The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed on May 15, 1869, to work for women's suffrage in the United States. Its main leaders were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was created after the women's rights movement split over the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which would in effect extend voting rights to black men. One wing of the movement supported the amendment while the other, the wing that formed the NWSA, opposed it, insisting that voting rights be extended to all women and all African Americans at the same time.
The NWSA worked primarily at the federal level in its campaign for women's right to vote. In the early 1870s, it encouraged women to attempt to vote and to file lawsuits if prevented, arguing that the constitution implicitly enfranchised women through its guarantees of equal protection for all citizens. Many women attempted to vote, notably Susan B. Anthony, who was arrested and found guilty in a widely publicized trial. After the Supreme Court ruled that the constitution did not implicitly enfranchise women, the NWSA worked for an amendment that would do so explicitly.
The NWSA and its leaders also worked on related projects, such as a history of the women's suffrage movement and the establishment of the International Council of Women, which is still active. The split in the suffrage movement was healed in 1890, when the NWSA merged with its rival, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association under the leadership of Anthony and Stanton.
Background
Women's suffrage in the U.S. emerged as a significant issue in the mid-1800s. A key event was the first women's rights convention, the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, which was initiated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.Women's Rights National Historical Park, National Park Service, "Elizabeth Cady Stanton" Women's right to vote was endorsed at the convention only after a vigorous debate about an idea that was controversial even within the women's movement. Soon after the convention, however, it became a central tenet of the movement.Buhle (1978), p. 90
In 1851, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed a decades-long partnership that became important to the women's rights movement and to the future National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). For the next several years, they worked together for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights.
In 1866, Anthony and Stanton organized the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention, the first since the Civil War began.Stanton, Anthony, Gage (1887), Vol. 2, pp. 152–53 The convention voted to transform itself into the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), whose purpose was to campaign for the equal rights of all citizens, especially the right of suffrage.Stanton, Anthony, Gage (1887), Vol. 2 pp. 171–72 Its members consisted mainly of activists in the women's rights and abolitionist movements, and its leadership included such prominent activists as Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone and Frederick Douglass.
Over time, the AERA members whose primary interest was women's suffrage began to divide into two wings. One wing, whose leading figure was Lucy Stone, was willing for black men to achieve suffrage first, as the abolitionist movement insisted, and wanted to maintain close ties with the Republican Party. The other, whose leading figures were Stanton and Anthony, wanted women and black men be enfranchised at the same time and worked toward a politically independent women's movement that would no longer be dependent on abolitionists for financial and other resources.DuBois (1978), pp. 80–81 In 1868, Anthony and Stanton began publishing The Revolution, a weekly women's rights newspaper in New York City that became an important tool for supporting their wing of the movement.
The dispute became increasingly bitter after the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was introduced, which would in effect enfranchise black men by prohibiting the denial of suffrage because of race. Lucy Stone supported the amendment even though she argued that suffrage for women would be more beneficial to the country than suffrage for black men.Stanton, Anthony, Gage (1887), Vol. 2, p. 384. Stanton and Anthony opposed it, insisting that all women and all African Americans should be enfranchised at the same time. Stanton argued that by enfranchising almost all men while excluding all women, the amendment would give constitutional authority to the belief that men were superior to women, creating an "aristocracy of sex".Rakow and Kramarae (2001), pp. 47–51
During the debate, Stanton wrote articles for The Revolution with language that was sometimes elitist and racially condescending.DuBois (1978), pp. 175,177,178 According to Cheris Kramarae and Lana Raknow, Stanton distinguished between " 'colorophobia' " and her own belief in the "evolutionary development of the human 'race.' Stanton, for example, sometimes referred to the 'lower orders of mankind', an indication of her belief that education and 'civilization' were needed to bring groups of people (particularly American Blacks and white working-class immigrants) out of barbarism and to the pinnacle of development...to admit Black men to enfranchisement was to admit them into 'manhood', making ever more difficult the task of redefining citizenship...for women."Rakow and Kramarae (2001), p. 48 She also presumed that all "lower orders" promoted "low ideas of womanhood." Stanton wrote, "American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood to make laws for you and your daughters, to be your rulers, judges, and jurors---to dictate not only the civil, but moral codes by which you shall be governed, awake to the dangers of your present position, and demand, too, that women too shall be represented in government!"
