• Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (and other women delegates) are denied seats at the World anti-slavery convention in London.

• Mott, Stanton, Jane Hunt, Martha Wright and Mary McClintock issue a public notice for a meeting at Seneca falls, New York "to discuss the social, civic and religious rights of women." At the convention the Declaration of Sentiments and a set of resolutions is signed. This marks the first formal declaration of woman's interest in the vote.

• Local and national women's rights conventions are held. The first national is in 1860 Worcester, Mass. and 1,000 people attend. The suffrage leaders discuss both abolition and women's rights issues. In Akron, Ohio in 1851 Sojourner Truth gives her famous "Ain't I a Woman" refutation. With the start of the civil war suffrage leaders turn their attention to the anti-slavery fight. Concern grows over wording of the proposed Fourteenth amendment which would put the word "male" into the U.S. Constitution for the first time.

• Suffragists petition Congress with over 10,000 signatures asking for an amendment prohibiting disenfranchisement on account of sex. When women in Washington D.C. ask for the vote in local elections, the first Congressional debate on Woman Suffrage takes place.
• May 1, the first Women's Rights Convention since the Civil War is held. The convention resolves itself into The American Equal Rights Association. Debate in the woman's suffrage movement continues over the Fourteenth Amendment. Stanton and Anthony oppose its ratification--which costs them some supporters.

• Kansas puts two proposed amendments on the ballot: one to grant suffrage to women, the other to grant suffrage to black men. Both measures lose.

• The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified.

1869

• The Fifteenth Amendment is proposed, prohibiting denial of rights on the basis of race, color, or condition of previous servitude. Women's rights leaders work to have the word "sex" added
• The American Equal Rights Association fragments over the controversy about the 14th and 15th amendments. Stanton and Anthony feel betrayed by male abolitionists who refused to push for excluding the term "male" or including the word "sex" in the amendments. They form the National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA) exclusively for women and dedicate their energies to a fight for a federal amendment granting women the vote and to fights for broader issues of women's rights. Lucy Stone and others for the American Woman's Suffrage Association a group that includes men and is dedicated to securing woman's suffrage through a state by state approach. This group is generally seen as more conservative and more single-issue focussed than Stanton's group.
• Women win the right to vote in Wyoming upon its becoming a territory.

• The territory of Utah grants women the right to vote (a right they will lose under the Edmunds-Tucker Act of Congress in 1887).

• The Anti-Suffrage Society is formed, composed of wives of prominent men.

• Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman to run for President, on her own ticket. Frederick Douglass is the vice-presidential candidate.
• Susan B. Anthony registers to vote in an effort to force a court decision on woman suffrage. She is tried, convicted and fined $100, which she refuses to pay. Before the trial she gave speeches before so many potential jurors that the prosecution asked and received a change of venue. Anthony enlisted other speaker's to help and before her court date most of the people in the community had heard her argument. The cautious judge refused to let the jury deliberate and instructed them to find her guilty.

• The Woman's Crusade begins in Ohio where women take to the streets to protest the presence of saloons in their communities. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is formed a year later. Within two years the organization will begin agitating for women to have a vote on liquor licensing policies in their communities.

• Women disrupt the Centennial in Philadelphia by issuing a Woman's Declaration.

• Senator Aaron Sargent of California introduces the proposed 16th Amendment for woman's suffrage (known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment). Stanton appears at hearings held by the Committee on Privileges and Elections. The committee reports against the amendment.

• Select committees for both houses of Congress are appointed and both report favorably on Woman Suffrage.

• January 25, the first vote is taken on Woman Suffrage in the Senate. The measure is defeated by a two to one margin.

• The two major suffrage organizations bury the hatchet and merge forming the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Stanton serves as President. Because of the failure at the national level they resolve to fight on a state by state basis.

• Susan B. Anthony becomes President of NAWSA in part over controversy due to Stanton's publication of The Woman's Bible.

• Colorado grants women suffrage.

