kept their own groups. >> learn how the civil war shaped frontier outlaws, today at 6:00 p.m. eastern, 3:00 p.m. pacific, on american history tv. >> next on american history tv, the national constitution center hosts a conversation with lori ginsburg, discussing the life and legacy of elizabeth cady stanton, the program begins with an overview of their forthcoming exhibit, the 19th amendment and how women won the vote. [applause] jeffrey: greetings, ladies and gentlemen. welcome to the national constitution center. i'm jeffrey rosen, president of this wonderful institution. let us begin.

by inspiring ourselves with the national constitution center's congressional mission, we are the only institution in america chartered by congress to disseminate information about the u.s. constitution on a nonpartisan basis. beautiful, thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. it just lifts the spirits and prepares us for the learning ahead. we are so grateful and honored that you have come to the national constitution center tonight and grateful to c-span for covering this important discussion about women's suffrage and elizabeth stanton's role in it. c-span friends, during these anxious times, as many people are avoiding leaving the home in large public gatherings, it's so urgently important to engage in lifelong learning and that is why watching c-span is so important. please, also, and friends here as well, use the national

constitution center's virtual online resources to learn about the constitution. we have this spectacular new program called classroom exchanges that unites classrooms across the country for live discussions about the constitution moderated by judges and master teachers with classes around the country as you look for ways to continue your or from even from home schools, go to constitution center.com, check out the interactive constitution, pick up provisions of the constitution you don't know about and let the learning continue. we are going to begin tonight's discussion, which is devoted to lori ginsburg's wonderful book, by discussing this exciting new exhibit at the national constitution center that will open on june 10. it's called the 19th amendment, women win the vote.

it is about the history of the 19th amendment and how women won the vote. joining me to describe it and discuss it is my wonderful colleague, elena, who heads the exhibits department here. i just wanted to have a brief conversation with her about what she and her great team are trying to achieve in the exhibit and the story they are trying to tell, both to excite all of you about the exhibit and to set up the great discussion to follow. elena, first of all, welcome. thank you for being here. thanks to you and your team for the amazing job you have done. at seneca falls in 1848, elizabeth cady stanton and other great advocates of women's equality passed the declaration of sentiments, which said, among other things, that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created

equal. they were using the declaration of independence as a model but trying to extend it to include women's equality. what were the authors of the declaration of sentiments trying to achieve and why did they gather in seneca falls to write it? elena: elizabeth cady stanton was the primary author and it is amazing to look at the document itself. we will be featuring a copy in the upcoming exhibit. we wanted to not only feature the artifact, but feature the inspiration that came from the declaration. you can read the different grievances that she wrote against men instead of the king. we have featured those in the exhibit. interesting in general, in the time, the use of the declaration of independence in argument for women's suffrage, i have been culling for a lot of quotes with speeches, congressional debates,

reading on how women were fighting for the right to vote. they are frequently going back to those founding ideals in the declaration and saying no taxation without representation. they are very central arguments were they say wait a minute, we were kind of left out from the founding era and we are going to rewrite that and say that all men and women are created equale created equal. thehe relation between coloration and constitution is central to the exhibit. you have done a wonderful job telling the story about the civil war and reconstruction and the promise of declaration being extended to the african-americans. and how lincoln pledged he never had an idea politically but did not come from the declaration. a poignant fissure between african-americans and advocates for women's suffrage.

it started off the pre-civil war era. the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, the last of which extended the right to vote to african-american men but not women, the movement split. tell us about that. >> it is a significant story that we started in our civil war and reconstruction. theontinue that story into 13th amendment gallery where you can see the roots of these arguments and how there was unification after the civil war toward a common cause. that being slavery. we get to the 14th amendment. the very critical word mail is instituted into the constitution for the first time. this upsets many white women in particular who are fighting for

their suffrage. they ultimately end up starting the split over the 14th amendment and the 15th amendment, which guaranteed voting rights for african-american men that come up with that final break, there were women like stanton who were going to explicitly push for women's suffrage first. not allow african-americans to get the vote before them. thatee a lot of the racism started to creep into the movement and really become at the forefront of the debates. and end up continuing. it will be interesting to hear what laurie has to say on this topic because it is central to the narrative, how to address the racism. she as a historian and me as a developer have different ways of approaching that narrative and

helping visitors understand the story. and her through books and talks and lectures, she is able to show that narrative. i want to make sure we have that conversation about our different approaches and make sure to tell the truth narrative of the story. >> is great of you to consult lori ginsberg in crafting the script. was so central. it showed the framers of the 14th of mimic did not expect the amendment would grant the right to vote. that made it harder for women's suffrage is advocates to argue as they did in the 1870's and 80's that the 14th amendment should be expended -- extended to women. he rejected their claim as did the supreme court.

