Compare And Contrast The Women Suffrage Association And The American Woman Suffragettes

Before the thirty-sixth state, Tennessee, ratified the nineteenth amendment and made it an official, new suffragists were separating from groups and making their own. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) were two groups formed by those new suffragettes. The two groups later formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but the more radical young women separated to form the National Women’s Party (NWP). There were also groups that were against women’s suffrage one being the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS). Those men and women were called anti suffragists or antis. There were many anti suffrage states that didn’t ratify the nineteenth amendment

NAWSA abandoned the more radical ideas of NWSA as a way to compromise the two groups (155). NAWSA was full of women that wanted to lead, and it was an unsuccessful group in its earlier year due to that. From 1900 to 1915 NAWSA had at least three different leaders, Carrie Catt, a leader for four years left due to a dying husband. Anna Howard Shaw, a veteran suffragist , medical doctor, an ordained Methodist minister, and a powerful orator, yet she was neither a strong leader nor an effective organizer. The third leader was Alice Paul, she had been in Britain fighting for suffrage. When she came back to the US she saw the need for rigorous Congressional persuasion to get votes for women. She came to NAWSA in 1912 to permit her to organize a persuasion arm in D.C. It was known as the Congressional Union, and its one purpose was to persuade for a federal woman suffrage amendment. NAWSA gave Alice exactly thirteen dollars for her annual lobbying budget. The first appearance of the Union was a parade the day after Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration in 1913. Paul coordinated a march of around 8,000 college women, professional women, and middle-class women of the NAWSA into costumed marching units, each with its own banners. Fearing a riot, the War Department called on mounted cavalry to “restore order.” Later after Carrie Catt had returned to leadership her and Alice Paul fought over strategy. Paul refused to be limited to her politically confrontational tactics, and it angered many NAWSA members that wanted respectable Congressional cooperation. Paul was set on ”holding the party responsible” (the democratic party and President Wilson) for the failure to pass women’s suffrage. Catt, on the other