It has been well documented that the Republican Party has historically supported the civil rights of African Americans. The Civil War was waged under a Republican president in order to abolish slavery and protect the unity of the United States.
In 1856, only five years prior to the outbreak of that war, the Republican Party was founded and its main motivation was the abolition of slavery. The Republican Party fought against the Democratic Party, which opposed equal rights for blacks with its alliance with the Ku Klux Klan and its passage of the Jim Crow laws.
Just as the Republican Party was responsible for promoting and defending the civil right of blacks against the Democratic Party, which fought to retain the second-class citizenship of African Americans, the Republican Party has also been the party of equal opportunity for women.
Women’s Rights Convention
In 1848, the Women’s Right Convention took place in Seneca Falls, New York; thus began the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. A national meeting was held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts; then, in 1870, suffragettes Lucy Stone and Mary Livermore were seated as delegates at the Massachusetts Republican State Convention.
In 1872 at the Republican National Convention, a resolution was passed supporting admission of women “to wider fields of usefulness.” In addition to this resolution was the declaration that “the honest demand of this class of citizens for additional rights . . . should be treated with respectful consideration.”
Republican National Convention
Therese Jenkins and Cora Carleton became the first two women to be seated as alternate delegates at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in 1892. Also at this convention for the first time, a woman gave an address. The speaker was J. Ellen Foster, who chaired the Women’s Republican Association of the United States.
Foster handed out to the other delegates fliers with details for her organization’s inclusion in the politics of the nation. She made it clear that the women were going to work with the delegation and that they were not going away.
Democrats Defeat Voting Rights Amendment
Republican Senator A. A. Sargent of California pioneered the 19th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in 1878. Encouraged by Susan B. Anthony, Sargent’s amendment was also called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. Unfortunately, a Democrat controlled senate defeated the passage of the amendment four times.
Republican-Controlled Congress Finally Passes Suffrage for Women
Only after the Republicans won control of congress in 1919 did the Equal Suffrage Amendment pass. It found favor in the House of Representatives in May and then passed the Senate in June.
As the 19th Amendment was circulating for ratification, the states with Republican legislatures passed the amendment. Thirty-six states ratified the Amendment. Twenty-six states had Republican legislatures and easily ratified the Amendment. Nine states voted against its ratification—eight of those states had Democratic legislatures.
Even before the Amendment was part of the Constitution, twelve states, all with Republican congresses, had conferred suffrage rights on women. The 19th Amendment entered the Constitution August 26, 1920, after Tennessee, the last state to do so, ratified the Amendment.
 |
