Rude Republic: Americans and their Politics
in the Nineteenth Century
Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin

Second-Order Document:
Election Day!
Copyright by E.W. Gustin, circa 1909.
Source: lcweb2.loc.gov

Rationale: Printed around seventy years after de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, this source challenges the notion of American democratization during the nineteenth century. The rationale for choosing a document from the early twentieth century -- particularly one showing the perceived negative impact of women’s suffrage -- was to show that seventy years after de Tocqueville penned such lines as “even the women frequently attend public meetings, and listen to political harangues as a recreation after their household labors,” American women still were not provided the basic and most essential liberty of a democracy: the right to vote.