by Elaine Weiss
Joe Hanover was in antic motion on the floor. He was threading between desks, grabbing elbows, thrusting his chin toward ears, confronting and cajoling delegates in the minutes before the vote on ratification began. If he needed to speak to one of the men privately, he pulled him into one of the committee rooms or cloakrooms at the side of the chamber. Hanover was pulling over delegates who still might be wobbly, and there weren’t too many of them left; the lines were fixed. Banks Turner had saved the day on that last vote to table—that roll call had felt like a near-death experience to Hanover—but there was no knowing whether Turner was going to stick with the Suffs on this next, decisive vote. And even if he did, even if Turner defied Seth Walker again, it wouldn’t do the trick: the vote would be tied and ratification would die. Hanover needed two more solid votes, and he had no hope of finding them.
The clerk shuffled the papers on his desk in preparation for beginning the roll call once again. The tension in the chamber was almost painful, given the stress and heat. Josephine Pearson felt a surge of excitement. Abby Milton and Catherine Kenny recognized they could do nothing more to steer the decision; it was out of their hands. It was just as Mrs. Catt had predicted, just as she’d told them: “No matter how well the women may work, or how effective their results may be, ratification in Tennessee will go through the work and action of men,” she’d warned, “and the great motive that will finally put it through will be political and nothing else.” Not justice, not fairness. Politics—Tennessee politics, presidential politics—might put ratification through, or it would kill it.
Chief Clerk John Green started from the top again, in a slow, careful cadence. “Anderson . . . Bell . . .”
Harry Burn heard his name called. He knew most of his constituents in McMinn County didn’t want woman suffrage and were even more vehemently opposed to the federal amendment. His colleague and legal mentor, Harry Candler, was dead set against ratification. Certain political leaders had warned him, in graphic terms, that for the sake of his own political career he’d best vote for rejection. He was painfully torn. Personally, he favored giving women the vote, he thought it was only fair and right, but Burn wanted his constituents to reelect him in the fall. He wanted a political career. He was supporting his widowed mother back in Niota as an agent for the local railroad, and his father had been stationmaster of the Niota depot for thirty years. The railroad was against the amendment, too. Rejection was the safest course. But now, with Banks Turner possibly flipping, suddenly siding with the Suffs, and maybe creating a tie, ratification could hinge on a single vote. His. It was the scenario he’d most feared. The sound of his name echoed in his ears.
In his jacket pocket, inches below the red rose on his lapel, sat the letter that had arrived earlier in the morning, addressed to him at the Capitol building, written in a fine, very familiar hand: “Dear Son: Hurrah and vote for suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt. I noticed Chandler’s [sic] speech, it was very bitter. I’ve been waiting to see how you stood but have not seen anything yet. Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt. . . . With lots of love, Mama.”
“Aye,” said Harry Burn.
Sue White’s pencil froze on her tally sheet. The clerk moved on to call George Canale. Burn’s reply was so unexpected, uttered so quickly and flatly, that few in the chamber reacted at all for several moments. Perhaps they’d heard it wrong. Perhaps the young legislator had gotten confused. But as the clerk moved deeper into the “C” names, a low murmur bubbled up in the galleries and swelled to fill the chamber, a throaty rumble of astonishment as it all sank in: Harry Burn had just voted “aye” for ratification.
Suffs rose to their feet and roared, overpowering the clerk’s voice. The roll call had to be suspended, and it took several minutes to regain order. Seth Walker and the rest of the Anti delegation of the house drilled their eyes on Burn and slapped their knees in disgust with the fickle young lawmaker who’d said he was with them. Anita Pollitzer and Betty Gram, squeezed by the crowd, expressed their amazed joy vertically and vocally, bouncing up and down while shrieking.
“My vote will never hurt you,” Burn had told them, but he’d given them no good reason to believe him. So this was what he’d meant.
Of course, Burn brought them to a tie, and only if Banks Turner remained with them could they inch ahead to win. They hushed themselves and sat through the rest of the roll call in agony.
