During the nineteenth century, women in the United States organized and participated in a

large number of reform movement, including movements to reorganize the prison system,

improve education, ban the sale of alcohol, and most, importantly, to free the slaves. Some

women saw similarities in the social status of women and slaves. Women like Elizabeth Cady

Stanton and Lucy Stone were feminists and abolitionists who supported the rights of both

women and blacks. A number of male abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison and

Wendell Philips, also supported the rights of women to speak and participate equally with men

in antislavery activities. Probably more than any other movement, abolitionism offered women

previously denied entry into politics. They became involved primarily in order to better their

living conditions and the conditions of others.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the

Constitution adopted, in 1868 and 1870 granted citizenship and suffrage to blacks but not to

women. Discouraged but resolved, feminists influenced more and more women to demand the

right to vote. In 1869^6 Wyoming Territory had yielded to demands by feminists, but eastern

states resisted more stubbornly than before. A women's suffrage bill had been presented to every

Congress since 1878 but it continually failed to pass until 1920, when the Nineteenth

Amendment granted women the right to vote.

What is the topic of the passage primarily concerned with?