In the early years of American Colonial Society, the rights, roles, and responsibilities of women swayed from one viewpoint to another. In the mid 1600s, the first question of women's rights was raised after Anne Hutchinson confronted the Puritan Church concerning the exclusion of women in church affairs. She eventually went to court and was found guilty. She was also banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The actions taken by the Colony did not represent the beliefs that other colonies had concerning women's roles in society. The dangers of the New World, disease, Indian Wars, and westward expansion sometimes left women widowed, and having to bare her husband's responsibilities. Through the necessity of having to perform tasks outside of their domestic oblig

Through the reasearch of this paper I have found a new appreciation and a better understanding of the women's suffrage movement. The two interpretations given by DuBois and Ginzber are two different points of views. There is not one real right answer to what sparked the ninth resolution and the demand by women for their right to voter, but rather it is a combination of events and Ideas.

The split was mostly over the support of the Fifteenth Amendment. Stanton and Anthony had felt betrayed. They had worked as abolitionist as well as feminist. They were apauld at the suffrage of black and they began a anti-Fifteenth Amendment campaign. The campaign brought about a war of words. Susan B. Anthony once said, "If the 'entire people' could not have suffrage, then it must go ' to the most intelligent first....Intelligence, justice, and morality, are to have precedence in the Government, let the question of woman be brought up first and that of the Negro last."

Women played an active role in the development of this country and its struggle for liberty (from England). Miriam Gurko calls it ironic that "it was the arrival of independence and the spread of democracy" that cost women their rights and labeled them second class citizens.

Women began to get more involved with legislation. In 1840, women were attending political meetings and pushing moral questions in to legislation. Ginzberg states that "activists increasingly framed their conception of social change in terms of electoral means and goals". The disillusionment that moral suasion would work as a tool for reform corresponded with the belief in the promise of legislative change.

Stanton began by reading the "Declaration of Sentiments", an adaptation of the Declaration of Independence" written by Thomas Jefferson. The organizers felt that the "rights of man must include the rights of women". The women saw fit to include the words "and women" so that the Declaration begins by stating:

Historians agree that the right to vote is an impacting tool that can used to create change. Some, however, look at the ninth resolution as being brought about due to the ineffectiveness of moral suasion, or the act of urging, persuading, or convincing people to do what is right. Others have interpreted the resolution as an extension of the new radical republicanism in the 19th century, which persuaded rights for all, and the abolition of slavery.

Action had to be taken by individual states. In 1869, the Territory of Wyoming gave women the right to vote. The Utah Territory did so a year later. Wyoming entered the Union in 1890 and became the first state with woman suffrage. Colorado adopted woman suffrage in 1893, and Idaho in 1896. By 1920, 15 states--most of them in the West--had granted full voting privileges to women. Twelve other states allowed women to vote in presidential elections, and two states let them vote in primary elections.

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Approximate Word count = 2519
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)