of thend important part exhibit. you tell the story of how the right to vote was one state-by-state in the 70's and 80's -- 1870's and 1880's. describe that battle. give us a sense of how it began in the founding era. it picked up in the 1870's and 1880's. why? >> by that point, particularly in western territories, they wanted to encourage women to come to their borders. they started granting the right to vote. it was a practical reason to attract more people and then they will be able to apply for statehood. 1869 with wyoming is the first. there were a lot of great illustrations from the time that show progress sweeping from the west toward the east. when you start having some people pushing for just the constitutional minutes. it would be a 16th amendment, that would be the next in line after the 15th.

you have a lot of people pushing against the state level for change. ultimately there will be national change. this propels the story into the 20th century, where we look at the continuing. we get toward the end where there were a final few years where it gets dramatic and you are seeing a lot more of the photography that you are familiar with. the picketing in front of the white house. all of, processions, these public things happening. toldwide, you have this push ultimately grant women the right to vote and really fulfill a true democracy. partat leads to the final of the exhibit where you tell the dramatic story about how president wilson changes his position on the 19th amendment and states are ratifying it and it all comes down to a dramatic story in tennessee.

give us a sense of what happened. burns was planning on voting no on ratification. neededs the final state for it to become part of the constitution. he received a letter from his mother who says you really should vote yes on this ratification. what did he do? he ends up switching his bow at the last minute. nobody expected it. it pushes it over the edge. ultimately tennessee ratified. it took one final vote to add it to the u.s. constitution. >> amazing. makeows how one vote can all of the difference. it turned out bird five proposed an amendment that would have illuminated the electoral

college. it passed the house with bipartisan support of president nixon, ford, george h to be bush and failed by three or four votes in the senate because of a filibuster. can turnional politics on one or two decisions. what do you -- what are you most excited about displaying in the exhibit? there are so many great artifacts that you have. >> at the end of the exhibit, we are actually going to be featuring pennsylvania's ratification copy of the 19 amendment. those of you from pennsylvania, it is kind of cool. featuring women in various ways trying to get the right to vote and convince other people they should have that right. see a lot of posters,

different buttons with pants on them or rolling pens. a lot of visual cues there. one of my personal favorites, a ballot box. that from the reconstruction era where some women were able to vote. this one i believe is from utah. there is a county printed on it. i tried to track down where exactly that is. utah allowed them to vote early on. it actually has printed on it balance. those are some of the highlights. >> i am grateful to you and your team for doing a superb job in creating this exhibit. i can't wait to share it with all of you on june 10. please join me in thanking elena.-- we are honored to hear from

america's leading biographer of elizabeth cady stanton, cory ginsberg. -- lori ginsberg. colleague, alana or work. welcoming lanain and lori. [applause] >> good evening. thank you. i will continue the conversation with you and lori. thank you for being here to discuss your book on stanton. thank you for being a member of the national constitution center and thank you for everyone -- for your support. your support makes it possible. welcome. i just want to start by asking

you about stanton and her life. i will introduce you more by telling you about your background. you are a pressure of history in world studies at pennsylvania state university and you have written several books on women's a study ofluding women's origins in antebellum new york. right?onouncing it cady?-- elsethink everyone pronounces it katie and i don't know why. you talk about her family and her relationship with her father, which i found interesting and detailed in your book. it is a pleasure to come to the constitution center.

elizabeth cady stanton is someone who i have always argued with. i wrote a number of books in women's history. she is a fascinating character. charismatic, bossy, elitist. brilliant. she is quite amazing. i think that people who study u.s. women's history cannot help but grapple with her in some ways. i believe that for all of her flaws there is no one like her in the 19th century. she was born in 1815 in johnstown, new york, her father was a judge and her mother was a descendent of a revolutionary war hero. they were quite conservative. wealthy, property owning, slaveowning. people often forget that that was still the case in upstate new york. much of the north. traditional, as stanton remembered it, on matters of gender. the famous story that she told was that when she was 11, her last brother died, she crawled into her father's lap seeking to

