Suffragettes Dbq Essay

The 14th Amendment of the Constitution emancipated the African-American slaves by stating that all citizens were to be free.Women were free in the United States;however, they were far from equal. The most significant way in which women weren’t equal is that they were not allowed to vote like their male counterparts.Women during the mid 19th century and into the early 20th century took notice of this fact and fought for years to give women the right to vote. Some women took what was viewed at the time as a radical approach by fighting for suffrage at the federal level, while other women took a more passive approach by fighting for suffrage at the state level. The women who fought for suffrage are known as suffragette. The suffragette that were

Document 1 says, “[Women] are compelled to pay taxes without representation; and yet we are governed without our consent, unlike men.” Women had to pay taxes and as did men. But unlike men, women weren’t able to represent themselves in the government by voting. People who opposed women’s suffrage would argue that although women were free and had rights, voting should not be one of those rights. Many anti-suffrage groups, such as the Brooklyn Auxiliary, were against suffrage because they found suffrage to be something that would be forced upon women who did not desire it. (doc#3) The Brooklin Auxiliary was correct in making the point that many women did note desire suffrage. However, they were wrong in the sense that women having the right to vote would impose on the women who did not want the right to vote. If they didn’t want to vote, that would have been their chose. It’s not as though there was going to be people showing up to anti-suffrage women who did not wish to vote and coerce them to do so. In fact, not giving women who wished to vote the right to vote based solely on the fact that other women were against it would be forceful in of