After the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, suffragists like Alice Paul knew that their work wasn’t finished. While the government recognized women’s right to vote, many women still faced discrimination. If ratified, the amendment would guarantee equal rights to all people regardless of their gender.

Two organizations were formed in 1869: the National Woman Suffrage Association, which sought to achieve a federal constitutional amendment that would secure the ballot for women; and the American Woman Suffrage Association, which focused on obtaining amendments to that effect in the constitutions of the various states.

On May 21, 1919, the amendment passed the House 304 to 89, with 42 votes more than was necessary. On June 4, 1919, it was brought before the Senate and, after Southern Democrats abandoned a filibuster, 36 Republican Senators were joined by 20 Democrats to pass the amendment with 56 yeas, 25 nays, and 14 not voting.

However, during the mid-1970s, a conservative backlash against feminism eroded support for the Equal Rights Amendment, which ultimately failed to achieve ratification by the a requisite 38, or three-fourths, of the states.

In the Declaration, “the pursuit of happiness” is listed with the other “unalienable rights” of “life” and “liberty.” Those are qualities of existence, states of being. You are either alive or dead, free or enslaved. Governments have something to say about those states by how they govern their citizens.

The basic principle of the Declaration was that all “men are born and remain free and equal in rights” (Article 1), which were specified as the rights of liberty, private property, the inviolability of the person, and resistance to oppression (Article 2).