by Elaine Weiss
The war was over now, but Stahlman could neither forget nor forgive Lea for this vicious vendetta, and the Banner’s editorial pages reflected the continuing animosity. The publishers were at loggerheads about the gubernatorial primary at the moment, Stahlman supporting Roberts and Lea working against him, though they were stiffly aligned, at least on paper, in the Men’s Ratification Committee. The political was always personal for Edward Stahlman. The feud lived on.
At the lectern, Carrie Catt didn’t pussyfoot around. She launched right into her main themes, in terms the Kiwanians could readily understand: It would be bad for Tennessee’s business image and Nashville’s future to delay or deny ratification of the amendment. Moreover, it would be downright embarrassing. “Tennessee will be made ridiculous in the eyes of all citizens of this country who know the U.S. Constitution if she refuses to ratify on the grounds of unconstitutionality,” Catt told them flatly. The Supreme Court had spoken decisively, she insisted, and the Tennessee Constitution’s prohibitions on a sitting legislature voting on ratification of a federal amendment had been ruled null and void.
She tackled headlong the rumors about legislators violating their oath of office by voting on ratification. Every legislator takes an oath of loyalty to both the state and the federal constitutions, she reminded her audience, and the federal Constitution takes precedence, as it is the supreme law of the land. Always the schoolteacher, Catt urged everyone to go to a bookstore, buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution, and read Article VI, Sections 2 and 3, on the oath of office, so they could approach a wavering legislator on the issue and set him right.
Having dispatched the legal arguments, she moved on to the political. Both major political parties and both presidential candidates were urging ratification (not urging it quite strongly enough, she thought, but did not let that slip from her lips), and it would not be wise for Tennessee to disappoint. There were many ways the state could be punished, she didn’t have to elaborate on that, everyone in the room understood.
She ended on an emotional patriotic note: “We have just emerged from the greatest war known, which was fought for liberty and democracy,” she told the Kiwanians, and more than a hundred thousand American men gave their lives in service to that cause. Democracy was ascendant in Europe, and European women—even German and Russian women—were voting. Where was democracy for American women? she asked incredulously, making suffrage a matter of national pride. In closing, she made a rousing exhortation for Tennessee to come forward and take its place within the glorious movement toward world democracy. There was loud applause.
Major Stahlman approached Mrs. Catt and the suffragists surrounding her after her speech, his cane rapping toward them. Even at seventy-seven years he was a powerful presence, with strong features, a head of snowy hair, and an energy, perhaps best described as barely contained ferocity, that expressed itself in an abrupt manner. He introduced himself. He assured them of his support for Governor Roberts and for ratification. They could count on him.
Catt wanted to set off on her road tour with a strong tailwind of positive publicity. By Saturday, with pledge results from the roving league deputations trickling in, Catt decided that the legislative poll was complete enough, and positive enough, to announce that Tennessee was certain to ratify. It was a stretch, she knew. The poll was still incomplete, and still unstable, but she was willing to make the leap. Going public with the poll might make it harder for legislators to slink out of their pledges later, might encourage hesitant ones to jump off the fence and join the winning side. It was blue-sky optimism, and she was an optimist. Catt and Marjorie Shuler quickly sketched out a press release declaring that a majority vote for ratification was clinched.
“Suffrage is all the rage now,” Catt asserted with confident élan. Politicians gravitate toward success, she knew. Her analysis was mostly anecdotal, of course, based upon scattered intelligence from those with their ears to the ground or their shoes in the mud of the districts, chasing their lawmakers. But it was also based upon assurances from knowledgeable Tennessee political men, such as Congressman Cordell Hull, who consulted with Catt over the weekend. Catt wanted to make it seem as though a tipping point had already been reached and ratification was sliding smoothly downhill to victory.
