Does the Declaration of Independence Prevent Women’s Suffrage?

Julia Shaw / August 18, 2010

Did you know that the first female member of the Congress was elected prior to the ratification of the 19^th amendment? It is true that today, August 18, 2010, marks the 90^th anniversary of the ratification of the 19^th amendment, ensuring the right to vote regardless of sex. But that does not mean women weren’t exercising this right prior to 1920.

The anniversary of the 19^th amendment is an occasion to praise the women whose efforts in the suffrage movement secured this amendment. Too often, though, this praise becomes an invective against the Founding Fathers (who supposedly created a political order for the wealthy, propertied, and male), and injustice that was rectified by the 19^th amendment.

This usual narrative about the Founding reduces the Founders to sexists, while both forgetting that women voted throughout the founding period and mischaracterizing the principles of the American Founding.

First, American women began casting their ballots long before 1920. As Vindicating the Founders: Race Sex Class and Justice in the Origins of the America shows, women voted in large numbers as early as the late 1700s and early 1800s. New Jersey’s state constitution of 1776 stated that “all inhabitants” who met the state’s age, property, and residence requirement were entitled to the right to vote. Records also show that women voted in New York and Massachusetts before and after the Revolutionary War. In her essay on the 19^th Amendment from the Heritage Guide to the Constitution, Tiffany Jones Miller notes that both the territory and state of Wyoming allowed women to vote. Wyoming became a state in 1890, 30 years before the 19^th amendment was ratified. (more…)