by Elaine Weiss
The vote was a surprise, with stronger support for ratification than either side had expected. Several senators, card-indexed as Anti, had suddenly switched sides to bolster the margin. As the senators exited the chamber, they encountered a line of smiling suffragists who saucily lifted their skirts just enough to reveal a bit of ruffle beneath, proving that they still wore petticoats.
Streams of women and men, in distinct rivulets of yellow or red, cascaded down Capitol Hill from the statehouse toward the Hermitage. The Tennessee Suffs ran to Mrs. Catt’s room to give her a full report. The vote was splendid, she agreed. The political leaders of both parties had done a fine job of keeping their men flying straight, and Republican senators hadn’t taken Harding’s free pass to abandon their pledges. But Catt was disturbed by Senator Candler’s comments about her on the floor. She didn’t care about him calling her an anarchist or a dictator, but she blanched when the Suffs related Candler’s accusation that she favored intermarriage between the races. This could cause real trouble.
In a southern state such as Tennessee, racial taboos held tremendous power. In 1920, interracial marriage was illegal in thirty of the forty-eight states, including Tennessee, and antimiscegenation laws would remain enshrined in state constitutions for almost another half century, until declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even in those New England and upper midwestern states where interracial marriage was not against the law, it was widely scorned. Catt was right that mixed-race marriage was a toxic topic and woman suffrage could not afford to be in any way associated with it. She’d never said anything about marriage between the races; the allegation was a calculated lie, manufactured by the Antis and mouthed by their man Candler, but it could still be dangerous. She could not allow it to stand.
Within hours she’d written a firm, terse response and released it to the press: “It is an absolute fabrication that I have at any time advocated intermarriage between the white and negro races,” she insisted. “Furthermore, I believe it to be an absolute crime against nature.” Her statement was published in newspapers across the country.
Once again, Catt distanced herself from the ideal of true equality in pursuit of the franchise. She’d taken a similar position earlier in the year, during the South Carolina ratification campaign, when she’d refuted rumors circulating in the state capital that she’d “been entertained in negro homes and entertained negroes in my home.”
“This is a most malicious appeal to sectional prejudice,” Catt complained to a South Carolina senator. “I emphatically deny these stories.” Whether her aunt Susan—who proudly welcomed many black guests to stay in her home and cherished her special place in Frederick Douglass’s household—would have approved of her protégée’s small-minded defense of the amendment that bore her name can only be surmised.
When pressed for the source of his allegations about Catt’s views on interracial marriage, Candler had to admit he’d stretched things a bit, connected dots in a most haphazard way. He said he’d based his claim on a published interview with Catt in which she was quoted as saying, “Suffrage knows no bias of race, color or sex.” Catt did believe that, at least in the abstract.
* * *
Though both houses of the legislature were adjourned until Monday, and the house vote wasn’t yet scheduled, the pace of activity in the Hotel Hermitage did not abate on Friday afternoon. The Antis were not downcast by the senate’s action; the senate vote was no indicator of suffrage’s strength, Charlotte Rowe told the press. “This happened in other southern states,” she said. “It will be remembered that in both Mississippi and Delaware the senate ratified, but defeated the amendment in the house by 2 to 1. These two states were working under the same ‘party pressure’ as Tennessee is now.” The Antis were setting their sights on the house, a more fertile field for their activities. They brandished copies of the Friday afternoon Banner, which, as expected after Major Stahlman’s public denunciations the night before, had turned its editorial pages against ratification.
While the Antis held strategy meetings on the mezzanine level of the Hermitage, the Suffs held their own in the assembly rooms below, just off the lobby, and then broke into smaller conclaves throughout the hotel and statehouse. Joe Hanover took charge, projecting confidence and determination. Hanover ordered another canvass of the house members, to solidify the pledges and identify any weak reeds among the members. Hanover was hearing things about legislators having second, and third, thoughts. The Tennessee Suffs were assigned to find their delegates once more.
