The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.



On this date in 1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby issued the proclamation that the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing women the right to vote, had been adopted. Adoption of the amendment was the culmination of the suffrage campaign begun at a convention organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls, New York in July, 1848. Among the resolutions adopted there was one that said "it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise."



Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the mother of seven children, also shared the fervent opposition to abortion and infanticide that characterized these feminists. Her words in a letter to Julia Ward Howe are frequently quoted: "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."



Professor Marjorie Spruill Wheeler of the University of Southern Mississippi is among the country's pre-eminent scholars of The History of the Suffrage Movement.