TR on Women’s Rights and Women’s Suffrage
At Harvard in the spring of 1880 Theodore Roosevelt wrote an essay entitled “Practicability of Giving Men and Women Equal Rights.”
Roosevelt wrote that he thought it was “advisable to make women equal to men before the law especially as regards to the laws relating to marriage. There should be the most absolute equality preserved between the two sexes.” He added, “I do not think the woman should assume the man ‘s name. The man should have no more right over the person or property of his wife than she has over the person or property of her husband. I would have the word ‘obey’ used no more by the wife than by the husband.”
1905 Talking to Suffragettes
When the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party met in Chicago in early August 1912, the reformer and leading suffragette Jane Addams was one of two chosen to second TR’s nomination. Later that month, during a campaign speech in Vermont, Roosevelt made the party’s position official, “We recognize that there should be equality of right, between men and women and we are therefore for equal suffrage for men and women.”