, 1869. Those elections were going to be a very-important step in Wyomings bid to become a new state.
The United States was quickly growing. The nation had recently reunified after the Civil War had ended in 1865. Statehood was the goal of all territories. It meant full partnership in this vast, new country. Gaining statehood, however, was difficult. The territories had to prove themselves worthy of entry into the union. In 1869, the population of Wyoming was a meager 8,014, too small to be considered for statehood. The requirement for statehood was a population of more than twenty-five thousand.