Iron And Silk
The Women's Suffrage Movement in America, 1848-1920By Margaret Elspeth Harrington
Length4h 49m
About this audiobook
Women's suffrage movement history, Seneca Falls to Nineteenth Amendment 1848-1920, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul — the complete 72-year narrative history of American women's fight for the vote.
On August 18, 1920, Tennessee legislator Harry Burn walked into the state House chamber wearing an antisuffrage red rose. In his pocket was a penciled letter from his mother: "Hurrah and vote for Suffrage and don't keep them in doubt... Don't forget to be a good boy." When his name was called, Burn voted yes. By one vote, Tennessee ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, and twenty-six million American women became eligible to vote.
Iron and Silk traces the full arc of women's suffrage history — from the 300 people at Seneca Falls in July 1848 hearing Elizabeth Cady Stanton read a Declaration modeled on the Declaration of Independence, through Susan B. Anthony's 1872 arrest and directed-verdict trial, through Alice Paul's 1917 White House pickets and the Night of Terror at the Occoquan Workhouse, to the Winning Plan that Carrie Chapman Catt executed with the precision of a military campaign.
Inside this women's suffrage book:
Seneca Falls, July 1848 — the Declaration of Sentiments, Frederick Douglass's argument that the ballot was the foundation of all other rights, and the suffrage resolution that barely passed even among the organizers (Chapter 1)
Susan B. Anthony's arrest — handcuffed by a U.S. marshal, tried before a judge who delivered a directed verdict without jury deliberation, fined $100 she told him she would never pay (Chapter 13)
The Night of Terror — November 14-15, 1917, Occoquan Workhouse: guards beating Alice Paul's pickets, Dora Lewis knocked unconscious, Lucy Burns throttled — and how the outrage accelerated Wilson's conversion (Chapter 11)
Catt's Winning Plan — the secret 1916 Atlantic City strategy dividing states into referendum targets and congressional pressure campaigns; winning New York in 1917 changed the math for every Eastern senator (Chapter 10)
The honest reckoning — the racial exclusions made to secure Southern support, the Amendment's failure to protect Black women in the South, and what 72 years of organizing achieved and left unfinished (Chapters 18, 22-23)
The women's suffrage movement succeeded because Catt and Paul made the political cost of continued denial higher than the cost of conceding. Febb Burn's penciled letter is proof it worked all the way down — to a farm woman who had no formal connection to the movement but had absorbed its arguments. This is the complete narrative history of women's rights in America, from Seneca Falls to the Nineteenth Amendment.
For readers of Doris Kearns Goodwin's NO ORDINARY TIME and Stacy Schiff's THE WITCHES.
Audiobook details
GenreHistory, Psychology
Length4 hrs 49 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJun 2, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
2Prologue: A Half-Century Campaign
3PART ONE: THE ROOTS OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS (1848-1869)
4Chapter 1: Seneca Falls — The Declaration of Sentiments, 1848
5Chapter 2: Stanton and Anthony — The Partnership That Changed America
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6Chapter 3: The Civil War and the Broken Promise — Reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment
7Chapter 4: The Split — NWSA vs. AWSA and the Question of Strategy
8PART TWO: THE LONG CAMPAIGN (1870-1900)
9Chapter 5: State by State — The Western Strategy
10Chapter 6: The New Woman — Education, Work, and the Changing American Female
11Chapter 7: The Anti-Suffrage Forces — Liquor Interests, Southern Democrats, and Conservative Women
12Chapter 8: Wyoming Leads — The First States to Grant Women the Vote
13PART THREE: THE FINAL PUSH (1900-1920)
14Chapter 9: The Progressive Era Alliance — Suffrage and Reform
15Chapter 10: Carrie Chapman Catt and the Winning Plan
16Chapter 11: Militant Suffrage — Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party
17Chapter 12: The Nineteenth Amendment — Ratification and Victory
18PART FOUR: THE MOVEMENT'S LEADERS
19Chapter 13: Susan B. Anthony — The Pioneer
20Chapter 14: Elizabeth Cady Stanton — Philosopher of the Movement
21Chapter 15: Sojourner Truth — Race, Gender, and the Suffrage Question
22Chapter 16: Working Women and Suffrage — Labor and the Vote
23PART FIVE: OPPOSITION, COMPROMISE, AND THE FINAL BATTLE
24Chapter 17: Why Men Opposed Women's Suffrage
25Chapter 18: The Southern Question — Race, Class, and the White Suffragists' Compromise
26Chapter 19: Tennessee Ratifies — The Thirty-Sixth State and Harry Burn's Vote
27Chapter 20: International Suffrage — America in Global Context
28PART SIX: LEGACIES
29Chapter 21: What the Vote Changed — Women in Politics After 1920
30Chapter 22: The Unfinished Agenda — Women's Rights Beyond Suffrage
31Chapter 23: The ERA — Equal Rights and Its Long Struggle
32Chapter 24: The Suffragists' Legacy — A Movement That Transformed Democracy
33Epilogue: The Unfinished Vote
34Acknowledgments
35Selected Bibliography
36About the Author
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