by Elaine Weiss
“I cannot pledge myself,” he’d whispered to Pollitzer and Gram when they’d last confronted him. “But I will do nothing to hurt you.” What did that mean? All they knew was that they couldn’t trust Harry Burn.
After more than two hours of bitter back-and-forth, with tempers sparking and stomachs growling, Seth Walker relinquished the Speaker’s chair and walked down to claim the floor. Before he could open his mouth, the Antis in the chamber began a long, loud ovation for him, which he accepted graciously, with a nod. He looked paler than usual, his eyelids heavy, his voice tighter, his manner agitated. Reporters noted that his nerves seemed “more or less unstrung.” Nevertheless, the chamber hushed as he launched into what Tennesseans call a “real bearcat” of a speech.
“I thank God I can stand here unfettered and unhampered by political influences or by political aspirations,” Walker opened. He won a loud cheer from the Antis while Suffs grimaced. “I resent the statements made by Mr. Riddick that the South is the tail end of creation,” he fumed, his voice rising. “I am a southerner from the bottom of my foot to the crown of my head! . . . We want this to remain a white man’s country!” There was deafening applause from the red-rosed.
“I resent charges that I’ve been influenced by a certain railroad, or that railroad has tried to change the opinion of some members of this body,” Walker shouted. He held up a copy of the General Assembly’s oath of office. “We are asked by some to disregard this oath. I don’t believe the men of Tennessee will do it. The man who asks you to sacrifice your conviction is not worthy to be called a Tennessean.”
Walker read the oath aloud, emphasizing the section where members swear they will “not vote for anything injurious to my people.” The Nineteenth Amendment was most certainly injurious to the people of Tennessee, and to the rest of the South, Walker boomed. “Just as soon as this 19th Amendment—this Susan B. Anthony Amendment—is put upon a state like Georgia,” a state with a large black population, “Hell’s going to break loose in Georgia!”
Are we going to force suffrage upon another southern state that has rejected it? Walker challenged his colleagues. He read a letter he’d received from “certain colored ladies of California” urging the Tennessee legislature to ratify. “The Negro women of California always voted 99 per cent,” the letter writer said, pointing proudly to the active participation of black Californians, who’d been able to vote since 1911. “While our white sisters vote only about 20 percent.”
“I say this is infamous!” Walker shouted.
Walker held a sheaf of documents in his hand and methodically read aloud one, then the next, to make his various points. He gave a dramatic reading of Harding’s letter to Judge Tillman, praising Harding’s good judgment and character, while provoking a shiver in his fellow Democrats. “I don’t know whether Harding or Cox will be elected as President,” Walker said slyly, “but if Harding should be elected, you will have an honest man.”
He then read President Wilson’s recent telegram to him, urging ratification, and at this point the galleries exploded again, but now it was the Suffs causing a ruckus. At Walker’s mention of Wilson’s name, Anne Dudley climbed atop a bench at the very back of the room, behind the railing where spectators were still permitted to stand, and began shouting, “Wilson! Wilson! Wilson!” followed by a shrill cheer. “Little would one have dreamed that this little mite of a woman could possess such vocal powers,” wrote the Chattanooga Times.
Wilson, the southern president, was still a demigod to Tennessee Democrats, though he was being branded a traitor by Antis of the party. Dudley’s call was taken up into the galleries, where Suff women echoed Dudley’s “Wilson” cry, with whoops, trills, yells, whistles, clapping, and foot stomping. It was quite a scene, and it went on for several minutes, drowning out Walker’s speech.
He paused, waited, and then, sensing a lull in the rumpus, regained control. He read aloud his defiant reply to President Wilson, which elicited an outburst from the Antis almost as rowdy as the Suffs’ had been. Walker then glanced up toward the galleries to address his yellow-sashed tormentors:
“Last year, standing about where I am now, I made the fight in this house for the suffrage bill, which you seemed to desire so ardently then. After the fight had been won I was proclaimed a hero. Today you same women are denouncing me as a Judas, as a Benedict Arnold, as a traitor. I have been insulted right here in this city. It has been said that the Louisville and Nashville Railroad had something to do with dictating my attitude.” Betty Gram may have felt eyes all around the chamber burning into her, but she retained an impassive mien. Walker brushed away those claims, but as the Suffs noticed, he never actually denied that he’d been influenced by the L&N.
