"Moving Heaven and Earth": The Uses of Religion in the New York Woman Suffrage Campaign

On November 2, 1915, all eyes focused on New York. Election Day marked the culmination of more than a half century of relentless work by thousands of suffrage supporters to win the elective franchise for women in the country's most populous state. Trained female poll watchers, who had volunteered their time to guarantee an orderly election, paid close attention to the 1.3 million men who turned out to vote. The ballot included Amendment Number 2 on woman suffrage. One of five "Amendments to Be Submitted to the People in 1915," the amendment proposed eliminating the word "male" from the New York State constitution to enable women to vote on an equal basis with men.¹ Along with four other measures on the ballot involving constitutional language, state debt, legislative apportionment, and taxation, Amendment Number 2 failed. Deeply disappointed with the results, suffragists headed for their homes and sleep.²

Press coverage of the vote on woman suffrage varied considerably. For example, several prominent New York City newspapers broadcasted the defeat of the woman suffrage amendment with banner headlines the day after the election.³ However, in small town newspapers across the state, including the Seneca County Courier-Journal, the election results appeared in a single paragraph buried deep in the paper, days after the election.⁴ Few, if any, newspapers speculated on the reason(s) for the defeat of the suffrage proposition. Perhaps some people had assumed all along that the woman suffrage referendum would fail. After all, it was a midterm election year, and this was the first time the woman suffrage question had come before New York voters. The vocabulary relating to the term "woman suffrage" could be perplexing. The possibility that men might have to share the political process, or worse yet political power, with women loomed ominously for many voters. In the weeks leading to the election, Tammany Hall's leaders reaffirmed their staunch antisuffrage stance, casting their influence over multitudes of city voters. For many New Yorkers preoccupied with the possibility of the country stepping into the Great War, the defeat of women's bid for enfranchisement did not rise to the level of a newsworthy item.

While some suffragists privately pondered viable explanations for the defeat of the women's suffrage amendment, Empire State Campaign Committee Chairman Carrie Chapman Catt quickly announced what she considered to be the definitive reason for the defeat. In a letter written to her district chairmen three days after the election, Catt emphatically stated: "I believe that we failed to work enough with the orthodox churches of all religions."⁵ She argued that to effectively direct the next stage of the New York campaign, activists must acknowledge and overcome the sheer force of pious opposition to suffrage. What Elizabeth Cady Stanton had recognized in 1860 as the equivalent of trying to "move heaven and earth"—surmounting unwavering opposition to suffrage for men and women of faith—remained over a half century later one of the greatest obstacles to women's enfranchisement.⁶

Suffragists in New York had a complicated history of dealing with issues concerning the intersections of religion and suffrage, however the question of how suffrage leaders appropriated religion to advance the suffrage movement has not yet been thoroughly addressed by scholars of women's history.⁷ Questions that demand a detailed analysis concern the suffrage leaders' own religious beliefs (or lack thereof), the strategies suffragists used to appeal to the clergy and their followers, and how relationships between suffrage organizations and religious institutions played a vital part in building the 1917 woman suffrage coalition that made victory in New York possible. To fully understand the women's suffrage movement in New York, it is imperative to recognize religion as an essential component of the campaign.

Suffrage and Religion in New York State

In the decades before the inception of the formal suffrage movement, religion had come to occupy an important place in Americans' lives. A proliferation of steepled churches dotted the landscape even in the tiniest hamlets. Along the Erie Canal...