by Elaine Weiss
Thomas Riddick, Joe Hanover, and the other freshly elected members were called up to take their oaths of office, the same oath some considered to be in dire jeopardy. They raised their hands, swore to uphold the Constitution of the State of Tennessee, as well as the Constitution of the United States, and sat down. The visitor galleries above the chamber floors were packed, mostly with women, but also with a healthy sprinkling of men. The Suffs were more energetic in their decorating, draping yellow cloths and flowers around the balconies, and yellow-flowered breasts outnumbered red ones in the rows. Clusters of women filled the doorways, both on the floor level and in the balconies, and both women and men were on the floor, circulating among the desks of the legislators, defying all rules of lobbying decorum.
Legislative item number one was consideration of the Nineteenth Amendment, and the next few dealt with establishing a process for women to register to vote, pay a poll tax, and other legal requirements. In addition, there were more than 140 other issues to address, a laundry list of state and local considerations that the governor had included as a special session sweetener, enabling the legislators to return home with a little gift for their constituents. The Suffs had qualms about all these other bills on the docket distracting the lawmakers and gumming up the works, perhaps purposefully so, but it was out of their hands.
Now came the ritual pageantry, the formal transmittal of the federal amendment from the governor to the legislature. Todd and Walker each ordered the clerks of their chambers to read aloud the governor’s official submission of the amendment and his accompanying message to the legislature. Both Suffs and Antis held their breath slightly as the clerks began their recitations, as neither side knew just what the governor intended to say to the lawmakers or how strongly he would choose to say it.
To the Suffs’ pleasant surprise, the governor offered an exuberant argument for ratification, urging the legislature to approve the amendment promptly. “Tennessee occupies a pivotal position on this question,” he reminded the delegates. “The eyes of all America are upon us. Millions of women are looking to the Tennessee legislature to give them a voice and share in shaping the destiny of the republic.” The lawmakers had an obligation to their constituents, the governor said, but also to their state and national party platforms: “Both parties have clearly and unequivocally declared for the ratification of this amendment,” he told them. “But there is another and higher ground on which ratification may be made to depend, upon the ground of justice to the womanhood of America.”
This was stronger stuff than the Suffs had expected. Roberts tackled the constitutional questions head-on, presenting the opinion of the Tennessee attorney general that acting upon ratification was legal and no legislator would be abrogating his oath of office. He covered all the bases, and his message conveyed a true sense of mission, even passion, a rare emotion for Albert Roberts to display: “I submit this issue to you as perhaps the most far-reaching and momentous one on which any body of men has been called to pass since the establishment of our government.”
Seth Walker listened from the Speaker’s leather chair, elevated on a rostrum at the front of the house chamber. Behind him was a bunting of stars and stripes, and above his head a bronze sculpted eagle watched over the assembly. Walker listened to the governor’s message without showing any emotion or agitation. Only his gray eyes moved, surveying the room: a low gaze across the floor, where his colleagues sat, a flick of his vision upward to take in the partisans in the galleries. Walker was dignified and in control, methodically conducting his speakership responsibilities without a word about his change of heart.
According to the rules of the legislature, after the joint resolution to consider the Nineteenth Amendment was introduced, it would “lay over” in each chamber for a day and then be referred to the appropriate committee for consideration and recommendation. But the resolution wasn’t introduced into the house. The delay was blamed on a clerical error: the governor hadn’t attached the actual resolution document to his message, and without that piece of paper there was nothing to introduce. As it happens, this was a very convenient mistake for Speaker Walker, allowing him to delay the proceedings for a day, giving him extra time to quietly consolidate his forces.
