Women’s Suffrage from the Founding Era to the Civil War

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The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

As proposed and ratified by men in the late 1780s, the Constitution did not prohibit the states from establishing gender-based restrictions on voting.1 From the Founding of the United States in 1776 to the end of the Civil War in 1865, none of the states consistently recognized a woman’s right to vote in federal or state elections.2 In fact, several state constitutions in existence at the time of the Founding specifically limited suffrage to men.3 Many women faced additional barriers to voting because of “coverture,” a legal doctrine derived from English common law.4 Coverture denied a married woman a separate legal status from her husband, thereby preventing her from voting.5

Although women could not vote in the early 1800s,6 they actively led and participated in political reform movements.7 Female activists, many of whom advocated for the abolition of slavery, increasingly wrote and gave speeches in support of women’s suffrage.8 In 1848, two of these activists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, organized a convention in Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss women’s rights.9

At this convention of a few hundred women and men, Stanton presented her Declaration of Sentiments, which was modeled after the United States’ Declaration of Independence.10 Stanton’s Declaration stated that “all men and women are created equal.” 11 The Declaration listed various grievances against the government and the system of coverture, including the denial of women’s “inalienable right to the elective franchise.” 12 One hundred convention attendees signed this declaration, including Stanton, Mott, and African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass.13 Convention attendees also narrowly passed a separate resolution calling for women’s suffrage.14

After the Seneca Falls Convention, women and men organized other conventions throughout the United States to advocate for women’s rights, including suffrage.15 During the 1850s, some formerly enslaved African-American women, who faced barriers to voting because of race and gender, organized and attended conventions advocating for women’s suffrage.16 These women included Sojourner Truth and Sarah Redmond.17 As a result of these efforts, in the years leading up to the Civil War, the campaign for women’s suffrage attained broader public awareness and support.18

1: See Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162, 172 (1875), superseded by U.S. Const. amend. XIX. In March 1776, only a few months before the United States declared its independence from Great Britain, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, imploring him to “remember the Ladies” when drafting a legal framework for the new government. Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, Nat’l Archives (Mar. 31, 1776), https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0241. She wrote that if “particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” Id. John Adams, who was serving as ambassador to Great Britain, did not attend the Constitutional Convention. See Meet the Framers of the Constitution, Nat’l Archives (Mar. 16, 2020), https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/founding-fathers. See also Eleanor Flexner & Ellen F. Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States 13–14 (1996).
2: Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 1, at 8. New Jersey’s 1776 constitution permitted some women to vote if they owned a specified amount of property. See N.J. Const. of 1776, art. IV ( “That all Inhabitants of this Colony of full Age, who are worth Fifty Pounds proclamation Money clear Estate in the same, & have resided within the County in which they claim a Vote for twelve Months immediately preceding the Election, shall be entitled to vote for Representatives in Council & Assembly; and also for all other publick Officers that shall be elected by the People of the County at Large.” ). However, in 1807, the New Jersey legislature enacted a law denying women and African-Americans the right to vote. See Did You Know: Women and African Americans Could Vote in NJ before the 15th and 19th Amendments?, Nat’l Park Serv. (July 3, 2018), https://www.nps.gov/articles/voting-rights-in-nj-before-the-15th-and-19th.htm.
3: See Minor, 88 U.S. at 172–73 (listing provisions of state constitutions addressing voter qualifications at the time of the Founding).
4: Coverture, Black’s Law Dictionary 446 (10th ed. 2014).
5: Id. See also 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 430–33 (1765) ( “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband . . . .” ). Unless a woman obtained her husband’s permission, the common law imposed significant restrictions on her ability to own property, enter into contracts, or sue in court. See id.
6: The Kentucky Legislature granted some “women who were heads of households and taxpayers” the right to vote on education-related issues from 1838 to 1902. Kentucky and the Nineteenth Amendment, Nat’l Park Serv. (Sept. 3, 2019), https://www.nps.gov/articles/kentucky-and-the-19th-amendment.htm.
7: Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 1, at 38. See also Sandra Day O’Connor, The History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 49 Vand. L. Rev. 657, 658 (1996).
8: See O’Connor, supra note 7, at 658.
9: Seneca Falls and Building a Movement, 1776–1890, Libr. of Cong., https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/women-fight-for-the-vote/about-this-exhibition/seneca-falls-and-building-a-movement-1776-1890/ (last visited Feb. 10, 2023). See also 1 History of Woman Suffrage 63–75 (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony & Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., 1887), https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/28020/pg28020-images.html#CHAPTER_I.
10: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments, Nat’l Park Serv. (Feb. 7, 2023), https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm.
11: Id. (emphasis added).
12: Id.
13: Id.
14: 1 History of Woman Suffrage, supra note 9, at 73. The women’s suffrage resolution passed by a “small majority” because some attendees believed it was not a “rational” course of action at the time. Id.
15: O’Connor, supra note 7, at 660. See also Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 1, at 76.
16: Sharon Harley, African-American Women and the Nineteenth Amendment, Nat’l Park Serv. (Apr. 10, 2019), https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-american-women-and-the-nineteenth-amendment.htm.
17: Id.
18: O’Connor, supra note 7, at 660.