by Elaine Weiss
“The people of Tennessee have already passed upon suffrage!” he declared. “The real voice of the people has already been heard in the expression of both party platforms.” Hanover swiveled to look directly at Walker. “My colleagues, Mr. Bond and Mr. Walker, were both members of the Democratic state convention in June which wrote into its platform that ‘we stand for woman suffrage in Tennessee,’” Hanover exclaimed, and suffragists all through the chamber burst into sustained applause.
Mrs. Catt was not in the chamber. In accordance with the new Suff strategy, she was to remain invisible, so she was sitting in her hotel room, quite miserable, staring at the Capitol cupola through an open window. Harriet Upton and Marjorie Shuler were with her, watching Catt closely for any sign that she was having trouble breathing, that the hot air and stress might be affecting her heart. As they sat in Catt’s room, they could hear occasional cheers or shouts coming from the statehouse through the open window, but they had to wait for a breathless young messenger to run down from Capitol Hill and knock on Catt’s door to deliver the latest report of what was actually happening in the house and senate chambers.
In the senate, Herschel Candler’s motion to refer the ratification resolution to the Judiciary Committee hung in the air for just an instant before a pro-suffrage lawmaker made a countermove to table it. It was the custom of the senate, the senator protested, to allow the Speaker to refer resolutions to the committee he thought proper; that custom should be respected. The tabling measure was brought to a vote; it carried by a slim majority, and the Suffs were mightily relieved. Todd announced definitively that the ratification resolution would go to the Committee on Constitutional Amendments. This was a setback for Candler and his Anti colleagues, but they did not make any further fuss. It was just the first skirmish; there was time.
In the front row of the house chamber, Edward Oldham slowly rose to his feet to speak in favor of the mass meetings. He was a seventy-four-year-old farmer, and he was, he reminded his colleagues once again, a proud Confederate veteran. Oldham was only sixteen when he volunteered for the Tennessee cavalry, and he served for the full duration of the war; now, with his clipped silver beard and bare forehead, he bore a striking resemblance to his hero Robert E. Lee.
“The people of Lauderdale, whom I represent, do not want suffrage for women,” Oldham pronounced confidently. Woman suffrage will cause divorce and dissatisfaction in many homes, he continued, and was a menace to family life. The people did not want it! “Is there any fair-minded man who is afraid to submit this question to the people he represents?” Oldham challenged his colleagues.
Man after man took his turn recommending or denouncing the mass-meeting resolution, but no one mentioned whether black citizens would be allowed to take part in these meetings; the answer was undoubtedly no. The delegates stood in the chamber just where Frankie Pierce had stood barely three months before, pledging the support of the Negro women of Nashville to the League of Women Voters, outlining her legislative goals, the programs her community needed. Catherine Kenny, who’d invited Pierce to the Capitol that day, had been so pleased with her presentation, and so impressed by the organizational ability Pierce had displayed in last fall’s municipal elections in getting the black women to the polls, that she took real pride in this new alliance the women of Nashville had forged. It seemed to bring to life Mrs. Catt’s concept of the league as an organization for all women voters: all colors, all creeds, all political parties. For Democratic Catholic women, for Republican black women, all together. But Frankie Pierce was not in the galleries this morning with all the other Tennessee Suffs. She couldn’t be. Her presence could not help win ratification from the men of the legislature, it could only hurt. She wouldn’t be allowed to sit with the white Suffs in the gallery anyway. Inviting her was simply out of the question.
The state party leaders were arrayed around the house chamber, in constant motion, pulling any strings they could reach. Kenneth McKellar was wielding the message that had arrived from DNC chairman George White that morning, urging Tennessee delegates to ratify. Republican leaders were impressing upon their delegates, especially the wavering ones, the importance of the special five-page telegram they’d just received from Will Hays of the RNC.