Seth Walker did not. He walked over to stand next to Banks Turner. The hall hushed as the clerk rounded past the S names and headed into the Ts. Walker was again whispering to Turner. The clerk called, “Tarrant”—aye. “Thronesbury”—no. “Travis”—no. “Tucker”—aye. “Turner . . .”
Silence. Banks Turner did not reply. “Mr. Turner,” the clerk called again. Again silence. A great shout of satisfaction went up from the Antis on the floor and in the galleries. Suffs bit their lips. Joe Hanover stood frozen at his desk. Harry Burn swiveled his head over his left shoulder to watch Turner. Seth Walker stood in the aisle next to Turner. “Mr. Turner,” the clerk called once more. Turner remained silent, his face contorted by the strain of the moment. The clerk marked Turner as not voting and moved on: “Vinson”—no. Soft sobbing could be heard in the balconies.
The roll call spiraled toward its conclusion with the Ws, and the Antis leaned forward in happy anticipation as the final set of names was called, a solid phalanx of seven nays. Then the clerk called: “Speaker Walker.” And Seth Walker shouted, “No.” The tally was 48 to 48. The amendment was defeated. All the Antis, including Josephine Pearson, were on their feet again, ready to cheer, but before any sound could leave their throats, Banks Turner abruptly stood up from his chair.
Turner was a thin man, and even though he was still young, his reddish hair was thinning and receding, making his forehead, covered with beads of perspiration, prominent. His eyelids drooped and his lower lip jutted out as he took a breath, then spoke.
“Mr. Speaker,” Turner said, “I wish to be recorded as voting Aye.”
There was a long moment of silence, silence and shock. Then an explosion, a roar never before heard in the old statehouse. The chamber shook with screams and cries, with thumping and whooping. Anne Dudley’s shriek pierced the chamber. Those who could dance in the jammed chamber did, and there was weeping among both men and women. The winners frantically waved hundreds of tiny yellow flags and threw yellow flowers down onto the heads of the legislators on the floor. Joe Hanover was mobbed by delegates, like the winning pitcher of a ball game. Hanover and his ratification men ripped the yellow roses from their lapels and tossed them up into the balconies, where they met the yellow petals raining down.
Overton, helpless in the Speaker’s chair, didn’t even try to gain control of the chamber. The clerk hadn’t even announced the tally, but the Suffs didn’t care, they could count. With Burn, and then Turner, it was 49 to 48. But through the uproar a loud voice rang out. It was Seth Walker, his arm outstretched, his face flushed. “Mr. Speaker,” he called out, “I wish to change my vote from Nay to Aye.” The Suffs were too busy celebrating to pay much attention. “And,” Walker shouted over the din, “I wish to move for reconsideration.” It was a Machiavellian move, buying his side time. By changing his vote to the winning side, he could claim the right to bring the ratification question back for another vote anytime within the next two days.
But none of that mattered at this moment. The winners were too relieved, too overjoyed. Walker’s vote gave the suffragists a valuable gift: the fiftieth vote, an unassailable constitutional majority. An emotional chorus of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” drifted through the statehouse.
Carrie Catt could hear the wild commotion from her window, and she knew. Yellow-draped messengers were running down the hill toward the Hermitage to give her the news she had been waiting a lifetime to hear. Harriet Upton’s heart began to pound in her chest as she watched the Suffs cascade down the hill.
Alice Paul, waiting in Washington, received a rush wire from Nashville. She rose, went to her worktable, stitched the thirty-sixth star onto the long cloth banner she’d created to chart the course of ratification, and unfurled it from the window of National Woman’s Party headquarters.
But the fight was not over.
Chapter 22
Liberty Bell
THE SUFFS CELEBRATED while the Antis seethed. The happy pandemonium in the house chamber gave way to visceral anger as the Antis focused their rage upon Harry Burn.