Finding those delegates was made decidedly more difficult, as many had packed their bags and headed home for the weekend. The legislators were tired and grumpy, and staying in Nashville cost more than their per diem salary could cover. For those who lived close enough to make a weekend sprint home feasible, it was a chance to unwind, see their family, and consult with constituents. This made the Suffs very nervous, to think of the house members moving beyond their grasp and into the grip of unknown persuaders. Suffragists in the home districts were put on alert to keep an eye on their solons, while those in Nashville were ordered to stick close to the delegates who remained in the city.
The suffrage women were each assigned two delegates and took their responsibilities seriously, inviting their designated men to lunch and to dinner, for a ride in the country, a game of cards, or a moving picture show, anything to keep them out of the clutches of Anti workers, corporate lobbyists, or a bender in the Jack Daniel’s Suite. The legislators certainly enjoyed the attention of some very attractive and socially prominent women, including Annie Laurie Stahlman, an energetic suffragist who was seen hosting a delegate at the tony Belle Meade Country Club, against the vehement protests of her father-in-law. The Suffs’ work was to “cajole and coddle, entertain and amuse” the delegates, as Harriet Upton described it, all the while making strong, logical arguments for ratification. Some newspapers took a more hyperbolic view of the suffragists’ attentions: “Automobile rides, hugs, kisses, even the absurdity of polishing the members’ noses and rouging their cheeks in the assembly hall were frequently witnessed,” one observer claimed.
* * *
Warren Harding did not send any note of congratulations to the senators of Tennessee. He was baffled by the negative reaction to the letter he’d written to Judge Tillman about fidelity to conscience and honorable reluctance to violate one’s oath of office. It proved he was a man of principle, he believed. He’d gladly given Tillman permission to read the letter aloud in the statehouse in Nashville last night, but now Will Hays was furious with him. Harding couldn’t fathom why. While the senators of Tennessee were voting on Friday afternoon, Harding was speaking from his front porch, advocating a new “baptism in righteousness and a new consecration in morality” for the nation, a return to honesty and unimpeachable virtue in civic life. His wife, Florence, smiled approvingly from the shadows of the porch.
At the White House, Woodrow Wilson was feeling chipper, much improved, so much so that his physician, Dr. Grayson, had left his side to take a long-delayed vacation. Wilson spent his days sitting in his wheeled chair, reading in the sun of the south portico, keeping up with the dreadful news of renewed fighting in Europe—Warsaw was under fierce attack by the Red Army—and taking long automobile rides through the Virginia countryside with Edith. He tended to public affairs for as many hours as his strength allowed, working with his secretary, Joseph Tumulty. Upon his return from his daily car excursion on Friday afternoon, Tumulty briefed him on the situation in Tennessee. Ratification in that state was halfway there, Tumulty told the president, national woman suffrage almost clinched, his League of Nations legacy possibly made secure, but there was an obstacle: the Democratic Speaker of the Tennessee house, Seth Walker, was standing in the way.
Tumulty, the Suffs’ best friend in the White House, kept in close contact with Mrs. Catt and with Helen Hamilton Gardener, NAWSA’s liaison to the president. Mrs. Gardener, recently
appointed by Wilson to the Civil Service Commission, was very generous to Tumulty, sending his family boxes of flowers, fresh apricots, and other delicacies (she sent such gifts to Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, too), and building on this friendly relationship, Gardner could comfortably approach Tumulty with occasional requests. On Friday evening, the president sent a telegram to Seth Walker:
May I not in the interest of national harmony and vigor, and of the establishment of the leadership of Americans in all liberal policies, express the earnest hope that the house over which you preside will concur in the suffrage amendment.
As soon as the wire was sent, Tumulty sent a second telegram to Carrie Catt at the Hermitage, informing her of the president’s message to Walker, knowing she’d be pleased. When Alice Paul learned of Wilson’s gesture of help, she was also immensely pleased. Paul did not enjoy a close relationship with the White House, for understandable reasons, but she thanked the president, publicly and warmly: “The message sent by President Wilson to Speaker Walker was without solicitation on our part, and we are deeply grateful for the aid he has given the suffrage cause since the fight for ratification by Tennessee began.” In her glee over the combined successes of the day—the senate ratification and the president’s assistance—Paul got a bit carried away: “We have won the long fight for suffrage,” she announced on Friday night. But Miss Paul was mistaken.