Catt was also cheered by the arrival of Anne Dallas Dudley, back home from the Democratic convention. Dudley had long been the beautiful face and charming ambassador of the movement in Tennessee, a silky secret weapon. Bringing her wealth, social prominence, and southern bona fides to the side of the Cause, she’d made suffrage respectable in Nashville. She’d founded the Nashville Equal Suffrage League and had served as head of the Tennessee Suffrage League. Even more important, she was the Suffs’ best answer to the usual Anti depiction of suffragists as ugly and masculine “she-men,” unhinged and unsexed. Soft-focus photographs of Dudley reading to her adorable young children, the perfect maternal scene, were published and circulated by the Tennessee Suffs—even long after Dudley’s children grew out of the nursery—as an antidote to the Anti disparagements. Even Dudley’s businessman husband was a good suffragist, always in the forefront of any “men for woman suffrage” activity; now he was on the Men’s Ratification Committee. Catt felt better knowing that Anne Dudley would be holding down the fort in Nashville while she was away.
On Sunday night, July 25, Catt, Abby Milton, and Marjorie Shuler departed Union Station on the overnight train to Memphis. Before they left, the press release announcing an assured victory in Tennessee went out to the local and national newspapers and all the wire services. It would appear in the Monday papers.
“More than a majority of both Tennessee Senate and House are pledged to the ratification of the federal suffrage amendment,” the statement read. NAWSA was able to announce the completion of the poll so early owing to the “splendid performance of our Tennessee members,” Carrie Catt proclaimed.
“We are rejoicing over the results of our work so far,” Abby Milton, state president of the League of Women Voters, was quoted as saying, “but we intend to continue just as strenuously during the two weeks intervening before the special session because we want the vote for ratification to be as nearly unanimous as possible.”
As the three suffrage missionaries lay in their Pullman berths, rocked by the rhythm of pistons turning wheels, there were many matters to trouble their minds and disturb their sleep. Among these was the article Marjorie had clipped from the front section of the Sunday morning Banner, headlined: ASKS MRS. CATT TO EXPLAIN STATEMENT. It was the Banner’s publication of Mrs. Pinckard’s attack letter, a strange way for Major Stahlman’s paper to express support for the amendment.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Catt’s words of sanguine certainty on ratification were rolling through printing presses around the country as she hurtled through the night on the Nashville–Memphis express.
Chapter 13
Prison Pin
IT’S ALL BLUFF, Sue White fumed on Monday morning. She’d just scanned the Nashville Tennessean and found Mrs. Catt’s press release. It was preposterous, impossible that a majority had pledged favorably, certainly not yet. She was conducting the Woman’s Party’s own poll of the legislature and finding that getting straight answers, much less positive pledges, was akin to pulling teeth from a bear. And now there were the thirteen new wild cards, the candidates running to fill vacancies in the legislature in the special election on primary day, August 5. They could swing the ratification count one way or the other, and that cohort was still a mystery. Catt was dreaming. Or playing some fibbing game. Or both.
White was running on adrenaline, her nerves jangled and her mind racing, since she’d returned to Nashville late on Friday night, July 23. During the previous ten days she’d traveled more than sixteen hundred miles, back and forth and again to Ohio, the pulsing hiss of locomotive steam still ringing in her ears. Those ten days were a high-speed blur, a whirl of presidential candidates, handlers, boosters, and banners.
Now her tough work was beginning.
Over the weekend she found a storefront to serve as Woman’s Party campaign headquarters: a good spot, in the heart of downtown, with big windows facing busy Sixth Street. It was just half a block from the Hotel Hermitage and a quick walk to the Capitol building. A storefront headquarters was so much better than a hidden hotel suite: it made a big, bold statement that the Woman’s Party was a distinct and substantial force in the ratification campaign and not shy about saying so. People could look in, walk in, see that the Alice Paul Suffs weren’t two-headed clawed monsters, just intelligent, civic-minded women.
