by Elaine Weiss
About a hundred miles from where Flanagan was stationed, Anita Pollitzer kept up a punishing pace. She was managing a sprawling workshop of East Tennessee Republicans, working from their office desks or kitchen tables, telephoning, writing, and wiring their friends on behalf of ratification. She circulated among them: prodding them into action, keeping them on task. If they dillydallied on their assignments, delayed contacting someone they’d promised to approach, Pollitzer was over their shoulder in a flash. She had little patience for slackers.
When one high-level politician, a U.S. congressman, promised her he’d try to get hold of Herschel Candler—whom Pollitzer had still not managed to locate—and then failed to do so, she was in no mood to accept the congressman’s feeble excuse: he’d tried to call Candler in Athens, but no luck. Pollitzer took hold of the congressman’s telephone. She rang up Knoxville central and asked for the Athens town operator. There were clicks and rings as the Athens operator came on the line.
“This is a matter of life and death,” Pollitzer told the operator, trying to sound breathless and urgent. “Congressman Taylor must speak with Senator Candler. I have been in Athens myself and I know it is such a tiny place that you have only to look out of the door to know where Senator Candler is. You must find him for me.” Within minutes Herschel Candler came to the telephone.
“Cannot see my way clear to vote for amendment. Period,” Candler defiantly told his own state party chairman, who was pressing him to get on board for ratification. “My oath of office would not permit.” Candler repeated much the same thing to Pollitzer on the phone. Candler was hopeless.
* * *
Back in Nashville, Josephine Pearson and the officers of the Southern Women’s Rejection League announced an ingenious new project of cultural, historical, and political importance: a museum exhibit. It was to be the centerpiece of their new headquarters space in the Hotel Hermitage, made possible by Nina Pinckard’s superb curatorial skills.
“We have been able to secure, with great difficulty, the original United States Senate copies of the three Force Bills introduced in the last congress to enforce the 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments, if the latter is ratified,” she explained to reporters. Any reference to force bills was poison in the southern states, Pinckard knew quite well, dredging up traumatic memories of federal enforcement of civil rights laws during Reconstruction, which southerners considered an insulting encroachment into their state affairs. The current force bills introduced into Congress by northern Republican pro-suffrage legislators sought to apply to the Nineteenth Amendment the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which stipulated that any state that abridged the voting rights of its eligible citizens could have its representation in Congress reduced by the proportion of those so denied. If the federal suffrage amendment was ratified, a state that refused to allow black women, or men, to vote could be punished.
“These Force Bills would rob the southern states of no less than seventy seats in Congress,” Pinckard claimed, acknowledging that it was a matter of policy in the southern states to deny black citizens the vote. The infamous “Grandfather Clause” stipulating that only those men whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote could participate in current elections—eliminating virtually all black southern men, whose grandfathers had been slaves—had been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1915, but there were many other ways to prevent black men from voting. Exorbitant poll taxes and property requirements, arcane registration requirements, outrageous literacy and “knowledge” questions (“Recite the state constitution” was a favorite), threat of job loss, and brute physical intimidation did the trick just fine.
Southern states despised any mention of force bills, with their dual threat of federal election oversight and diminished congressional power, even though neither oversight nor the threat of reduced representation had ever been carried out. Defending against Washington’s prying eyes peeking into the polling place remained a priority for the southern states throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.
The menacing force bills were only one provocative element of the Antis’ museum plans, as Mrs. Pinckard promised even more titillating artifacts: photographs of Susan B. Anthony’s black friends, for instance, plus “photographs and documentary evidence of the true originators of the 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments, proving their common origin,” Pinckard boasted. It was no secret that Frederick Douglass would appear in this section of the display. Another highlight of the exhibit, Pinckard revealed, would be a copy of the blasphemous Woman’s Bible, written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and edited and approved by Carrie Chapman Catt, proof of the suffragists’ contempt for religion in general and Christian values in particular. This antiratification exhibit was going to be a blockbuster, Pinckard assured the press.
* * *
As Carrie Catt and her entourage moved eastward toward Knoxville, the murmurs they’d been hearing about various plots to stymie ratification grew louder. All of them were frighteningly plausible; some were actually true. The rosy prospect of a quick, favorable legislative majority faded, and Catt’s mood grew darker.
She heard whispers that Governor Roberts, frightened by all the legal complications surrounding ratification, would, even if he won renomination, simply abandon plans for the special session, preserving the electoral status quo for himself in the fall. (Angry Tennessee Suffs couldn’t vote against him because they wouldn’t have the vote in gubernatorial elections.) Another version of this scenario, from very reliable sources, was that the governor would allow the session to convene, but his advisers, working with his loyal men in the legislature, were going to “ditch” the amendment, bury it in committee, until the twenty-day life span of the special session expired.