give and receive comfort and he put his arm around her and said -- my daughter, i wish you were a boy. everybody groans at that, and the sting of the remark is certainly something many women feel. but it's not actually an irrational comment for a father of a brilliant daughter who recognized her life was going to be quite limited by the time and place in which she lived. there were not very many options for a wealthy young woman born in 1915. she got the best education she could for girls, but she was always resentful that she didn't get to go to college with the boys after handily beating them in all subjects in grade school. she took that resentment with her in making a life that was devoted to challenging all the many ways, and you will hear this said many times tonight, not really suffrage, although

many ways she felt women's lives were restricted and spirits crushed by virtue of being girls. lana: it's interesting that her father was very much opposed to suffrage and she rebelled against that throughout her life. you hint that this may have been part of her motivation behind the work that she did. one thing that he did do was, being conscious of the laws that regulated women, he put a lot of property in her name because he was maybe distrustful of husbands and the ways they would treat their wives as property. i thought that was interesting. lori: in 1848, april, the married woman's property act passed in new york, giving married women the right to own and inherit property. it was fathers like judge cady who supported this because they wanted their inherited wealth not to go to sons-in-law. not necessarily profligate ones,

but just unknown quantities. elizabeth cady stanton's husband, henry brewster stanton, although he became a lawyer and was in the state senate for a while, he was not well off or a suitable beau when they met. elizabeth's father was clear that he was going to leave property separately for her. including the house they owned. only for her. for a conservative family to have their lively, brilliant 25-year-old daughter fall in love with a 35-year-old abolitionist lecturer, that was not the choice. at first the father forbade the marriage. they got married and went on their honeymoon, they went to the world anti-slavery convention in london. lana: a very momentous event in her life, her first time out of the country, interacting with british women, very advanced in the tactics that they were using of suffrage over the u.k., that

was a powerful experience for her. lori: i think that she was mostly impressed with the american women that she met there. she met with a bunch of the anti-slavery society women who were elected by their local chapters of the anti-slavery society as delegates to london, but when they got to the convention, the british quakers who were much more conservative on matters of gender, much more mainstream in british life, they barred the women from participating and put them behind the bar, which outraged the young elizabeth cady stanton to no end and outraged others, too. william lloyd garrison among others sat behind the bar with them and refused to participate because of the exclusion of groups. for stanton, she described it as a political turning point in her life, meeting lucretia mont and

these other women who had for years already in the 1840's been already struggling about these issues. lana: you and jeff were just talking about the exhibit. we were talking about pre-seneca falls. just as important to the movement, the main focus of the exhibit drops you in at 1848 at the convention. so, you know, what's the approach to telling the story of, you know, stanton, her work prior to seneca falls and incorporating the work of the anti-slavery movement and the importance of that to suffrage? elena: is interesting when you go to start an exhibit, you have a limited space. you have to make -- never an infinite amount of space. you have to make important decisions at the get-go. where will we start in time? where will we end in time? it's not always clear-cut. we decided to go with 1848. that doesn't mean that we don't acknowledge what's happening

before. historical events occurring before that, what was voting like at the founding is really important. we include the story of new jersey, their first state constitution allowed some women to vote, particularly if they held property. primarily widows. it's that early point where you understand where we are in time. what do i need to know for when we get to 1848, what was life like for women? we tread the ground from the original constitution being written through 1848, reaching a peak in 1848 where we tell the story of stanton and we feature a lot of other women and men who were fighting for women's suffrage. you will be able to meet some of these women and men in an interactive element in the exhibit where we will feature bios for each of these individuals. stanton is one of them.

you will get a little bit of her background and her influential role. it's interesting for a writing exhibit. there's only so much you can include. if you envision for any one person, there must be about 50 words, which is about three sentences. it can be a herculean task just to get it down to that important nugget information. it's always interesting to think of how like lori is able to write a whole book on one person and i have maybe two or three spots in the exhibit if we are talking about the declaration of sentiment or stanton in particular. lori: i would say that although this book is about one person, i have written books about large groups of people, historians writing one book, we are always in conversation with each other. it's important to note that we disagree with each other. sitting at large tables, there are archivists doing different kinds of work.

