by Elaine Weiss
White’s train from Nashville: Alice Paul to Florence Boeckel, NWP headquarters, Washington, July 21, 1920, NWPP, LoC. Accounts of this meeting in The Suffragist, August 1920; Irwin, 465.
Her tiny body: Descriptions of Alice Paul and her leadership qualities drawn from J. D. Zahniser and Amelia R. Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Irwin; and Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote (New York: Boni and Liverwright, 1920).
The women, all dressed: Descriptions and photographs of the “notification” event are in The Suffragist, August 1920; LoC newsreel footage, https://www.loc.gov/item/mp7600 0342/, and “Women Displeased by Harding Stand,” New York Times, July 23, 1920.
Slammed together in a “Black Maria”: Louisine Havemeyer, “Memories of a Militant: The Prison Special,” Scribners, May 1922.
“Fifty-six years ago”: Ibid.
He folded his arms: Harding’s demeanor while listening is discerned from photographs in The Suffragist, August 1920, and LoC newsreel.
When Harding was asked: Pietrusza, 225.
The baby was safely: Pietrusza, 79–81.
Harding had not yet bothered: Pietrusza, 217, quoting Nan Britton, The President’s Daughter (New York: Elizabeth Ann Guild, Inc., 1927), 134–35.
They’d been carrying on: Pietrusza, 74–75.
and in the spring: Harding’s replies to Carrie Phillips’s threats are among the 240 pieces of correspondence (including Harding’s steamy love letters to Phillips) available in the Manuscript Division of the LoC, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/collmss.ms000023; also discussed in Pietrusza, 88–89; Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Florence Harding, 179–84.
she threatened to expose: Harding discusses these negotiations with Phillips in his letter of July 2, 1920, in the Harding-Phillips correspondence, LoC. Also discussed in Pietrusza, 319–20, and New York Times, July 10, 1964.
“To what these ladies”: The Suffragist, August 1920.
At two o’clock: New York Times, July 23, 1920; Washington Post, July 23, 1920.
Harding wrote the speech: “Harding Finishes Acceptance Speech,” New York Times, July 18, 1920.
the inimitable words of journalist H. L. Mencken: in John W. Dean, Warren G. Harding (New York: Macmillan, 2004), 73.
“The womanhood of America”: Text of Harding’s acceptance speech in New York Times, July 23, 1920.
“If Sen. Harding refuses”: “Women Displeased by Harding’s Stand,” New York Times, July 23, 1920.
Paul threatened to follow: Ibid.
Chapter 10: Home and Heaven
“They call us”: In “Antis will fight,” Chattanooga Times, July 18, 1920.
Rowe set off on: In “South Sees Peril in Suffrage,” The Woman Patriot 3, no. 21 (September 6, 1919).
“Miss Rowe earned her spurs”: New York Evening World, August 9, 1920.
“They Shall Not Pass!”: This phrase was used frequently in antisuffrage literature. For example, in The Woman Patriot, May 24, 1919; October 4, 1919; and March 6, April 10, and May 1, 1920.
“Some women have”: Rowe’s testimony is in “Extending the Right of Suffrage to Women: Hearings Before the Committee on Woman Suffrage,” House of Representatives, Sixty-Fifth Congress, on H. J. Res 200. January 3–7, 1918, 323.
“But if you everlastingly”: Ibid.
“If working girls”: Ibid.
“Feminism is intimately”: “Suffragettes will Ignore Antis,” Tulsa (OK) World, May 26, 1918.
“Unless America prevents”: Ibid.
“The idea that”: Ida M. Tarbell, The Business of Being a Woman (New York: Macmillan Co., 1912), chapter 8.
“There is some limitation”: Addams is quoted in Dr. Paula Treckels, “Ida Tarbell and the Business of Being a Woman,” Chautauqua Institute lecture, 1997. Reprinted on the Web site of Tarbell’s alma mater, Allegheny College, http://sites.allegheny.edu/tarbell/ida-tarbell-and-the-business-of-being-a-woman. Additional discussion of Tarbell’s anti-suffrage views can be found in “Ida Tarbell: The Making of an Anti,” in Camhi, Women Against Women, and Robert Stinson, “Ida Tarbell and the Ambiguities of Feminism,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 101, no. 2 (April 1977): 217–39.