Hays had spent hours the previous night convincing a reluctant Warren Harding to agree to send direct notes to the list of resistant Tennessee Republicans that party leaders Ben Hooper and John Houk had requested. Hays had worked on Harding till midnight, badgering the candidate on the need for stronger, specific action on the ratification issue. All right, Harding finally agreed, you can send the messages—over your name, not mine. So Hays composed telegrams to the list of Republicans, including Herschel Candler and Emerson Luther in the senate, Austin Overton and Harry Burn in the house, and he pulled no punches.
“Democracy in the United States is really nothing but a sham unless election day gives all Americans the chance to express their political opinion effectively,” Hays lectured the Republicans. The 1920 election will “influence our national life for at least the next 50 years,” Hays argued, and women must be allowed to take part in that decision. “To hold American women bound by the result of an election, to train them in schools and colleges to think for themselves as well as a man, to accord them freedom of utterance as a constitutional right, and then to attempt to deny them the opportunity to stand up and be counted on election day is a governmental blunder of the first magnitude.” Carrie Catt smiled when Harriet Upton showed her Hays’s emotional plea. Will Hays sounded just like a good Suff. And for that reason, Herschel Candler had no intention of listening to his advice.
Across the hall in the senate, Lon McFarland, in his linen suit and bolo tie, rose to speak. He had his own resolution to introduce. Speaker Todd nodded for him to begin.
“The men of Tennessee, noted for their integrity and chivalry,” he read aloud from the text of his resolution, “and being desirous of doing in this case for their women as they always have in the past, and having the greatest admiration and respect for the intelligence of our home women . . .” Those who knew McFarland’s discerning eye for the ladies smiled, but no one quite knew where he was going with this odd oration.
“And Whereas, there are numerous lobbyists, both female and male, from all sections of the United States at the present time in the city of Nashville, some being for and some against the ratification of the amendment . . . ,” McFarland pronounced in his smooth Tennessee drawl.
“Be it Resolved: That we most respectfully and earnestly request all of the ladies and gentlemen, and also all of the men and women from outside the state who are interested in lobbying for or against this measure, to please go away and let us alone, we feeling that we are fully capable and competent to fight our own fights without interference from any outside people whatsoever.”
Back in the house, L. D. Miller stood again and moved to table Bond’s delay resolution. Here was the first showdown, the first test of strength for both sides. If the Anti legislators could beat back this tabling motion, it would show they had the votes to delay, and possibly to kill, ratification. The galleries grew still. The roll call began. “Mr. Anderson,” the clerk called out. “Aye,” was the first response, in support of tabling the resolution, and the Suffs murmured approvingly. “Bell”—aye; “Bond” and “Boyer”—no. The Antis were pleased. “Boyd,” “Bratton,” and “Brooks”—aye. “Burn”—no. “Carter”—no.
Catherine Kenny kept a tally of the votes, mentally noting the men who had pledged to her canvassers to support ratification but who were now throwing their support to the delay resolution. One lawmaker from Dayton had sworn nine separate times—“I’m with you ladies till they call the roll up yonder,” he’d promised—but now he was answering with the Antis. More optimistically, Kenny noted, four Anti delegates had now voted with the Suffs. Anita Pollitzer, who was keeping a similar tally for the Woman’s Party, winced to hear the names of some of her Eas
t Tennessee Republicans, including Harry Burn, among those opposed to tabling the measure. Their pledges, their word, had been worth nothing.
The clerk moved down the roll: “Hanover”—aye. “Oldham,” then “Overton”—no. “Riddick”—aye. “Turner”—no. And finally: “Speaker Walker”—no.
The Suffs did not have to wait for the clerk to announce his count; the delay resolution was dead. The Suffs burst into cheers, the Anti spectators were stoically silent. “The fight is won!” Governor Roberts gloated. “Victory for suffrage is certain.” Speaker Walker banged his gavel and adjourned the house for lunch.
There was scant time for delegates to digest their hasty lunch before they were hit with the next Anti sally, a less nuanced, more lethal resolution introduced by representative W. F. Story, prohibiting the legislature from taking any action on ratification until 1921, but it was held over until the next day.