we are always in conversation about some of the same question. where do we start and end of the story? what is the framework, what is the interpretation? the main difference to me is not so much between what we do as it is the temporal focus or the topical focus as the ways that we interpret stuff. for me, there is no women's suffrage movement in 1840. there isn't really one until after the civil war. these people are abolitionists. each person at the seneca falls convention had heard of women's rights before because they were all involved in the anti-slavery movement in one way or another. it's not just the anti-slavery provides context for women's suffrage and rights, though it does do that, but it was the audience, the constituency, that school of abolitionism that launched their thinking and their careers in different ways for different activists, of course. it's important to keep in mind, and it is very hard to do this, very hard to understand how

radical this all was. i have some tricks i do with students about this, but it is hard to understand that when the seneca falls convention demanded numerous, as you pointed out, a range of rights for women, the vote among them, when people demanded an end to slavery, it seems so obvious to us that we couldn't imagine how outrageous they were at the time and it was important to keep in mind that these people were the lunatic fringe of their generation. people didn't want to be seen with them on the streets. it's hard for us to do that. to remember that.

lana: with seneca falls, there was a large consensus it seemed around most of the points they were trying to make. such as seeking the right to vote and, to the extent that other women's suffragists said that you can't put this in there, people will think we're crazy, even her husband said that it will seem like a farce, but she insisted, and it got in there. lori: can i explained a little bit? people have often, she included, have often thought that the folks who objected to it it did so because they were timid or politically cautious. i think that's not the case. people like lucretia mont didn't believe in working in electoral politics. they were nonvoting abolitionists. the men, too. the quakers believed that politics were, hard for us to believe, dirty, corrupt, based in violence. they chose not to work in the world of electoral politics. so when someone like lucretia mott's said that it is with great reluctance that she demanded to vote for women, even as she was demanding it, the reluctance was not because she was timid or conservative but

because the vote was a fraught tool for what were called at the time moral persuasion abolitionists and reformers who didn't believe that voting was the best or most appropriate way to create moral change in a society. stanton, who thought she was the most radical person on the planet, always right, exaggerated other people's timidity about this. lana: interesting. was lucy stone similar? i know that she founded the american women's suffrage association that had a different approach to the one that stanton and anthony would go on to found. lori: that's decades later. lucy stone was speaking as an anti-slavery agent and adding lectures on women's rights before stanton even thought to get on a podium a couple of years earlier. lucy stone saw a connection between demanding the end of slavery and an end to the restrictions on women's legal,

political, what do we want to say, cultural lives. this is 20 years later, after the civil war. the split occurred for a variety of reasons. you mentioned a kind of abolitionists versus women rights activists after the civil war, but it is important to remember that many white women's rights activists sided with those who thought black men should get the vote first. stanton did not. this is such a complicated and interesting debate, they took ethical positions based on a different way of seeing the world. for stanton, the 13th amendment ended the question of slavery. at one point she said -- i wrote this down, i just think it is a wonderful quote. she said "1868, the curtain had fallen on the last act, and the lights are extinguished, the audience gone to their homes.

this is in the face of enormous, vicious, racist violence that we know she read about. it is in the newspaper that she read. for her, anti-slavery stood more or less as prelude to what she saw as the more important rights for women like herself. lucy stone did not agree. african-american women as well as white women thought that it was more urgent in the crisis for black men to have the vote so that their communities could be represented in southern legislators. lana: it's not really -- i would resist calling it a sort of black men versus white women split. there were many different kinds of splits. it had to do with making decisions about what was the greatest emergency in the face of early reconstruction. >> i know that you are

interested in hearing the thoughts about how to approach it in a fair but accurate way, presenting the history to a modern audience. lori: i think that stanton really thought she was taking the moral high ground, saying she believed in universal suffrage. you understand that they don't mean to include children, and you laugh, but logically children are citizens as well. this is how unthinkable women's suffrage was to many people. it was similar to calling for votes for children. or analogous. they could have stuck to the moral high ground saying that no one's rights should proceed anyone else's. instead of doing that, she resorted to some rather extraordinarily ugly, racist remarks that still make us, that are still painful to read. she made them publicly, alienated her friends, including the ever loyal frederick douglass. no one in history is a saint, but he put up with a lot of grief from her.

