NWSA founded (may 15, 1869 – may 15, 1869)
Description:
The NWSA (otherwise referred to as The National) was founded on May 15, 1869 by Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. The National condemned the passage of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments because they didn’t include women and the founders of the National broke away from the AERA because they wouldn’t support a sixteenth amendment for women’s suffrage after the fifteenth was proposed. The exclusively women members pushed politically for the federal Constitutional Amendment for the women’s suffrage that the AERA didn’t allow them to campaign for, and held conventions in Washington D.C. to represent that, even though their headquarters were located in new York City. They also became involved in other women's rights issues, such as rights for working women and reforming marriage and divorce laws. To campaign for a federal amendment, they used a strategy first proposed by Virginia Minor that became known as New Departure: to use the language from the fourteenth amendment to justify that they were already citizens, so they had the right to suffrage. They also used language introduced before the American revolution, such as “taxation without representation” and “governed without consent”. Many NWSA members tried to vote or register to vote, and a few were arrested. Virginia Minor was one of these members, and when she appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, the court declared that “while women were citizens, suffrage was not a ‘necessary privilege and immunity’ to which all citizens were entitled.” In 1876, Anthony and other members interrupted a celebration of the centennial anniversary after a reading of the Declaration of Independence with a speech on women’s rights. They then presented a Women’s Declaration of Rights and Articles of Impeachment to prove that “women were being wronged by the absence of civil and political rights.” Actions like these made their image seem more radical than their conservative counterparts, the AWSA, and may have lessened the support for the movement at first. “In 1877, the NWSA initiated a federal Constitutional Amendment, written mostly by… Stanton, which was introduced into the Congress every year until it passed in 1919.”
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