by Elaine Weiss
this despicable rumor campaign: These rumors were circulating in June—see Catherine Kenny to Nettie Shuler, June 29, 1920, in Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, TSLA—detailed allegations were published in a letter by E. L. Wirt in the Putnam County Herald, July 29, 1920, quoted in Reichard, “Defeat of Governor Roberts,” 94–109.
the Tennessee Constitution: Article III, Section 32: “No convention or general assembly of this State shall act upon any amendment of the Constitution of the United States proposed by Congress to the several States, unless such convention or General Assembly shall have been elected after such amendment is submitted.”
As he’d told Mrs. Catt: A. H. Roberts to Catt, June 13, 1919, Catt Papers, TSLA.
Exactly a year later: “Hope of Early Extra Session is Doomed,” Nashville Tennessean, June 22, 1920.
the U.S. Supreme Court pulled: Hawke v. Smith (253 U.S. 231), argued April 23, 1920, decided June 1, 1920.
“It would be a real service”: Woodrow Wilson to Gov. A. H. Roberts, June 23, 1920, Roberts Papers, TSLA.
Frierson produced an opinion: Frierson’s opinion, contained in a letter to President Wilson, is reprinted in The Suffragist 8, no. 6. (July 1920): 121. Also, “Holds Tennessee Can Act At Once,” New York Times, June 25, 1920.
Tennessee suffragists screamed: Telegram, Sue White to Roberts, June 28, 1920, Roberts Papers, TSLA. Sue White’s plea to Roberts is in “Suffragists Ask Roberts for Extra Session Call,” Nashville Tennessean, June 20, 1920; White also asked U. S. Sen. Kenneth McKellar to urge Roberts, which he did: McKellar to Sue White, June 2, 1920, NWPP, LoC.
Democrats at their convention: “National Committee Calls on Governor,” Nashville Tennessean, June 26, 1920.
He was pelted: “Heavy Pressure is Brought for Special Session,” Nashville Tennessean, June 25, 1920. For other sources of pressure on Roberts see “Nation Awaits Action of Tennessee on Suffrage,” New York Tribune, June 28, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
from his own Tennessee delegation: See, for example, Abby Milton to Gov. Roberts, Western Union Telegram, June 27, 1920, Roberts Papers, TSLA.
he stalled: A. H. Roberts to Woodrow Wilson, June 25, 1920, Roberts Papers, TSLA.
ADMINISTRATION AGGRAVATED BY ROBERTS’ STAND: Nashville Tennessean, June 26, 1920.
still tied in knots: Democratic National Committee chairman Homer Cummings telephoned Roberts from the convention in San Francisco. Carol Lynn Yellin, Janann Sherman, and Ilene J. Cornwell, The Perfect 36: Tennessee Delivers Woman Suffrage (Memphis: Serviceberry Press, 1998), 83. Other examples include a telegram to Gov. Roberts from the Women Delegates to the Democratic Convention, June 27, 1920, Roberts Papers, TSLA.
“Some Republican state”: Yellin et al., Perfect 36, 83.
Roberts finally announced: “Roberts Tells of Plan to Call Extra Session,” Nashville Tennessean, July 2, 1920.
if he did not win renomination: Roberts to Catt, July 10, 1920; Kenny to Catt, July 11, 1920; and Catt to Kate Burch Warner, July 14, 1920. All in Catt Papers, TSLA.
nothing but headaches: Catt to Roberts, July 14, 1920; Catt to Marjorie Shuler, July 14, 1920. Both in Catt Papers, TSLA.
how can you expect: Roberts to Catt, July 10, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
Kenny and Milton had already told her: Kenny to Catt, July 11, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
the more the merrier: Catt to Kenny, July 14, 1920; Catt to Dudley, Milton, and Kenny, July 8; Catt to Abby Milton, July 12. All in Catt Papers, TSLA.
“Tennessee promising”: Catt to Nettie Shuler, NAWSA New York, July 18, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
Chapter 7: The Blessing
another bad night of nightmares: Wilson’s agitated state at this time is reported in Dr. Cary Grayson’s handwritten journal, July–September, 1920. Cary T. Grayson Papers, courtesy of Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum, Staunton, VA.
