Suffragists

SUFFRAGISTS FOUGHT for the vote for women in the United States, England, New Zealand and Australia. After the American Revolution's fervor faded, the initial impulse for expansion of rights gave way to a conservative retrenchment, then prosperity brought domestic complacency—for some. Women lost the right to vote in New York in 1777, Massachusetts in 1780, New Hampshire in 1784, and everywhere except New Jersey in 1787, when the U.S. Constitutional Convention empowered the states to determine voting qualification. New Jersey took the vote from women in 1807. Between 1820 and 1880, middleand upper-class women were stereotyped under “The Cult of Domesticity.” Working-class women were forgotten.

Men thought that woman's place was in the home, but some women thought they belonged in school. Emma Hart Willard opened ...