by Elaine Weiss
Harriet Upton learned that one Republican legislator was being offered $100 by a rogue Republican lobbyist working against ratification, on condition that the lawmaker simply go home before the house voted. The legislator decided to stay. But the delegate who’d tried to strike a bargain with Upton—I’ll vote for ratification if you can arrange for a new post office in my hometown—walked over to the Antis when she refused.
Joe Hanover was swamped by reports of money being slipped under the table to influence house members’ votes or to keep them from voting at all. Hanover didn’t possess the usual political tools to counter these blandishments—patronage, pork, and legislative favors, such as greasing the wheels for bills sponsored by a delegate—because he was only a rank-and-file legislator with a battlefield promotion to floor leader. The Suffs also didn’t have the corporate support—or cash—that the Antis seemed to possess. Hanover’s most useful tool was his popularity and respect in the house. Some of the less educated legislators from the rural districts had come to rely upon Hanover to draft the bills they wanted to submit for passage, and he used his legal skills to help them. That generosity now paid off. One of those veteran members, a fiddle-playing farmer who was counted safe to vote for ratification, came to Hanover’s room over the weekend to report that he’d changed his mind. “Sorry, Joe, but I’m going to have to leave you suffrage boys,” the fiddler said, a bit bleary-eyed from a long night in the Jack Daniel’s Suite. “The Antis just paid me two hundred dollars.”
The way Hanover told the story, he put his arm around his colleague and said: “You sold out too cheap. I hear they’re paying the others five hundred.”
The legislator was miffed. “Well, them crooked sons of bitches!” he cried. “I’m gonna vote for you, Joe.” And he returned to the suffragists’ camp.
There were other modes of persuasion available to the Antis besides cold cash: jobs and positions could be offered, business and personal loans proffered, lucrative deals dangled. And if these didn’t work, there were other techniques besides logical argument to convince a man that it was in his interest to vote against ratification. Edward Stahlman, once a professional lobbyist for the railroads and still their outspoken ally, could be seen all over the Hermitage, hard at work on legislators who’d pledged to ratify but now might be convinced to waffle and tilt. His efforts were meeting with success, and reporters were beginning to notice that in the past few days, Stahlman “has done more to change the minds of men who were for suffrage when they came here a week ago than any other individual.” Luke Lea’s Tennessean began to refer to Stahlman as “the Prince of Lobbyists” with grudging admiration.
“Enough votes are pledged to adopt the resolution in the house,” a veteran statehouse reporter noted over the weekend, “but the members do not look you in the eye when they say they will vote for it.” Sentiment for ratification had cooled, and “a sort of reversal of enthusiasm has been spreading over the members like wet blankets,” the reporter observed. “The house would like to postpone action another week or another month or another hundred years. . . .”
John Houk noticed eyes averting, too. He was losing pledged men. His senate colleagues had held firm, but lower chamber delegates were deserting the ratification ranks all through the weekend. Those smooth-talking corporation men in the Hermitage lobby were the reason, he believed.
“There are signs of the old railroad lobby against ratification on the surface,” Houk warned RNC chairman Will Hays in a searing telegram. After years in the statehouse, Houk could spot them—the railroad men and the factory men, the steel men and the liquor men—from across the Hermitage dining room, with one eye shut. He could almost smell them.
In an extraordinary step, Houk went beyond his confidential note to Hays to sound a very public alarm on Sunday evening: “I believe one of the most powerful lobbies in the history of the Tennessee legislature is now at work to defeat ratification,” Houk announced to reporters, “and if ratification is defeated the special interests of the state will be responsible.” He called for a legislative inquiry into the reports of corporate influence and bribery.
Sue White knew what John Houk was talking about: her latest polling numbers kept slipping through the weekend, as men who had once pledged for ratification hesitated yet again. It was the Louisville and Nashville influence, she, like Houk, was convinced. The L&N had kept a stranglehold on the Tennessee legislature for generations, and now Edward Stahlman and Seth Walker could forcefully represent the company’s position against ratification in persuasive confabs with (often) intoxicated delegates. There was a powerful synergy in the workings of the Anti lobbyists.
