Essay: President Woodrow Wilson impact on the women’s suffrage movement

Twenty-eighth President Woodrow Wilson is often remembered for the large role he played in ending World War I. However, he also greatly impacted the women’s suffrage movement. Women did not possess the right to vote when President Wilson took office on March 3, 1913. Although Wilson considered himself an intelligent man with high morals, he opposed women’s suffrage. Nevertheless, during his two terms as president, women attained degrees of influence in the White House never believed to be possible. The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, and while Wilson was still president, women did win the right to vote (Lengel). At first, President Wilson did not support women’s suffrage, but the suffragists were able to sway his opinion and earn his support, which led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
President Wilson did not support a suffrage amendment for women when he first took office in 1913 (Lengel). Woodrow Wilson is considered a progressive president, and supported reforms for points like labor and banking (Cobbs). Historians have often said that Woodrow Wilson’s attitude towards the women’s suffrage movement was a neglectful one. The president believed that granting suffrage to women was the jurisdiction of the states, and refused to support a constitutional amendment (Graham 665). He felt as if a woman’s place was in the home, and women had no need for a voice in the elections (Cobbs). Los Angeles Times Reporter Elizabeth Cobbs states, “Women who spoke in public gave Wilson a chilled, scandalized feeling…in the 1912 presidential campaign, the Democrat told his staff that he was definitely and irreconcilably opposed to woman suffrage…and the type of woman who took an active part in the suffrage agitation was totally abhorrent to him.” Suffragist and National Women’s Party leader Alice Paul and her three-hundred supporters once met with President Wilson at the White House in 1917, hoping the president would have a plan for winning congressional approval of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. They were not prepared for the icy reception they received. Instead of committing to help advance the cause in Congress, President Wilson shied away from any commitment to the women’s suffrage movement, claiming he was not the leader of his party. He said, “Ladies, you must concert public opinion on behalf of woman suffrage” (Sobieski 13). Wilson was opposed to women’s suffrage for most of his first term as twenty-eighth President of the United States.
The National Women’s party, led by suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, advocated for women’s suffrage until a constitutional amendment was passed. On March 3, 1913, one day before Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural parade, a pair of women mounted two horses near the United States Capitol. They were about to lead a parade of supporters of women’s suffrage (Kelly). This was just the beginning of what was to become the National Women’s Party’s fight for suffrage. Paul urged activists to do things like protest the president at public events and campaign against Wilson’s Democratic Party in 1914 and 1916. When Paul’s insistence on radical demonstrations led to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, or NAWSA, trying to slow her efforts, Paul launched her own group, the National Woman’s Party, in 1916. By 1917, many Americans viewed the National Women’s Party as confrontational, too militant, and no good for suffrage. After the United States entered World War I, NAWSA announced that it would turn their focus towards supporting the war effort. Paul and the National Women’s Party continued pressing for a suffrage amendment. The last straw for the National Women’s Party was when President Wilson, recently elected to a second term, walked out on a visiting suffrage delegation after angrily refusing to endorse their cause. The next morning, twelve women carrying banners took up positions outside the White House gates. They returned every day (Zahniser 56). Under Paul’s leadership, the National Women’s Party advocated for suffrage in ways never imagined by NAWSA.
After the United States entered World War I, many suffragists felt that if America was to defend democracy abroad, then they deserved the right at home, in the form of suffrage for women (“Wilson”). Public hostility towards the picketers dramatically increased after the United States entered World War I. Rather than foolish, the suffragists were branded as unpatriotic traitors  (Zahniser 56). For five months these pickets continued, while Congress refused to act without word from President Wilson. At first, Wilson was amused by the picketers. He tipped his hat, smiled at them, and even invited them in for coffee. However, as time went on, his attitude changed. In late June 1917, six women were arrested. Eleven more were detained on July 4. Ten days later, a third group was arrested and taken into custody. All the women were tried and convicted under false obstructing traffic charges. The protesters were sentenced to sixty days in the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, and it was there, they suffered beatings, forced feedings, and unsanitary conditions. But the pickets and arrests continued. In August, riots broke out in front of the White House gates. For three days, suffragists were beaten by angry mobs, as the police stood by, refusing to intervene. Presidents have often had to navigate carefully around political issues, and suffrage for women was no different. The women’s suffrage movement had been growing for years, and despite displaying hostility towards their cause a number of times, Wilson began to see the importance of suffrage for women. But, it was the efforts of women during World War I that truly won President Wilson’s full support of a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage (“Wilson”). The end of the suffragists fight was swiftly approaching.
The suffragists were able to sway Wilson’s opinion by the end of  1917. Wilson, who was under increasing pressure, had ordered investigations of jail conditions, and finally gave up and pardoned the suffragists. Six weeks later, he declared his support for a federal suffrage amendment via a speech to Congress (Zahniser 58). He endorsed a constitutional suffrage amendment, explaining his change of mind in terms of the war. The House rapidly approved the amendment, but the Senate still opposed an amendment. This prompted the president to visit Congress again, on September 30, the night before another vote. Wilson pleaded with Congress, and urged the adoption of the amendment as “virtually essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged” (“President Wilson”). However, the senators voted down the amendment once again. They would reject the amendment one more time in February of 1919.  It was not until a new Congress convened in the spring of 1919 that both the House and Senate would finally approve a constitutional suffrage amendment (“President Wilson”). Additionally, more persuasion and demonstrations by the National Women’s Party were necessary before the Nineteenth Amendment passed both houses of Congress. By this time, women in twenty-four states had won the right to vote. Women’s contributions to the war effort, including working in factories and farms, and serving overseas as nurses and ambulance drivers, also sped up the process. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified swiftly, and despite failing in eight states, the amendment was added to the Constitution on August 26, 1920 (Zahniser 59). All American women officially had the right the vote.
President Wilson’s support of the Nineteenth Amendment was crucial to its passage. At first, President Wilson did not support women’s suffrage, but the suffragists were able to sway his opinion and earn his support, which led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Thanks to Woodrow Wilson’s eventual support of the Nineteenth Amendment, women no longer had to wait for suffrage.