(Continued from p. 8)
deep roots in the events of Reconstruction. Republican leaders had welcomed the talents of feminist abolitionists and then deserted them after the war on the grounds that the enfranchisement of the Southern black male was more important than women's issues. They would have to wait.
NAWSA itself was a league of voluntarily affiliated local groups. It found resources and set priorities through conventions, elected leaders, and publications. Shortly before World War 1, tactical militants organized by Alice Paul broke with the parent organization.
From the beginning suffragists had to tilt at the social windmill of the "place" of women. Anti-suffragist arguments that women were not rational, that they belonged at home raising children, that the Bible sanctified an inferior role for them, were essentially defensive measures used to fortify an image of male dominance in times of change. As economic structures of male domination sagged, fortification of traditional sex roles proceeded at a desperate pace. Attributes of femininity were at stake. Women could not be ladies and be political animals too. Both politics and motherhood would suffer.
The religious argument was far weightier than it is today, (it's been replaced by psychology) but other objections of men, and women, opponents have a startling contemporaneity. To learn how the suffrage movement grew out of dissatisfaction with middle class life styles created by increased economic and educational mobility gives us a new understanding of great-grandmother.
Restricted in tactics, disillusioned with male politicians whose priorities spelled betrayal, at war with the moral foundations of their society, these women met, wrote , spoke, sweated, and finally won--a paper victory, To read this book is to realize how little has happened in 120 years.