Before Equal Suffrage: Women in Partisan Politics from Colonial Times to 1920

Women's participation in partisan politics during the first several decades under the new federal Constitution must be divided into two parts. The initial decades--the 1790s through the 1820s--sometimes referred to as the Early National period, would see women playing a slightly larger political role than before. Occasionally they even engaged in open electioneering. For example, a Frenchman observing election day proceedings in Virginia in 1791 reported that in some towns "women go about canvassing, running from shop to shop; they beg for votes."¹ However, most of the female politicking undertaken at the time probably still occurred behind the scenes. Not until the 1830s and 1840s, in the so-called Jacksonian era, do we find women engaged in public political activity on a broad scale.

The period began with certain women of one state still being permitted to vote. The New Jersey Constitution of 1776 had opened the way for property-holding single women to exercise the suffrage, and they would for a time continue to do so. Indeed, in 1790, such voting was reaffirmed by statute, and the numbers at the polls gradually increased. Both parties in the state--the Federalists and the Republicans--actively campaigned for women's votes, especially around the turn of the century when the struggle between the two reached its highest levels. Yet within a few years, the Federalists, who had initially benefited the most from female voting,

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