you know, she didn't stick to the moral high ground that she could have. she was a political absolutist. absolutists can be thrilling, but they can also be sometimes wrong. [laughter] lana: interesting, too, though, because i think you describe she was very cautious about writing about anything that she felt. she wrote a lot, but didn't write that this was how she felt about this subject for that subject, but was very aware that she was the portrayal of the suffrage movement but there were all of these other complications around what she was writing about with regards to race and nativism. lori: she didn't think it took away from her saintly image. she thought she was right. that was not the part she worried about. like everybody, i think she had issues with her children. for such an advocate of progressive womanhood, divorce,

women's autonomy, she had seven children. virtually no other suffrage or activist leaders have that many children. she had a lot of children. at one point she referred to her seventh baby as her biannual clumsiness. implying that she had some idea of how not to have children but did anyway. like everybody, i think she had family difficulties. some of the children sided with her, some with her husband. some of the children were the caretakers. you know, it's a complicated family and she destroyed a bunch of papers that would have given us more insight. >> with her relationship with susan b anthony, who had her own obligations without children, but as you think about it for instance stanton and the children she had around her, wondering how you are able to do all the work with children in the household, it's a challenge that women today still struggle

with. lori: the way she took care of it when she had a housekeeper. a quaker woman who stayed with her for 35 years, anthony would show up and help. it was probably chaotic. there were times when she couldn't be on the road, so she would be home and writing, which is what she loved anyways, writing speeches and thinking. we describe her as the founder of the women's suffrage movement, but she described herself as a leader of thought, not institutions. she was much happier staying home rather than going to conventions, which she felt were boring. when we read accounts of conventions, they will say that she gave this speech, but really she wrote it and anthony read it for her. because she didn't like it. lana: right, you said it was a was immediately after when they had different conventions, she didn't want to go. lori: she just loved what she called throwing thunder.

she loved the riling up her friends. she has a great quote that i was hoping to use one day, on her 75th birthday she said that her feeling is to tone up rather than tone down. you know? that's a great motto. i have to think that her friend susan b anthony never worried much about her toning down. her friend would have preferred her to focus. because anthony believed that women's suffrage was the primary goal and everybody needed to focus. stanton didn't, she was always on the next great cause of women's oppression. lana: one thing they both did was in the midst of the various strategies, pursuing the 19th amendment, the state forms, finance of the full strength of a you mentioned november 2, 1880, we were talking about that

in the exhibit. maybe describe a little bit what the thinking was behind going to the polls to try to vote? lori: jeff mentioned this earlier, there was a practice called the new departure that they came up with, which was that the 14th amendment granted women citizenship and they were entitled to vote. they just should do it. it started early with a number of women, white and african-american women in washington, d.c., who tried to vote. there were dozens of women all over the country, new jersey, a they decided to go try it. anthony insan b. rochester, with her sister and a bunch of friends went and voted. they got arrested. , for reasons that absolutely escape me, ask her if

she had any final words to say at the end of her trial. which strikes me, and always struck me as a foolish thing. she spoke and published it and distributed it throughout the country. she refused to pay the $100 fine and it became a big deal. also, anthony, because she was now voting took the process seriously. voting is never symbolic. we know this. she voted a straight republican ticket. deciding two candidates were awful enough but one was slightly better than the other. she went with grant over greeley. it was hard. stanton, in 1880, when she decided to vote, it was a symbolic act on her part. there is a funny story where the person who takes the ballot from you thought it would be historic

and she kept it. she signed his name to it and it is very cool. she made a big deal about it. it did not ever become the cause. by then, she was on to other causes anyway. >> you mentioned the ballot box, is that something from the departure era? >> it is. that it is from utah, a place where they had granted women the right to vote, we think it was not meant for women who could not vote and were trying to. we pair that with the story of the women who were trying to vote under this new departure strategy. when i was doing the research for this exhibit and learning about the new departure, it was a constitutional story. they are using the 14th amendment, primarily saying we are citizens. therefore we have the right to vote.

their amendments are ratified. they are going to the polls and having experiences. when we think of how to convey heremation, everyone in has a different way that they prefer to learn. you may come to a museum and be drawn toward reading every single thing i have written for an exhibit. great if you do that. or you might prefer the artifacts. this particular story, we decided to tell through a typical interest -- interaction. there will be a display of ballot boxes for you will list pallets out and see what was happening in different states and learn about different women's stories. one of the features is kerry barnum. she went to the polls in 1871. she tried to vote here and she felt to do so. she took her case all the way to the pennsylvania supreme court. and they said you're a citizen.

