The New England Woman Suffrage Association (NEWSA) was established in November 1868 to campaign for the right of women to vote in the U.S. Its principal leaders were Julia Ward Howe, its first president, and Lucy Stone, who later became president. It was active until 1920, when suffrage for women was secured by the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The NEWSA was formed during a period when a split was developing within the women's rights movement and also between one wing of that movement and the abolitionist movement. Disagreement was especially sharp over the proposal to enfranchise African American men before enfranchising women. The NEWSA, which accepted that approach, was organized partly to counter the activities of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who opposed it, insisting that women and black men should be enfranchised at the same time. The NEWSA also maintained close ties with the abolitionist movement and the Republican Party whereas Stanton and Anthony were working toward an independent women's movement.
The NEWSA was the first major political organization with women's suffrage as its goal. It was formed on a regional basis several months before the establishment of two national women's suffrage organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. The NEWSA played a key role in the formation of the latter and had overlapping leadership with it.
Background
The New England Woman Suffrage Association (NEWSA) was formed during a period when a split was developing within the women's rights movement and also between one wing of that movement and the abolitionist movement. Disagreements had already weakened the American Equal Rights Association, which was formed in 1866 by women's rights advocates and abolitionists to campaign for equal rights, including suffrage, for all citizens regardless of race or sex. Priority had become an issue: should universal suffrage be the immediate goal, or should African American men be enfranchised first? After slavery was abolished in the U.S. in 1865, the American Anti-Slavery Society declared that its work would not be finished until African Americans were also guaranteed political equality. By the time of the NEWSA's founding, hope for fulfillment of that goal was embodied in a proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of race. Because it would not also prohibit the denial of suffrage because of sex, however, it became a focal point for discord within the women's movement.
Some members of the women's movement, such as Abby Kelley Foster, supported the amendment because they believed that suffrage for African American males was a more pressing need than suffrage for women. Others, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, opposed any amendment that would in effect enfranchise all men while excluding all women, believing it would create an "aristocracy of sex" by giving constitutional authority to the idea that men were superior to women. Lucy Stone, who played a leading role in the NEWSA, argued that suffrage for women was more important than suffrage for black men but also supported the Fifteenth Amendment.
The split also involved different assessments of the ruling Republican Party. Many leading women's suffragists had been introduced to social activism through the anti-slavery movement and felt loyalty to both that movement and to the Republican Party, which had provided political leadership for the abolition of slavery in the U.S. and was still in the difficult process of consolidating that victory. After the uncomfortably close elections of 1868, Republican leaders recognized the importance of enfranchising African American men, most of whom were recently freed slaves, as a way of helping to preserve the victory over slaveholders during the American Civil War (1861–1865). They and their abolitionist allies increasingly viewed women's suffrage as an objective that, even if successful, would not produce comparable political benefits, and they considered the campaign for it to be a drain on resources that were needed elsewhere.