View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.
"In this densely written and tightly argued work, Mead (Northern
Michigan Univ.) presents answers to the often asked question of why
woman suffrage was accomplished in the US West well before it was
in the East."
--"Choice"
"In this superb study . . . Rebecca J. Mead convincingly
demonstrates the importance of the region to understanding the
success of the national suffrage movement."
--"American Historical Review"
"This concise book is the most complete overview to date of the
woman suffrage movement in the American West."
--"The Journal of Arizona History"
"Mead has produced a strong case for western women's
well-reasoned, winning plan and has provided a superb foundation
for renewed engagement with an important question. My thanks to
you, Professor Mead."
--"Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"
"Thanks to Mead's extensive research and careful weighing of
evidence, no future scholar will be able to work from the
assumption that the East represents the nation in the history of
women's enfranchisement. She has laid the critical foundation for a
genuinely national history of one of the most important
developments in modern America."
--"Reviews in American History"
"Moving beyond the traditional emphasis on the work of radical
women to include the larger political and social context, Mead's
book makes a strong contribution to our understanding of our
history of nineteenth century women, western United States
politics, and issues of gender and law."
--"Utah Historical Quarterly"
"Mead...deserves respect for embarking on an ambitious
undertaking that necessitated very extensiveresearch which she
covered meticulously. She has revisited this significant political
transformation with the tools of recent historical scholarship to
the fore and contributed constructively to a complex area of modern
political history."
--"Australasian Journal of American Studies"
"In this comprehensive estimation, Mead not only answers the
question of why western states were ahead of the curve in granting
women the vote, but also examines the relationships, often tense,
between the local, state, and national suffrage associations as
well as with farm, labor and progressive coalitions."
--"Montana: The Magazine of Western History"
"Rebecca Mead has crafted a detailed history of suffrage
campaigns in the western states."
-- Karen E. Campbell of Vanderbilt University
"This book should challenge historians of woman suffrage to look
more closely at other regions and states. . . . But it is Mead's
treatment of a political culture among women with its own history,
burdens, crosscurrents, and innovators that should have the wider
impact."
--"Journal of American History"
"Rebecca Mead's new synthesis finally de-mystifies the West's
'radical and fundamental challenge to the exisitng political status
of women'."
--"Western Historical Quarterly"
By the end of 1914, almost every Western state and territory had
enfranchised its female citizens in the greatest innovation in
participatory democracy since Reconstruction. These Western
successes stand in profound contrast to the East, where few women
voted until after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in
1920, and the South, where African-American men were systematically
disenfranchised. How did thefrontier West leap ahead of the rest of
the nation in the enfranchisement of the majority of its
citizens?
In this provocative new study, Rebecca J. Mead shows that
Western suffrage came about as the result of the unsettled state of
regional politics, the complex nature of Western race relations,
broad alliances between suffragists and farmer-labor-progressive
reformers, and sophisticated activism by Western women. She
highlights suffrage racism and elitism as major problems for the
movement, and places special emphasis on the political adaptability
of Western suffragists whose improvisational tactics earned them
progress.
A fascinating story, previously ignored, How the Vote was Won
reintegrates this important region into national suffrage history
and helps explain the ultimate success of this radical reform.
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