In retaliation, White threatened to reveal the names, and publish the written pledges, of any delegate trying to wriggle out of his promise to vote for ratification. No man would be allowed to execute a double cross quietly. Show them for the hypocrites they were, Miss Sue insisted.
“Blackmailers!” screamed the Antis.
The developments over the weekend seemed to confirm the shape of what might be called the suffragists’ grand unified conspiracy theory, a political hypothesis that was far-reaching but not so far-fetched. It tied together the L&N, Seth Walker and Edward Stahlman, and the mysterious “syndicate” man in the Hermitage lobby, with the money passing hands in the rooms above; it linked the refusal of the governors of Connecticut and Vermont to call special sessions with Warren Harding’s infuriating ambivalence.
On Sunday night, Alice Paul articulated this theory to the press: The L&N, owned by the Connecticut-based Atlantic Coast Line holding company, was financing and directing a furious antiratification lobby in Tennessee in order to protect the reelection of Connecticut senator Frank Brandegee, who faithfully advanced the interests of the company in the U.S. Congress. With the railroads just emerging from wartime federal control, facing labor demands and capital improvement expenses, they needed to keep their friends in Congress, especially ones such as Brandegee, who held a seat on the Interstate Commerce Committee.
Brandegee was also a vociferous antisuffragist who’d helped block congressional passage of the Nineteenth Amendment for years, working in harmony with Senators James Wadsworth of New York and George Moses of New Hampshire, all of whom were up for reelection in the fall. These incumbents had good reason to fear that if the women of their states were allowed to vote, they might exact revenge on them at the ballot box. Mollie Hay was at that very moment leading a revolt within the New York State Republican Party against Wadsworth’s renomination. These three senators were Republicans, and they’d been instrumental in choosing Warren Harding as the party nominee inside that famously smoke-filled room in Chicago earlier in the summer. Now they were asking Harding to protect their careers by putting the brakes on the Nineteenth Amendment and keeping women from the polls. The Connecticut and Vermont governors were also under the Atlantic Coast Line’s corporate influence, the theory posited, and the company had probably sent that mystery man—who claimed to represent a syndicate of New York, Connecticut, and Vermont interests—to the Hermitage.
“Some of the poor dupes in Nashville do not realize that they are victims of a plot,” Paul told the press, blithely insulting the Tennessee legislators, “to return this bitter anti-suffragist [Brandegee] to the senate this fall.” Amplifying Betty Gram’s accusations against Seth Walker, Paul let the fur fly: “Mr. Walker, speaker of the house, is a young attorney who has, on many occasions, given the most fervent assurances that he would support suffrage. Recently he was made an attorney for the L&N Railway and the result is the otherwise inexplicable change of attitude evidenced in his message to President Wilson yesterday refusing to support the suffrage amendment.” It all fit together, alarmingly well.
That night, Paul sent Abby Baker on another emergency mission to see Warren Harding. She was to impress upon him the damage Senator Brandegee and his railroad minions were causing in Tennessee and to urge the candidate to do something about
it. Baker took a taxi to Harding’s house in Marion and was ushered into his study by Florence. Harding was evasive, as usual, but beyond that, Baker found him to be stunningly obtuse. “Frank Brandegee has no influence in the Senate or anywhere else,” Harding told Baker, dismissing her concerns about him. “He only has $100,000.” It seemed a bizarre assessment of a prominent lawmaker, but she let it go.
When she told Harding that his letter to Judge Tillman was being used by the L&N lobbyists in Nashville to convince legislators not to ratify, he responded: “I could not stultify myself by asking a man to vote for ratification if he had conscientious scruples about constitutionality.” Baker explained that those constitutional questions had already been ruled moot by noted legal experts, but Harding only looked at her blankly and repeated robotically: “I cannot stultify myself . . .” No matter the argument she put forward, regardless of the evidence she presented, Harding parroted this same answer, “I cannot stultify myself . . . ,” punctuated by a wiping of his brow.
