| History of the 19th Amendment |
 The 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States extended full voting rights to women. The Amendment was ratified in 1920 and was the result of decades of effort by feminist groups that push for equal rights. It all started with the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. Before the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, 28 states had already granted voting rights to women. Wyoming,
known as the Equality State, entered the Union in 1890 with equal voting rights; the very first state to enfranchise women. Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi River to extend voting rights to women and that occurred in 1913. By 1919, most western states and New York State also had provided voting rights to women. Several large states, including Virginia, Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania, refused. The 19th Amendment's fate was uncertain until the very last minute. As recently as 1915, the U. S. House of Representatives had defeated a similar proposal. The support of President Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned for the Amendment beginning in 1918, proved crucial to its passage.
Both the House and the Senate approved the Amendment in 1919, and the states rushed to ratify it in time for women to participate in the 1920 Presidential Election.
By the time the Amendment passed, many of the women who were founders of the women's rights movement including Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony had all died. In just 70 years though, their movement had turned the notion of women's suffrage from a laughing stock into reality.
As Carrie Chapman Catt, another suffragist leader, said, "when a just cause reaches its flood tide, whatever stands in the way must fall before its overwhelming power."
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