They hurled insults and threats from the galleries. Governor Roberts ordered the sergeant at arms to protect Burn, who decided to take matters into his own hands and slipped into the clerk’s room at the side of the chamber, climbed out a window, scooted along a narrow ledge, then climbed back in the next window, into the state legislative library. A startled librarian watched Burn jump into the library, descend its wrought-iron spiral staircase, make his way into the lobby, around the back of the sergeant at arms, and out of the Capitol. Although Burn could make this swashbuckling physical escape, the Antis would pursue him in other ways.
The Suffs’ bubble of euphoria was quickly pricked by a disturbing realization: Seth Walker’s move for reconsideration in the final chaotic moments of the session had put a giant question mark over the ratification. House rules gave Walker control of the reconsideration motion for the next three days, and he could call it up for a vote at any time. If a majority of the members present in the chamber agreed to reconsider the ratification, erasing the original vote, the amendment could still be rejected. In this game of legislative do-over, it was a matter of which side could muster the most men at any instant. In the skilled hands of a parliamentarian such as Speaker Walker, reconsideration could be a lethal weapon.
The Suffs needed to maintain their strength, and their forces, for several more days. They couldn’t afford to lose a single one of the forty-nine men who had voted for ratification, and all of them must remain on call to rally to the statehouse in defense of ratification at the drop of a hat. If the Antis could pick off just one of those ratification delegates, everything the Suffs had accomplished could be reversed. The Antis were defiant, insisting that their victory had been only slightly postponed. “The fight is not over by any means,” insisted Judge Higgins of the Tennessee Constitutional League. It was going to be a very long seventy-two hours.
Despite their frustration and continued anxiety, there must have been quite a joyous scene in room 309 of the Hermitage, when the singing, dancing Tennessee Suffs returned from the Capitol to celebrate with Carrie Catt. Catt wanted to share this moment with Mollie, but Mollie was a thousand miles away. She could, however, improvise a happy little ratification dance, a reprise of the jig she’d stepped to express her glee in celebration of congressional passage of the amendment. A jubilant Anne Dudley could finally feel that her faith in the men of the legislature was vindicated, as enough of them had proven gallant and brave when it counted. “It has been the greatest battle ever fought in the history of Tennessee, against such odds that it seemed that only a miracle could save us,” she gushed, “but the honor of Tennessee has been upheld by the men of the Volunteer State.” Abby Milton called it the happiest day of her life and truly believed it was divine providence that moved Seth Walker to unwittingly give the Suffs that fiftieth vote, affording them an unassailable constitutional majority. Now they must hold that majority intact.
A breathless Sue White dictated a report to Alice Paul; White’s colleagues at headquarters replied: “Splendid Work. Hold the Fort.”
While the Suffs in Nashville understood that their work was not yet done, the rest of the world assumed the house vote was the final step for women’s enfranchisement, and thousands of congratulatory messages from around the world poured into Nashville, NAWSA’s offices in New York City, and National Woman’s Party headquarters in Washington. Some gave full credit for the victory to Carrie Catt (“Only you could have brought victory”), while others accorded that honor to Alice Paul (“I know who won it for us all! Almost single handed you’ve given this generation of women their political freedom”).
“The civilization of the world is saved,” exclaimed James Cox, in anticipation of women voters supporting the League of Nations.
“All along I have wished for the completion of ratification and have said so,” Warren Harding said rather defensively, “and I am glad to have all the citizenship of the United States take part in the presidential elections.”
Catt had had lots of time to think about what she might say when the time came, and true to form, she projected nothing but certainty that ratification was won and the “hour of victory” arrived. She issued a statement of fierce optimism and simple eloquence:
Our mothers began it. So it came on to us as, in a way, a sacred trust. And a great part of our rejoicing today in the hour of victory is compounded of our feeling of loyalty to the past and our satisfaction that we have stood faithful to its trust.
Now that it is all over, the feeling of “ceaselessness” is probably the sensation uppermost with us all, and perhaps that is just as well that it should be. For women cannot stop. The National cannot stop. With a new purpose, the purpose of making the vote register for an improved citizenship, the women of the National are already lined up under a new name, the League of Women Voters.
