Women's Rights Before The Emancipation Proclamation

• Ex-slave Frederick Douglass supported women's rights at the Seneca Falls Convention.Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  Women were refused seating at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention simply because they were women, fueling a rumbling discontent among women about their own rights in society. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and delegate Lucretia Mott decided to hold their own women's rights convention. According to Mrs Stanton it was "about time some demand was made for new liberties for women." Progress was slow but finally the two women organized the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in 1848, attended by more than a hundred people. The American women's movement started here in earnest.
  
  

Women's vs. Black Suffrage

• Campaigning suffragettes got 400,000 signatures by 1864 for the abolition of slavery.Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  After putting women's rights on hold for the sake of civil war efforts, New York's cancellation of most of the 1860 Reform Bill two years later divided the women's movement. This bill had granted women crucial rights over their money and children. When it was repealed, many activists wanted to focus on the fight for women's rights while others remained loyal to the universal suffrage cause. Despite the internal controversies, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the Woman's National Loyal League in 1863, a call to arms for the cause of universal suffrage. While the women's work was pivotal to Congress passing the 13th Amendment banning slavery, an additional resolution supporting women's rights was dropped.
  
  

Women's Suffrage

• Between 1896 and 1910, women lost 500 state ballots for equal rights.Brand X Pictures/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
  
  The feminists failed to gain parity with black suffrage but their work for the abolition of slavery did establish women as a political force to be reckoned with. In 1890 the National American Woman Suffrage Association united the two factions previously opposed over the issue of universal suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton led the new organization in a strengthened push towards winning the vote for women. The strategy was to campaign at state level for women's suffrage, thereby building a strong argument with which to convince Congress of their cause. Between 1890 and 1896, only two states -- Wyoming and Utah -- had women's rights in their constitutions on entering the union. Two more -- Idaho and Colorado -- approved their inclusion by referenda.
  
  

Women Get The Vote

• Susan B.Anthony was a President of the NAWSA in the late 19th Century.Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images
  
  By the late 19th Century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton had retired from active feminism and the movement achieved a broader appeal, reaching working class and black women too. The National American Woman Suffrage Association organized determined local campaigns to get women voting rights in each state. By 1919, the NAWSA had President Woodrow Wilson's backing and the support of 30 state legislatures. The 19th Amendment -- passed by a large majority -- granted American women the right to vote: a victorious end to a 72-year-long battle.