American Woman Suffrage Association
The new organization, called the National American Woman Suffrage Association, was initially led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had been the leaders of the NWSA.
[4][5] The proposed Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection of the laws to all citizens, regardless of race, color, creed, or previous condition of servitude, added the word "male" to the Constitution for the first time.
The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed at a hastily organized meeting two days after the last AERA convention.
[7] It was organized by leaders of the New England Woman Suffrage Association (NEWSA), which had been created in November 1868 as part of the developing split within the women's movement.
The first slate of officers consisted of equal numbers of men and women, and the convention agreed to alternate the presidency of the organization between a woman and a man.
[14] Suffrage activists who hoped to prevent a split in the movement convinced Susan B. Anthony, one of the leaders of the NWSA, to attend the AWSA's founding convention.
She rose to speak immediately after Lucy Stone's speech, offering to cooperate with the AWSA and saying the movement was more important than any one organization.
In her The Revolution newsletter, Stanton periodically appealed to racism and ethnocentrism in order to distinguish female suffrage from black male suffrage: “ 'Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic,' declared Stanton, had no right to be “making laws for [feminist leader] Lucretia Mott.” '[16] The AWSA, which included Lucy Stone, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Henry Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe and Josephine Ruffin, strongly supported the Republican Party and the Fifteenth Amendment, which they felt would not win congressional approval if it included the vote for women.
[19] Stanton and Anthony, the leading figures in the NWSA, were more widely known as leaders of the women's suffrage movement during this period and more influential in setting its direction.
[22] After several years of negotiations, the organizations officially joined in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
[23] The leaders of this new organization included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Frances Willard, Mary Church Terrell, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Anna Howard Shaw.
[3] Stone gave her first public speech at Oberlin, but received a great amount of backlash from the Ladies Board, calling her actions "unwomanly" and "unscriptural.
Along with their success in western states, the AWSA also played a vital role in the passage of the 19th amendment which granted white woman the right to vote under constitutional law.
The attention the AWSA gave to woman's suffrage and their work to spread the message were all contributing factors that led to the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920.
[29] The journal never had any immense financial success attached to it, but it received widespread attention which heavily contributed to the Woman's Suffrage Movement.
[30] It also offered insights from the readers including editorials, letters from supporters, debates on other woman's rights issues, short stories and poetry.
