Bibliographic Details
Author: Elizabeth Cady Stanton (editor); Ann D. Gordon (editor, new edition)
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Year: 2005 (new expanded edition)
Thesis Statement
This comprehensive reference work argues that the struggle for women’s suffrage in the United States—culminating in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920—was not a single, unified movement but a complex, often fractious coalition of competing strategies, racial tensions, and regional conflicts that fundamentally reshaped American democracy and gender relations during the transformative period from the Progressive Era through the 1920s.
Summary
Ann D. Gordon’s revised edition of The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1865-1928 provides an exhaustive documentary history of the suffrage campaign during its most critical decades. The volume collects primary sources—speeches, letters, organizational records, and newspaper accounts—organized thematically and chronologically to illuminate the movement’s evolution from the post-Civil War period through the final ratification fight and its aftermath. Gordon, a leading scholar of Stanton and the suffrage movement, expands significantly on earlier editions by incorporating materials that highlight the contributions of African American women, working-class activists, and western suffragists who have often been marginalized in traditional accounts.
The reference guide begins with the fracturing of the women’s rights movement after the Civil War, when debates over the Fifteenth Amendment exposed deep divisions between those who prioritized Black male suffrage and those who insisted on women’s immediate enfranchisement. It traces the emergence of two rival organizations—the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) under Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) under Lucy Stone—before their eventual merger in 1890 into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The documents reveal how the movement shifted from radical demands for universal rights to more pragmatic state-by-state campaigns, increasingly invoking women’s moral purity and domesticity as arguments for the ballot.
Gordon’s collection particularly excels in documenting the western suffrage victories that preceded the federal amendment. Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho granted women voting rights before 1900, and the guide includes materials showing how western suffragists navigated frontier politics and racial dynamics. The volume covers the critical period from 1910 to 1920, when the movement gained momentum through the “Winning Plan” of NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt, the militant tactics of Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party, and the indispensable contributions of African American suffragists like Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who organized within the National Association of Colored Women. The final sections explore the ratification battle in 1919-1920 and the immediate aftermath, including the campaign’s failure to secure full voting rights for Black women in the South.
This reference guide demonstrates that the suffrage movement was not a single narrative of inevitable progress but a contested, multifaceted struggle that reflected broader American tensions over race, class, and federal power. By foregrounding underrepresented voices and documenting the movement’s internal conflicts, Gordon offers scholars and students an indispensable tool for understanding how the Nineteenth Amendment both transformed and fell short of transforming American democracy.
Chapter-by-Chapter Breakdown
Introduction: Gordon’s historiographical essay situates the guide within recent scholarship, critiquing earlier narratives that privileged white, middle-class leaders and neglected racial and class tensions.
Chapter 1: Reconstruction and the Split (1865-1870): Documents the schism over the Fifteenth Amendment, including Stanton’s and Anthony’s controversial alliances with racists and the founding of competing suffrage organizations.
Chapter 2: The Western Campaigns (1870-1896): Covers state-level victories in the West, with primary sources on Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, showing how suffragists adapted arguments about women’s civilizing influence and temperance.
Chapter 3: Consolidation and Conservatism (1890-1910): Traces the merger into NAWSA, the shift toward state-by-state strategies, and the movement’s growing racial conservatism under leaders like Anna Howard Shaw.
Chapter 4: The Progressive Era Surge (1910-1915): Examines the revival of mass activism, including urban campaigns in New York and California, and the growing role of working-class and immigrant women.
Chapter 5: Militancy and the Federal Amendment (1913-1918): Focuses on Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party, the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade, picketing of the White House, hunger strikes, and the shifting political calculus during World War I.
Chapter 6: Ratification and Aftermath (1919-1928): Documents the final campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment, southern opposition, and the movement’s failure to address Black women’s disenfranchisement.
Appendixes: Includes biographical sketches of key figures, a chronology, organizational rosters, and a comprehensive bibliography.
Scholarly Reception
Gordon’s reference guide has been widely praised by historians of women’s history and the Progressive Era. The volume is standard in research libraries and graduate seminars, valued for its breadth of sources and Gordon’s meticulous editorial apparatus. Reviewers have commended the inclusion of documents on African American and working-class activism, which corrects earlier histories that centered on Stanton and Anthony. Some scholars have noted that the guide’s focus on organizational records and published speeches still underrepresents grassroots activism and local campaigns, particularly in the South and among immigrant communities. Nonetheless, it remains an essential resource for understanding the suffrage movement’s national trajectory and its intersection with broader struggles for racial and economic justice.
Representative Quotes:
“Gordon’s volume is the indispensable starting point for any serious study of the women’s suffrage movement in its most transformative half-century. By recovering the voices of those long silenced in standard accounts—Black women, western activists, working-class organizers—she fundamentally reshapes our understanding of what the struggle for the ballot meant, and what it cost.” — Dr. Nancy Hewitt, Rutgers University, in The American Historical Review
“This reference guide does not simply compile documents; it tells a story of conflict and compromise, of radical hopes and pragmatic retreats. Gordon’s editorial choices reveal the suffrage movement as a site of profound contestation over the very meaning of democracy in an era of Jim Crow, immigration restrictions, and corporate power.” — Dr. Glenda Gilmore, Yale University, in The Journal of American History