“Harding looks perfectly stupid,” Baker relayed to Alice Paul. “So much so that the newspapermen call him nothing but ‘Old Stupid.’ They say he is drinking again and his appearance confirms the report.” Even in this state, Harding did manage to make a pass at Mrs. Baker. But he said he’d have to ask his campaign manager, Harry Daugherty, whether he should play any further role in Tennessee. Daugherty would tell him: No.
By Sunday night, August 15, things seemed murkier than they’d been before, the outcome in the house even more uncertain. The Suffs had come into the special session with sixty-two signed pledges for ratification from house members; the Woman’s Party now reported between forty and forty-three firm commitments, with another dozen pro-ratification votes possible. The Antis claimed some of those “firm” legislators had pledged to them as well. Both sides projected confidence, both sides predicted victory, but both began to hedge a bit.
Joe Hanover went from an unequivocal declaration on Saturday—“There is absolutely no chance of defeat”—to a more measured statement on Sunday: “There is no doubt in my mind” that Tennessee would ratify. Sue White admitted that the issue was “undecided” but took a literal approach to predicting victory. “We have the votes pledged,” she said, “and many of these pledges are in writing, and in my possession.” Those were old pledges, she knew, minds had been changed in the meantime, but she’d use those original promises to shame any deserter. Seth Walker insisted he was “reasonably sure” the house would reject ratification. Reporters understood that neither side had any idea how things might play out, polls had become meaningless, everything was in flux.
On Sunday evening, a weary Carrie Catt sat at the writing desk in her room and penned a letter to her friend Mary Peck in New York, offering her candid view of the situation in Nashville:
We now have 35 1/2 states. We are up to our last half of a state. With all the political pressure, it ought to be easy, but the opposition of every sort is here fighting with no scruple, desperately. Women, including L. Clay and K. Gordon, are here appealing to Negro phobia and every other cave man’s prejudice.
Men, lots of them, are here. What do they represent? God only knows. We believe they are buying votes. We have a poll of the House showing victory but they are trying to keep them at home, to break a quorum and God only knows the outcome. We are terribly worried and so is the other side.
I’ve been here a month. It is hot, muggy, nasty, and this last battle is desperate. We are low in our minds—even if we win we who have been here will never remember it with anything but a shudder. Verily the way of the reformer is hard.
Chapter 20
Armageddon
ON MONDAY MORNING, the mood in Nashville was volatile, even violent. This was the suffrage Armageddon, as both sides considered the impending clash as a defining battle between good and evil, a struggle for the soul of Tennessee and the heart of the nation. When the legislators returned to the city, they were welcomed by a new Anti broadside that made the stakes perfectly clear:
BEWARE!
MEN of the SOUTH: Heed not the song of the suffrage siren. Seal your ears against her vocal wiles. For, no matter how sweetly she may proclaim the advantages of female franchise—
REMEMBER, that Woman Suffrage means a reopening of the entire Negro Suffrage question; loss of State rights; and another period of reconstruction horrors, which will introduce a set of female carpet-baggers as bad as their male prototypes of the sixties.
DO NOT JEOPARDIZE the present prosperity of your sovereign States, which was so dearly bought by the blood of your fathers and the tears of your mothers, by again raising an issue which has already been adjusted at so great a cost.
NOTHING can be gained by woman suffrage and much may be lost.
With the reconvening of the legislature, the Hotel Hermitage lobby became a petal-strewn battlefield, with men and women shooting suspicious glances at one another, flinging insults and insinuations, hurling accusations of deceit and skulduggery. The opulent lobby, chandeliered dining rooms, and potted-palmed loggia were scenes of shouting matches and shoving, often escalating into fistfights.
Overnight, Governor Roberts had been visited by a powerful group of newspaper publishers and warned that unless he reversed course and “pulled off his men” working for ratification, his political career was over. Stahlman’s Banner, the Ochses’ Times, and other Democratic papers that had supported Roberts in the primary would turn their editorial pages against him in the general election, go Republican. Roberts swallowed hard.
