1856: Shouldn't we vote, too?

In her autobiography, Glimpses of Fifty Years, Willard recalled her early frustration at seeing her father and older brother riding off to vote (for John C. Frémont) in the presidential election of 1856—when she was 17--knowing that she and her younger sister, Mary, would not be able to join them when they  grew up. Mary’s fear of appearing “strong-minded” if she were to seek the vote reflected the dilemma that Willard and other suffragists continued to face all their lives: how to convince “the average woman” that voting would not compromise her womanliness.

"Something else that had already happened, helped to stir up my spirit into a mighty unrest. This is the story as I told it to my journal: 

This is election day and my brother is twenty-one years old. How proud he seemed as he dressed up in his best Sunday clothes and drove off in the big wagon with father and the hired men to vote for John C. Frémont, like the sensible "Free-soiler" that he is. My sister and I stood at the window and looked out after them. Somehow, I felt a lump in my throat, turned to Mary, and she, dear little innocent, seemed wonderfully sober, too. I said, "Wouldn't you like to vote as well as he, and doesn't the country need our ballots?" Then she looked scared, but answered, in a minute, "'Course we do, and 'course we ought--but don't you go ahead and say so, for then we would be called strong-minded.""

Quote: Frances E. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman (Chicago: Woman’s Christian Temperance Publishing Association, 1888, pages 69-70).