WORLD WAR 1ST.

Main articles: American entry into World War I and United States home front during World War I

American Cemetery at Romagne-sous-Montfaucon

As World War I raged in Europe from 1914, President Woodrow Wilson took full control of foreign policy, declaring neutrality but warning Germany that resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare against American ships supplying goods to Allied nations would mean war. Germany decided to take the risk and try to win by cutting off supplies to Britain; the U.S. declared war in April 1917 American money, food, and munitions arrived quickly, but troops had to be drafted and trained; by summer 1918 American soldiers under General John J. Pershing arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, while Germany was unable to replace its losses

The result was allied victory in November 1918. President Wilson demanded Germany depose the Kaiser and accept his terms, the fourteen points wilson dominated the 1919 Paris Peace Conference but Germany was treated harshly by the Allies in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) as Wilson put all his hopes in the new league of nations. Wilson refused to compromise with Senate Republicans over the issue of Congressional power to declare war, and the Senate rejected the Treaty and the League.

Women's suffrage

Further information: Women's suffrage in the United States

The women's suffrage movement began with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and the declaration of sentiments demanding equal rights for women. Many of the activists became politically aware during the abolitionist movement. The women's rights campaign during "first-wave feminism" was led by Mott, Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, among many others. The movement reorganized after the Civil War, gaining experienced campaigners, many of whom had worked for prohibition in the women's christian  T  . By the end of the 19th century a few western states had granted women full voting rights,^[108] though women had made significant legal victories, gaining rights in areas such as property and child custody.^[109]

Around 1912 the feminist movement which had grown sluggish, began to reawaken, putting an emphasis on its demands for equality and arguing that the corruption of American politics demanded purification by women because men could not do that job.^[110] Protests became increasingly common as suffragetteAlice Paul led parades through the capital and major cities. Paul split from the large  (NAWSA), which favored a more moderate approach and supported the Democratic Party and Woodrow Wilson, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, and formed the more militant National Woman's Party. Suffragists were arrested during their  S. S. pickets at the White House, the first time such a tactic was used, and were taken as political prisoner.

The old anti-suffragist argument that only men could fight a war, and therefore only men deserve the right to vote, was refuted by the enthusiastic participation of tens of thousands of American women on the home front in World War I. Across the world, grateful nations gave women the right to vote. Furthermore, most of the Western states had already given the women the right to vote in state and national elections, and the representatives from those states, including the first woman Jeannette Rankin of Montana, demonstrated that woman suffrage was a success. The main resistance came from the south, where white leaders were worried about the threat of black women voting. Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, and women could vote in 1920

NAWSA became the League of Women Voters, and the National Woman's Party began lobbying for full equality and the Equal Rights Amendment, which would pass Congress during the second wave of the women's movement in 1972. Politicians responded to the new electorate by emphasizing issues of special interest to women, especially prohibition, child health, and world peaceThe main surge of women voting came in 1928, when the big-city machines realized they needed the support of women to elect al smith a Catholic from New York City. Meanwhile Protestants mobilized women to support Prohibition and vote for Republican Herbert Hoover.^[115]