Walker resented yet another thing Tom Riddick had said earlier in the debate. He was angered by Riddick holding aloft the pledges of legislators who had once promised to ratify and threatening to expose those who’d changed their minds. Walker had his own pile of pledges:
“I have right now in my pocket the written pledges of more than a majority of members of this house that they will vote to defeat this amendment,” and a gasp could be heard in the galleries. “But before I would show that paper to a living soul, and thus keep any one of these men from voting according to his own conscience, or even threaten to publish the list in an effort to coerce them into voting as they may feel they should not, I would suffer this right arm to be cut off,” he cried, extending his arm for effect. He excited the crimson-corsaged to another wild ovation.
“Men of Tennessee, be men today!” Walker exhorted, bringing his admirers to their feet. “I don’t want Democrats or Republicans. I call upon you as men!
“In good faith and good morals, we cannot ratify!”
Walker’s concluding words coaxed another round of jubilant acclamation, and the substitute Speaker rapped the gavel repeatedly, to no avail. Walker had spoken for almost an hour, his passion and fury mesmerizing the chamber. His stem-winder seemed to galvanize the Antis.
With the vote expected to be so close, even the slightest swing in sentiment could spell the difference between success and failure of the amendment. When the delegates emerged from Walker’s oratorical spell, they remembered they were hungry. Charlie Brooks slipped his watch from his vest pocket: he couldn’t stay very long.
It was Joe Hanover’s turn, and he was under pressure to score. “Ours is the great Volunteer State,” he began, “and women from the East, West, North and South are looking to us to give them political freedom.” The Suffs in the gallery gazed down upon Hanover’s head and beamed. “The entire world today has cast its eyes on Tennessee. This is a moral question, and that’s why I am here, voting for this amendment.” Applause.
Hanover wanted to make a soaring oration for suffrage, but he couldn’t allow Seth Walker’s assertions and allegations to go unchallenged. He tackled them one by one: he countered Walker’s slights about black women voting in California with a testimonial from the governor of that state, attesting that “politics is cleaner and government is better” since California women were given the ballot. Cheers. He refuted the picture Walker had painted of woman suffrage bringing about Negro domination in the South by quoting the suffragists’ favorite population statistics, showing that white women voters outnumbered eligible black citizens in the southern states. Then he tackled Walker head-on.
“There has been so much said about the constitution of Tennessee and oath of office,” he said in an even tone, but then allowed his voice to rise, “but certain interests have sent their lobbyists to ask members of this legislature to violate their pledges!” Suffs in the galleries rained down boos. “And their agents are down at the Hermitage Hotel right now!”
While Hanover was speaking, a knot of Anti legislators gathered behind the screen of the Speaker’s desk, out of view. They whispered to one another, gesticulated, nodded in agreement, and returned to their desks. Charlie Brooks looked at
his watch again. It was going on so long, he really couldn’t wait around for the vote. His train would be leaving soon and he had to get home to his Ida.
“Tennessee never does things by halves for women,” Hanover continued, but he could see his colleagues were getting restless, and he rushed to finish. “What we do for them as Southern men we should have the privilege of doing for other women, that ours may be truly a democracy.”
As soon as Hanover concluded, while the cheers for him were still reverberating, before he could even return to his chair, a rush of voices and raised hands clamored to be recognized. The voices and hands belonged to the same delegates who’d gathered behind the Speaker’s desk moments before. Finally it was Seth Walker, still on the floor, who was recognized. “I move this House adjourn until tomorrow morning,” Walker announced, saying that the delegates needed more time to consider so momentous a decision. Chaos broke over the chamber.
