National Woman Suffrage Association

The National Woman Suffrage Association was an American organization founded in 1869 to campaign for a federal constitutional amendment granting women the vote. It was a leading national organization in the women’s suffrage movement.

American Equal Rights Association: An American organization founded in 1866 to advocate equal rights, including voting rights, regardless of race or sex. Disagreement over the Fifteenth Amendment’s scope helped precipitate the association’s formation.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American women’s rights activist and writer who helped organize the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. Stanton co-founded the NWSA and served as its first president.
New Departure: A suffrage strategy that argued the Fourteenth Amendment already gave women the right to vote as citizens. NWSA activists used this constitutional argument to challenge voting restrictions without waiting for a new amendment.
National American Woman Suffrage Association: An American women’s suffrage organization formed in 1890 by merging the NWSA and the American Woman Suffrage Association. The NWSA joined its former rival in this organization after decades of separate campaigns.
Fifteenth Amendment: A 1870 amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting denial of voting rights on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Its ratification without a sex-based voting guarantee sharpened the split among suffrage activists.
Matilda Joslyn Gage: An American women’s rights activist, writer, and abolitionist who campaigned for women’s suffrage. Gage was a founding leader who challenged legal and religious barriers to women’s rights.
Fourteenth Amendment: A 1868 U.S. constitutional amendment establishing birthright citizenship and equal protection of the laws. The NWSA debated whether its language already protected women’s voting rights.
Nineteenth Amendment: A 1920 U.S. constitutional amendment prohibiting denial of voting rights on account of sex. The federal amendment campaign the NWSA helped launch ultimately culminated in its ratification.
American Woman Suffrage Association: An American organization founded in 1869 that pursued women’s voting rights through state-by-state campaigns. It emerged from the same split but favored state campaigns over the NWSA’s federal amendment strategy.
Victoria Woodhull: An American activist who became the first woman to address a U.S. House committee on women’s suffrage in 1871. Her 1871 petition to Congress advanced the NWSA’s claim that existing constitutional protections already covered women.

Linked from 10 pages