Joint Resolution #1, the ratification resolution itself, had already spent its overnight rest, and now Speaker Walker was obliged to send it to committee. He’d announced that he intended to send it to the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by his pal Billy Bond, but the outcome of the morning’s vote demonstrated that Walker might face resistance to this move. He did. Walker reluctantly relented: the ratification resolution would be sent to the House Committee on Constitutional Affairs and Amendments, as it was in the senate, and Walker named Thomas Riddick to chair the committee.
Riddick was celebrated as an expert in constitutional law, and Walker’s move appeared to be a generous gesture, but it was really a clever trap. Riddick, in only his third day in the legislature, now held significant additional power, and Walker understood that this might not go down so well with some of the veteran delegates, even if they were suffragists. Walker was carefully seeding trouble.
By late afternoon on Wednesday, the Hotel Hermitage was a hive of commotion. With both houses adjourned, assorted configurations of men and women, Suffs and Antis, Democrats and Republicans, held meetings, huddled in private, and hatched plans. Suffs congratulated themselves on their day’s victories, while Antis dismissed the test votes as merely symbolic, no real measures of strength. They took courage in the communiqué they’d just received from their Anti brethren in the North Carolina legislature—signed by a majority of the lower body—promising a mutual pact to deny ratification. North Carolina lawmakers pledged not to inflict the Nineteenth Amendment upon Tennessee and begged Tennesseans to do the same.
The Tennessee Antis also floated a trial balloon: they let it be known that the men of the Constitutional League were not at all pleased with Governor Roberts’s performance in the house chamber that morning, working so strenuously on the side of the Suffs, and might consider fielding an independent candidate to run in the fall election, siphoning off Democratic votes and weakening Roberts’s chances. It was an appropriate punishment; they let the idea take off.
During the afternoon and evening, the League of Women Voters workers were again sent out to find and take the political pulse of their assigned delegates. The legislators were under tremendous pressure: from their party chiefs, their senior elected officials, their constituents. Adding to all this, they felt besieged by both Suff and Anti advocates, who were chasing them, pestering with questions, giving them no peace. It’s little wonder that the league women often returned from their assignments frustrated, reporting that quite a few of the delegates could not be found or had skipped out on scheduled meetings. A favorite route of escape was the Jack Daniel’s Suite.
A constant stream of legislators and politicians came to consult with Mrs. Catt in her room, and quite a few of them had whiskey on their breath, which unnerved her. At times the whole legislature seemed to be drunk. “Are none sober?” Catt asked incredulously. “Possibly,” she was told.
Strike while the iron is hot, goes the old adage, so late on Wednesday evening Tom Riddick and Andrew Todd announced that both the house and the senate would vote on ratification on Friday. The votes appeared to be there, so why wait? But those keeping careful count with a more skeptical eye, including Sue White, recognized that things were not quite so rosy: while the Suffs had mustered enough votes to defeat the delay resolution, they had amassed the bare minimum—fifty votes—required for a constitutional majority in the house, the threshold that would be needed to ratify. There wasn’t a single vote to spare.
“The opposition has yielded by barely a hair’s breadth,” White warned, throwing cold water on the Suffs’ moment of joy, “and suffrage is not yet out of a hazardous position. The tabling of the referendum resolution was victory, but it is not the end of the fight. It will take further efforts and increased energy to accomplish ratification.”
That night, Alice Paul sent Abby Baker to extract those increased efforts from Governor Cox. The presidential candidate was in a buoyant mood after the day’s events in Nashville. “Boys, it looks like suffrage is going to go over in Tennessee after all,” Cox told reporters at his evening briefing in Dayton. “I have just been talking with Governor Roberts over the long distance telephone. He is very confident. He believes a favorable vote will be taken by Friday.”