They were seeking: Accounts of this White House meeting are in “Party United, Wilson Says,” New York Times, July 19, 1920; “Cox Affirms Wilson Pledge,” Baltimore Sun, July 19, 1920; “Cox is Pleased with Visit,” Washington Post, July 191, 1920; and “Nominee Accepts Wilson Policy,” Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 1920.
Wilson didn’t want successors: A. Scott Berg, Wilson (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013), 688; David Pietrusza, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 191, 198–99.
But Wilson insisted: Berg, 617–18.
Three weeks out: Berg, 634–38; Phyllis Lee Levin, Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House (New York: Scribner, 2001), 330–31.
Three nights later: Berg, 641–42.
Since that night: Berg, 644–45.
The consulting doctors: Berg, 643.
She devised a set: Edith Bolling Wilson, My Memoir (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1939), 289, 302; Levin, 344.
Edith knew that Woodrow: Berg, 679–80; Wilson, My Memoir, 303; trepidation about Wilson’s reaction can be found in Dr. Grayson’s Journals, July 1920.
COX PROMISES TO HELP: Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1920, and Baltimore Sun, July 17, 1920.
“I give to you”: Baltimore Sun, July 17, 1920.
he was “thoroughly wet”: Pietrusza, 197. As governor of Ohio, Cox did support presidential suffrage. Suffragists’ qualms are expressed in letters from Woman’s Party headquarters to Ohio contacts, Alice Paul asking for inside information about Cox’s character and politics: Headquarters Secretary to Mrs. Cyrus Mead, July 6, 1920, and in a note to NWP Press Secretary Florence Boeckel from a reporter for the Detroit Journal’s Washington Bureau, claiming Cox was opposed to woman suffrage earlier in his career. Both in NWPP, LoC, reel #80. Antisuffragists also claimed Cox was known in Ohio for his ambivalence, or opposition, to woman suffrage. “Candidates on Suffrage,” Letter to the Editor, New York Times, July 17, 1920.
“It is true”: “Mrs. Catt Pins Faith to Tennessee Democrats,” Nashville Tennessean, July 17, 1920.
The way Roosevelt: Jean Edward Smith, FDR (New York: Random House, 2007), 82–83; Joseph Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1971), 213.
“I was shocked”: Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), 68, and Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. I: 1884–1933 (New York: Viking, 1992), 195.
“violently opposed”: Eleanor’s biographer Joseph Lash writes that she was “violently opposed” to women’s enfranchisement (Eleanor and Franklin, 159) but her modern biographer, Blanche Wiesen Cook, takes a more nuanced view of her indecision.
as the wife: Roosevelt, 68; Smith, 83.
Even after New York women: Lash, 290.
tried to avoid the issue: An excellent account of Wilson’s evolution on the subject of suffrage is Beth Behn, “Woodrow Wilson’s Conversion Experience: The President and the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment,” PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2012.
“I must say very frankly”: Woodrow Wilson to Witter Bynner, June 20, 1911, in Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), quoted in Behn, “Conversion Experience,” 27.
“The suffrage parade was too funny”: Eleanor Roosevelt to Isabella Ferguson, in Cook, 200.
Washington had never seen: There are many descriptions of the parade, including: “5,000 Women March, Beset by Crowds,” New York Times, March 4, 1913; “Mobs at Capital Defy Police, Block Suffrage Parade,” Chicago Tribune, March 4, 1913; “Parade of Suffragettes is Disrupted by Riots,” Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1913.
Within the next months: Inez Haynes Irwin, The Story of Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party (Fairfax, VA: Denlinger’s Publishers, Ltd., 1964), 33–35; Levin, 182; Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote (New York: Boni and Liverwright, 1920), 37–41.
The Wilsons allowed: Berg, 168.
“I believe th
at”: “Wilson Indorses Woman Suffrage,” New York Times, October 7, 1915; Berg, 376.
“On behalf of a million women”: Catt to President Wilson, October 7, 1915, Woodrow Wilson Papers, LoC, quoted in Behn, “Conversion Experience,” 61.
“The joke is”: Cary T. Grayson letter, October 19, 1915, quoted in Berg, 376.