There were tales that three men, purporting to represent the Republican National Committee, were circulating among legislators, convincing them to stonewall ratification so Democrats could be denied the capstone of suffrage victory. In addition, the Rejection League was said to be teaming up with the Constitutional League to urge delegates to attend the special session but refuse to vote on ratification, as a matter of honor, citing their “oath of office” qualms. There was even a report that one high-level Tennessee Republican leader was acting as a double agent, professing to work for ratification while actually doing his best to undermine it. Catt took these rumors of shenanigans very seriously and fired off a panic-tinged telegram to Republican National Committee chairman Will Hays: “Report 3 Republicans here representing national Republican committee, opposing ratification.”
Hays’s reply did little to assuage her fears: “Report is of course absolutely false,” Hays insisted. The RNC had passed many unanimous resolutions favoring ratification “and is now doing all it can properly do” to support the amendment, he explained. The RNC might deny any knowledge of this ruse in Tennessee, Catt believed, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t happening. Even if it was not officially sanctioned, even if it was a rogue operation, these men, whoever they were, were making a plausible enough pitch to be effective with jittery Republicans. Catt was fed up with both parties’ empty resolutions and pale excuses of “doing all it can properly do.”
The latest news accounts were also alarming. Reporters, sniffing around Nashville and digging in Washington and Ohio, were filing stories with headlines such as TENNESSEE DOUBTFUL, POLITICIANS RELIEVED: NEWS THAT SUFFRAGE MAY NOT PASS LIFTS BURDEN FROM CANDIDATES and GOP LEADERS FEAR SUFFRAGE and SUFFS LOSING TENNESSEE, HARDING WON’T HELP.
Anita Pollitzer recognized the danger of this leadership vacuum and fumed as several of her East Tennessee legislators withdrew their ratification pledges on “constitutional grounds.”
“I believe liquor influence making great headway under pretense constitutionality,” she reported. “Situation extremely critical.”
The Republicans were equivocating, but so were the Democrats. “Organizers report no signs of work being done by national leader
s of either party in Tennessee,” Alice Paul complained. Actually, Democratic National Committee chairman George White had secretly wired every Democrat in the Tennessee legislature, urging them to commit to ratify in time for James Cox to announce an assured majority in his official nomination acceptance speech on August 7. But the pledges were not coming in, and some of the responses the DNC did receive from Tennessee Democrats were certainly not positive:
“As to supporting proposed 19th Amendment,” replied L. M. Whitaker, representing three counties in the south-central part of the state, “to do so I will have to violate my oath to support the constitution of Tennessee. Will have to lower the standard of Southern Womanhood. Will have to grossly offend sister states by enforcing an obnoxious measure on them. Will have to surrender the cordial principle of American government of states rights. It will be a long step [toward] degrading American homes. Will double the Negro purchasable vote of South. Will sacrifice settled social and domestic ethics and customs for a supposed political expediency. There can be but one answer.”
Sue White was witnessing the Democratic resistance firsthand. Governor Roberts’s men were not lining up to support ratification, she confided to Anita Pollitzer. By the latest Woman’s Party count, the Suffs were ten votes short in the house, six in the senate, and some of the pledges White did have in hand were too iffy to be secure. Miss Sue was, she confessed, “worn out.” She was scared. When are you coming to Nashville? she begged Alice Paul.
As all the Suffs, Antis, and politicos sprinted around the state, they warily watched the calendar and eyed the clock. The state primary was just a few days away; the fate of the governor and the future of the amendment were riding on that election. The special session, if it happened at all, was to convene in less than a week.
The suffragists’ seven-decade quest for the vote was being squeezed into a mad dash; the Antis’ cherished goal of protecting American civilization was being condensed into a tight time frame. And despite all the frenetic activity, ratification remained totally unpredictable; as the days passed, the uncertainties seemed only to multiply.
* * *
By Monday, August 2, Catt was in Knoxville, giving speeches, meeting with local suffragists, and making the rounds of politicians. After another long, draining day, Catt finally retired to her hotel room, but exhaustion, anxiety, and the oppressively heavy air made sleeping difficult. Sometime in the night, Abby Milton was awakened by loud, insistent knocking on her door. She opened it to find Marjorie Shuler, wrapped in a robe, breathless, frantic: “Mrs. Catt has suffered a heart attack.”
It wasn’t actually a heart attack, but Abby and Marjorie didn’t know that in those first terrifying moments. All they knew was that their Chief was stricken, wounded in the field, just as the decisive battle was nearing.
Chapter 15
A Real and Threatening Danger
CATT HAD WHAT people called a “bad ticker.” Her heart occasionally fluttered or skipped or squeezed painfully in her chest, took her breath away. The doctors told her to take it easy; less stress, less strain, more rest, was their usual prescription. She never obeyed those orders. Marjorie and Abby Milton found Catt dizzy, pale, and perspiring but sitting upright and alert. She was fine, she protested. It was just one of her little spells. It would go away.
Catt had not actually suffered a heart attack: it was most likely an episode of angina, a recurring symptom of her chronic heart ailment; it was unlikely to be fatal, even if it was very frightening. Catt had learned to live with it. Catt hated being ill, as if it revealed some embarrassing personal weakness or confirmed the silly stereotype of women as the “weaker sex.” Yet she’d had her share of health problems over the years, and her tendency to overwork to the point of exhaustion triggered numerous collapses. Even an iron will could not always compensate for a more fragile body.
