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Quiz for Analyzing Historical Evidence: The Final Push for Woman Suffrage

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Analyzing Historical Evidence: The Final Push for Woman Suffrage

Choose the best answer to each question.

Question

1. In her letter to Maud Wood Park, National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) vice president Mary Garrett Hay wrote, “I kept in very close touch on the telephone and telegraph wire with the New York Congressmen and they reported to me, really twice a day what was going on, as far as Speaker, Floor Leader, and Suffrage Committee was concerned. . . . Things will be all right, I believe, but I have made up my mind not to trust either Democrats or Republicans until the Suffrage Amendment is passed.” What does this letter suggest about NAWSA’s approach to the issue of woman suffrage at the end of the 1910s?

It used publicly visible and militant tactics in the fight for suffrage.

It had given up on electoral politics as the way to achieve suffrage.

Its members used traditional political channels to achieve their goal.

It created a new political party to agitate for suffrage in Congress.

Correct. The answer is C. Mary Garrett Hay outlined for Maud Wood Park her continuing efforts to lobby for the passage of a woman suffrage amendment among New York’s congressmen and senators, illustrating the way NAWSA worked through traditional political channels to achieve its goal.

Incorrect. The correct answer is C. Mary Garrett Hay outlined for Maud Wood Park her continuing efforts to lobby for the passage of a woman suffrage amendment among New York’s congressmen and senators, illustrating the way NAWSA worked through traditional political channels to achieve its goal.

Question

2. Although President Woodrow Wilson opposed a woman suffrage amendment when he took office, he said in this September 1918 speech before the U.S. Senate, “[The Senate’s] adoption is, in my judgment, clearly necessary to the successful prosecution of the war and the successful realization of the objects for which the war is being fought. . . . If we be indeed democrats and wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they wish to be led, nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions.” Which of the following was the source of Wilson’s argument in this speech?

The National American Woman Suffrage Association president

National Woman’s party picketers outside the White House

The Committee on Public Information head George Creel

Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848

Correct. The answer is B. Since the early days of the war, picketers from the National Woman’s party had been protesting outside the White House carrying signs that challenged the United States’ status as a democracy and mocking Wilson’s wartime rhetoric. Wilson’s arguments in this speech mirrored those the party had been making since the county’s entry into the war.

Incorrect. The correct answer is B. Since the early days of the war, picketers from the National Woman’s party had been protesting outside the White House carrying signs that challenged the United States’ status as a democracy and mocking Wilson’s wartime rhetoric. Wilson’s arguments in this speech mirrored those the party had been making since the country’s entry into the war.

Question

3. At the end of his speech before the Senate in 1918, Woodrow Wilson argued that woman suffrage was necessary because “it is vital to the right solution of the great problems which we must settle, and settle immediately, when the war is over. We shall need in our vision affairs, as we have never needed them before, the sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the women of the world. . . .We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system of life as well as to discover just what it is that ought to be purified and reformed.” Which of the following summarizes Wilson’s assumptions about women in this statement advocating woman suffrage?

Women were better than men at identifying social problems and their solutions.

Women’s natural emotionality heightened their ability to identify and resist political corruption.

Women’s intuition allowed them to sense the best ways for political leaders to move the country forward.

Women’s natural purity and maternalism made them uniquely qualified to improve and purify American society.

Correct. The answer is D. In this statement, Wilson was building on the nineteenth-century notion that women were pious, pure, moral, and domestic. He suggests that these characteristics gave women a vital role to play in the process of reforming the modern urban and industrial society. His conclusion accepted the idea that women’s instinctive morality and purity would be important in setting a new direction for the world after the war.

Incorrect. The correct answer is D. In this statement, Wilson was building on the nineteenth-century notion that women were pious, pure, moral, and domestic. He suggests that these characteristics gave women a vital role to play in the process of reforming the modern urban and industrial society. His conclusion accepted the idea that women’s instinctive morality and purity would be important in setting a new direction for the world after the war.

Question

4. In the letter she wrote to her staff to celebrate the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt wrote, “As I look back over the years . . . I realize that the greatest thing in the long campaign for us was not its crowning victory, but the discipline it gave us all.” This sentiment provides evidence to support which of the following historical arguments?

Suffragists were sorry to win their goal because their movement fell apart.

Suffragists appreciated the lessons and skills they learned through their activism.

The suffrage movement was an important source of friendship and support for women.

In 1920, NAWSA activists realized they valued the suffrage movement more than suffrage itself.

Correct. The answer is B. Carrie Chapman Catt was suggesting in this letter that she valued everything she and the other suffragists learned through their years of activism for woman suffrage. She was not mourning the movement’s victory.

Incorrect. The correct answer is B. Carrie Chapman Catt was suggesting in this letter that she valued everything she and the other suffragists learned through their years of activism for woman suffrage. She was not mourning the movement’s victory.

Question

5. Taken together, Mary Garrett Hay’s letter, Woodrow Wilson’s speech, and Carrie Chapman Catt’s reminiscences support which of the following conclusions about the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920?

American women ultimately gained the right to vote because Woodrow Wilson demanded it.

Women won suffrage in the United States in 1920 primarily because they supported the cause of World War I.

American women benefitted from their experience in the suffrage movement and from its victory.

The achievement of woman suffrage in the United States was inevitable.

Correct. The answer is C. These documents support the conclusion that the woman suffrage movement in the United States was important to women because of the skills and training it gave them, but also because its long campaign finally succeeded and achieved passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Without the woman suffrage movement, women would not have earned the right to vote.

Incorrect. The correct answer is C. These documents support the conclusion that the woman suffrage movement in the United States was important to women because of the skills and training it gave them, but also because its long campaign finally succeeded and achieved passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Without the woman suffrage movement, women would not have earned the right to vote.

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