ANNUAL MEETING OF THE CONNECTICUT WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, HELD AT HARTFORD, SEPTEMBER 9, 1870. REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE [wrapper title].

[Hooker, Isabella B.]:

Edité par Hartford: Case, Lockwood & Brainard, 1871.

A propos de cet article

Rare copy of the Report of the Executive Committee for the second annual meeting of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA), founded just one year before, on October 28, 1869. Submitted and signed in type by the co-founder and chairman [sic] of the executive committee, Isabella Beecher Hooker, this report provides updates on the progress of the suffrage movement, both in Connecticut and nationwide. Also included are updates on movements in Great Britain and Europe, including a brief list of prominent figures in Britain supporting women's suffrage. There are excerpts from notable speeches and articles by John Stuart Mill, Francis W. Newman, and the reproduction of a letter from J.H. Howe, chief justice of Wyoming Territory, to Myra Bradwell, prominent Chicago lawyer and suffrage activist, explaining (despite his initial reservations) the success Wyoming courts have had in impaneling women as jurors (as part of the founding documents, Wyoming Territory granted suffrage to white women for all elections). The women's suffrage movement in America started gaining real strength in the 1840s with the first women's rights convention, the Seneca Falls Convention, convened in 1848. But the years leading up to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment grew the movement substantially. Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others formed the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in 1866 "to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex." Yet, in the final proposal, the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based only on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Anthony and Stanton opposed the amendment unless it was accompanied by a Sixteenth Amendment that would guarantee suffrage for women; Stone, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Julia Ward Howe supported it and feared that it would not win congressional approval if it included women's suffrage. And so, in 1869 they split into the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) led by Anthony and Stanton; and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) led by Stone, Howe, and Harper. The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), established in 1873, also pursued women's suffrage, providing additional support for the movement overall. State, territorial, and city suffrage movements also expanded. While national bodies were important voices for suffrage, they recognized that suffrage would only be obtained through grassroots work at the regional and state levels. Accordingly, Isabella Beecher Hooker and Frances Ellen Burr founded the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 at a meeting attended by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and William Lloyd Garrison. As Hooker writes: "It becomes more and more evident that as a political measure, our main reliance must be upon the action of Congress passing an amendment to the Federal Constitution. On this account we urge every member of the Society to keep on hand forms of petition that they may obtain signatures from time to time, and return them to the Secretary as soon as filled. Of the importance of flooding Congress with these petitions from all parts of the country, no one can doubt." Partnering with the NWSA, the CWSA focused on women's suffrage at the local level, and although Connecticut did not vote in favor of women's suffrage until the Nineteenth Amendment had already passed in Congress, the CWSA was able to gain small victories towards women's suffrage, such as earning women the right to formally vote on local matters like school and library expenditures. Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822 1907) was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, daughter of Lyman Beecher and half-sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her broad career as a suffrage activist included participating in the founding of the New England Women.

N° de réf. du vendeur 56787

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: ANNUAL MEETING OF THE CONNECTICUT WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, HELD AT HARTFORD, SEPTEMBER 9, 1870. REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE [wrapper title].
• Éditeur: Hartford: Case, Lockwood & Brainard, 1871.