America’s suffrage leaders were women who recognized that the right to vote is essential to any meaningful form of citizenship. The 19th Amendment was ratified August 18, 1920.
Although almost forgotten today, the temperance movement played a powerful role in the quest for the women’s suffrage. Frances Willard, the second president of the once mighty Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WTCU), who was early on dedicated to the cause of women’s suffrage, saw to this.
In a way, Willard was a Phyllis Schlafly figure of her day in that she mobilized ordinary women. Women who might have regarded prominent suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton or free thinker Matilda Joslyn Gage as too radical for their tastes, were only too happy to join Willard’s crusade for the vote.
Willard saw a suffrage movement with room enough for women from all walks of life. She expanded the suffrage movement by bringing in ordinary women who saw the vote as a way to improve the lives of women and men like them.
