New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association Collection

The New Jersey Suffrage Association (NJWSA) in 1867 by abolitionist and feminist Lucy Stone (1818-1893). It was one of a number of state suffrage associations founded throughout the country. Lucy Stone and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher subsequently founded the American Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. Unlike the National Woman Suffrage Association founded the same year by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the "American" accepted the 14th and 15th amendments, which granted the vote to free black men, and believed in working for women's suffrage on a state-by-state basis. In contrast, the "National" opposed the amendments because they ignored the demands of women, and were committed to working for a broad spectrum of equal rights for women.(1)

Women had formerly been able to vote in New Jersey under the 1776 constitution, which granted the right to all "inhabitants" who met residence and property qualifications. Women lost this right by the election law of 1807, which specifically limited the franchise to free white men, and was codified in the 1844 Constitution. (2) During the late 1860s, suffrage societies were founded in many New Jersey cities, but the movement declined, however, after Stone and her husband Henry Brown Blackwell moved to Massachusetts.

The New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association was revived in 1890 and began to hold annual conventions. It was also in this year that the two national suffrage associations combined to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), giving new impetus to the movement in New Jersey. In,_ 1894, NJWSA set up the Committee on Laws Related to Women, which fought to improve women's legal status; for instance, their lobbying efforts enter the legal profession in New Jersey in 1895. NJWSA, however, became less active after a long the battle to grant women the right to vote in school board elections in 1897. (3)

A period of renewed activity began in l908; with the elections of Clara Laddey to the presidency. Membership grew rapidly under the leadership of enrollment chairman Lillian Feickert, who was elected president herself in 1912, serving until 1920. During this period, three other state suffrage organizations were founded: the Women's Political Union (1908), the Equal Franchise Society of New Jersey (1910); and the New Jersey Men's League for Equal Suffrage (1910). In 1911, the New Jersey suffrage societies formed a joint legislative committee with the object of bringing a suffrage referendum before New Jersey voters. The suffrage resolution was first introduced into the State Legislature in January 1912, and after three years of lobbying was finally passed in both the State Assembly and Senate in February 1915. A statewide referendum was defeated, however, in October 1915. (4)

The New Jersey Constitution prohibited another referendum for five years. At this time, however, Carrie Chapman Catt, the newly-elected leader of NA WSA, began a new drive for a federal suffrage amendment. Meanwhile the suffrage movement in New Jersey was growing stronger and stronger. The Equal Franchise Society and the Women's Political Union merged with NJWSA in 1915 and 1916 respectively, and a state branch of the national suffrage pressure group the Congressional Union was established in 1916, becoming the New Jersey branch of the National Woman's Party in 1917. In this year, NJWSA had 100,000 members, and a number of New Jersey politicians were beginning to support women's suffrage. (5) Upon the declaration of war in April 1917, NAWSA offered its services to the government. NJWSA purchased and operated a Soldiers' Club House in Wrightstown, New Jersey (1917-1919), which was staffed by volunteers. (6)

During the war, however, the drive for suffrage continued. The House of Representatives passed the federal suffrage amendment in January 1918, a year when both NJWSA and the Woman's Party worked to defeat anti-suffrage political candidates in New Jersey. Although they failed to stop the election of anti-suffragist David Baird to the U.S. Senate and twelve Democrats to the Assembly in 1918, their support resulted in the election of Edward Edwards, Democrat, as governor in 1920. (7)After the passage of the amendment in the U.S. Senate in June 1919, the next battle for NJWSA was to assure ratification in the state legislature. The New Jersey Suffrage Ratification Committee, made up of NJWSA and other women's organizations, with Lillian Feickert as chairwoman, was formed in July 1919. In February 1920, New Jersey became the 29th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. The New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association held a final victory convention in Newark April 23-24, 1920, where it formally dissolved itself and was reconstituted as the New Jersey League of Women Voters.

The New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association collection is .2 cubic feet (one half manuscript box) in size and span the years 1911 to 1938, with the bulk from 1911 to 1919. Types of documents include constitution and bylaws, correspondence, reports, press releases, broadsides, newspaper clippings and publications. Newspaper clippings have been photocopied on to acid-free paper. Please see series description for more information on the collection. Minutes, correspondence and other documents from the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association can also be found in the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark.

(1) Felice D. Gordon, After Winning: The Legacy of the New Jersey Suffragists, 1920-1947 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986), p. 8. (2) Gordon, p. 8-9. (3) Ida Harper, ed. The History of Woman Suffrage, vi (New York, 1922), p. 412 and Gordon, p. 10-13. (4) Gordon, p. 13-22. (5) Gordon, p. 22-26. (6) Harper, p. 427. (7) Gordon, p. 27-29.