Voting

Women's suffrage in the United States was achieved gradually, at state and local levels during the late 19th century and early 20th century, culminating in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

In June 1848, the Liberty Party, composed entirely of men, made women's suffrage a plank in their presidential campaign. The next month, the Seneca Falls Convention issued the first formal demand authored by US women for suffrage. 

During the 1850s the National Woman's Rights Conventions and Lucy Stone organized women's suffrage petitions campaigns in several states, and Stone became the first person to appeal for woman suffrage before a body of lawmakers when she addressed the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1853. 

Agitation was suspended during the Civil War but resumed in 1865 when the National Woman's Rights Committee issued a petition asking Congress to amend the United States Constitution to prohibit states from disfranchising citizens "on the ground of sex."

Disagreement among movement leaders over whether to support ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave the vote to black men but not to women, resulted in the formation of two rival organizations: the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), founded by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe. Both organizations initially campaigned for a Sixteenth Amendment to give women the vote, but the AWSA gradually turned to building support for the federal measure by winning the right of women to vote at the state and local levels. 

In 1889 the groups merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which, after 1900, argued for reforms of theProgressive Era. Women's contributions to American participation in the First World War (1917–18) gave the impetus for final victory.

On January 12, 1915, a suffrage bill was brought before the House of Representatives but was defeated by a vote of 204 to 174, (Democrats 170-85 against, Republicans 81-34 for, Progressives 6-0 for).  

Another bill was brought before the House on January 10, 1918. On the evening before, President Wilson made a strong and widely published appeal to the House to pass the bill. It was passed by two-thirds of the House, with only one vote to spare. The vote was then carried into the Senate. Again President Wilson made an appeal, but on September 30, 1918, the amendment fell two votes short of the two-thirds necessary for passage, 53-31 (Republicans 27-10 for, Democrats 26-21 for). On February 10, 1919, it was again voted upon, and then it was lost by only one vote, 54-30 (Republicans 30-12 for, Democrats 24-18 for).

There was considerable anxiety among politicians of both parties to have the amendment passed and made effective before the general elections of 1920, so the President called a special session of Congress, and a bill, introducing the amendment, was brought before the House again. On May 21, 1919, it was passed, 304 to 89, (Republicans 200-19 for, Democrats 102-69 for, Union Labor 1-0 for, Prohibitionist 1-0 for), 42 votes more than necessary being obtained. On June 4, 1919, it was brought the Senate, and after a long discussion it was passed, with 56 ayes and 25 nays (Republicans 36-8 for, Democrats 20-17 for). 

Within a few days, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan ratified the amendment, their legislatures being then in session. Other states followed suit at a regular pace, until the amendment had been ratified by 35 of the necessary 36 state legislatures. After Washington on March 22, 1920, ratification languished for months. 

Finally, on August 18, 1920, Tennessee narrowly ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, making it the law throughout the United States.  

Thus the 1920 election was the first United States presidential election in which women were permitted to vote in every state.

Nearly twenty years later Maryland ratified the amendment in 1941. 

After another ten years, in 1952, Virginia ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, followed by Alabama in 1953. After another 16 years Florida and South Carolina passed the necessary votes to ratify in 1969, followed two years later by Georgia and Louisiana in 1971.

Mississippi did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1984, sixty four years after the law was enacted nationally.