On the senate side, Speaker Todd had to stall so as not to fall out of sync with the house. The only mention of ratification came when Lon McFarland brought greetings from the Maryland legislature and asked that it be read into the record. This “memorial” had been given to McFarland by the distinguished chairman of the Maryland Senate’s Judiciary Committee, Senator George Arnold Frick, who’d led the successful effort to defeat ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in his state legislature and sat in the senate chamber this morning as McFarland’s guest. The message, signed by several dozen members of the Maryland General Assembly, asked their brother legislators of the Volunteer State to follow their lead in rejecting: Do not impose the federal amendment upon your kindred southern states, the Marylanders begged. Both chambers of the General Assembly adjourned until the next morning, taking no action on ratification. The Suffs groaned quietly.
Watching the proceedings, veteran Capitol Hill beat reporters privately told their fellow newspapermen: “Ratification doesn’t have a chance.”
The statehouse paralysis on Monday only shifted the political action to other arenas. The door to Governor Roberts’s office swung open and shut constantly, with people crossing the threshold, in and out, all afternoon and evening. It was during this string of entrances and exits that the Democratic ratification leaders from Memphis—McKellar and Riddick—were slammed with the news of Seth Walker’s defection.
Governor Roberts was forced to explain things to McKellar, who was enraged but also adamant that Walker’s turnabout not derail ratification and endanger his own standing among national Democrats. McKellar and Riddick flew into action: they had to find a new legislative path before morning. McKellar made the rounds of Democratic delegates, while Riddick, still in his very first day as a member of the General Assembly, gathered together the Shelby County delegation. Before supper, he’d signed on all the Shelby representatives in the house to introduce the joint resolution on Tuesday morning. They would, as a group, take the place of Seth Walker.
Roberts told his advisers, his allies, and his political friends that he’d be defeated in the fall if he didn’t secure ratification for the women; they told him he’d be defeated if he did. Roberts barely had time to catch his breath, and all the message slips on his desk reading “Call Gov. Cox” had accumulated into quite a pile. But there would be nothing to report until things were straightened out, in better shape. Roberts was using his time and energy to mend the gaping hole left by Walker’s defection and to stop the rip from enlarging. Cox didn’t need to know.
Hoisting umbrellas, both Suff and Anti women moved through the rain from the Capitol building to the Hermitage and ventured into the other hotels and cafés where legislators could be found. While they were busy buttonholing and beguiling, Mrs. Catt remained in her suite at the Hermitage, enmeshed in her own meetings, as both suffragist and political leaders came to consult with her. She was disturbed by the day’s developments—the delay in introducing the resolution, the stalemate in the Republican caucus—and alarmed by more reports of mysterious men circulating among the legislators in the Hermitage lobby. It seemed these men did their business wearing camouflage, pretending to various names and professions. She was told they were slimy salesmen, fast-talking the legislators on the need to stymie ratification. Who sent them, no one knew. They were the sinister influences made incarnate, Catt was certain.
She handwrote a letter to Republican National Committee chairman Will Hays, warning him that Republicans seemed to be mixed up in all this. She sent the letter to her office in New York to be typed and delivered directly to Hays; she didn’t want to dictate or wire this message from Nashville, it was too delicate.
“Outside people ha
ve supported a campaign here against consideration of the amendment upon the ground that if the legislature takes no action, there can be no question of constitutionality or violation of oath,” she told Hays. “As many of the legislature are men of little mental training they are confused in their thinking by the conflict of legal opinion and think no action is a safe and sane escape. Curiously enough the Republicans have allowed themselves to be conspicuously connected with this attempt.” The failure in that morning’s Republican caucus certainly seemed to bear this out.
One of those outsiders was a man going by the name of Thomas Keith, who was hanging around the Hermitage and the Capitol. He said he represented the Acme newspaper syndicate, with interests in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. He hinted that he was sent to Tennessee by the national Republican Party; his story changed daily. He talked a lot about the need to defeat the amendment. The Suffs found him suspicious enough that Catt had already engaged a private detective in New York to investigate Keith and get to the bottom of his mission. “I have a man on the job and will report when and if I can chase the thing down,” Catt promised Hays in the hard-boiled lingo of her favorite detective novels.