Sue White enjoyed a congratulatory telegram from her brother in San Francisco and from friends who wired, “Bully for Tennessee and Hurrah for You,” while a North Carolina admirer cheered: “Remember Stonewall, Hold the Line for the Honor of the South. God Bless You.” But she could take special delight in the compliment given to her and the Woman’s Party by former Tennessee governor Ben Hooper, who wired to Alice Paul: “I want you militants to join the Republican party. I know live people when I see them and you are the kind we need.”
Alice Paul had already given the press a prime photo opportunity: the well-rehearsed unfurling of her ratification banner from the balcony of headquarters, a Rapunzel-like scene complete with young Woman’s Party staffers, dressed in white, applauding the long, starry banner. Then she posed beside the banner, raising a celebratory wineglass (filled with grape juice, no doubt) to toast the thirty-sixth state. By afternoon she also gave reporters a valedictory statement, but Paul’s vision for the enfranchised woman was not merely as an educated voter, but as a committed activist for true equality:
The victory of women today completes the political democracy of America and enfranchises half the people of a great nation. . . . With the power to vote achieved women still have before them the task of supplementing political equality with equality in other fields. In state and national legislation, as well as in other fields, women are not yet on an equal basis with men. The vote will make it infinitely easier for them to end all discriminations and they will use the vote towards that end.
Paul could not possibly imagine just how long that task would take or that she would devote the rest of her life to achieving it.
They didn’t have to wait long for the first assaults.
In a series of closed-door meetings throughout the afternoon and evening, the Anti leadership hammered out a multipronged plan to discredit the legitimacy of the house’s ratification vote while pumping up pressure on those delegates who’d voted to ratify. They generated an avalanche of reproach directed at those who’d supported ratification, with the goal of delivering to each man at least a hundred protest telegrams. They also announced a mass meeting “To Save the South” at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for the next evening and planned “indignation” rallies around the state in the districts of legislators who voted for the amendment. If they could frighten one man, they could win.
And they had special plans for Harry Burn. By evening a group of leading Antis, including Edward Stahlman and Charlotte Rowe, had invented an elaborate scenario to explain Burn’s sudden reversal on ratification: he’d been bribed. By Joe H
anover.
They came up with “witnesses” willing to describe a sordid scene of corruption in the minutes before the final vote on ratification. It was a complete fiction, something out of a pulp novel: Harry Burn dragged by his lapels into a side room off the chamber, where Joe Hanover roughed him up and offered the guileless legislator “anything in the world he wanted,” with the promise of making him “the biggest man in Tennessee” and a payment of $10,000. Dazed and frightened, Burn was then shoved back into the chamber, the convenient witnesses claimed, where he immediately changed his vote to “aye” and put ratification over the top. Late on Wednesday, a delegation of Antis confronted Burn with these affidavits and gave him a choice: Don’t show up for the vote to reconsider ratification tomorrow, and we won’t publish these accusations in the Banner. Stick with the Suffs and your reputation will be destroyed.
The first thing Harry Burn did after escaping from the statehouse and returning to his hotel room was to place a long-distance telephone call to his mother in Niota. Febb Burn was delighted to hear from her son and even more delighted when he told her he’d received her letter and taken her advice and his vote for ratification had put it through.
Phoebe (Febb) Ensminger Burn was a sharp-witted, college-educated woman who read several newspapers every day and kept abreast of current events. Febb thought it was ridiculous that women couldn’t vote: her hired hands, who owned no land and paid no taxes (and in some cases couldn’t even read or write), were permitted to vote, but she, an educated, tax-paying woman, could not. It was the same predicament Carrie Catt’s mother had faced in Iowa a half century before. Febb Burn resented having no say in her country’s affairs and believed giving women the ballot would purify politics. “I am for progress,” she’d say, explaining her pro-suffrage attitude, which was not a popular stand in Niota.