Edith Bolling Galt: Biographical details from Miller, Ellen and Edith; Berg; and Levin.
The day after the wedding: “Support for Suffrage,” Washington Post, December 20, 1915.
their split with NAWSA: During the convention, in a last effort to reconcile the two groups, Catt and Paul met privately, but could not reach agreement. Paul reported that Catt walked out of the meeting after warning: “I will fight you to the last ditch.” Zahniser and Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 230.
The president was escorted: Emily Newell Blair and Virginia Jeans Laas, Bridging Two Eras: The Autobiography of Emily Newell Blair, 1877–1951 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 174–75.
When they began picketing: Levin, 180.
“What’s the use”: Paula Bartley, Emmeline Pankhurst (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2012), 204; and Mary Walton, A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot (New York: Macmillan, 2010), 154.
Catt called an emergency meeting: Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life (New York: Feminist Press, 1987), 138–39. Catt also reluctantly accepted President Wilson’s invitation to serve on the Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense during the war. Former NAWSA president Anna Howard Shaw was named the committee’s chairwoman, and, like Catt, found it to be without sufficient budget or clout, merely the government’s attempt to channel and control women’s wartime activities.
Catt paid a steep personal price: Van Voris, 138. Catt’s fellow suffragist and pacifist Jane Addams also supported the war and was also ostracized by the Peace Party.
“We have made partners”: Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 302–3; also text of this speech at Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library (www.woodrowwilson.org).
After their hour with the president: “Text of Statements . . . After Their Conference,” New York Times, July 19, 1920.
“I found the President”: Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 1920.
Chapter 8: On Account of Sex
“Well I have been”: Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Indianapolis and Kansas City: Bowen-Merrill Co., 1889), I: 431–46; Alma Lutz, Susan B. Anthony: Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), 198–216; Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 158–60; Jean H. Baker, Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 80–84.
And in Battle Creek: Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1996), 232; Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote: 1850–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 40.
“Ar’n’t I a Woman?”: Truth’s modern biographer, Nell Painter, questions whether Truth actually spoke these words, as was reported, and perhaps embroidered, by a writer who witnessed it at the Akron meeting. But Painter agrees that the symbolic power of the phrase was in keeping with Truth’s views and other statements and became an important part of her public legacy.
Susan Anthony and her cohorts: “Trial of Miss Susan B. Anthony for Illegal Voting,” New York Times, June 18, 1873; Harper, Susan B. Anthony, I: 431–46; Lutz, 209–16. Also, An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting (Rochester, NY: Daily Democrat and Chronicle Book, 1874).
The court ruled: Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875); Baker, 85; Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 160–63.
They found their champion: Lutz, 226–30; Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 165–69.
Stanton reported that during her testimony: Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 166.
at the 1890 National American Suffrage Association convention: This convention marked the rejoining of the National and American suffrage organizations, which had split in 1869.
Anthony assigned her: Van Voris, Catt, 30.
Everyone knew the vote: Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 283–84; Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1926), 320–23; Maud Wood Park, Front Door Lobby (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), 137–55.
Her friend Helen Gardener: Catt’s dress is discussed in Park, 149; Van Voris, 149.
When the Senate finally passed: Van Voris, 155.
They had to sit: Park, 258–67.
Catt listened quietly: Hyde to Peck, June 5, 1919, NAWSA papers, LoC, in Van Voris, 155.
She quickly dispatched: Van Voris, 155.
It was finally time: Van Voris, 149.
The first votes: Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 308–13; Catt and Shuler, 343–80 and 387–97.
Ohio suffragists celebrated: Harriet Upton Taylor to Catt, late June, 1919, quoted in Peck, 315–16.
Governor Ruffin Pleasant: Catt and Shuler, 353.
“I’d rather see”: Catt and Shuler, 354.
One Oklahoma Suff: Catt and Shuler, 391; The Woman Citizen, February 20, 1920.
“You thought you had”: Catt to Shuler, July 1, 1919, Catt Papers in the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College; quoted in Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 310.
A high school beau: Van Voris, 156.
In May 1920: Catt and Shuler, 400–401.
“lashed to the mast”: Clara Hyde to Catt, July 20, 1920, Catt Papers, LoC, reel #3.
