Antisuffragists and the Dilemma of the American West

Abstract

Under the leadership of women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the National Woman Suffrage Association was established in 1868 with the express purpose of granting American women the right to vote as the first step towards equality with men. But not all women supported this movement. Anti-suffragists were entirely satisfied with their role within the domestic sphere, which was best described in Barbara Welter's classic, "The Cult of True Womanhood." Women, they believed, were supposed to be pious, pure, submissive caretakers of their homes and families. For anti-suffragists these supposedly feminine characteristics embodied a woman's identity and explained her role in the home and the larger society. They were not second-class citizens; rather, women enjoyed an elevated moral standing. Thus, woman suffrage was a direct threat to female status.

In the American West, women gained equal suffrage quicker than they did in the East, and western women were quick to testify of its success. Anti-suffragists were determined to halt the spread of female suffrage and the threat that it implied to women's supposed superior moral status. Thus, anti-suffragists' opponents were not only leaders of the suffrage movement like Anthony; their political enemies were the enfranchised women of the West. They were the antitheses of the women of the Cult of True Womanhood and had to be exposed as unfeminine, immoral, and as ineffective voters.

But to prove their point, anti-suffragists had to leave the domestic confines prescribed by the Cult's ideology. They testified before Congress, published newsletters, and established their own antisuffrage organizations. In an attempt to maintain the code espoused by the Cult of True Womanhood, many anti-suffragists depended on men to promote their campaign by writing essays and representing antisuffragist women in state and national politics. Anti-suffragists tried to convince Americans that suffrage would do more harm than good. Anti-suffragists not only lost their fight against suffrage, they were forced to adjust to a more progressive role for women. In the end, anti-suffragists like Oklahoma's Alice Robinson and Edith Cherry Johnson were left to demonstrate the virtues of the Cult of True Womanhood in a transformed world in which their values were of declining relevance.