Post-Civil War Developments That Strengthened Suffrage Movement

United States History since 1865:
Post-Civil War Developments That Strengthened Suffrage Movement
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Question 1: Post-Civil War Developments That Strengthened Suffrage Movement
Women's suffrage entailed fighting for women to be accorded the right to vote in national and local elections. It took nearly 100 years for activists and reformers to win this right for women. Despite a lot of disagreement over the strategy to be used, almost crippling the movement, in 1920, the 19th amendment was made: hence the constitution was ratified (Sapiro 2020, 1557). Through this, just like men, American women were granted the rights and the responsibility of citizenship, which majorly entailed voting. Therefore various post-civil war developments were the major contributor to the growing strength of the suffrage movement.
The first post- Civil War development was the thirteenth amendment in 1865. Through this amendment, slavery was made illegal and indicated that black people, including women, had a right to control their labor (Williamson 2019, 23). Furthermore, through the amendment, women got the right to control how they used their time and even their bodies, unlike when they were enslaved. Through this amendment, women in the movement learned that they could get more rights, which seemed impossible at the time.
The second major development was the fourteenth amendment, which was passed in 1868. Consequently, this amendment affirmed the rights that were given to men and women of color. The law stated that everyone born in the United States, even previously enslaved individuals before the thirteenth amendment, were American citizens (Suk 2021, 799). As a result, no state had the power or the ability to take away the right to liberty, property, and life of any American man or woman. Additionally, through this law, men over the age of 20 were granted the right to vote for the first time. Thus, through this development, liberty was accorded to women, which acted as a driver for fighting for the rights to vote accorded to men.
Thirdly, the other significant development in the post-civil war was that women had already acquired a lot of skills that enabled them to earn a living. During the civil war, women worked as nurses to help men in the war in case they were injured (Sapiro 2020, 1557). Furthermore, women had also been hired to work in munitions factories; hence, they had learned various skills that enabled them to have an income. However, most of them were encoura...