by Elaine Weiss
But even now, in summer 1920, Carrie Catt’s fight for the Leslie money wasn’t over. Another distant relative had recently filed suit to overturn Catt’s claim on the estate, contending that Catt had somehow bewitched Mrs. Leslie into bequeathing her fortune to suffrage. Catt had to again wearily deny this, but the suit was going forward. The Leslie money hadn’t exactly come without cost, not without a mighty amount of travail and headache and worry, but it had come, and Catt was grateful. Catt paid tribute to Mrs. Leslie every week, in every issue of The Woman Citizen, where above the masthead was placed a bold-bordered box containing a dedication to Miriam Leslie and “her faith in the irresistible progress of women.”
* * *
Mrs. Catt and Marjorie returned to Nashville on Thursday afternoon, August 5, the day of the Tennessee primary. Men around the state were going to the polls; all of the candidates expressed full confidence that they would win their contests. The results of the primary would determine who’d held on to power, who’d won it, and who had lost it. Governor Roberts’s future, and his attitude toward ratification, would hopefully be clarified. He would, or would not, call the special session. The men who won the vacant seats in the legislature could tip the ratification polling numbers. But no one really knew.
Catt looked fatigued and had pale, dark rings under her eyes. She moved back into her room on the third floor of the Hotel Hermitage; in her absence, the hotel had filled with more Antis. Mrs. Ruffin Pleasant had arrived, wife of the former governor of Louisiana and, as Josephine Pearson described her, “the daughter of Maj. Gen. Ector, who had three horses shot under him at the battle of Lookout Mountain.” Pleasant and her husband had been instrumental in defeating ratification in the Louisiana legislature, and they’d come to Nashville to apply their skills in Tennessee. Many more Antis from around the country were expected soon.
There was little to do but wait.
Upon her return, the weary Catt, who could have no fonder wish than for a quiet nap under the ceiling fan, found in her hotel mailbox a galling note from Josephine Pearson. It was the paper equivalent of a slap of white gloves on her cheek: a challenge to a duel.
Having warmed up with her scalding letter to James Cox, Pearson enjoyed turning her rhetorical flamethrower toward Catt, challenging her to a verbal duel—a public debate—against the Antis’ knight-errant, Charlotte Rowe. Taking the role of a proper “second” in the code duello, Pearson laid out the offenses Catt had committed: “We have no objections whatever to your crying to Gov Cox for help, but when you have made a sweeping general charge meant to discredit Tennessee men and women, and their distinguished invited guests, we demand a bill of particulars.”
The tone of the note was sarcastic and taunting: “We would not for the world convey the impression that we have any objection whatever to your presence here, for southern courtesy, as well as confidence that your presence here is helping us, would prevent our making such objections.” But Pearson demanded that Catt debate Rowe “to allow the people of Tennessee to decide for themselves who is more ‘inspiring,’” and no excuses or evasions would be acceptable. Catt would not lower herself even to reply. Catt did take a moment to write a quick note to Clara Hyde in New York: “I’ve had two rocky days and can only say please pity and pray for the cause, and for me.”
After the polls closed, once the ballot boxes were opened and the votes counted, Banner reporters telephoned the latest tallies to the newsroom. A squad of editors there relayed these “hot off the wire” numbers to a team of typists, who sent them on to a projectionist, and the progress of the races was projected onto a screen hung across the street from the newsroom. A crowd of hundreds gathered on Commerce and Third Streets to witness the marvel of breaking news flashed before their eyes in the darkness, and they stood mesmerized, watching the numbers on the screen, until close to midnight.
By Friday morning, it was clear that Albert Roberts had prevailed over William Crabtree to win the Democratic gubernatorial primary by a comfortable margin of more than twenty thousand votes, and Alf Taylor had overwhelmed Jesse Littleton for the Republican nomination. Abby Milton and Catherine Kenny were disappointed by Roberts’s victory, and Sue White thought that Roberts’s win afforded a “slight advantage” in securing ratification, as now “his forces cannot claim lack of influence as an excuse for inaction.” But all the Suffs were relieved to hear that most of the men elected to fill vacancies in the legislature were pledged to ratify.