* * *
As the special session got under way, a deputation of Anti women from Nashville were chugging toward Ohio, on their way to confront James Cox at his Dayton estate, Trails End. Cox’s house was very different from Warren Harding’s classic of American design; Cox’s home was a sprawling, twenty-room French Renaissance–style mansion, definitely on the showy side. When the delegation finally arrived, they were ushered into Cox’s study. He’d had a hectic few days, as he prepared for his first campaign swing. Warren Harding might hide all summer on his front porch, but Jimmy Cox was going out to the people, fighting for the League of Nations. Cox was consumed by meetings with his campaign staff and with Democratic Party officials; he was writing his stump speeches and recording the best ones on phonograph discs for distribution. The campaign was officially launched, and people were rallying round: one hundred prominent Democratic women had already signed on to stump for the Cox-FDR ticket. (Of course, if ratification failed in Democratic Tennessee, those women might not be too enthusiastic about stumping, Cox fretted.)
Cox was also looking forward to seeing his name up in lights. Soon thousands of electric signs, constructed by the new Cox Electric League, a group of electrical workers around the country donating their expertise to the campaign, would blaze from windows and rooftops. The signs were the ultimate in high-tech electioneering, consisting of a circle of bulbs with an X-shape of lights within: half of the circle would be illuminated into the letter “C,” then the full circle would light up to spell an “O,” and then the “X” would flash out his name. This gizmo was going to make Cox a household name. Cox was also getting himself in shape for the rigors of the campaign trail by taking brisk morning rides on his stallion, the Governor, galloping after rabbits for two hours before breakfast. He was fit and ready. He was not, however, particularly eager to meet his evening guests, the ladies of the Association Opposed and the Rejection League.
The women made their case, and Cox listened, for more than an hour. They asked that he use all his influence to defeat ratification in Tennessee, and if he could not promise that, he should at least stay out of the fight, exert no pressure on the legislature. Remember, they told him, states’ rights was a sacred doctrine in the Democratic Party. They emphasized the states’ rights rather than the woman’s proper-sphere arguments of the Anti arsenal, perhaps realizing that they themselves were paying a political lobbying call. Cox asked questions and engaged in a polite exchange, but he ended the meeting without revealing his decision. He bade the ladies good night. At six o’clock the next morning, reporters caught Cox as he mounted the Governor for his morning ride. He told them he was standing pat on his decision to work for Tennessee’s ratification.
Very well, then, Governor, was the Anti women’s disappointed reply. This was obviously not the Democratic Party of their fathers: first Woodrow Wilson and now James Cox seemed very willing to desert the party’s principles for cheap political expediency. The Anti delegation boarded the next train to Nashville, feeling miffed but certainly not defeated.
* * *
On Monday evening, in preparation for the next day’s session, the Suffs approached Walker to review the latest poll of house members. That’s when he revealed himself. No, he told them, he would not be introducing or sponsoring the ratification resolution. What’s more, he could not support—or vote for—ratification. He told them this in a very matter-of-fact fashion, as if he were explaining a sudden whim to change the color of his tie. Then he departed. Once again, he gave his dumbfounded listeners no chance to respond, much less argue.
The shock waves of Walker’s defection radiated outward in widening circles, knocking the Suffs off balance. Sue White and Betty Gram took it especially hard, as Walker had pledged to them personally. They had believed him; they felt like fools. In Mrs. Catt’s room that night, the Suffs’ strategy meeting was an angry affair. They railed against Walker, but they blamed Roberts and Cox. Roberts must have known his ally was planning this trickery; perhaps, the Suffs insinuated, he’d even encouraged it. In any case, he did not seem to be lifting a finger to stop it. And Cox surely must have known of Walker’s desertion, too. (He probably didn’t; Roberts hadn’t told him.)
Catt tried to calm the rattled Tennessee Suffs, focusing their attention on what needed to be done to recover. She’d experienced this type of political betrayal so many times before; she was disgusted, but she wasn’t surprised. She’d tried to warn them, right at the outset, that this sort of underhanded thing could, and probably would, happen in Nashville.
