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Debates Over Suffrage

Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, 1916

Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, 1916

Item 5491 info
Maine Historical Society

Maine's pro-suffrage efforts began with visits from some of the celebrated suffragists of the day.

Susan B. Anthony spoke in Bangor in 1854. Lucy Stone followed in 1855, giving speeches on equal rights for women in both Augusta and Cornish.

That same year, women in Portland started a women's rights society, but their efforts were soon eclipsed by the movement to end slavery.

These earliest efforts were not forgotten, and the struggle for women's voting rights resumed after the Civil War.

More than 1,000 people attended the founding meeting of the pro-suffrage group Maine Woman Suffrage Association in Augusta in 1873.