Meyer was just: Biographical sketches of Meyer appear in Linda Kerber, “Annie Nathan Meyer,” in Notable American Women: The Modern Period, A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 473-4; also in the biographical sketch accompanying the finding aid for Meyer’s papers in the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio; also in Stephen Birmingham, The Grandees (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 310–9, “The Embattled Sisters.”
Charlotte Rowe used Meyer’s: Rowe did not employ the arguments of another outspoken antisuffragist, the anarchist Emma Goldman, who believed the franchise was little more than another type of opium for the masses, affording a fake sense of civic power, a distraction from the real work of revolution.
before Rowe’s own eyes: “Antis Will Fight,” Chattanooga Times, July 18, 1920.
First from the: Everett P. Wheeler to Gov. Albert Roberts, June 28, 1920, reprinted in The Woman Patriot, July 10, 1920.
Adoption of the amendment: William L. Marbury to Hon. Albert Roberts, July 19, 1920, reprinted in The Woman Patriot, July 31, 1920.
“The home loving women”: Mrs. James S. Pinckard to Gov. James Cox, July 26, 1920, reprinted in The Woman Patriot 4, no. 31 (July 31, 1920).
“I have ever an ear”: W. G. Harding to Mrs. Horace Brock, July 6, 1920, quoted in “Anti-Suffragists Also Rap Harding,” New York Times, July 16, 1920.
Harding had no desire: “Harding Bars Advising Holcombe on Suffrage,” New York Times, July 17, 1920.
He was caught: “Democrats Can Win Votes of Women,” Nashville Tennessean, July 25, 1920. Also in “Anti-Suffragists Also Rap,” New York Times, July 16, 1920.
“It is my earnest”: “Harding Urges Vote on Suffrage,” New York Times, July 24, 1920.
“put those frills”: John Vertrees to Josephine Pearson, February 8, 1917, Pearson Papers, TSLA, quoted in Elna C. Green, Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 119. See also Sarah P. Bradford to Miss Pearson, February 6, 1917, Pearson Papers, TSLA, in Green, Southern Strategies, 119.
She’d already sent: in Carol Lynn Yellin et al., Perfect 36, 89.
“The fate of white civilization”: Letter to Dear Sir or Madam from Josephine Pearson, President of the Tennessee Division of the Southern Women’s League for the Rejection of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, Nashville, July 9, 1920, Pearson Papers, TSLA.
Chapter 11: The Woman’s Hour
Southern women abhor: “Asks Mrs. Catt to Explain Statement,” n.d. (probably Nashville Banner, July 24, 1920), in Catt papers, TSLA. Also printed in The Woman Patriot 4, no. 31 (July 31, 1920): 2, reprinted as “Questions for Mrs. Catt,” published by Southern Women’s Rejection League, in Pearson Papers, TSLA.
“Pure buncombe”: Catt uses this phrase in her reply. See “Mrs Catt Answers Charges,” Chattanooga Times, July 26, 1920.
“The ‘nigger question’”: Catt to Catherine Kenny, June 29, 1920, Catt papers, TSLA.
At the close of the Civil War: For detailed discussion of this period see Faye E. Dudden, Fighting Chance: The Struggle over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), and Brenda Wineapple, Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848–1877 (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), chapter 20, 450–475; also Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), chapter 2.
“If that word male”: E. C. Stanton to Gerrit Smith, January 1, 1866, quoted in Flexner and Fitzpatrick,137; DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 61; and in Wineapple, 453.
/> “I will cut off this right arm”: Philip S. Foner, ed., Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1976), 33; also in Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 138.
“press in through that constitutional door”: Stanton and Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton as Revealed in Her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences, vol. 2. (New York and London: Harper Brothers, 1922), 109.
“It is with us a matter”: Proceedings of the American Equal Rights Association, May 1868, in Foner, Frederick Douglass, 84.
“When women . . . because she is black”: Proceedings of the American Equal Rights Association convention, New York City, May 12, 1869, in Foner, Frederick Douglass, 87.
Stanton and Anthony descended: E. C. Stanton editorial, “Women and Black Men,” in her newspaper Revolution, February 4, 1869, and similar sentiments expressed in other issues, cited in Dudden, Fighting Chance, 3; Foner, Frederick Douglass, 30–33; and also Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 138.
