Letter to Congress from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Others in Support of Women's Suffrage

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and four other prominent women's rights leaders addressed this petition to the Senate and House of Representatives. They asked Congress to enact a law giving women in the United States the right to vote. These women also asked to speak before both houses of Congress about this issue.

Stanton and Anthony had formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in May of 1869 – they opposed the 15th amendment (that granted black men the right to vote) because it excluded women. In the year following the ratification of the amendment, the NWSA sent this voting rights petition to Congress.

Vehement disagreement over supporting the 15th Amendment had resulted in a "schism" that split the women's suffrage movement into two new suffrage organizations focusing on different strategies to win women voting rights. One was the NWSA.

The other was the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), founded in 1869 by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The AWSA supported the 15th Amendment and protested the confrontational tactics of the NWSA.