Elizabeth Cady Stanton died in 1902 at the age of 83, and Susan B. Anthony in 1906 at 86. By then a new generation of suffrage leaders emerged–younger, better educated, and less restricted to the domestic sphere. The now respectable middle-class leadership of NAWSA adopted a’social feminist’ stance, arguing that women were, in fact, different from men, and therefore needed the vote in order to apply their special qualities to the political problems of the nation.

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However, more militant suffragists, among them Quaker agitator Alice Paul and Cady Stanton’s daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, continued to insist upon women’s absolute equality. They demanded a federal suffrage amendment as a necessary first step to achieving equal rights.

Victory on the voting rights issue came in the wake of World War I. Impressed by the suffragists’ participation in the war effort, Congress passed what came to be known as the ‘Susan B. Anthony Amendment’ in 1919. Following state ratification a year later, it enfranchised American women nationwide in the form of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

It had been more than 72 years since that daring call for female voting rights was issued at the Seneca Falls Convention. On November 2, 1920, 91-year-old Charlotte Woodward Pierce went to the polls in Philadelphia, the only signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration who lived long enough to cast her ballot in a presidential election.

This article was written by Constance B. Rynder and originally published in the April 1999 issue of American History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today!

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