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It was not until 1848 that the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with a convention in Seneca Falls, New York, organized by abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and Lucretia Mott (1793-1880).
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Stanton and Mott, along with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and other activists, formed organizations that raised public awareness and lobbied the government to grant voting rights to women.
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After a 70-year battle, these groups finally emerged victorious with the passage of the 19th Amendment.
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The campaign for woman suffrage did not begin in earnest in the decades before the Civil War.
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More than 300 people—mostly women, but also some men—attended, including former African-American slave and activist Frederick Douglass (1818-95).
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In 1869, Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) with their eyes on a federal constitutional amendment that would grant women the right to vote.
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The 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870.) The AWSA believed women’s enfranchisement could best be gained through amendments to individual state constitutions.
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When Wyoming was admitted to the Union in 1890, woman suffrage remained part of the state constitution.
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By 1878, the NWSA and the collective suffrage movement had gathered enough influence to lobby the U.S. Congress for a constitutional amendment.
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On November 2 of that same year, more than 8 million women across the U.S. voted in elections for the first time. It took over 60 years for the remaining 12 states to ratify the 19th Amendment.