that does not mean you get to vote. was an earlyly ruling that would lead to the supreme court ruling a couple of years later in 1875, saying the same thing. that was kind of at the end of whenew departure points the supreme court ruled on it. but we wanted to have the opportunity for people to engage with these stories and connect with people who are maybe from your hometown, that you can learn about what you're trying to do in this important era. >> you write that she has a great intellect and was influence by her father and her -- influenced by her father and her judge. what was her role? >> she realized right away this was a great strategy. she was not an originator of it. she was not supportive of victoria, who in 1872 ran for president.

she was right there to support the first woman to run for president. anthony was very unhappy with this and said whatever you do, do not put my name on any list for victoria passes presidency and it -- she responded by doing exactly that. she was quite an independent thinker. but not always a self-aware one. >> you write that there was this conviction that she as an american citizen, with respect to what was being said about citizenship, she was entitled to vote based on that and that that was a conviction she had. >> i think what came out to be ugly racism in a debate over the 15th amendment, i think there was a bone deep conviction that as a daughter of american revolutionaries and as a white, protestant, middle-class woman, she was as the men of her class

-- as american as the men of her class and her background, and the only disability she experienced since she was smarter than all of them anyway, it was the disability of sex. it was on the spaces of profound entitlement, that i think she thought she should have all the rights and not only the vote, the right to an education, the right to property, the right to vote. all of these things that became very much a part of what we take for granted. i think her conviction that she was very much a member of the elite, of the founders of the nation, it was very important to her. there is a part where she expresses outrage. the most ignorant and degraded

men both native and foreigners had. that is not in the battle over the 15th amendment. she had a sense early on that she was march serving, for lack -- more deserving for lack of a better word, and people who were given more rights than she was. "i am as good as the boys," that kind of attitude. >> i think that plays into later on, which anthony disagreed with. >> it is really her daughter who is upset about this. she thought maybe we could get more suffrage if we just granted it to educated women. this was a time after 1880, when more and more immigrants were coming into the united states. many of them not english speakers. many of them were not protestants. you think back between 1880 in 1920, there were a lot of the

italians, most of them catholic. and stanton pretty easily joined with the forces that would limit suffrage to england. her daughter, who had moved to england, was outraged by this. she viewed this as her mother's great failing, that elitism has taken a hold of her in this way and that she would succumb to that anti-foreign snobbery. i do not know what anthony thought about it so much. >> did we cover her relations with her daughter? >> yes. we have two moments. i alluded to the one earlier. there are basically three generations because it is about

a 70 year period. you get to meet these people and we highlight harriet at the beginning with a photo of her with her baby daughter, harriet, who becomes a suffragist. she pops up later, working for the same causes her mother was working for all stop we try and do the same with other connections like lucy and her daughter as well. especially in philadelphia here, there is interesting, -- to continue the abolitionist roots, really going through the suffrage movement as well.

>> toward the end of her life, you're right about how she did not travel as much although she was quite famous at the time. she died in 1902, still 18 years before the night teen's amendment was ratified. what would she doing toward the end of her life to continue to help the cause of suffrage? >> i agree, it is unfortunate she did not live to see the but amendment ratified, there is a whole thing about how she died so soon but 87 at that time was not so soon. by the end of her life, she really got bored. intellectually. she and anthony gathered the sources they could find about their movement. in part to gather sources that would appear but also to establish their role as leaders of the movement and to shape the movement in a particular way. originating in new york, them as the leaders and a bunch of different things, is at -- if anyone is interested in more readings.

a wonderful book has been written on the subject. she then decided she wanted to rewrite the bible. because she was an ardent secularist. the word did not exist. very skeptical. deeply protestant in many ways. but very skeptical. opposed the efforts to change the rules. she tried to gather women from change their roles. she tried to gather women from around the world for what we would call -- to write what we would call feminist criticism. there was not a word for it. her friends were very annoyed with her about this. all of them were like really? you are going to spend your time on this when there is so much work to be done? she was adamant that this was important late in life work for her. so she wrote this book, she edited it, and was chastised and

censored by her own organization and movement for it. by the 1890's, the movement was getting the support of conservative ministers. who believed the woman's suffrage would game a purified -- gain a purified home and so on. things that they were struggling for. they were not so interested in alienating the clergy. so she continued to be as an and annoyingable as she could even within her own movement. she focus about -- what was the status where most of them were being repealed? >> yes. there are still unequal laws. it's it was not until the 1930's that you as an american woman, if you marry a farmer come you