“We have long since recovered from our previous faith in the action of men based upon a love of justice,” she’d told the Tennessee Suffs. “That is an animal that doesn’t exist.”
It was a rough night and a raw morning for the suffragists. Anxiety invaded their sleep, as did the noisy carousing of inebriated legislators in the hallways of the Hermitage. Sue White worked deep into the night with McKellar, Riddick, and Charl Williams, crunching the latest polling numbers of legislators’ pledges, which appeared to be slipping. Anne Dudley babysat the joint resolution, making sure it was drafted correctly, every t crossed and i dotted in proper legal form, lest it be challenged. She also made sure that enough fair copies were printed so there could be no clerical mishaps again. Anita Pollitzer stayed up late with the Republican leaders, helping them to compose an SOS message to Harding and Hays. Then she was back at work well before sunrise on Tuesday, dispatching anxious telegrams to Alice Paul in Washington and Abby Baker in Ohio.
“Republican situation really fearful,” she wired. “Hooper, Taylor, others working with me every minute, but we cannot get the men without national aid. Do not tell anyone.”
She surreptitiously forwarded the text of the Republicans’ fresh plea to Harding, containing their bleak assessment: “There are 3 Republican senators and 11 representatives strongly against us,” the Tennessee Republicans informed Harding and named the men they knew to be pitted against ratification, including Finney Carter and Herschel Candler in the senate and Representatives C. F. Boyer, H. T. Burn, and E. O. Luther. (It certainly pained Pollitzer to see the names of the East Tennessee men she’d personally lobbied, and thought she’d pledged, appear on this roll.) “They are all good party men,” the Republican leaders told Harding, and they begged him to intervene. A less guarded note was sent to Will Hays, demanding he send a strong RNC man down to Nashville: Mrs. Upton was useless; the legislators considered her just a suffragist, not a Republican. They needed a respected party man who could knock heads in Nashville. “Please keep this in absolute confidence,” Pollitzer insisted in her wire. “We must get national pressure . . . or all definitely lost.”
By breakfast, the bleary-eyed Suffs were hit with another concussive blow from Seth Walker. He announced he
intended to lead the opposition to the amendment on the house floor. He would “go down the line” to defeat the amendment, using his power as Speaker to bring as many house members with him as he could. And, he let it be known, he planned to refer the ratification resolution to a hostile committee.
The fallout was captured in a news story: “Speculation was rife as to what influence his move would have on other members of the lower body.” No one had to speculate for very long: within hours five members of the house, previously pledged to ratify, were reported to have followed their Speaker to the Anti side.
The Antis could now openly call Seth Walker their friend and champion and chortle a bit when they did. They also received glad tidings from their co-workers in North Carolina: that state would definitely not ratify. The legislature had just convened, the governor was giving mixed, but mostly negative, signals, and the prospects for ratification were satisfyingly slim. Senator George Frick of Maryland was gleeful, telling reporters in Nashville: “If we hold Tennessee, the Amendment will never be ratified. The sentiment is turning against it.”
At ten o’clock, Seth Walker stood on the Speaker’s rostrum of the house, his left hand lifting the gavel, then swinging it down sharply to bring the session to order. In the senate chamber, Andrew Todd went through the same motion. The senator from Murfreesboro had never been a friend of suffrage; he’d voted against limited suffrage the year before, but he’d promised local suffrage leaders and state Democratic Party officials that he’d support ratification this time, even introduce the resolution into the senate. They had been burned by those types of vows before so were appropriately wary, but Todd did stand up and introduce Senate Joint Resolution #1 that morning. In the house, Walker sat calmly in his elevated chair while the six men of the Shelby County delegation rose to sponsor House Joint Resolution #1 in that chamber. The Suffs in the galleries murmured softly with relief. Both resolutions, in accordance to the rules, were laid over until the following day. The gavels in both chambers rapped adjournment. The battle resumed outside.