“Things are interesting”: Sue Shelton White to Emma Wold, NWP headquarters, July 20, 1920, NWPP, LoC, reel #80.
During the agonizing Senate delays: Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 296–97.
“Knowing men pretty well”: Catt to Mrs. George Bass, July 12, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
“We are now so convinced”: Catt to Abby Milton, July 12, 1920. Catt Papers, TSLA.
It was easier: Catt to Abby Milton, July 12, 1920, and Catt to Bass, July 12, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA. The Woman’s Party expressed similar fears about the parties purposely thwarting ratification, for example see Emma Wold, Headquarters Secretary, to Dr. Gillette Hayden, July 8, 1920, and Wold to Mrs. William Kent, July 16, 1920, in NWPP, LoC. An analysis of the political parties’ reluctance is found in “Votes for Women Upset to Campaign Tactics,” Nashville Tennessean, August 21, 1920.
The chaos of a disputed White House: Catt and Shuler, 372; Chicago Daily Tribune, March 26, 1920.
Catt also heard: Catt and Shuler, 369–70.
Her demands were polite: “Democrats Can Win Votes of Women,” Nashville Tennessean, July 25, 1920.
“Get some kind”: Catt to Esther Ogden, July 19, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
“Nothing can give us”: Catt to Abby Milton, July 12, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
“I am exceedingly glad”: “Harding Comes Out Flatly on Suffrage Issue,” Nashville Tennessean, July 22, 1920.
Chapter 9: Front Porch
It sat on a limestone: Description of Harding’s house courtesy of Sherry Hall, site manager of the Harding Home Presidential Site, Marion, Ohio.
A Marion Civic Association: Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1920.
The “militants” had unfurled: Irwin, The Story of Alice Paul, 462.
“I could not”: “Harding Refuses to Urge Suffrage Action,” Baltimore Sun, June 23, 1920.
“It’s the same old bunk”: Ibid. Also, “Harding Holds Out Hope for Suffs,” Washington Post, June 23, 1920.
He kept promising: Harding’s promises and maneuvers concerning the Vermont and Connecticut governors are extensively discussed in the National Woman’s Party correspondence during late June and early July 1920, NWPP, LoC.
“I answer no”: “Harding Bars Advising Holcomb on Suffrage,” New
York Times, July 17, 1920.
Alice Paul loudly announced: “Militants Plan Raid on Harding,” New York Times, July 18, 1920; also New York Times, July 20, 1920.
Negotiations began: These negotiations are detailed in Alice Paul’s communications with the Woman’s Party liaisons to Harding in Ohio. See especially telegram of Gillette Hayden to Alice Paul, July 13, 1920; Alice Paul to Dr. Gillette Hayden, July 13, 1920; and Kenyon Rector to Alice Paul, July 13, 1920. All in NWPP, LoC.
Warren and Florence Harding: Biographical information on Warren and Florence Harding from: Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, American President series, http://millercenter.org/president/harding; National First Ladies Library, Canton, Ohio, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=30, and David Pietrusza, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents (New York: Basic Books, 2009).
The ceremonies began: Harding’s Notification Day is described in: “100,000 to Hear Harding Told He’s It,” Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1920; “Harding Day,” Chicago Tribune, July 22, 1920; “Harding Pledges Aid for Suffrage Cause,” Baltimore Sun, July 22, 1920; “Harding Defines His Stand Today,” New York Times, July 22, 1920; “In Harding’s Hometown,” Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1920; “Grand Old Party Takes Firm Stand,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1920; “30,000 Try To Hear Harding’s Speech,” New York Times, July 23, 1920; “Notification of Mr. Harding Held,” Christian Science Monitor, July 23, 1920; “Normalcy and Prompt Pledge,” Washington Post, July 23, 1920. Newsreel of the event can be found at www.loc.gov/item/mp76000342/.
In the doorway: Albert Lasker was on leave from his Chicago advertising agency, working for the Republican National Committee as director of publicity; see Pietrusza, chapter 19, “Back to Normal,” and John A. Morello, Selling the President, 1920: Albert Lasker, Advertising, and the Election of Warren G. Harding (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001).