wilkes

. Following ratification, over eight million women voted in the November presidential election that same year. What was the result? A 26.2 percentage-point victory for Warren G. Harding, a proud Ohio Republican who was a staunch advocate for women's suffrage. This is not a mere coincidence; it was a direct reflection of how Republicans helped lead the charge for women's rights.

On November 5, 1872, American civil rights activist Susan B. Anthony voted in a presidential election. (She voted for the incumbent, Republican Ulysses S. Grant.) At that time, women were not allowed to vote. Two weeks later, Anthony was arrested, and eventually fined $100 for voting illegally. "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty," she said-and she never did. It was more than 40 years before the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in the United States. On November 2, 1920, more than 8 million American women voted.

At the request of Susan B. Anthony, Sen. A.A. Sargent, a Republican from California, introduced the 19th Amendment in 1878. Sargent's amendment (also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment) was defeated four times by a Democrat-controlled Senate. When the Republican Party regained control of Congress in 1919, the Equal Suffrage Amendment finally passed the House in May of that year and in the Senate in June.