<P> When Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Women Suffrage Association, their goal was to help women gain voting rights through reliance on the Constitution . Also, in 1869 Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). However, AWSA focused on gaining voting rights for women through the amendment process . Although these two organization were fighting for the same cause, it was not until 1890 that they merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). After the merger of the two organizations, the (NAWSA) waged a state - by - state campaign to obtain voting rights for women . </P> <P> Wyoming was the first state in which women were able to vote, although it was a condition of the transition to statehood . Utah was the second territory to allow women to vote, but the federal Edmunds--Tucker Act of 1887 repealed woman's suffrage in Utah . Colorado was the first established state to allow women to vote on the same basis as men . Some other states also extended the franchise to women before the Constitution was amended to this purpose . </P> <P> During the 1910s Alice Paul, assisted by Lucy Burns and many others, organized such events and organizations as the 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade, the National Woman's Party, and the Silent Sentinels . At the culmination of the suffragists' requests and protests, ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote in time to participate in the Presidential election of 1920 . </P> <P> Another political movement that was largely driven by women in the same era was the anti-alcohol Temperance movement, which led to the Eighteenth Amendment and Prohibition . </P>

What was happening to the right to vote in the first half of the 19th century