In a cynical ploy: Foner, Frederick Douglass, 30.
“Think of Patrick”: E. C. Stanton, “Manhood Suffrage,” December 24, 1868, in Ann D. Gordon, ed., The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), II: 196.
George Francis Train: For an incisive discussion of Train’s relationship with Stanton and Anthony see Wineapple, chapter 20, “Deep Water.”
“If the Devil steps forward”: Gordon, Selected Papers, II: 117; also quoted in Wineapple, 259.
“willing to be part”: Foner, Frederick Douglass, 39.
“There are few facts”: F. Douglass, “The Woman’s Suffrage Movement,” address to the International Council of Women, March 31, 1888, in Foner, Frederick Douglass, 113.
“I did not want to subject him”: Ida Wells-Barnett, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 229–30. Also related in Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 111.
her framed portrait: Cedar Hill, Douglass’s house in Anacostia, D.C., is preserved as a National Park Service Historic Site. The portraits of Anthony and Stanton are displayed as they were during his residence, according to the National Park Service.
Anthony eulogized her friend: Account of Douglass’s funeral, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 26, 1895.
“Frederick Douglass is not dead!”: Letter from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in Helen Douglass, ed., In Memoriam: Frederick Douglass (Philadelphia: J. C. Yorston & Co., 1897), 44–45.
“The relation of our leaders”: Carrie Catt to Mrs. Blake, New York, March 7, 1895, Cleveland Historical Society, quoted in Foner, Frederick Douglass, 43.
In 1903, when racist southern suffragists: The racial policies forged at the 1903 New Orleans convention are discussed in Elna C. Green, Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 10–11, and in Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, New Women of the New South: Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (Oxford, UK, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 118–19.
It was a matter of simple mathematics: Suffragists used this census argument for many years, and in attempting to defuse the “boogie” of the Negro Question in the ratification fight in Tennessee, The Woman Citizen published the latest available white-black census figures for the state in its July 5, 1920, issue. An example of Alice Paul’s use of this tactic can be found in the broadside “Will the Federal Suffrage Amendment Complicate the Race Problem?,” published by the Congressional Union, found in Caroline Katzenstein Papers (Record 10442), Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
But Paul refused: Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching (New York: Amistad, 2008), 5141–9.
“Negro men cannot vote”: Alice Paul’s statement is in “Willing to Sacrifice Colored Women,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 21, 1919, and in Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote: 1850–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 130. The statement is also quoted in Belinda Southard, “The National Woman’s Party’s Militant Campaign for Woman Suffrage: Asserting Citizenship Rights through Political Mimesis,” PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 2008, 477–78.
Black suffragists such as Wells: Wells’s impassioned pleas for white suffragists to stand up for black women, including her refutations of Susan B. Anthony’s expedient compromises, are chronicled in both Giddings and Terborg-Penn. Church Terrell’s distinguished career in civil rights and woman suffrage is described in her autobiography, Colored Woman in a White World (Amherst, NY: Humanity Book, 2005); also see Cherisse Jones-Branch, “Mary Church Terrell: Revisiting the Politics of Race, Class, and Gender,” in Sara Wilkerson Freeman and Beverly Greene Bond, Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times, vol. 1 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 68–92; and in Terborg-Penn. Dr. DuBois’s championship of woman suffrage can be found in his speeches and writings, including many editorials in NAACP’s The Crisis. These are documented in Jean Fagan Yellin, “DuBois’ Crisis and Woman’s Suffrage,” Massachusetts Review 14, no. 2 (Spring 1973): 365–75.
Catt refused to endorse: Catt’s hesitancy on the topic of birth control is discussed in Van Voris, Catt, 260.
Personally, Catt was offended: Once suffrage was won, Catt felt freer to express her views on racial issues. For example, in 1921 she denounced vicious accusations made against black U.S. troops stationed in Europe (“The Truth About Black Troops on the Rhine,” The Woman Citizen, March 5, 1921) and in 1924 she expressed her disgust with segregated hotels in Washington, D.C., which would not lodge black delegates to a peace convention she organized (Van Voris, 201).
“You ask if I”: Catt reply to the Chattanooga Times, July 21, 1920, reprinted in the Nashville Tennessean, July 26, 1920.