lost your citizenship. some american women discovered it. you can imagine to their annoyance. laws that certainly were discriminatory laws against women but the laws of property ownership had changed. even by the 1860's, many laws had changed. there are still complicated laws about domestic labor. >> and the issue, you're right the issue of divorce is another controversial one that she wanted to fight for but it created tension with religious whoor just -- suffragists did not necessarily want to fight the fight. >> that is right. a minister by training, just about want to touch the idea -- just did not want to touch the idea that marriage was nearly or primarily a legal contract that could be broken. but the women were also

temperance advocates. the argument was women should be drunkendivorced husbands. there was an ongoing debate about what was worth bringing up in the context of women's convention. stanton was ready to bring up anything. she was prepared to hurl her thunder. and not everyone would do that. she was not strategic, i think it is fair to say that. >> we have a great number of audience questions. is there anything you want to ask, that she could help guide us on? >> for obvious reasons, we have been focusing on a particular period of time. but plenty comes after 1902 and plenty comes after 1920.

as i mentioned, how we grapple with this, i'm curious what you most want to convey to people about what the 19th amendment did or did not do. >> that is a great question and a complicated one. the main thing i would convey, is before the passage of the 19th amendment, millions of women already voted. 15 states had full women's severed and others had presidential savage, which i -- for women's suffrage and others had presidential -- full women's suffrage and others had presidential suffrage, which i never understood. other states have partial suffrage. so millions of women could vote before the 19th amendment. i understand in the context of a museum, devoted to the constitution, it makes sense to focus on that, but millions of women could vote prior to it but also many women could not vote after. it is equally important to point that out. many native american women and chinese women who were not able

to become citizens, many women in territories, i recently and that recently learned that women in puerto rico did not get the the and only literate women got the vote nine years later from pressure from the u.s. congress. for the 19th amendment, it is an interesting moment and act to commemorate. but historians, to any kind of celebration of it as accomplishing much, but it may have accomplished a great deal, activating african-american women in the south to try and register to vote and white southerners recognized, we had historians writing about this, white southerners recognized it would take a lot of work to disenfranchise twice the number of people they had been disenfranchising. i mean that not sarcastically. it took work to set in place this and more people to

keep in place disenfranchisement and the status quo. >> i think at the exhibit, we touch on what the other advances in voting rights, including constitutional amendments pass in the right to vote as well -- as well. >> there is an understanding that for the people who could vote, what were they going for? pursuing the e.r.a., others pursuing legislation for labor laws, minimum wages, that kind of staff, and all the other people who could not vote, what was their struggle like? how did they continue to fight for that and how did that play out? >> african-american women in particular who went to the suffrage organizations, acting -- asking for health and expanding black suffrage, we're -- were basically told is over. they were not given any assistance in doing that. >> i want to get to questions before we wrap up. the first question, what was it

that allowed this lunatic fringe to develop? >> central new york along the eerie canal has been known as , the brand over district. a place of revivals, ministers had revival through the 1820's in 1830's. there were quakers, but mostly, protestants of various types. it is the origin of the mormons. the miller writes, millennialist, all kinds of cults and groups emerged. some became more or less mainstream social justice. some became extremely right-wing. others became utopian communities. just a lot going on there. >> that helped to spend some of

some of the feminist suffragists to the work they did? >> yes. a number of years ago, i wrote a book that you mentioned, about six women in jefferson county to new york, way up on the canadian border. in 1846, they petitioned state constitutional conventions. these are six virtually unknown farm women, they did not then go to the convention. they disappeared from history. i think it was not outrageous in their communities. >> and the west as well is when many territories grant the woman to write -- the right to vote. that may have also been a practical reason to encourage

women to move there. the right to vote moves across the country over time. great. you mentioned the women's christian tent -- union. how does a package of the 19th amendment influence or spread her the passage of the 21st amendment or it was their cross over from suffrage to temperance? >> that is the 18th amendment. prohibition was 18th amendment that came before the women's suffrage amendment. i think it probably had a lot to do with small protestant women who could already vote in many towns and states. they had a lot to do with passing the 18th amendment in a couple of years prior. >> a lot of suffrage arguments formally organizing around the et 90's, a lot of them are coming from the liquor industry and very practical. they will likely vote for prohibition. >> it is important to remember, there were powerful forces.