These beliefs and contentions corresponded with her published comments from inaugural issues of The Revolution. In 1868, for instance, she argued that "there is only one safe, sure way to build a government, and that is on the equality of all its citizens, male and female, black and white...Just so if woman finds it hard to bear the oppressive laws of a few Saxon Fathers, of the best orders of manhood, what may she not be called to endure when all the lower orders, natives and foreigners, Dutch, Irish, Chinese and African, legislate for her and her daughters?"Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Manhood Suffrage," The Revolution, December 24, 1868. Reproduced in Gordon (2000), p. 194 Ellen DuBois referred to this particularly litany of "lower orders" as "betraying her underlying elitism", whereas Sue Davis renounced her question as one in a series that "included racist and nativist comments." Stanton added that U.S. Senators "degrade" women "in their political status, below unwashed and unlettered ditch-diggers, boot-blacks, hostlers, butchers, and barbers." Stanton then objected to laws being made for women by "Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know the difference between a Monarchy and a Republic, and who never read the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling book."Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Manhood Suffrage," The Revolution, December 24, 1868. Reproduced in Gordon (2000), p. 196
Formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association
The AERA essentially collapsed after an acrimonious convention in 1869, and two rival women's suffrage organizations were created in its wake. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was created on May 15, 1869, two days after what turned out to be the AERA's last convention, with Anthony and Stanton as its primary leaders.Harper, Ida Husted, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (1898–1908), Vol. 1, pp. 326–327 The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was formed in November 1869, with Lucy Stone as its primary leader. The AWSA was initially larger and better funded, but Stanton and Anthony were more widely known as leaders of the women's suffrage movement and were more influential in setting its direction.Dudden (2011), p. 12.
Membership of the NWSA came partly from activists in organizations that Anthony and Stanton had created. One of those was the Women's Loyal National League, whose 5000 members had by 1864 completed a petition drive, the largest in the nation's history, in support of an amendment to abolish slavery.Venet (1991), p. 148Barry (1988), p. 154 Another was the Working Women's Association, which began as an organization of wage-earning women but evolved into one consisting almost entirely of journalists, doctors and other middle-class working women. Its members formed the core of the New York City segment of the NWSA, where the NWSA was headquartered.DuBois (1978), p. 193
Comparison to AWSA
Even after the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, some important differences remained between the two organizations, and others emerged over time.
The NWSA worked mostly at the federal level, focusing on a constitutional amendment to achieve women's suffrage, while the AWSA worked toward the same goal mostly at the state level. The NWSA's meetings were open to everyone, but the AWSA allowed only delegates from recognized state organizations to vote at its meetings, although any member could attend and speak. The NWSA initially dealt with several women's issues, such as divorce reform and equal pay for women, while the AWSA focused almost exclusively on suffrage. The AWSA's membership included both women and men, and its first president was a man, Henry Ward Beecher.McMillen (2008), p. 177 Stanton had originally proposed that the NWSA's membership be limited to women, but her proposal was not accepted. In practice, however, the overwhelming majority of the NWSA members and officers were women.DuBois (1978), pp. 191–192. Henry Brown Blackwell, a member of the rival AWSA, said the NWSA's bylaws excluded men from membership, but Dubois says there is no evidence for that. The NWSA held its conventions in Washington in accordance with its strategy of working primarily at the federal level, while the AWSA, working mainly at the state level, met in various cities across the country.Coolidge, Olivia E. (1966). Women's Rights: The Suffrage Movement in America, 1848–1920, pp. 124–125, New York: E.P. Dutton.
The author of a study of African American women in the suffrage movement lists nine who participated in the AWSA during the 1870s and six who participated in the NWSA. Stanton, a NWSA leader, "moved to sever the women's rights movement from its earlier moorings in the antislavery tradition." She periodically "appealed to racial and ethnic prejudices, arguing that native-born white women deserved the vote more than non-whites and immigrants." Lee Boomer and New-York Historical Society educators noted that "while the NWSA did not prohibit Black women from joining at the national level, local [NWSA] organizations could reject their participation."
Early years