The weekend of waiting developed into a strange interlude, marked by intensifying anxiety and hostility, move and countermaneuver. On Saturday morning, Seth Walker answered President Wilson’s personal plea, and the defiant tone of Walker’s telegram was remarkable, even shocking:
“I have the profound honor to acknowledge your wire of Aug 13,” Walker wrote to Wilson. “I do not attempt to express the views of other members of the lower house of Tennessee, but speak for myself alone, which on the Anthony amendment are contrary to yours. You were too great to ask it, and I do not believe that men of Tennessee will surrender honest convictions for political expediency or harmony.”
The arrogance of Walker’s reply, and its air of condescension, angered many Tennessee Democrats but made Walker an even greater hero to the Antis. He was their leader in Tennessee now, and he was showered with congratulatory messages from around the country. “I thank God that the spirit of Andrew Jackson still exists in the old Volunteer State,” wrote an admirer in Texas. “May your message awaken the old mountain patriots to a realization of the imperialism that threatens the rights of the states and individual liberty of the citizens.” Walker also received a pat on the back from the Ochs family, publishers of the Chattanooga Times: “We are with you in spirit and heartily congratulate you on the masterly manner in which you have expressed your convictions . . . your courage to maintain virtue will shine resplendent in the hearts of worthy Tennesseans.”
At the same time, Carrie Catt found herself forced into an uncomfortable defensive crouch, as she spent the weekend deflecting the Antis’ vitriolic personal attacks. First she’d had to publicly refute Senator Candler’s racially loaded allegations, and on Saturday she felt obliged to push back against the newest Anti claims concerning her connection to The Woman’s Bible. They’d taken out a big half-page ad in the Banner, denouncing Mrs. Stanton’s tome as a “suffrage tract” that questioned the divinity of Christ, denigrated Christianity, and ridiculed the Christian Church. The ad even lambasted the suffragists for desecrating the Sabbath by holding convention meetings on Sundays. “This is the teaching of national suffrage leaders,” the ad screamed, with Carrie Catt’s name in bold type. “Are you willing for women who hold these views to become political powers in our country?”
Catt was tired of this Bible nonsense and responded, “I spoke and voted for a resolution repudiating the bible.” But it was all a red herring, she averred, a distraction from the real issue facing Tennessee—justice for women.
Catt’s reply was duly published in the papers, but it didn’t restrain the Antis from using The Woman’s Bible as a grenade. They invited sympathetic clergymen to view the Bible exhibit at their Hermitage headquarters and convinced more than two dozen men of the cloth to sign a petition to the legislature condemning Mrs. Stanton’s heretical book and denouncing woman suffrage in general. Quite a few sermons on Sunday were devoted to demonizing the long forgotten Bible, its long dead author, and the beleaguered, but still living, president of NAWSA, perspiring in her room at the Hermitage.
* * *
Catt had reason to feel like a punching bag. Besides the Antis’ crude aspersions, she was being flooded with anonymous letters, dutifully delivered to her room by the bellboy, letters that were “vulgar, ignorant, insane,” as she characterized them, attacking her personally and denigrating all suffragists in the most sordid manner. Catt was also convinced that her phone was being tapped at the hotel. Upton, the veteran of many a dirty Ohio campaign, told Catt that almost every day, when she opened the door to her room, she found a man just outside, leaning with his ear to the door, trying to listen to her conversations. Pardon me, she’d bark with great annoyance, and he would scamper away. Other Suffs also reported men loitering in the hallways near their rooms, trying to overhear their discussions and meetings. They took to closing the transoms above their doors, making it harder to eavesdrop but also making their rooms unbearably hot and stuffy. Soon Upton would find that her telegrams were being intercepted on their way from her room to the hotel’s Western Union desk and handed to Anti headquarters.