• Despite petitions with 600,000 signatures New York refuses to submit the woman suffrage amendment to the voters. Suffrage efforts to extend the vote in Kansas fail.

• The first victory under NAWSA comes in Utah, where the vote is recovered after nine years.

• Idaho grants women the vote.

• Carrie Chapman Catt, a master organizer becomes President of NAWSA.

• Anna Howard Shaw, one of the greatest orators of the movement becomes president of NAWSA.

• Harriet Stanton Blatch (daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton) returns from England with new ideas about gaining public attention and support. She founds the Women's Political Union and engages in parades and street speaking.

• Women gain suffrage in the state of Washington.

• A massive campaign in California pays off and women get the vote.
• Three thousand march in a New York suffrage parade.
• Emmeline Pankhurst, the militant British woman's leader, speaks at the NAWSA convention.

• The Progressive Party, under Teddy Roosevelt, favor's woman suffrage.
• Ten thousand march in a New York Temperance parade.
• Oregon, Arizona, and Kansas grant full woman suffrage.

• Alaskan Territory grants woman suffrage. Illinois grants limited suffrage.
• Alice Paul and Lucy Burns return from London where they had been militants. They form the Congressional Union as part of NAWSA to pressure Congress.
• Eight thousand women march in Washington on the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. Police refuse protection. After women are attacked by mobs the Secretary of War calls out troops to restore order.
• The Susan B. Anthony Amendment is reintroduced in the House and Senate. The Senate reports favorably, but all action is blocked in the House.

• Nevada adopts Woman's Suffrage.
• The first vote on woman's suffrage since 1887 is taken in the U.S. Senate. The result is 35-34. The amendment is stalled again in the House by a tie vote in the Rules committee.
• The Democratic Party decides that suffrage is a state issue. Woodrow Wilson says he must follow his party so the federal govt. cannot be involve with the issue. The Congressional Union moves to direct political action then against the Democratic party.

• The House votes on woman's suffrage for the first time ever. The measure is defeated 204-174.
• 40,000 march in a suffrage parade in New York.
• Suffrage is defeated in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.
• Recognizing that Shaw's powers as an organizer are limited, NAWSA names Carrie Chapman Catt president again. (Catt remains a prominent political figure for the rest of her life and was the founder of The League of Woman Voters.)

• Alice Paul and the Congressional Union break from NAWSA and form the National Woman's Party (NWP).
• Both NAWSA and NWP march on the Republican National Convention and get woman's suffrage in the platform for the first time. The suffragists are unsuccessful at the Democratic convention. The NWP declares war on Wilson.

• January 10 the first "sentinels of liberty" appear at the White House. On inauguration day 1,000 suffragists join the pickets. In June police begin arresting White House pickets. Eventually, 218 women are arrested. The women institute a work strike at the prison and then a hunger strike.
• The House finally sets up a Woman Suffrage Committee which takes the amendment out of the control of the hostile House Judiciary Committee.
• North Dakota, Indiana, Rhode Island, Nebraska and Michigan grant women the right to vote in Presidential elections. Arkansas lets women vote in primaries.
• Woman's suffrage is added to the constitutions of South Dakota, Oklahoma, and finally, New York.

• Woodrow Wilson declares his support for national woman's suffrage--one day before a House vote on the issue. The amendment passes the House by exactly two-thirds.
• The Senate refuses to vote on the measure. The NWP transfers pickets to the Senate.
• In October, Wilson appears at the Senate to appeal for suffrage. It is defeated--just 2 votes short of the two-thirds majority.

• The suffrage amendment is vote on again in the Senate and is one vote short.
• In Jan. a perpetual fire is built in an urn in the park across from the White House. Every time Wilson gives a speech about democracy, the NWP tolls a bell and burns his words. Women attend the fire all day and night.
• With pressure form Wilson the final vote is secured and on June 4, 1919 the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution is passed.

• Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify the amendment and the amendment is signed into law on August 26, 1920.