The Suffrage Movement in progress

This map was published in February of 1919, just a few short months before the nineteenth amendment was passed in congress in July of that same year. It shows the popularity of the votes for women campaign throughout the country. It was originally published in The Suffragist, a notable newspaper of the time that can be attributed to spreading the ideas of women’s suffrage across the country and brought the country’s attention to the cause. This map conveys the popularity of the suffrage movement in the northern and western states of the country, but it specifically emphasizes the south’s hesitance to give women the right to vote. The map exemplifies Southern conservatism. The popular opinion in the grouping of states was that women did not need or particularly deserve the right to vote. This was a sentiment not only shared by conservative men, but also many conservative women in the states, who did not want their preferred roles as mothers and caretakers jeopardized by politics. Up North, the general attitude was far different. In Northern cities, liberal women actively campaigned for their cause. The Western states were the among the quickest to adopt the idea of women’s suffrage, as women had proven themselves to be competent workers in the sparsely populated territory.