The Antis also felt aggrieved. Charlotte Rowe announced that she was lodging a civil suit, seeking damages against Catherine Kenny for public defamation. Rowe claimed that when she recently came upon Kenny talking to another suffragist in the Hermitage lobby, Kenny warned her companion: “Let us move away from that notorious woman.” Rowe, outraged, followed Kenny across the lobby, making quite a scene. Now the incident was the city’s favorite piece of gossip—did Kenny use the phrase “notorious woman” or “notorious creature”?—while Kenny protested that she didn’t say Rowe was “notorious” in the sense of character, just reputation. Rowe was not mollified; see you in court, she told Kenny.
The Antis also complained that Suffs were conspiring to suppress the distribution of antisuffrage-inclined newspapers, such the Chattanooga Times, in Nashville. The paper was suddenly hard to find at the newsstand in the Hermitage lobby or at most other vendors in town, and the Antis alleged that Suffs were buying bundles of the paper off the delivery truck and destroying each day’s issue before it could reach the hands of readers. The Times launched an investigation.
The Antis were well aware that their backs were pressed against the wall, but they adopted a defiant swagger during these intervening days, boosting their image among impressionable legislators. The looming confrontation in the house was possibly the Antis’ last stand, their Alamo, though they were confident of a more favorable outcome than experienced by that former Tennessee legislator Davy Crockett. Along with their more aggressive stance, the Antis’ language and actions grew more belligerent. Friction with the Suffs became physical. Upton was jostled in the Hermitage elevator by a group of Tennessee Anti women (whether Miss Pearson was among them isn’t known) who made clear that she wasn’t welcome in Nashville. Joe Hanover also found himself roughly shouldered in the hotel and was subjected to vile slurs as he walked through the lobby: “Kike!” the Jewish legislator was called. “Bolshevist!” It was getting nasty.
On one afternoon during the weekend, Catt lay down on her bed to take a nap. The heat, tension, and constant stream of visitors sapped her strength by midday, and she found forty winks to be a tonic, keeping her going for the late night meetings. As she stretched out on the mattress, she slipped her hand under the pillow, and her fingers hit something hard. Bolting upright, she grabbed the thing under the pillow and pulled it into the light. It was a whiskey bottle.
The Antis. The Antis planted the booze, she was certain, to discredit her. It was another of their devili
sh plots to malign her and embarrass the Cause. She didn’t scream, but she did panic. She must hide it before she was caught in possession of the forbidden booze by an Anti search party, obviously the next stage of their plot. She considered hiding it in a suitcase, but that seemed too obvious; she thought of flushing it down the toilet, but the liquor smell might linger. She heard someone enter her sitting room and braced for the raid.
It was only Harriet Upton walking in. Oh, that bottle, Harriet tried to soothe the Chief, there was nothing to it. A friendly woman reporter had asked if she could stow it in the suite for safekeeping, Upton had agreed, and there was nothing to be alarmed about. But Catt was still alarmed. The Suffs couldn’t afford a tawdry, trumped-up scandal like this. Catt insisted that she be driven far out into the countryside, where she was finally relieved to see the whiskey bottle safely disposed, buried in the crevice of a stone wall covered with poison ivy. Paranoia had set in, but with good reason.
In the wake of the senate ratification, the Antis redoubled their efforts to swing house delegates against ratification. Whether a delegate was still noncommittal, confused, or simply ripe to have his mind changed, the Antis made a fresh push to get to him. If he remained in Nashville over the weekend, they found him; if he was at home, he was visited. There were many means of persuasion.
A thriving industry of bribery and influence peddling developed, and there were rumors of sacks of money being shipped into Nashville over the weekend in advance of the house deliberations. Both the Antis and the Suffs claimed their opponents were trafficking in illicit inducements, and there were so many reports of bribes being offered and taken that a Nashville judge would soon convene a grand jury to investigate. Some legislators and politicians were said to be acting as middlemen, bringing the names of susceptible lawmakers to Anti campaigners, then arranging the payments, with a finder’s fee cut for themselves.