# History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 5/Preface

Contents
The History of Woman Suffrage is comprised in six volumes averaging about one thousand pages each, of which the two just finished are the last. While it is primarily a history of this great movement in the United States it covers to some degree that of the whole world. The chapter on Great Britain was prepared for Volume VI by Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, leader of the movement there for half a century. The accounts of the gaining of woman suffrage in other countries come from the highest authorities. Their contest was short compared to that in the two oldest countries on the globe with a constitutional form of government — the United States and Great Britainand in the former it began nearly twenty years earlier than in the latter. The effort of women in the "greatest republic on earth" to obtain a voice in its government began in 1848 and ended in complete victory in 1920. In Great Britain it is not yet entirely accomplished, although in all her colonies except South Africa women vote on the same terms as men.
Doubtless other histories of this world wide movement will be written but at present the student will find himself largely confined to these six volumes. This is especially true of the United States and many of the documents of the earliest period would have been lost for all time if they had not been preserved in the first three volumes. These also contain much information which does not exist elsewhere regarding the struggle of women for other rights besides that of the franchise. That the materials were collected and cared for until they could be utilized was due to Miss Susan B. Anthony's appreciation of their value. The story of the trials and tribulations of preparing those volumes during ten years is told in Volume II, page 612, and in the Preface of Volume IV. They were written and edited principally by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and covered the history from the beginning of the century to 1884. The writers expected when they began in 1877 to bring out one small ​volume, perhaps only a large pamphlet. When these three huge volumes were finished they still had enough material for a fourth, which never was used.
Miss Anthony continued her habit of preserving the records and in 1900, when at the age of 80 she resigned the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she immediately commenced preparations for another volume of the History. She called to her assistance Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, who had recently finished her Biography, and in her home in Rochester, N. Y., they spent the next two years on the book, Mrs. Stanton, who was 85 years old, taking the keenest interest in the work. When the manuscript was completed hundreds of pages had to be eliminated in order to bring it within the compass of one volume of 1,144 pages.
Miss Anthony then said: "Twenty years from now another volume will be written and it will record universal suffrage for women by a Federal Amendment.” Her prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. She put upon younger women the duty of collecting and preserving the records and this was done in some degree by officers of the association. In 1917, after the legacy of Mrs. Frank Leslie had been received by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the association, she formed the Leslie Suffrage Commission and established a Bureau of Suffrage Education, one feature of which was a research department. Here under the direction of an expert an immense amount of material was collected from many sources and arranged for use. After the strenuous work for a Federal Suffrage Amendment had brought it very near, Mrs. Catt turned her attention to the publishing of the last volume of the History of Woman Suffrage while the resources of the large national headquarters in New York and the archives of the research bureau were available, and she requested Mrs. Harper to prepare it. The work was begun Jan 2, 1919, and it was to be entirely completed in eighteen months. No account had been taken of the enormous growth of the suffrage movement. It had entered every State in the Union and it extended around the world. It was occupying the ​attention of Parliaments and Legislatures. In the United States conventions had multiplied and campaigns had increased in number; it had become a national issue with a center in every State and defeats and victories were of constant record.
To select from the mass of material, to preserve the most important, to condense, to verify, was an almost impossible task. A comparison will illustrate the difference between the work required on Volume IV and that on the present volumes. The Minutes of the national convention in 1901 filled 130 pages of large type; those of the convention of 1919 filled 320 pages, many of small type; reports of congressional hearings increased in proportion. Of the State chapters, describing all the work that had been done before 1901, 29 contained less than 8 pages, 18 of these less than 5 and 7 less than 3; only 6 had over 14 pages. For Volume VI not more than half a dozen State writers sent manuscript for less than 14 and the rest ranged from 20 to 95 pages. The report on Canada in Volume IV occupied 314 pages; in this volume it fills 18. The chapter on Woman Suffrage in Europe outside of Great Britain found plenty of room in 4 pages; in this one it requires 32.
The very full reports of the national suffrage conventions, the congressional documents, the files of the Woman's Journal and the Woman Citizen and the newspapers furnished a wealth of material on the general status of the question in the United States. It was, however, the evolution of the movement in the States that gave it national strength and compelled the action by Congress which always was the ultimate goal. The attempt to give the story of every State, in many of which no records had been kept or those which had were lost or destroyed; the difficulty in getting correct dates and proper names upset all calculations on the amount of material and length of time. As a result the time lengthened to three and a half years and the one volume expanded into two, with enough excellent matter eliminated to have made a third. In each of these chapters will be found a complete history of the effort to secure the franchise by means of the State constitution, also the part taken to obtain the Federal Amendment and the action of the Legislature in ratifying this amendment. ​The accounts of the annual conventions of the National American Suffrage Association demonstrate as nothing else could do the commanding force of that organization, for fifty years the foundation and bulwark of the movement. The hearings before committees of every Congress indicate the never ceasing effort to obtain an amendment to the Federal Constitution and the extracts from the speeches show the logic, the justice and the patriotism of the arguments made in its behalf. The delay of that body in responding will be something for future generations to marvel at. In Chapter XX will be found the full history of this amendment by which all women were enfranchised.
In one chapter is a graphic account of the effort for half a century to get a woman suffrage "plank" into the national platforms of the political parties and its success in 1916, with one for the Federal Amendment in 1920. A chapter is devoted to the forming of the National League of Woman Voters after the women of the United States had become a part of the electorate. All questions as to the part taken in the war of 1914-1918 by the women who were working for their enfranchisement are conclusively answered in the chapter on War Service of Organized Suffragists. In one chapter will be found an account of other organizations besides the National American Association that worked to obtain the vote for women and of those that worked against it. A full description is given of the organizing of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and its congresses in the various cities of Europe.
Volumes V and VI take up the history of the contest in the United States from the beginning of the present century to Aug. 26, 1920, when Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby proclaimed that the 19th Amendment, submitted by Congress on June 4, 1919, had been ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States and was now a part of the National Constitution. This ended a movement for political liberty which had continued without cessation for over seventy years. The story closes with uncounted millions of women in all parts of the world possessing the same voice as men in their government and enjoying the same rights as citizens.