Joe Hanover began receiving telephone calls in the middle of the night, from women and from men. The women spoke in sugary tones, professing to be devoted Suffs who wanted to give Hanover some vital information. Meet me in room something or other, they’d purr. He had to laugh, it was so obvious. He knew that if he walked into that room, the Anti-hired photographers would flash their camera bulbs, purporting to catch him in a compromising situation. No thanks, he answered. But the men’s voices on the phone were gruff and sinister as they delivered naked threats: If he knew what was good for his health, he’d do an about-face on ratification. Governor Roberts ordered Hanover placed under police protection. Captain Paul Bush of the Tennessee State Police was assigned as Hanover’s bodyguard, and the strapping trooper took up residence in an adjoining room on the third floor of the Hermitage, monitoring Hanover’s mail, telephone calls, and visitors.
The delegates, especially those who’d signed pledges to ratify, were also reminded of just how much they, and their families, might lose if they continued to support ratification. Those who hadn’t succumbed to bribes began to be pelted with threats: job loss, political ruin, career destruction; their house mortgage just might be foreclosed, their loan called due, their business met with unexpected disaster. Carrie Catt was appalled by reports of blatant extortion, horrified by the idea that shadowy men working for the Antis’ corporate friends were “applying the third degree” to lawmakers in hotel rooms around the city.
If house members weren’t persuaded by these techniques, perhaps they could be dissuaded—or prevented—from voting at all. Some began receiving phony telegrams claiming their wife was ill, their child injured, their house on fire, to compel them to hastily leave Nashville. Other lawmakers, known to have a weakness for liquor, were entertained for hours in the Jack Daniel’s Suite, plied with whiskey until they were in a stupor, and the resulting hangover was expected to be powerful enough to keep them from the next roll call. When the Suffs learned that one such legislator, listed as favorable to ratification, was careening down the Hermitage hallways, they made sure he was escorted by friends to his room, put under a cold shower and sobered up under a fan, then put to bed. He made roll call.
* * *
Both the house and senate convened at two o’clock. The senate, relieved of the burden of ratification and unencumbered by hordes of spectators, took up more routine measures. But the house floor an
d galleries were again crowded with red- and yellow-rosed partisans, and similarly bedecked men and women were in animation on the floor, darting from one delegate to the next. Disproving fears about a quorum, attendance was unusually high, with ninety-five of the ninety-nine delegates in their chairs. There was a heightened buzz of anticipation, as there was some possibility that the vote might be called right then and there.
But the Constitutional Amendments Committee hadn’t yet met to decide upon its recommendation, and while the Suffs might attempt to drag the resolution out of committee onto the house floor for a vote, that would be risky, as such a move required two-thirds of the members to agree, not just a majority. Ratification leaders would execute this maneuver only if they felt very confident of their strength. They were not confident; the Antis noticed. The house adjourned until Tuesday morning, pending the decision of the committee. The intervening hours were frantic.
As the delegates emerged into the Capitol corridors following adjournment, they were backed into corners by teams of women, adorned with red or yellow, making another round of soprano supplications and alto advocacies. As the lawmakers walked on the sidewalks leading from the statehouse to the Hermitage or any of the adjoining streets, they were accosted by zealous proselytizers trying to convert them. Knots of arguing advocates formed on the streets and in the Hermitage lobby, attracting curious onlookers and wisecrackers the way a brawl or a cockfight might. “Campaigners were working in relays,” wrote reporters on the scene, “and when one enthusiastic advocate or antagonist of votes for women became exhausted there was another one near to take up the task.”
More bad news was delivered to the Suffs during the day: nearly the entire Nashville-Davidson County delegation, five of the seven men who had been pledged solidly for ratification, had suddenly defected to the Antis. This was the stuff of nightmares. The Davidson delegation was a keystone Democratic bloc and was the responsibility of Luke Lea and his political apparatus to manage. Lea had obviously lost control of his men—or let them go. Or the railroads—with offices, facilities, and tracks in Nashville—had captured them. Anne Dudley, who’d pledged these Davidson men of her home district, was distraught; Carrie Catt was dismayed, but not deeply shocked, to find that, once again, the freedom of American women might fall victim to the egos and ambitions of powerful men. As might be expected, the Antis were jubilant.