Who were the suffragists?
Women in America always endured plenty of suffering. What they lacked was “suffrage” (from the Latin suffragium for “vote”). American women as far back as Abigail Adams—who admonished her husband John to “Remember the Ladies” when he went off to declare independence—had consistently pressed for voting rights, but just as consistently had been shut out. It was not for lack of trying. But women were fighting against the enormous odds of church, Constitution, an all-male power structure that held fast to its reins, and many of their own who believed in a woman’s divinely ordained, second-place role. But in the nineteenth century, more women were pressed to work, and were also a strong force in the abolitionist movement, with Harriet Beecher Stowe attracting the most prominence. But to many male abolitionists, the “moral” imperative to free black men and give them the vote carried much greater weight than the somewhat blasphemous notion of equality of the sexes. In fact, it was exclusion o
