The Story of Woman's Suffrage and One Vote

A One-Vote Oddity

Women’s Suffrage and One Vote

 

The battle for a woman’s right to vote was long, arduous, and filled with an amazing number of near-sighted men. But women proved equal to the challenge and finally won the day. Supporters of women’s suffrage, starting in 1849, introduced constitutional amendments at every session of Congress for half a century. But it wasn’t until the territory of Wyoming in 1869 that the movement began to take off.

The next year the Utah territory followed. In 1890,Wyoming became a state and became the first state to enfranchise women. In 1893, Colorado let women vote, followed by Idaho and the new state of Utah in 1896. Washington, 1910; California 1911; Arizona, Kansas and Oregon 1912 were the next states to allow women full partnership as citizens.

But all of these victories were in rural western states, west of the Mississippi River. Illinois, in 1913, was the first industrial state to jump on board. At President Wilson’s inauguration 5,000 women showed up to petition and marched for the right to vote. They were not well received.

 

“Police had granted a permit for the parade, but they did little to protect the determined women. … [who] had to fight their way from the start and took more than an hour to advance the first few blocks. They were spat upon, shoved, slapped, tripped, and sometimes knocked to the ground. Their banners were mutilated, their hats were pulled off, and their clothing was torn. Many of them were in tears from the assaults and insults screamed by male chauvinists who lined the route”²⁷

 

The incident hit the headlines and fueled the engine for a new constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage. Eventually, President Wilson weighed in with his support. On January 9, 1918, the House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on the amendment. The women’s advocates knew that the vote would be close, and many were worried. At what seemed the worst possible time, it was learned that four of the measure’s supporters were ill. In addition, another voter was at the bedside of his dying wife and could not be counted on.

(Continued in next post and at OneVoteOddities.blogspot.com)

Footnotes

24. P.J. Achtemeirer, Harper and Row, P., & Society of Biblical Literature (1985). Harper’s Bible Dictionary. “justice,” includes index. (1^st ed.). SanFrancisco, CA: Harper and Row.

25. Let me be perfectly clear. I am not claiming to be “righteous” in the existential sense. I am a sinner who knows only too well my tendency to wickedness and rebellion against God. But I am, and others are “righteous,” when we stand for the standards of a righteous God. To proclaim truth is a “righteous” thing to do.

             There is another type of righteousness that is the most important of all. That is the righteousness that the Apostle Paul speaks of in the book of Romans, a “declared righteousness,” given to all those who place their faith in Christ (3:21-26). That  “imputed” righteousness (read the fourth chapter of Romans), produces a change of life, without which “no one will see God” (Hebrew 12:14). In January of 1974, Christ gave me His righteousness and it (His righteousness) is my ONLY hope of glory.

26. Christianity Today “Mark Hatfield Taps into the Real Power on Capital Hill,” (October 22, 1982), 22.

27. Lindop, 72-73