Catt spent the next day recuperating at the comfortable Milton home in Chattanooga, enjoying the quiet, a bit of pampering, and the three young Milton daughters, who were already veterans of many a suffrage parade. While Catt was cocooned in the pleasant hush of the Miltons’ house and garden, the ratification fracas grew hotter and louder.
As news spread of Senator Harding’s latest refusal to intervene with Republican Tennessee legislators, Harding also received a letter from the Tennessee Constitutional League—whether the notes crossed in the mail or one precipitated the other isn’t clear—demanding that Harding keep “hands off” in Tennessee. It assured Harding that he’d made a wise decision in holding back. The Constitutional League guardians sent an identical letter to Cox and composed another set of sharp warnings to every Tennessee lawmaker.
“We ask you, as a sworn officer of our State Government, to stand with us . . . for the upholding of the honor of Tennessee and the rights of our people as guaranteed in our Constitution,” the letter to the legislators read. The letter was strong but not strident, no histrionics, just very lawyerly; it conveyed a man-to-man ease and just the right tone of arrogance. “We feel justified in saying that you have not the right to . . . foreclose your freedom of action by any promise, express or implied. Your own obligation to obey the constitution rises above any party or personal consideration.”
In other words, any written or verbal pledges to vote for ratification should be—and must be—considered null and void, the Constitutional League claimed. And on the other side of the equation, any ill-advised pledges made by the presidential candidates to assist in passing ratification should also be repudiated.
Carrie Catt, supposedly resting in Chattanooga but still receiving up-to-the-hour reports by telephone, recognized that this was the ticking bomb with which the Antis planned to blow up the supporting structure of the Suffs’ campaign. She could sense the menace of this clever explosive device even as she sat in the cool shade of the Milton house. It must be defused—or preemptively detonated. Never mind her heart.
From the Miltons’ parlor, Catt dictated a set of stinging telegrams to Cox and Harding: “There is a very real and threatening danger” to ratification of the federal amendment by the Tennessee legislature, she told them, resulting from “the tremendous effort being made by outsiders to persuade the legislators not to act on the amendment at all, under the pretense that it would be a violation of their oath.” What’s more, “these outsiders are inspiring messages to you,” she told the candidates, taking direct aim at the Constitutional League, “signed by Tennessee names, asking you to keep hands off.” Keeping hands on, Catt insisted, with a tight and forceful grip, was the only option if they honestly wanted to salvage the amendment. “We renew our appeal to you for the aid we so greatly need in this last battle for women’s political liberty.”
Catt’s wires to the candidates, to Harding in particular, set off a cascade of sparks. Harding’s patience for the whole ratification matter was fraying, as he was being harassed from all sides: the different camps of Suffs, the many varieties of Antis, the lawyers, the press, the Tennessee Republicans, and Will Hays at the RNC. The national election was only thirteen weeks away; Harding must focus, avoid mistakes, appear presidential. If he could hold on, allow Cox to make the unforced errors, and sidestep any controversial comments, he could win the White House. Harding sent Catt a quick, if hollow, reply: “Your telegram received. No discouragement is voiced from here. On the contrary we are continuing to encourage the Republicans of the Tennessee General Assembly to join cordially in the effort to consummate ratification.” He really just wanted them off his back. And off his porch.
The reaction of the Woman’s Party to Harding’s newest evasions was precisely as he feared: they were already climbing his front porch steps. As soon as Alice Paul had gotten hold of Harding’s equivocal response to the Harding-Coolidge League, she dispatched Abby Baker to confront him on his porch in Marion. Baker carried her own weapon into the meeting—if not a stick, perhaps the equivalent of a dainty, pearl-handled derringer: “I impressed upon him that, unless
the Tennessee legislature acted favorably, the ratification question was likely to become an incubus on the back of the Republican Party,” Baker recounted to reporters. And should Tennessee fail the women of America, the Woman’s Party would have no choice but to assign blame and punish the offending national political party in the fall. She was threatening to unleash the “woman’s vote”—a potent weapon, if it really existed.
* * *
“What will the Negro woman do with the vote?” Mrs. Juno Frankie Pierce asked her audience of several hundred white women at the inaugural convention of the Tennessee League of Women Voters, held in the statehouse in May. Pierce, a founder of the Nashville Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs and an active suffragist, answered that rhetorical question with an air of calm authority:
“Yes, we will stand by the white women,” Pierce explained. Nashville’s black suffrage clubs had coordinated closely with Catherine Kenny and the city’s white suffrage organization to get out the vote in the 1919 municipal elections, the first open to Tennessee women. “We are optimistic because we have faith in the best white women of the country, of Nashville. We are going to make you proud of us, because we are going to help you help us and yourselves.”
It was an extraordinary moment. Hearing the voice of a black woman, the daughter of a slave, inside the house chamber of the Tennessee Capitol, was astonishing. Kenny, with Abby Milton’s approval, had invited Pierce to address this founding meeting of the league, in a taboo-breaking experiment in political cooperation.
“We are interested in the same moral uplift of the community in which we live as you are,” Pierce explained. “We are asking only one thing—a square deal.”