Campaigning against women's suffrage campaign, 1900-1913.

A Safargate's house. 1910.

The women's suffrage movement actually began in 1848, when a women's rights conference was held in Seneca Falls, New York. The Seneca waterfall meeting was not the first to support women's rights, but the suffragists later saw it as a meeting that started the suffrage movement.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Susan b. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton found themselves increasingly at odds with their former reform colleagues. Many reformers wanted to focus on the right to victory - including the right to vote - for newly fledgling African-American men. With his efforts, the 14th and 15th amendments of the Constitution were passed. Anthony and Stanton were against these amendments because they included the word "men". He believed that the words "men" written in these amendments would make it even more difficult for women to get the right to vote for women.

At the turn of the century, women reformers in the club movement and settlement house movement wanted to pass reform legislation. However, many politicians were unwilling to listen to an excluded group. Thus, over time women began to realize that to achieve reform, they needed to win the right to vote. For these reasons, at the turn of the century, the women's suffrage movement became a mass movement.

Women's suffrage was cast by opponents as a threat to the very fabric of society, the integrity of the family, and the protection of one's own manhood. In 1920, the 19th Amendment, energizing women, was finally ratified, due to the joint efforts of NAWSA and NWP. This victory is considered to be the most important achievement of women in the progressive era. This was the single largest extension of the right to democratic voting in our America's history, and it was achieved peacefully through democratic processes.