The Womans Suffrage Movement in the 1800s Suffrage is the right or exercise of the right to vote in public affairs. The freedom of an individual to express a desire for a change in government by choosing between competing people or ideas without fear of reprisal is basic to self-government. Any exclusion from the right to suffrage, or as it is also called, the franchise, excludes that person from a basic means for participation in the political decision-making process1. In the United States at the time the Constitution was written, it is estimated that only six percent of the adult male population was entitled to vote2. Under the influence of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, religious and property qualifications were eliminated. Racial barriers to voting existed legally until the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified after the civil war. Although the struggle to achieve equal rights for women to vote did not include a declared national war, it was nevertheless, a fierce battle fought primarily by determined female soldiers. Even though the womens suffrage movement started long before the civil war, it was the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment that set a precedence for human equality. This precedence was the antecedent that women needed to become more aggressive and increasingly vociferous, which ultimately led to their right to vote.Like other suffrage movements, it was the strong leaders that ensured that the battle for womens rights would in their favor. Some of these leaders are familiar names in American history. Susan B. Anthony is probably the most well known pioneer of womens rights. Susan B. Anthony was educated in New York, and became a teacher. She soon became unsatisfied with this career and became an advocate for civil rights. Her initial efforts in this area, however, as an agent for the Daughters of Temperance and for the American Anti-Slavery Society, were disappointing, for she ...
