ROSS SIMPSON

Suffragist organizers held the first-ever National Women’s
Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts on October
23, 1850. 

More than 1,000 delegates from 11 states arrived for the two-
day conference, which had been planned by members of the
Anti-Slavery Society.

ROSS SIMPSON

Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906)

Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and
women’s rights activist who played a pivotal role in the
women’s suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family
committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery
petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New
York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing American women
the right to vote, was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

The women’s suffrage movement was founded in the mid-19th century by
women who had become politically active through their work in the abolitionist
and temperance movements. In July 1848, 240 woman suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York, to
assert the right of women to vote. Female enfranchisement was still largely opposed by most Americans, and the distraction of the North-South conflict
and subsequent Civil War precluded further discussion.

During the Reconstruction Era, the 15th Amendment was adopted, granting
African American men the right to vote, but the Republican-dominated
Congress  failed to expand its progressive radicalism into the sphere of
gender. 

 
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, founders of The
National Woman Suffrage Association, circa 1881. 

ROSS SIMPSON

On this day in 1898, the USS Maine sank when it exploded in Havana Harbor for unknown reasons. More than 260 crew members were
killed. The episode escalated tensions between the United States
and Spain and contributed to the outbreak of the Spanish-American
War two months later.