While Cox was meeting with reporters in his office, Abby Baker was left to cool her tapered heels in a nearby anteroom. Impatiently awaiting her turn, she grabbed the ears of a few reporters herself and gave them a very different view of the situation. She openly questioned Cox’s blithe confidence in Governor Roberts’s optimistic reports and Roberts’s ability to deliver ratification on his own. She came armed with a portfolio of documents, including the latest intelligence from Sue White and Anita Pollitzer on the ground in Nashville, attesting to the volatility of the situation and the dangers that lay ahead. Cox must switch around his campaign schedule, Baker insisted, go to Nashville immediately to take charge. He was relying too much upon an unreliable Roberts.
And Baker was carrying another bit of information, intended to neutralize the claims Cox was undoubtedly hearing from some southern Democrats, that woman suffrage would trigger an avalanche of Negro ballots—Republican ballots—spelling the demise of white hegemony and Democratic rule in the South. Baker carried her own statistics to reassure Cox: census data showed that there were more white women in the southern states (10.6 million) than black women and men combined (4.3 million). It was an old, and sad, suffragist argument, but as Baker knew from her years of lobbying in Congress and the states, it often worked. Woman suffrage would not imperil white supremacy in the South or harm the presidential ambitions of James Cox, she promised.
It was a late night and a bleary-eyed dawn for the Nashville combatants. Once Riddick and Todd announced plans for a Friday vote, there was little time for sleep. The Tennessee Suffs welcomed the promise of swift action, the Woman’s Party workers were nervous about it, and the Antis were dismayed, but everyone knew they’d have to scramble to nail down the votes they needed within the next thirty-six hours. Most immediately, they were preparing for the expected morning showdown in the house over the Story resolution—if that passed, there would be no vote at all—and then for the joint house-senate hearing that evening.
The public hearing was shaping up to be a spectacular event, a kind of barefisted prizefight featuring an all-star card of Suff and Anti champions. The teams were still being assembled, the participants carefully vetted not only for their speaking prowess, but for their legal acumen, political clout, and popular appeal. It was reported that Governor Roberts might be on the Suff team, as well as Sue White representing the Woman’s Party, and Anne Dudley punching for the Tennessee Suffs. The Antis were fielding notable judges, a U.S. congressman, and, of course, Charlotte Rowe. Pyrotechnics were anticipated.
* * *
Speaker Walker brought the house to order at ten o’clock on Thursday morning; the chaplain prayed, the clerk called the roll. The galleries were full again, ninety-four members were at their desks, Governor Roberts was working the floor. The proceedin
gs moved swiftly and, for the Suffs, successfully. When delegate Story’s resolution—prohibiting the current legislature from acting upon ratification—came up, the ratificationists moved quickly to table it, and the resolution went down in a voice vote.
Over in the senate, Lon McFarland withdrew his “please go away” resolution, aimed at all outside lobbyists, before it came up for consideration. He gave no explanation for the action, but his colleagues were both bemused and relieved. Both houses adjourned to prepare for the evening debate.
As the senate dispersed, Anne Dudley found Lon McFarland walking in the Capitol corridor and approached him with a smile. I’m not an outsider, she kidded him as she affectionately leaned toward him to straighten his string tie. I’m a Nashvillian born and bred, and if you want to honor Tennessee women, as you say you do, the best way is to vote for ratification, she continued as she nimbly pulled both ribbons of his tie even and firmed the knot. Tennessee men giving Tennessee women the vote; she thought that would appeal to McFarland’s sensibilities. McFarland did not reply, nor did he back away. He simply reached into his jacket, pulled out his pocketknife, and in one motion sliced off the strings of his tie just below the knot. Dudley was left speechless, holding the limp strings in her hand, as McFarland walked briskly away. “Just keep it,” he called over his shoulder.
The Anti ladies now went for the jugular. From their headquarters in the Hermitage they released a barrage of barbed propaganda publications, spiked with racist and sexist malice. Their matériel was only paper, but the words and images printed on those sheets had the lacerating proficiency of a serrated knife. Some were original creations, while others were adapted from recent Anti campaigns in other southern states, amounting to a roster of greatest hits.