Resolutions Adopted by the Twelfth Annual Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association…
“Resolved ... That The Right Of Citizens ... To Vote
Shall Not Be Denied Or Abridged By The United States
On Account Of Sex... “
Anthony, Susan B. Resolutions Adopted By The Twelfth Annual Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, Held in St. George’s Hall, St. Louis, Mo., May 7th, 8th and 9th, 1879. [St. Louis: National Woman Suffrage Association], 1879.
A single 8vo. leaf, folded once to make four pages; cover title on front panel, text on two pages, rear panel blank; a fine copy of a very fragile publication. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of one of the earliest known printings of the “Anthony Amendment,” calling for full voting rights for women. The text of the amendment as it appears here was first introduced into Congress on January 10, 1878; it remained entirely unchanged until its incorporation into the U.S. Constitution in 1919 as the 19th Amendment. The only edition which may have preceded this printing is the U.S. Government printing of the text in the Congressional Record, making this the first privately printed edition; considering the government’s lack of enthusiasm for the cause of woman’s suffrage, it is doubtful that the U.S. Government Printing Office published this more speedily than did Anthony’s National Woman Suffrage Association, whence the proposed amendment originated.
According to HAWH:
The National Woman Suffrage Association brought its demand for a proposed Sixteenth Amendment to grant woman suffrage to center stage by holding national conventions each Winter...NWSA members submitted a flood of petitions and resolutions to Congress and the White House, and regularly testified before congressional committees. A delegation from NWSA boldly disrupted the July 1876 Centennial celebrations in Philadelphia by presenting a “Woman’s Declaration of Rights” drafted by Stanton and read aloud by Anthony. Beginning in 1878, at NWSA’s urging, a woman suffrage amendment was introduced every year in Congress. (414-415)
Although Anthony was not officially credited with the authorship of this work, it was indisputably hers, known informally as the “Anthony Amendment.” Since 1872 when she was jailed for voting, Anthony had devoted her primary energies to securing for women the right to vote; she slept, ate, and breathed woman’s suffrage. At the time of the proposed amendment’s introduction, Anthony, then the Vice-President of NWSA, was conducting a national lecture tour designed to gather popular support for the cause.
This was an especially tense and important time for Anthony and for the woman’s suffrage movement:
...between 1877 and 1883 Anthony campaigned from state to state, returning to Washington every year for the annual National convention at which time she usually arranged to testify on behalf of woman’s suffrage before a House or Senate committee. These years were filled with the repetitiveness of one campaign after another. It was work that had to be done whether or not it held the excitement and challenge of the earlier days. And these years were also filled with great sadness. Susan lost her sister Hannah in 1877 and her mother in 1880. And they were filled with great labor as Anthony and Stanton produced the first volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, “a royal octavo of 900 pages,” in 1881. (Kathleen Barry, Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist, NY: NYU Press, 1988, 275)
A quintessential piece of women’s history.
(#3707)
Print Inquire
