Women's suffrage goes into effect following Tennessee's ratification of the 19th amendment.
On June 1848, the Liberty Party, composed entirely of men, made women's suffrage a plank in their presidential campaign. The next month, the Seneca Falls Convention issued the first formal demand authored by US women for suffrage.
During the 1850s the National Woman's Rights Conventions and Lucy Stone organized women's suffrage petitions campaigns in several states, and Stone became the first person to appeal for woman suffrage before a body of lawmakers when she addressed the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1853.
The Civil War, and the drive to enfranchise freed slaves put womans suffrage on the back burner nationally but at the local levels the movement continued to grow.
World War I provided the final push for women's suffrage in America. After President Woodrow Wilson announced that World War I was a war for democracy, women were up in arms. The National Women's Party led by Alice Paul became the first "cause" to picket outside the White House one banner on August 14, 1917, referred to "Kaiser Wilson" and compared the plight of the German people with that of American women.
On October 17, Alice Paul was sentenced to seven months and on October 30 began a hunger strike, but after a few days prison's authorities began to force feed her. After years of opposition, Wilson changed his position in 1918 to advocate women's suffrage as a war measure. The next year Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote.
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