The struggle for women’s suffrage was a long and protracted one that began in the 1840s and lasted nearly eighty years. The battle embraced a multitude of strategies and spanned two generations of leaders. It was not until the aftermath of World War I (1914–1918) that the long-anticipated passage of a constitutional amendment legalizing suffrage for women in the United States finally occurred. Its author, Susan B. Anthony, and its proponents had hoped the amendment would follow on the heels of the Fifteenth Amendment, providing for universal male suffrage in 1870. Their hope for a sixteenth amendment allowing women to vote was frustrated, however, and they had to settle for a fifty-year wait and the position as the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. On June 4, 1919, forty-one years after its initial introduction, the United States Congress voted approval: the House of Representatives in a vote of 304 to 89 and the Senate in a vote of 56 to 25. The Sixty-sixth Congress proceeded to send the bill to the states for ratification. During the following fourteen months, thirty-six state legislatures voted in favor of the amendment, leading to its acceptance on August 18, 1920. As expected, the greatest support for the amendment derived from the Midwest and trans-Mississippi regions of the United States, with the states of the Northeast lagging behind only slightly. The strongest opposition came primarily from the South.