- In both wars the cooperation and emotional commitment of women were needed.
- The Civil War was more drawn-out and for many in the South became a total war.
- The First World War did not involve women in a life-or-death struggle, but it did increase economic activity and mean that women’s contribution to the workforce was important.
- Also, the Allied propaganda of a liberal alliance with progressive France and Britain, against an autocratic and militarist Germany, shifted opinion.How could one fight for democracy and then keep women disenfranchised?
The support given by some women to a Women’s Peace Party, (WPP) founded 1915, which called for an end to the war, showed the need to maintain support for the war.
States were more receptive to NAWSA arguments. New York and Illinois enfranchised women in 1917; South Dakota, Michigan in 1918.
The NAWSA also targeted anti-suffrage senators, and some were defeated.
Increased protests such as picketing outside of Washington in 1917 with the Silent Sentinels protests made clear to the public that women were not allowed to vote despite being true American citizens and even serving in the war.
- President Wilson commented that ‘..the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged.’
World War I laid bare the unequal nature of American society.
- In the minds of many, men and women alike, how did it look for the United States to fight for liberty around the world while half its citizenry was denied the right to participate as equals?
In comparison the Civil War was less influential in the development of women’s suffrage.
Although the civil war precipitated the movement, there was less cohesion and unity. Which was only reached in the 1890s.
The civil war also overshadowed the goal of women’s suffrage by placing importance on the 15th Amendment.
It was not the time for women yet according to the federal government.
