If American involvement in the war constrained the freedoms of German
Americans, pacifists, and anyone else labeled as disloyal, it enlarged the
liberty of women. The most salient consequence was woman's suffrage. The
campaign to obtain the vote for women went back to the mid-nineteenth
century, and suffragists had become a powerful lobby in cities and several
states by the early twentieth century, but even a Progressive leader like
President Wilson had opposed a national suffrage amendment. In the course
of the war, with women playing a crucial and visible role in national life,
that position became untenable. Wilson shifted to support woman's suffrage
in January 1918. He was, he claimed, modvated by the support women had
given to the war. Meanwhile, the influence of other opponents faded. The
amendment giving women the vote passed Congress in June 1919; the states
ratified it in fourteen months.
World History
