Photo by Tim Rowland
Helen Allen Nerska, director of the Clinton County Historical Association, speaks on North Country suffrage issues to a gathering at the Keene Valley Library.
KEENE VALLEY | Better than a century ago, a merchant in Plattsburgh took out an advertisement in the paper, using copy that must have seemed hilarious at the time. The ad posited that if women were as excited about voting as they were about shopping at this particular store, they’d have had the ballot by now.
But seriously.
Helen Allen Nerska, director of the Clinton County Historical Association, speaking to a gathering at the Keene Valley Library last week, said the ad demonstrated the degree to which women’s suffrage was on the minds of North Country residents as states and the nation lurched toward equal voting rights. Articles show that as the debate heated up, there were many clubs, meetings and visits from prominent suffragists in Clinton and Essex counties, Nerska said.
This is the 100th anniversary of passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the vote; it was ratified by the people a year later.
70-YEAR BATTLE
The fight for women’s suffrage is generally characterized as an ongoing battle that lasted 70 years, with a brief hiatus during the Civil War. Western territories began allowing women to vote, beginning with Wyoming in 1869.
New York had a shot at being the first state east of the Mississippi to pass women’s suffrage, but the measure was defeated in 1915, with only 43 percent of the population being in favor, and the distinction went to Illinois. Both Clinton and Essex counties were strongly opposed, Nerska said.
But things were beginning to change. Newspapers that had been hostile, or poked fun at, the women’s movement began to show support.
“Newspapers are now critical of the anti-suffrage vote,” Nerska said.
The North Country was home to a number of heroic women who led the fight, including Hannah Straight Lansing, who became editor of the Plattsburgh Sentinel, fighting for rights she herself would never enjoy.
“Like many suffragists of her generation, she died before getting the right to vote,” Nerska said.
The movement was also helped locally by appearances by titans of the movement, such as Susan B. Anthony, Anna Dickenson and Mary Livermore. The press was initially more impressed with their speeches than with their cause. In 1876, one paper writing on women’s suffrage, said the messenger was persuasive, but as for the right to vote, “afraid not.”
“It was very similar to what you might say to a child asking for a second piece of candy,” Nerska said.
‘HOWLING DERVISHES’
Advertisers made fun of the movement, as did cartoonists, who drew professionally dressed women striding purposefully through the living room while the husband timidly huddled in the background with the kids. Anti-suffrage clubs tried to make men — who of course would be the ones to vote — feel as if they were losing their authority.
In the North Country, as across the nation, feelings were strong on both sides. And the debate grew nasty. Suffragists were characterized by a local bishop as “howling dervishes” out to poison the minds of young girls. The vote, others wrote, would cause women to lose their ability to keep house. And, alluding to the black vote, newspapers argued that the number of “corrupt and ignorant” voters had already been doubled, and that the country shouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
The movement got one last big push when Pres. Woodrow Wilson, in exchange for women’s support of World War I, announced that women should have the right to vote. New York did indeed allow women to vote in 1917. This time Clinton County still voted no, but Essex County, by 15 votes, said yes.
