American women boast a long legacy of political activism on issues ranging from the struggle for independence from England to their own political and social rights. In the nineteenth century, women organized an independent social and political movement for women’s rights and suffrage. Many of those women also were active in, and learned from, the abolition, temperance, and Progressive movements. Their crowning achievement, the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, made gender-equal suffrage in the United States a reality and opened the door to electoral participation for generations of women.