“No, no!” shouted Hanover and Riddick and other ratification leaders. “No, no!” was the echo from Suffs in the gallery. Further delay played into the Antis’ hands, the Suffs feared, gave them more time to pick off swaying delegates. More time for bribes, more time for intimidation, more time for simple confusion and doubt. The postponement over the weekend had been disastrous for the Suffs’ count. The test vote on clearing the floor had given the Suffs a hairbreadth majority of fifty-one. They needed to vote—today. But Walker’s motion to adjourn took precedence. The roll call on the motion to adjourn began.
The delay was too much for Charlie Brooks; he had to get home. He was sorry to bother Joe Hanover again about his personal problem, but Brooks’s problem was the Suffs’ problem, as they couldn’t afford to lose a single vote now. Just stay to vote against adjournment, Hanover pleaded, then darted to the back of the chamber and found Luke Lea, explaining Brooks’s situation. Lea went up to the gallery, where Newell Sanders was sitting (after being chased from the floor), and they rushed out of the statehouse together.
Brooks did stay and voted against adjournment, but it was to no avail. With a solid Anti phalanx augmented by the merely hungry and testily tired, the motion to adjourn was approved by a vote of 52 to 44. The gavel rapped: the house was adjourned until ten thirty Wednesday morning. The Suffs in the gallery were silent and stunned. Josephine Pearson and her comrades were all smiles as they bustled down from the galleries. The hundreds of spectators still standing in the hallways looked confused.
Luke Lea and Newell Sanders ran back to the statehouse with a plan: Sanders laid out $495 for a chartered train to take Brooks that afternoon directly to the nearest depot to his house, then wait. If Brooks’s wife was well enough, the train would return him overnight to Nashville, and he’d be able to vote with the Suffs tomorrow. Lea and Sanders drove Brooks to Union Station.
If any delegate who’d agreed to adjournment thought he was buying himself a respite, he was sadly mistaken. Even as they escaped down the Capitol steps, the delegates were overtaken and surrounded by red and yellow advocates; they were accosted on the sidewalks and barricaded on the curbs; they had uninvited companions at their luncheon table; they were pulled aside into Hermitage alcoves. The screws were tightened.
At the Hermitage, Catt and Upton were livid, and they lashed out at the man they felt responsible for precipitating this turn of events—Warren Harding.
“Opposition only claiming unconstitutionality and you fall into their trap,” Upton berated Harding in a blistering telegram. “This morning Democratic speaker of house read your letter and declared you upheld position of constitutional objectors. Not only Republican but Democratic votes at stake.”
Upton went on to the candidate’s latest outrage: “Your published interview on possibility of election contest will absolutely kill ratification unless counteracted. No such question exists. Imperative that you should send message that having been convinced constitutional objection is not well founded you still urge Republicans to vote for ratification. That message must come before ten o’clock Wednesday morning. Notify me.”
Carrie Catt didn’t bother writing to Harding, addressing her complaint directly to RNC chairman Will Hays: “Harding’s letter to Tillman and morning paper interview has lost us votes and unless counteracted will bring defeat. The world will lay entire responsibility for defeat upon Harding. Immediate action is necessary. See Upton telegram to Harding. CCC.”
Hays, traveling between Marion and New York, didn’t see Catt’s wire until late Tuesday night. He telegraphed her near midnight: “Wire me any suggestions as to just what I should do.”
Upton received no reply from Harding.
* * *
The move to adjourn was a stealth act perfectly executed. Seth Walker was a masterful parliamentarian, manipulating rules and procedures like a scalpel in the hands of a skilled surgeon. He’d outmaneuvered the Suffs again. On the other hand, it might be taken as a sign that the Antis were frightened of a vote, that they were delaying in an effort to postpone defeat. That was a comforting notion to the Suffs, but they knew it was overly optimistic: the Antis were most likely postponing in an effort to fortify their numbers. Walker claimed a majority already, and the adjournment vote showed fifty-two siding with the Anti-led move, forty-four resisting. Several men who were on the Suffs’ lists as favorable had voted to adjourn; had they jumped the fence to the Antis? Or was it hunger and fatigue, and perhaps fear, propelling some of those “aye” votes for delay? The problem was, no one knew.