In the past few days, White had also designed her ground game, or at least the first phase of it, determining her officers’ placement in the field. She could count them on one hand, certainly not the fifteen staffers she’d initially requested, but they were the best, no amateurs. White’s team was composed of the party’s national organizers, its special operations squad, seasoned campaign operatives who’d worked in all the hot ratification states. White was placing Anita Pollitzer in the Republican stronghold of East Tennessee; Betty Gram would go to Memphis and the West Division; Catherine Flanagan would target the candidates running for seats in the special election, making a base in the northeast corner of the state. Each would have to cover a lot of ground, talk to the men who counted, and convince the men who pulled the strings. This was where Miss Sue’s deep knowledge of her home state would be invaluable.
Sue White had traveled far in the past two years, farther than she could ever have imagined, from the life she’d expected to live in Tennessee. Enlisting in the party had taken her around the country, placed her in the vanguard of a great national crusade, and deposited her into the bosom of an eclectic community of idealistic and adventurous—fearless—women from every part of the nation. These past two years had changed her, not in a fundamental way, she was still sunny Miss Sue, but in a profound way nevertheless. Opened her eyes and opened the world.
Her roots were still in Tennessee, but for now it was just her place of assignment, her duty post, where Miss Paul had sent her on a mission. She couldn’t think, or plan, beyond that. As soon as ratification was completed—if it was completed—the party, and Sue White, would have to make some major decisions about the future.
The issues were already being debated among the staff: When woman suffrage was finally secured, should the party disband, its work done? Should it transform itself into a political party of women, advocating for issues important to women, promoting women for elected office, fielding its own candidates? Or should it turn its energies toward winning equal rights for women in other societal matters, like equal pay and economic independence, access to education and professions, divorce and custody rights? White wanted to be part of that discussion, wanted to help make those decisions, but first she had to win Tennessee.
Now Governor Roberts’s enemies were whispering to her that he had no intention of actually calling the special session, that he was stalling until it would be too late. According to these informants, his Anti advisers now had the upper hand and had convinced him his election prospects hinged on keeping women out. He’d announced the special election to fill vacancies, but not the special session: very suspicious. White wrote directly to Governor Roberts, reporting that uncomfortable questions about his intentions were circulating around the capital, and the only way to quell them was to confirm his commitment to ratification in the special session. She stopped short of openly demanding he quit dawdling and officially announce the session, but that message was clear between the lines.
* * *
When White dressed that morning in her room at the Tulane, she pushed the sharp point of a pin through the fabric of her blouse, just at the vee where the lapels crossed. The small silver rectangle was her most treasured possession.
She had earned the pin on a Sunday afternoon in early February 1919, at the front gates of the White House. The war was over, and after more than a year of stalling, the Senate was going to vote on the federal amendment the next day. The amendment was expected to go down in defeat, one vote short. President Wilson was in Paris negotiating the peace treaty, making flowery pronouncements about democracy, assuring a delegation of Frenchwomen (who wanted woman suffrage to be included in the peace terms) that he favored women’s enfranchisement around the world. But Wilson wasn’t doing much to prove it at home, the Woman’s Party complained, and wasn’t working hard enough to wrangle that last recalcitrant Democratic senator needed to pass the amendment before the Sixty-Fifth Congress adjourned. Wilson seemed willing to let the amendment die again.
Since New Year’s Day 1919, the Woman’s Party had been using a new publicity tactic: lighting “Watchfires of Freedom” in Lafayette Park across from the White House, small bonfires contained in Grecian-style urns in which the president’s lofty words about democracy and freedom were ceremonially burned. All through January and early February the watch fires burned night and day, guarded by shifts of suffragists, fed with replenishments of wood, paper, and the words of Woodrow Wilson relayed from Paris. Rowdy men and boys repeatedly tipped the urns and spilled the fires, policemen tried to extinguish them, but the women promptly rekindled the flames. The women were arrested on spurious charges, such as lighting fires in a public place after sunset. Upon refusing to pay a fine, they were sent to jail; insisting they were political prisoners, not common criminals, they launched hunger strikes in the jailhouse. After being released, many of the women went right back to their posts guarding the watch fires and soon returned to jail.
