More than thirty woman suffrage journals were published
during the seven decades of the woman suffrage movement (1849–1921). These journals, which were published
by individuals as well as state and national organizations,
expressed the beliefs and goals of the suffrage movement
at a time when this information was largely excluded from
and ridiculed by the general circulation press. Suffrage
publications aided in recruiting, mobilizing, and sustaining
support and membership in the movement and established
a sense of community among suffragists who were often
separated by great distances and unable to meet.
In addition to women’s right to vote, suffrage publications discussed a wide range of issues affecting women,
including labor laws, employment, education, and marriage
and divorce laws. When woman suffrage was guaranteed
in all elections with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919, several of these journals continued publication to address issues of citizenship
and womanhood.
First Suffrage Journals—Pre-Civil War
Women’s right to vote first became a political issue in 1848,
when a gathering of men and women met in Seneca Falls,
New York, to discuss the “social, civil and religious rights
of women.” At the end of the convention, sixty-eight women
and thirty-two men signed a “Declaration of Principles” in
which, among other things, they called on women to secure
for themselves the “sacred right to the elective franchise.”
Shortly after this, Amelia Jenks Bloomer, one of the women
who had attended the convention, established The Lily
(1849–1858). The eight-page monthly started as a temperance journal, but within the year was emphasizing suffrage.
Bloomer also promoted a variety of reforms, including the
introduction of “bloomers” (pantaloons to be worn under a
knee-length skirt). Bloomer sold the Lily in 1854 when her
husband relocated his business to a frontier town where it
would have been impractical to continue publication. The
journal lost impetus under the new owner, Mary Birdsall of
Richmond, Indiana, and ceased publication in 1858.
A second publication to result from the Seneca Falls
Convention was the Una (1853–1855), launched by Paulina
Wright Davis, a wealthy Providence, Rhode Island, socialite. Davis edited the paper on her own until 1855, when she
was joined by Caroline Healy Dall, and moved the publication to Boston. Davis sought to attract working-class
and immigrant women readers, and addressed issues that
affected them such as poverty and child labor in addition to
broader women’s issues such as suffrage, temperance, and
women’s rights. Unfortunately, the Una’s target audience
could not afford the one-dollar subscription rate. Plagued
by a shortage of funds and the responsibility of running the
paper on their own, Davis and Dall discontinued publication in October 1855.
The next year, Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck, a homeopathic
physician, established The Sibyl: A Review of the Tastes,
Errors and Fashion of Society (1856–1864) in Middletown,
New York. The bi-weekly journal supported a range of
reforms in addition to women’s rights, including abolition,
temperance, and dress reform. Like other feminist papers,
it published subscribers’ letters and served as an important
place for women from different regions of the country to
express and share their views. Hasbrouck continued publication during most of the Civil War, but suspended the
journal in 1863, unable to continue in the face of rising
publication costs and increasing family and professional
demands.
Post-Civil War Suffrage Journals
Following the Civil War, the woman suffrage movement
split over the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which eventually guaranteed the right to vote to all male citizens regardless of
“race, color, or previous condition of servitude” but made
no mention of women. The more radical faction, led by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, established
the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and in
early 1868, began to publish the Revolution with Anthony
as proprietor, Stanton and Parker Pillsbury as editors, and
the wealthy Francis Train as their financial backer. From the
beginning, the Revolution was controversial and adopted a
belligerent tone, alienating potential advocates and angering many supporters. Stanton called for women’s political
enfranchisement as the first, basic right, then went on to call
for additional reforms, including liberalized divorce laws,
equal pay, equal employment opportunities, and unionization. The paper also advocated many causes espoused by
Train, including the Irish rebellion and open immigration.
It soon ran into financial difficulties when Train was jailed
by the British government for his pro-Irish sentiments and
his support was cut off. By 1869, he and Pillsbury were no
longer involved in the paper and Stanton recruited Paulina
Wright Davis, former editor of the Una, as corresponding
editor. Deprived of Train’s financial support and unable to
raise sufficient funds through subscriptions, Anthony sold
the Revolution in 1870 to Laura J. Bullard, who was more
moderate in her support of woman’s rights. Under Bullard’s
hand, the publication became more of a literary and socially
oriented publication, and was merged into the New York
Christian Enquirer in 1872.
In response to Stanton and Anthony’s actions, the more
conservative suffragists established the American Woman
Suffrage Association (AWSA) and in 1870 began to publish
the Woman’s Journal, which continued publication until
1917. Edited and published by Lucy Stone and her husband
Henry Blackwell, and after their deaths by their daughter,
Alice Stone Blackwell, the Journal appealed to moderates
who supported woman suffrage but not all of the social
and political reforms espoused by Stanton and Anthony.
Financed by various suffrage organizations as well as
wealthy benefactors, the weekly Journal prospered until, in
1917, it was merged with several other suffrage publications
to become The Woman Citizen.