Chapter 12: Cranking the Machine
“I have come to help you”: Catt to Tennessee League of Women Voters, Nashville, July 21, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
“Roll up your sleeves”: Quoted in Gertrude Brown autobiography, unpublished manuscript, Gertrude Brown Papers, Schlesinger Library; also in Van Voris, 129.
“That unheard from number”: Catt to Tennessee League of Women Voters, Nashville, July 21, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
“Please hasten now”: Ibid.
The pledges already in hand: Catt to Tennessee League of Women Voters, Nashville, July 21, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
Now Ogden offered: “Mrs. Catt Sends Vote Plea,” New York Times, July 20, 1920; “Ogden to Bring Message from Cox,” Nashville Tennessean, n.d. (approx. July 23, 1920).
“We did a whizzing business”: Van Voris, 33–34.
Anthony was so fascinated: Alma Lutz, Susan B. Anthony: Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), 262–64.
Cody invited Anthony: Lutz, 264. Cody’s invitation followed Anthony’s public defense of his Wild West show performing on Sundays; many clergymen had denounced the Sabbath performances.
“The cartoonists had pictured”: Van Voris, 33.
the suffragists undertook: Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1926), 107.
“How long will it delay”: Van Voris, 129.
On election night: Van Voris, 147.
were roaming the countryside: Catt and Shuler, 437; Abby Crawford Milton, “Report of the Tennessee League of Women Voters,” 1920, Abby Crawford Milton Papers, TSLA, 6–8.
On the second floor: “Mrs Catt Talks to Kiwanis Club,” Nashville Banner, July 23, 1920; “Mrs Catt Defends Ratification Plans,” Nashville Tennessean, July 24, 1920.
Tennessee Bar Association: “Says Ohio Case Does Not Apply,” Chattanooga Daily Times, July 22, 1920; Catt and Shuler, 434.
Stahlman had limped: Biograph
ical details from Stahlman obituaries in Nashville Banner, August 12, 1930; New York Times, August 13, 1930; “EB Stahlman, A Friend’s Appreciation,” Nashville Banner, August 12, 1930; “A Famous Southerner,” New York Times, August 14, 1920.
His feud with Luke Lea: Details from Robert O’Brien, “The U.S. Government’s Investigation of E. B. Stahlman as an Enemy Alien: A Case Study of Nativism in Nashville,” master’s thesis, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, 1996.
argue against entry: One example of Stahlman’s resistance to war policy can be found in “Publishers Oppose Espionage Measure,” New York Times, April 24, 1917.
“a Hun by birth”: Nashville Tennessean, May 13, 1918, quoted in O’Brien, 120.
beat the drum for Stahlman: Nashville Tennessean, June 3, 1918, quoted in O’Brien, 4.
Stahlman defended himself: Stahlman also signed onto the ultra-patriotic “100% American” groups which sprouted during the war. Stahlman joined journalist Ida Tarbell as a director of the American League for National Unity, among other organizations. “War on Hyphenism is Aim of New Body,” Washington Post, April 20, 1917.
Catt didn’t pussyfoot around: Details of Catt’s speech in “Catt Talks to Kiwanis Club,” Nashville Banner, July 23, 1920, and “Catt Defends Ratification Plans,” Nashville Banner, July 24, 1920.
“Suffrage is all the rage now”: “Cox Has Won Many Votes in Tn. for Women,” New York Evening World, July 26, 1920, Catt Papers, TSLA.
It would appear: Press Release, July 25, Abby Milton Papers, TSLA; “Tennessee Safe for Suffrage Says Mrs. Catt,” Nashville Tennessean, July 26, 1920; “Poll Suffrage Majority,” Washington Post, July 26, 1920.
It was the Banner’s publication: Nashville Banner, July 25, 1920.
Chapter 13: Prison Pin
“It’s all bluff”: Sue White to Alice Paul, July 26, 1920, NWPP, LoC.
a whirl of presidential candidates: “Gov. Cox Will Urge Suff Measure,” Chattanooga News, July 20, 1920; “Nominees Strive to Win Tennessee,” New York Times, July 23, 1920; “Militants Counting on Democrats Now,” New York Times, July 25, 1920.