The spectacle of scores of women being hauled off in paddy wagons while the president was in Paris negotiating world peace was embarrassing, and the Democratically controlled Senate finally agreed to bring the amendment to the floor on February 10. But it was clear that the last Democratic vote needed could not be shaken loose. Woodrow Wilson was not negotiating hard enough to win that vote from within his own party, Alice Paul insisted, and so, on the eve of the Senate vote, she turned up the watch fire’s heat.
Paul called for delegations from around the country to gather in Washington for a special demonstration and told them to be prepared to go to jail. She asked Sue White to play the leading role in the ceremony: burning President Wilson in effigy. Not just his words, but a likeness of him. This had never been done before in any suffrage protest; it was a step beyond, a highly provocative move. White’s suffrage mentor in Memphis, civic reformer Lulu Colyar Reese, who was in sympathy with the Woman’s Party methods of direct action, was nervous about this drastic ploy and pleaded with White not to participate. Reese feared not only for White’s safety, but for the backlash she’d surely face in Tennessee and consequent damage to the suffrage cause in the state.
It was “the most difficult thing I was ever asked to do,” Miss Sue admitted, “the greatest sacrifice I have ever made, and nothing but the deepest conviction could have moved me to do it.” It was an initiation rite, she understood that, Miss Paul’s test of her loyalty and commitment. White deliberated and fretted but finally decided to answer Paul’s summons. She arrived in Washington a few days before the demonstration to rehearse the ritual she was expected to perform.
At four thirty in the afternoon, with dusk nearing, a silent procession of seventy-five women from twenty-two states marched out the door of party headquarters and headed across Lafayette Square toward the White House. Leading the parade was Louisine Havemeyer, holding high the American flag, followed by the Woman’s Party colors, and then a column of picketers holding banners with such sentiments as “The President is responsible for the betrayal of American Womanhood” and “President Wilson is deceiving the world.” Following these were a pair of women carrying an earthenware urn between them and then a brigade carrying kerosene-soaked wooden logs and kindling in their arms.
They placed the urn on the sidewalk in front of the White House gates with an honor guard surrounding it. An estimated two thousand spe
ctators were gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue to watch this “little drama of democracy,” along with a hundred policemen, a phalanx of fire extinguishers, and a troop of Boy Scouts assigned to help keep order.
Mrs. Havemeyer planted her flag and began her speech. This was Havemeyer’s first, and only, experience in a picketing demonstration. She’d always told Miss Paul, “No picketing and no prison for me. I don’t like the thought of either one.” But when Paul asked her to join this special protest, she couldn’t refuse. Bring your valise, Paul advised Havemeyer, packed with a warm cloak and a bottle of disinfectant. Mrs. Havemeyer carried her bag out of her Fifth Avenue mansion, telling her family she was just visiting friends in Washington for a few days.
Havemeyer’s heart was beating fast and she had to struggle to retain her poise as the party protesters assembled inside headquarters, but once she stepped out with the flag, she “instantly felt as placid and calm as if I were going out to play croquet on a summer afternoon.” At the White House gates, her booming voice rose above the crowd:
“Every Anglo-Saxon Government in the world has enfranchised its women. In Russia, in Hungary, in Austria, in Germany itself, the women are completely enfranchised, and thirty-four are now sitting in the Reichstag,” she said as a red-faced police captain, his uniform adorned with gold braids and buttons, stared at her. “We women of America are assembled here today to voice our deep indignation that, while such efforts are being made to establish democracy in Europe, American women are still deprived of a voice in their government here at home.”
While Havemeyer was speaking, the urn was lit and the flames rose high. Sue White stepped up to the burning caldron, holding the president’s effigy. The newspapers described the effigy as “a huge doll stuffed with straw, slightly over two feet in height,” but it was no such thing. This effigy was not the traditional stuffed dummy, but a paper doll with the figure of Wilson drawn in black ink, depicting him delivering one of his empty “freedom” speeches with a woman’s head chained to his belt. White nodded to Havemeyer, then dropped the paper doll into the flames. There was a flash. The police rushed toward White, wielding their extinguishers, trying to rescue the effigy, but it was quickly consumed.