Both sides scrambled through the afternoon to fortify, and possibly augment, their lines. Charl Williams, with the encouragement of Mrs. Catt, called all suffragists to the Hermitage assembly rooms for a pep talk and assignment sign-up. Another poll must be taken by nightfall—find your delegates. Take them to dinner if you can, take them for a walk or drive if you’re able, take them to the moving pictures if you must, just keep them in your sight. Volunteers were needed for policing duties: the Hermitage hallways must be patrolled throughout the night to make sure delegates could not attempt to slip—or be spirited—away. Suffrage soldiers must guard the platforms and passenger rooms of Union Station, so no cowardly, or coerced, delegate could leave town before the vote. Be prepared for a night without sleep.
Joe Hanover hadn’t slept for several nights, and he hadn’t eaten much, either. He never did get lunch after the adjournment, and he wasn’t going to get any dinner tonight. He’d lost several pounds from his thin frame since the special session began. He reached into his jacket pocket for one of the graham crackers he kept there, his battlefield rations, and came up with crumb-coated fingers. With his clean hand he went through his delegate poll again, checking off the men who were solid and those who were not. Then he made his rounds.
By early evening the Hermitage lobby was more crowded and noisy than ever, the whole scene blanketed by a layer of cigar smoke. Suddenly a reporter for the Associated Press ran into the lobby, waving a long, narrow strip of paper torn from a newswire teletype machine. He stood in the center of the lobby and began reading the bulletin aloud in a booming voice: “In a surprise maneuver, the North Carolina Senate has voted to postpone consideration of the ratification of the 19th Amendment until the 1921 legislature. The vote was 25 to 23 to postpone.”
Anti sympathizers in the lobby lustily cheered the news, and red-corsaged women laughed with glee as word spread throughout the hotel. Seth Walker was especially pleased. Those women wearing yellow were visibly shaken and tried to hold back tears, and some men looked grim and shook their heads.
The vote in Raleigh was ominous to the Suffs in more ways than one. Not only did it mean that ratification was dead in North Carolina—the senate had been possible, in the house there was no chance—but it was the manner in which the Carolina Antis had finessed the senate vote that gave all suffragists in Nashville a fright. After hours of vicious debate the senators had been ready to vote, and the Suffs seemed to possess a slim margin to pass ratification. But b
efore a motion to ratify could be proposed, the Anti floor leader jumped in to make a motion to postpone. Nervous senators welcomed this easier route, a way to opt out of a contentious issue. It was much safer to simply avoid voting; they could claim they’d not really voted against woman suffrage, just wanted to think about it a bit longer. This was a ploy that might be replicated in Nashville tomorrow.
Lights burned late in the Hermitage as meetings and plotting continued, pleas were made and pressure applied. A knock on a delegate’s door might bring a visitor bearing gifts, or the promise of sex, or even the threat of kidnapping. Harriet Upton was awakened several times in the wee hours to learn that a Republican member was missing; a hunting party went out to find him. Men of the Ratification Committee began knocking on delegates’ doors every few hours to check on them.
Suff and Anti leaders plotted their moves and developed contingency plans in conferences that stretched well into the night. The mood at the nightly strategy meeting in Mrs. Catt’s room was particularly bleak, and the Suffs tearfully confessed their despair to one another. Even Catt gave up on any confident proclamations of majorities and victories. Every man who had been marked as “bribable” on her ledger had proven himself and moved to the Anti side. The latest poll showed that whatever majority the Suffs may have once possessed had evaporated. The count predicted ratification to fall short by two votes. The amendment, the Cause, and Carrie Catt’s life’s work, falling short.
As the meeting broke up and the Suffs returned to their rooms for a restless night, Carrie Catt caught Abby Milton’s sleeve. Milton’s heart ached to see the Chief appear so despondent, so close to seeming helpless. Milton was a religious woman, and she knew Catt was not, so she was startled when Catt leaned in to whisper: “Mrs. Milton, there is one more thing we can do—we can pray.”