Sound familiar?
Perhaps no other sentiment better captures the spirit and intention of Boston’s 19th century revolutionaries in the fight for women’s suffrage. In pursuit of full enfranchisement, the suffragists of Boston were not the first to call back to the ideals of the American Revolution. In commemoration of the Boston Tea Party centennial in December 1873, prominent speakers and advocates of women’s suffrage met at Faneuil Hall to call out the contradictions of the American ideal, including Julia Ward Howe, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips and more. In the wake of the Civil War, emerging leaders, who had honed their activism in the abolitionist movement, linked abolitionism and women’s suffrage as steps towards full citizenship for all Americans. In the minds of these American radicals, universal suffrage and the end of slavery were crucial components in a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Admission Ticket, Woman’s Tea Party, 1873. Courtesy of Boston Athenaeum.
Lucy Stone, an organizer and speaker at the Woman’s Tea Party meeting, championed the cause of universal suffrage. Along with allies, she believed that the restriction of the ballot to one group on the basis of gender or race constituted one of the great injustices of the 19th century. Stone underscored the significance of the cause by saying, “If we can make it keenly felt, and clearly understood, here and now, that the taxation of women without representation, is as great an injustice as was that done to men in the olden time, this day will be worthy to be held in grateful remembrance by our children’s children forever.”
Woman's Journal. 1873. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
2020 marks the Centennial of the 19th Amendment’s ratification in 1920. Over the next year, the National Parks of Boston will continue to share stories of perseverance, agency and courage throughout the suffrage movement and highlight Massachusetts leaders from the 19th and 20th centuries. Follow us on Instagram @boafnps and @boston_nhp to learn about these stories through #SuffrageSaturdays and to be notified of upcoming centennial commemorations, women's history programming and emerging research at the National Parks of Boston.
