19th Amendment Ratification

This paper explores the ratification process of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution that occurred on August 18, 1920. Sources such as Wikipedia detail the extensive process of the approval of women’s suffrage that took place over the span of about forty years and the opposition it overcame to become an amendment, however it fails to explain the men’s role in the women’s suffrage movement, particularly in the state of Tennessee, which was the last state’s vote needed to approve its ratification as an amendment to the US Constitution. Wikipedia details the efforts made by the women’s suffrage movement in fighting to remove the barrier of an individual’s sex in their right to vote. Yet, primary sources such as the National Woman’s
Senator Aaron A. Sargent was the first to introduce the notion of the Nineteenth Amendment to Congress in 1878. Over forty years later, the ratification process of the nineteenth amendment began early in the year of 1919. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate voted in favor of the suffrage amendment to the US constitution, then the bill proceeded to the states, seeking the approval of three-quarters of the state legislators in order to ratify the amendment. While some states, including Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan, approved the amendment right away, others were not as easily convinced to grant women the right to vote. This powerful forty-year fight began with the women’s suffrage movement after the Civil War. During the Reconstruction Era after the war, women took fierce movements to achieve their equal rights and to eliminate discrimination against females. This women’s suffrage movement was led by strong and accomplished women such as Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and these women formed powerful groups that campaigned, protested, and battled to lead movements towards achieving equality between men and women. Organized groups of women fought to achieve the rights they deserved as United States citizens on both the state and national
Men played a vital role in the approval process of the Nineteenth Amendment and without them, in this time of a male-dominated culture, the movement would not have been able to achieve ratification at the time it did. Despite the lack of information that is presented in sources such as Wikipedia, influential men, such as state legislators and even the President, Woodrow Wilson, were concerned with the subject of women’s suffrage and some showed their support by voting to approve it and using the political power they attained. Wikipedia lacks information particularly on the state of Tennessee, which was the last vote needed to approve its ratification and how the influence of one man, Harry Burn, had a lasting impact in granting women the right to vote. Primary sources, such as the National Woman’s Party Papers and Western Union telegrams, clearly show that men played an important role in the approval and ratification of the nineteenth amendment were a dominant force in achieving approval. These sources offer new insight on the reasons behind sexual inequality and discrimination against women in the United States, which is left out of sources such as