The Power of Women: Matilda Joslyn Gage and the New York Women's Vote of 1880

Matilda Joslyn Gage woke on the morning of Wednesday, October 13, 1880, knowing that the day would be an important one for the women of New York State. At the beginning of the year, the New York legislature had passed a bill allowing women to vote and run for positions on local school boards. When the governor signed the bill into law, Gage started nine months of hard work in preparation for the fall elections that would take place in rural school districts, including her own in Fayetteville (near Syracuse). Like an expectant mother, she approached the day with a mixture of fear, excitement, and nervous anticipation.

Gage had devoted her life so far to the cause of women's rights, focusing on the vote. As a top officer in the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), she was well aware of the challenges of a radical and unpopular movement. She had been told that women were intellectually incapable of voting, that it was against God's plan for women to vote, that it would destroy the home, that politics was too dirty for women to participate in, and that women didn't want to vote. "When women ask for the vote, they shall get it," said the anti-suffragists. The apathy of millions of women in the United States and their reluctance to work for their own political freedom was frustrating for Gage and her co-leaders, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "How can it be that every woman, every woman," Gage wrote, "does not rise in the might of her inherent inborn rights, and cry 'away with it!'"¹

But now, the women of New York State had a chance to prove that they did want a voice in their government, even if it was only for running school districts. Suffrage leaders believed that school suffrage was a "foot in the door" to full voting rights; that New York as the birthplace of the movement could either lead the forward progress of woman suffrage or cripple it by proving that women would not come out to vote. As Gage walked across the street from her home to the schoolhouse to monitor the election, she wondered what the day would bring.

The Importance of School Suffrage

School suffrage is not usually mentioned by historians because they have focused on Anthony and Stanton and their work for a federal amendment, and school elections just aren't very exciting unless something controversial is being voted on.² When historians do mention school suffrage, it is usually in a list with other forms of partial suffrage³ or in works about the efforts after 1880 in other states.⁴

However, the story of that vote in the autumn of 1880 is useful to us today as a microcosm of the nineteenth-century suffrage movement. The first wave of suffrage leaders endured "repeated failure" and didn't live to see national success, but a few victories were won at the state and local levels, giving them hope to keep working.⁵ This account highlights a forgotten leader, Matilda Joslyn Gage, who was active at the national, state, and local levels and took it upon herself to prove that women would vote if they were educated and organized.⁶ The story of school suffrage in New York simultaneously demonstrates the courage of ordinary women and the need for strong female leaders. Leaving their home to vote required women to go outside their traditional domestic sphere and take on a new public role under harsh circumstances.

Would women find the courage within themselves to vote and perhaps even run for office, despite their not having held any public office in New York until just a few years before?⁷ Unfortunately, we only know the answer for white women—voting would have certainly required more courage for women of color. But the historical record is almost all about white women. So far, I have only found one instance, noted later in this article, about African-American women participating in school suffrage. There is...