it was not just that women were too delicate to vote. that had long been solved. women were in all areas of public life. i do not know who still believed that by the et 90's or whenever. or through the next -- 1890's or whenever, or through the next 30 years. but there were powerful forces against women voting coming couldn't by women, very conservative women who believed this would bring out other radical behaviors. i actually have a great quote on this. the woman patriot came out, devoted to not passing women's suffrage and allowing socialism and all this stuff. at one point, they said, after women's suffrage had passed and was ratified, they had all these lawsuits to undermine it. let us remember that women's suffrage is tied to the 15th amendment, forced upon --

-- forced upon the then helpless south. this was many decades after black men had been disenfranchised in the south. they are still bent out of shape at the 15th amendment because they recognize this goes together. suffrage was never isolated. they went on to say, nobody but the mentally blind ever expected the feminist movement to stop the vote. -- stop at the vote. they go on to quote from a magazine edited by margaret -- this idea that to -- demand for women's rights was a slippery slope, it is true. you actually do not know what you are stepping up onto when you make an outrageous demand.

it actually was true. >> another question asks, when women got the first right to vote, what did they have on any sort of election outcomes? i do not know if you know the age limits at the time? >> they had less of an impact than they said they would. they didn't although the same. they passed a couple of acts that were sort of progressive era government helping clean up milk, things we take for granted. i read one story that said the passage of women's suffrage was hud because it did not lead to the kinds of dramatic changes people expected to have. the earlier generation did not actually think women suffrage would lead to this but secure

-- particular legislation. they thought would make women more fully citizens of the united states. that is just harder to measure. but think they would have been quite shocked to learn that more than half of white women voted against the presumed first woman president. i think she would have been quite shocked. >> i will close with my final question and i will give you a chance to ask any questions you may have. what your thoughts on what her legacy is today, and how this took that through to the 19th amendment and beyond? >> it is a good news and bad news thing. none of us would be willing to give up the rights demanded, that she viewed as individual

rights we should all have. i think she was brilliant at establishing certain rights as being essential for women. at the same time, i think the kind of assumption, the entitlement and racism in her thinking and writing have left a legacy for us and feminism that is very hard to address and eradicate. i think those are damaging things that are not just slips of the tongue. i think they are damaging to all of us. >> we are currently in an anniversary year, which is why we are having these conversations around the 19th amendment. you pointed out earlier the differences between using the word celebrate and commemorate. how do you feel we should commemorate this amendment? >> i was making the point that celebrating means there is a happy ending and is a happy story and i do not think it is a

happy story. there is a wonderful philosopher who referred to herself and many of us as a feminist killjoy, always out to ruin a good celebration. i think commemorate she is important because it makes us think about our history. we live at a time where people are talking about statues and flags in the names on buildings and the names at universities, all of these things are part of commemorating a history we need to explore thoroughly and i think there are wonderful exhibit and washington, d.c., about the 19th amendment with different points of view -- not different points of view. they look at different stuff with different interpretations. i think it is great we have this conversation, historians figuring out how all of this stuff is complicated and then, how do we put it in a visual way that is accessible to the most number of people.

>> thank you so much. thank you for being here. [applause] >> i hope you will come back. >> thanks again. [applause] >> american history tv is on social media. follow us at c-span history. each week american history tv's real america brings you archival films that provide content for today's public affairs issues. in new york city, a wpa housing demolition project is on

the way which will greatly improve the living conditions of families of moderate means. in many of the cities of the country, they are making way for modern buildings. at the park in harlem and many other congested areas, wpa workers have constructed a huge sitting bull and they will caught a make -- accommodate 41 million persons. .teelworkers have been employed swimming pools are valuable to the community because they offer relaxation to young and old during the summer.

at the same time, pools remove children from that city streets providing safeguards to prevent such tragedies as were all too common to the old swimming hole. another feature of the program at colonial park, a wading pool has been built in which the youngsters may splash to their hearts content. new additions to the playground have been made possible by the improvement of parts of the park that were formally active. even the youngest find plenty of opportunities. in many parts of the country nursery schools have been established for almost 10,000 children are provided with hot meals, play activities and preschool training under instructors removed from their other roles.

employment has been provided for teachers, dietitians and cooks. >> the first u.s. congress was seated in march of 1789. shortly after, george washington was inaugurated as the first president. next from purdue university, historians examine the early years of the federal government and the politics of the 1790's. this was part of a conference called remaking american political history. >> welcome, everybody. thank you for coming out. cotlar.is seth i am here to preside over this panel of historians, we are talking about the 1790's and now thinking about the relationship of that fragile moment in history. and how