Women s Rights During The Civil War - 1628 Words

Women Getting the Right to Vote â€Å"While the word suffrage, derived from the Latin â€Å"Suffragium,† simply refers to the right to vote, the modern connotation specifically calls to mind the women’s suffrage movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Part of the larger social movement of Women’s Rights and the fight for equality within patriarchal societies , the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States spans a seventy-two year period† (Dolton 31)The campaign for women’s suffrage began in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and 30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had. During this same time, many reform groups across the United States–temperance†¦show more content†¦The women’s suffrage movement (aka woman suffrage) was the struggle for the right of women to vote and run for office and is part of the overall women’s rights movement. In the mid-19th century, women in several countries—most notably, the U.S. and Britain—formed organizations to fight for suffrage. During the 1850s, the women’s rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. â€Å"With several others they called the first women;s rights convention in the United States in 1848 at Seneca Falls, N.Y. Stanton insisted that a suffrage clause be included in the bill of rights for women that was drawn up at the convention† (â€Å"Elizabeth Cady Stanton†). Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship. (The 14th Amendment cites that Constitution’s protection to all citizens–and defines â€Å"citizens† as â€Å"male†). Some woman-suffrage advocates, among them Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony believed that this was their chance for them to push lawmakers for a truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women’s votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African-Americans. â€Å"In 1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)†