The Woman’s Tribune (1883–1909) was the second-longest surviving suffrage journal. Clara Bewick Colby established the Tribune as the weekly organ of the Nebraska
Woman Suffrage Association, but was soon filling its pages
with news of a variety of women’s organizations as well as
topics such as “Household Hints” in an attempt to expand
the readership base. Perhaps because of these digressions,
Colby lost the association’s support in 1884 and thereafter published the paper with her own money in Beatrice,
Nebraska, Washington, D.C., and, finally, Portland, Oregon.
Free of editorial control, Colby expanded the paper’s topics to include regular columns on hygiene, literature, law,
fashion, art, and finance, hoping to make it an important
paper in suffrage circles. Though the Tribune reached 9,200
subscribers in 1890, she was never able to turn a profit.
Attempts to win sponsorship from the National American
Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) (formed in 1890 as
a result of the merger of the AWSA and the NWSA) failed,
probably because of the Tribune’s broad-based editorial
content. Colby’s financial problems became more severe at
the end of the century, when she and her husband separated.
In 1904, in anticipation of the upcoming campaign in Oregon, she moved to Portland. The Oregon suffrage amendment failed, however, and the Tribune’s financial situation
continued to slip. Colby discontinued publication in 1909,
citing financial problems.
Regional Publications
Other suffrage journals were published by regional groups
and often expressed local concerns. The Woman’s Exponent
(1872–1914) was published by and for Mormon women in
Salt Lake City. Edited by Lulu Greene Richards (1872–1877)
and Emmeline B. Wells (1877–1914), the Exponent created
a place in which its readers’ needs could be expressed and
at the same time sought to present a favorable picture of
Mormon women to the often hostile outside world. When
Utah women won the right to vote in 1896, the Exponent
continued covering suffrage campaigns in other parts of the
nation. In 1914, the rising cost of publication and the failure
to entice new subscribers led the eighty-six-year-old Wells
to discontinue publication.
Another regional publication was the Ballot Box (1876–
1878), which became the official voice of the NWSA in
1878, when its name was changed to the National Citizen
and Ballot Box (1878–1881). The journal was established
by the Toledo Woman Suffrage Association to support state
suffrage and under Sarah Langdon Williams the monthly
publication enjoyed spirited debate, sufficient subscribers,
and financial stability. In 1878 family issues forced Williams to sell the Ballot Box to Matilda Gage of the NWSA,
who moved it to Syracuse, New York. Gage recruited Stanton and Anthony as corresponding editors and changed the
journal’s mission to secure federal, rather than state, suffrage. Despite her ambitious plans, financial difficulties and
the lack of resources forced Gage to suspend publication of
the National Citizen and Ballot Box in late 1881.
The Wisconsin Citizen (1887–1917) was published almost
single-handedly for its first twenty-five years by the Rev.
Olympia Brown, the president of the Wisconsin Woman
Suffrage Association (WWSA) from 1884 to 1913. Brown
used the journal to publicize her legal battle against the
state, which refused to allow her to vote in 1887, to keep the
movement alive despite repeated defeats, and, in later years,
to blast the state’s powerful brewing and liquor industries for
defeating suffrage campaigns. A younger faction within the
WWSA forced Brown out of office in 1913, partly because
of those failed campaigns. They elected journalist Theodora Youmans to replace her and the new president took
over the Citizen within the year. Youmans used the Citizen
to publicize her goals as president and, in the last years, to
promote the national campaign for a federal amendment at
the expense of legislation within the state. Overextended
and overworked, Youmans discontinued publication of the Citizen in 1917, replacing it with a typewritten monthly bulletin sent to newspaper editors.
Other suffrage journals include the Pioneer (1869–1873),
published in San Francisco by Emily A. Pitts; The New
Northwest (1881–1887), published in Portland, Oregon,
by Abigail Scott Duniway; the Woman Voter (1910–1917),
published by the New York City Woman Suffrage Party;
the Western Woman Voter (1911–1913), published in Seattle; the Suffragist (1913–1921), published by the militant
National Woman’s Party; and The Woman Citizen (1917–
1927), published by the NAWSA as the result of the merger
of the Woman’s Journal, Woman Voter, and National Suffrage News.
Despite the disadvantages these women journalists faced
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
their work taken as a whole helped to raise the public’s consciousness of women’s rights and contributed to changes
in the American political and social climate in ways that
eventually led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
Further Reading
Buechler, Steven. Women’s Movements in the United States. New
Brunswick, N J: Rutgers University Press, 1990.
Burt, Elizabeth V. “Dissent and Control in a Woman Suffrage
Periodical: 30 Years of the Wisconsin Citizen.” American
Journalism 16, 2 (Spring 1999): 39–62.
Endres, Kathleen L., and Therese L. Lueck, eds. Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Social and Political Issues.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights
Movement in the United States, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA.:
Belknap Press, 1975.
Lumsden, Linda. “‘Excellent Ammunition’ Suffrage Newspaper
Strategies During World War I.” Journalism History 25, 2
(Summer 1999): 53–63.
Steiner, Linda. “Finding Community in Nineteenth Century
Suffrage Periodicals.” American Journalism 1, 1 (Summer
1983): 1–15.
Solomon, Martha Solomon, ed. A Voice of Their Own: The
Woman Suffrage Press, 1840–1910. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1991.
Elizabeth V. Burt