Women and the U.S. Constitution: 1776-1920 [Paperback]

As a result, American women played a peripheral role in constitutional history until 1920. This pamphlet looks at this role as it developed throughout the nineteenth-century, culminating in 1920 with the passing of the women's sufferage amendment in 1920.In the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, gender was a non-issue. Women played no role in the authorship of either the original 1787 document or the Bill of Rights, and were largely excluded from the Constitution's application.Series IntroductionIntroductionChapter 1: The Common Law of Domestic RelationsChapter 2: The Declaration of IndependenceChapter 3: The United States ConstitutionChapter 4: Constitutional Invisibility, 1791-1870Chapter 5: Constitutional Possibilities: Efforts to Nationalize Women's Rights, 1866-1900Chapter 6: Claiming Rights through the Nineteenth Amendment, 1900-20EpilogueSuggested ReadingsNotesJean H. Baker is a professor of history at Goucher College. She is the author of several books, including Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists; Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography; and Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in Mid-Nineteenth Century America, and editor of Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited.