The Woman's Hour

by Elaine Weiss

  Chapter 18

  Terrorizing Tennessee Manhood

  IT WAS A STUNNING opening gambit. As soon as the chaplain finished his prayer on Wednesday morning, house majority leader William Bond rose from his seat. Bond was a friend of Seth Walker’s, just a few years older than the Speaker, and they’d worked closely together to push through Governor Roberts’s legislative agenda. They were both ambitious young lawyers forging political careers, and together they launched a meticulously orchestrated ploy.

  Speaker Walker recognized Bond. He wished to introduce House Joint Resolution #4. Proceed, replied the Speaker. “Whereas,” Bond read from the paper in his hand, as the floor and galleries suddenly went silent, heads tilted, ears strained. Bond’s first set of six or seven “Whereas” pronouncements provided a history lesson, a pointed reminder of why the Tennessee Constitution contained that provision restricting the timing of the General Assembly’s consideration of a federal constitutional amendment. There was good reason, Bond reminded his colleagues: the Fourteenth Amendment, giving all rights and protections of citizenship to the freed slaves, had been rammed down Tennessee’s throat at the close of the Civil War, forcibly thrust through the legislature in 1866 by the radical Republican governor, the despised William “Parson” Brownlow. The legislature acted “against the opinion and sentiment of an overwhelming majority of the people of Tennessee,” Bond recited, reading the resolution text in his practiced courtroom style. The legislators didn’t ask the people—the white people—if they wanted the Fourteenth Amendment, he emphasized, it was forced upon them.

  With that infuriating incident in mind, Tennesseans rewrote their state constitution in 1870, requiring legislators to face the public in an election before they considered any federal constitutional amendments. Bond acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that the clause stood in conflict with the U.S. Constitution, and he didn’t dispute that ruling but instead nimbly sidestepped the issue with a novel approach.

  Resolved: The General Assembly must take no action on ratification until the voice of the people could be heard. The popular sentiment on ratification should be expressed by both men and women in mass meetings, held in every county seat of the state, at noon on Saturday, August 21—a postponement of nearly two weeks. A chairman in each county would then report the prevailing opinion of its citizens to the district’s delegates in the legislature by August 24, and the legislators could then properly vote the will of their constituents. This would delay, and diminish, any chance for timely ratification.

  The chamber erupted: shouts, cheers, and protests, on the floor and in the galleries, everyone on their feet. Reporters likened the reaction to a loud, breaking storm, thunderheads that had been building for weeks finally splitting open. The Antis applauded the resolution’s brilliant stroke of promising a measure of populist democracy while delivering the desired delay—perhaps forever—of ratification. The Suffs were duly alarmed: the mass-meeting idea was a candy-coated and very palatable excuse for legislators to do nothing.

  By house rules, the resolution should be held over to the next day for a second reading, but Speaker Walker made a quick, deft move, ruling to allow a suspension of the rules, placing the resolution immediately before the house. The hot debate began; faces flushed and voices rose.

  “The members of this legislature must determine whether they are men or weaklings!” shouted Leonidas (L. D.) Miller of Chattanooga, a firm suffrage supporter who understood the seductive danger of the Bond resolution.

  “Nothing could be fairer,” to the people or legislators of Tennessee, “than this resolution,” Billy Bond responded dismissively.

  “This measure is not meant as an obstruction,” Frank Hall, one of the resolution’s co-sponsors concurred, “but to sound out popular sentiment.”

  Miller shook off their rationalizations. “Make no mistake,” he insisted, “the authors of this resolution to defer are, in their hearts, bitterly opposed to suffrage ratification, and the purpose of it is not to secure the will of the people, but to delay action and defeat the ratification of suffrage in Tennessee!”

  “Are you afraid to let the people express themselves?” Bond shot back. “Do you believe they will go against you, and that you will not be able to put over a measure they do not want?”

  How much declaring do you need? Miller countered. The state conventions of both parties had declared for ratification, the national conventions, too. “And far and above the political party appeals,” cried Miller, “comes the voice of the womanhood of America calling for justice long overdue.” The Suffs in the gallery cheered. “Will you yield to the appeal of womanhood or the insidious influence at work to defeat the measure? To throw this question back upon the people will show cowardice,” Miller boomed.

  While the debate unfolded, Anne Dudley delicately circulated around the chamber. It was a safe assumption that just the lovely sight of her would remind certain legislators that they’d made a promise to support ratification, and for those who seemed to have already forgotten those vows, she could refresh their faltering memories with a sweet, sharp nudge. These were men she knew well, both politically and socially, and she could approach them in a certain easy way, a way they understood. She’d already pledged the delegates from Nashville and surrounding Davidson County, and they were all rock solid for ratification, they promised.

  She’d gotten to know many of the legislators during the statehouse suffrage skirmishes of the past years, while others were friends or colleagues of her husband, Guilford, a prosperous Nashville insurance man who could amiably kid his pals about not being manly enough to support their wives in their desire for enfranchisement. Some of the men she saw in the chamber this morning had jeered her in the early years of the Nashville Equal Suffrage League, when she led that first public parade, with two thousand proper Nashville matrons dressed in white with yellow sashes making a spectacle of themselves on the streets of the city. These men had been taken aback when Anne, in a public debate, had smashed the Antis’ trusty rationale—that women did not have the right to vote because they were not required to bear arms in wartime—with her poignant reply: “Yes, but women bear armies.” And even the bitterest Anti solon had to admire Anne’s sangfroid when that bomb was tossed through a window while she addressed a suffrage meeting in 1913. “Is that an anti-suffrage bomb?” she’d asked calmly, peering over the podium, pausing only a few beats. It didn’t explode, so she continued on with her speech.

  Yet today Anne Dudley seemed nervous. Mrs. Catt was professing confidence, but last night Andrew Todd had confided to the Suffs that he thought the senate might pull through on ratification, but the house was lost.

  On the north side of the Capitol the senate was also in session, and the mood there was almost as edgy as in the lower house. Speaker Todd wanted to speed things along, allow no time for disruptions or space for delay, but he was struggling to stay on track.

  The galleries of the jewel-box-like senate chamber were also packed, though the observers were quieter than their comrades in the house. Sixteen massive Tennessee marble columns, each hauled in one piece by slaves and convicts up Capitol Hill, surrounded the thirty-three desks of the senators like silent sentinels.

  Joint Resolution #1, providing for the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, emerged from its overnight layover onto the day’s docket. There was no attempt to introduce the kind of mass-meeting delay tactic that was being debated across the hall; Anti strategists were waiting to learn the outcome of that ploy before bringing it to the senate. But the Antis were prepared to strike in other ways.

  Andrew Todd moved that the ratification resolution be referred for consideration to the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments, whose members were known to be friendly toward ratification. Herschel Candler immediately jumped up in protest. It should more properly be sent to the Judiciary Committee, he argued. (The Judiciary Committee members, it was understood, were
less favorably inclined toward suffrage.) Candler did not like being railroaded like this.

  He’d had enough of such tactics this morning. First he’d received an insulting telegram from Republican chairman Hays, telling him that for the good of the party, the good of the country, the good of the whole world, he should violate his oath of office to ratify. Such pompous claptrap was best ignored. Then he had to sit through another Republican caucus, where the same hollow arguments were pounded into the table. The state party leaders wanted everyone to file into a straight line, like stupid sheep, and swear to ratify, on the orders of Hays, Harding, and God. He wasn’t having any of it. He was his own man. The ratification resolution should go to Judiciary! Candler insisted with fire in his voice.

  In the house, Seth Walker stepped down from the Speaker’s chair onto the floor to advocate for the Bond resolution. There was a stir in the galleries and fidgety anticipation among the delegates. Walker straightened his back and squared his shoulders, a tall, commanding presence in the well of the chamber.

  “This resolution carries out the spirit of the law as enacted by our forefathers,” Walker began. Remember, he told his colleagues, the Fourteenth Amendment was imposed upon the South by the vengeful Union states and forced upon Tennessee by a legislature “composed of Yankee carpetbaggers” who ignored the will of the people. He did not need to mention that accepting the Fourteenth Amendment was the price for Tennessee’s readmission to the Union, nor did he choose to mention the legislators who tried to slip out of the statehouse to avoid voting on the amendment, prevented only by the gunshots of the Union soldiers on guard. Those bullet holes were still obvious on the marble staircase leading down from the house chamber.

  The esteemed forefathers at the constitutional convention of 1870 corrected this procedure, prevented it from happening again, by writing that essential clause “in letters that stand immortal,” Walker pontificated. Tennessee then rejected the Fifteenth Amendment, the one guaranteeing the voting rights of the freed slaves, and the General Assembly passed a joint resolution condemning federal “imposition” of black suffrage upon the states. “The constitution of this great state cannot be played with for political purposes,” Walker insisted.

  If the legislature was being forced, by a Supreme Court ruling, to act before an election, this resolution was a suitable and legal antidote, he explained. “We want to get an expression from the people, for that is the spirit of the constitution of 1870!” Walker declared to red-rosed applause.

  Josephine Pearson watched the argument from her gallery seat; she’d never seen anything quite like this. Mr. Vertrees had not permitted her to set foot in the statehouse during the 1917 and 1919 debates, so this was her first opportunity to watch the legislature in action. Here were the brave Anti men of Tennessee taking their stand, upholding the honor of the South, and she was so proud of them. Especially that young, very handsome Seth Walker. She had suffered so long on account of her opposition to suffrage—lost so many friends, been snubbed too many times, turned down for jobs and appointments—and it was obvious to her why: because she was a proud Anti, willing to stand up for what she believed.

  On the desk of each legislator was the latest set of Anti materials, which Pearson had helped to compose and distribute. She thought the new advocacy piece was especially fine: “CAN ANYBODY TERRORIZE TENNESSEE MANHOOD?” it screamed in big, bold type. “The Susan B. Anthony Amendment Will Never Be Ratified If Tennessee Representatives Do Their Duty NOW.”

  Tennessee had the opportunity to save America, the jeremiad announced. “The Federal Suffrage ‘Drive’ is Dead if Tennessee will answer the call of her own constitution, her own people, and that of her sister Southern states.” Face down the suffrage blackmailers and card indexers, the piece implored the Tennessee delegates. Ignore those who say woman suffrage is “bound to come” in an attempt to weaken your resistance; recognize that those distant party leaders and candidates—in Ohio and Washington—don’t understand the South’s “local conditions” and the threat of Negro domination. They don’t see the looming danger of another era of southern reconstruction, brought on by federal control of elections. Only you, the legislators of Tennessee, stand in the way of calamity.

  “The men who vote against Ratification will go down in American history as the SAVIORS OF OUR FORM OF GOVERNMENT and the true Defenders of Womanhood, Motherhood, the Family and the State,” the document promised.

  For Pearson and her allies, all this was neither hyperbole nor exaggeration; it expressed a deep truth and revealed a pernicious danger that was not being taken seriously enough. The nation had just fought to protect Europe, and itself, from the despotism of the Hun, but now the gravest threat to the American Republic was coming from within, from this federal amendment and its grave ramifications—racial, social, and political. It fell to the Antis, standing firm in Nashville, to safeguard the South’s democracy.

  Thomas Riddick, house floor leader for ratification, jumped into the debate. Many of the attorneys present had heard Riddick speak in a courtroom, but never before in the legislature; this was his debut performance. This resolution was ridiculous, Riddick railed, a legal sham and a logistic nightmare. Riddick’s eyes blazed and his mustache bobbed up and down on his lip as he spoke. Not only was it simply a variation on the ratification referenda the Supreme Court had already struck down, and an outrageous shirking of a legislator’s responsibilities, but these so-called mass conventions could never accurately gauge the public sentiment. How would popular opinion be measured—by who showed up first? by who yelled the loudest?—and who would interpret and report what was expressed? There was too much room for manipulation and possibly fraud.

  The Suffs did a double take as they saw Governor Roberts appear in the back of the chamber. Sweating through his shirt and crumpled jacket, he was following the debate, consulting with Riddick and Miller, and writing strategy notes to certain delegates, dispatching the missives to their desks. He called some lawmakers over to his side for a few hushed words, an intense back-and-forth, then a pat on the back.

  Roberts had finally spoken with Governor Cox on the telephone—told him things were under control—and had spent all last night and early morning working on iffy Democratic legislators. Now he was wrestling on the floor of the house; he was working.

  Abby Milton saw the governor at the back of the room and saw her stepson, George Milton, Jr., scribbling away in the press gallery. Young George, barely twenty-five, was an eager, if callow, young reporter for his father’s newspaper, finally assigned to a big story. He chronicled every event with gusto, as if he were a war correspondent or a sports reporter at an important race. He liked to relate who was jockeying for position, whether the red or yellow rose was drooping that day in the War of the Roses. And now he was taking notes on how Governor Roberts was rolling up his sleeves and doing his darnedest to stop this delay resolution. The Milton family had worked strenuously to defeat Roberts in the primary, putting the editorial pages of their Chattanooga News into the service of his opponent, but Roberts’s very visible efforts on behalf of the amendment were causing them to view the governor in a new light.

  Sue White and Anita Pollitzer, standing at the edge of the chamber, did not share this sunshine view of Governor Roberts; they still suspected that he was double-dealing. He’s acting as if he’s working for ratification, Pollitzer reported to Alice Paul, but his own men are working against us. Pollitzer also believed Roberts was giving inaccurate information to Governor Cox in an effort to keep the candidate from putting more pressure on state Democrats or coming to Tennessee himself. When Pollitzer mentioned the possibility of Cox coming to Nashville to help push for ratification, Roberts had visibly blanched.

  Miss Paul took Pollitzer’s suspicions seriously and issued new instructions to her organizers in Nashville: Backpedal on accusations against the liquor and railroad industries and instead emphasize the responsibility borne by Cox and Roberts i
f ratification should fail. The “sinister forces” charge was just too hard to prove concretely, even if true, and journalists were tiring of it; holding the Democrats accountable was more comfortable, and profitable, territory for the Woman’s Party. Keep the pressure on. And talk to the wire service reporters in Nashville, Paul instructed her lieutenants, make sure they quote us rather than Mrs. Catt; it’s important for fund-raising purposes that the Woman’s Party receive credit and public attention for its work in Tennessee. Paul had already purchased a Pullman car ticket for Nashville.

  As the house debate wore on, Joe Hanover of Shelby asked to be recognized by Speaker Walker. I wish to speak against this resolution, he announced. The Suffs paid particular attention to the words of this young attorney who so earnestly, and publicly, had come to their side. He’d made that heartrending speech during the limited suffrage debates last year, about the American Dream and the power of the vote, and his sincerity seemed to sway several on-the-fence delegates. Even though he’d resigned from the legislature to take a good job as a Shelby County district attorney, he’d decided he must return to the statehouse to help get ratification through, campaigned to regain his seat, and here he was. During the past few nights, he’d begun attending the Suffs’ strategy sessions in Mrs. Catt’s room, impressing them all, especially Mrs. Catt, with his political acumen and strategic vision. And his passion for their fight.

  Hanover did not have Confederate pedigree or Tennessee forefathers. He was an immigrant whose parents had brought him as a boy to America to escape the pogroms against Jews in their native Poland. This was the land of opportunity, they told him, the land of equality and freedom, and he believed every word. He lived the American Dream: night law school, a fledgling legal practice, a seat in the legislature. But women—his own mother—didn’t share in that equality, not as full citizens, and that seemed wrong, plainly un-American, to Hanover. Now he was in a position to do something about it.