Late on Saturday afternoon, August 7, Governor Roberts confirmed, or confounded, the rumors: he formally called the General Assembly to meet in extraordinary session beginning at noon on Monday, August 9. The decisive confrontation—anticipated, relished, dreaded—was finally set. It would begin in less than forty-eight hours.
Chapter 16
War of the Roses
ALL THROUGH THE WEEKEND, all over Tennessee, the men of the legislature were packing their bags, closing their shops and offices, canceling vacations, kissing their wives and children good-bye, and boarding trains. They might be gone for a few days or for three weeks (the full term of the session); no one could tell. The delegates who lived in the more remote sections of the state, where phone wires hadn’t yet been strung or electricity service didn’t yet exist, wouldn’t receive Governor Roberts’s call to convene until Sunday or Monday and would have to scramble to make their way to the capital.
They stormed into Nashville aboard steaming trains, riding the iron horses that had made the city great. Mercury was a busy god during this weekend, greeting the hundreds of men and women pouring into Union Station to attend the special session. He watched over everyone pulling into the station—the legislators and lobbyists, politicians and partisans, correspondents and conspirators—all the participants in what the newspapers were already calling “the Tennessee War of the Roses.” And Union Station was a crazy place.
The special session was most especially a boon to florists: arriving passengers were met by welcoming parties of women who pounced upon them and attempted to pin a rose to their lapel, an Anti red rose or a Suff yellow rose. Yellow or gold had long been the American suffrage campaign’s symbolic hue, signifying the flame of freedom’s fires; the Woman’s Party adopted a version of the British suffragists’ tricolor of green, white, and violet/purple (a chromatic acronym for “give women the vote”); and the Antis had more recently adopted a patriotic red-blooded motif. A Tennessee delegate had to be careful about which color rose he accepted as his boutonniere, but whichever he chose, he would know no peace.
Josephine Pearson and Nina Pinckard were at the Hotel Hermitage, striking a pose for the camera. As the photographer set his bellowed Graflex camera on a tripod and fiddled with his flash, the women practiced their positions, standing at the doors of Anti-Ratification headquarters on the mezzanine level of the hotel. Red, white, and blue bunting, as well as miniature American flags, adorned the entrance, and Pinckard clutched a polished wooden pole bearing a large Confederate battle flag.
Pinckard was dressed all in white, from her hat to her shoes, a single red American Beauty rose pinned low on her breast; Pearson wore a dark dress and flat-brimmed hat, three red roses on her bosom; between the standing women was seated a very old, frail, white-mustachioed man.
When the photographer’s flash exploded, it caught Pearson turned toward Pinckard, the corners of Pearson’s mouth upturned in a satisfied half smile, her roses illuminated by the burst of light. Pinckard took a more assertive, defiant stance: her right arm outstretched upward, holding the corner of the Stars and Bars, spreading it out to its full glory behind her. Sitting beside her, sharing a grip on the flag’s long pole, was the wizened man, wearing a bow tie and waistcoat, a huge rose pinned to his suit jacket. He was William Absalom Crutcher, a proud Nashville veteran of the War Between the States, a living symbol of all those who “fought and bled for Tennessee’s States Rights” whose sacrifice, the members of the Southern Women’s Rejection Lea
gue wished to remind everyone, must not be squandered.
The Confederate veteran was just a boy when he joined the celebrated Tennessee cavalry unit led by General Nathan Bedford Forrest; he served as a scout, and all his life he was honored to belong to the Forrest group of Confederate veterans. The banner of the Forrest veterans was displayed prominently in the photo, hanging down from the Stars and Bars pole, and this was very much on purpose. The banner was a signal, a silent whistle to any Tennessean: General Forrest was popularly known not only as “the Wizard of the Saddle” for his lightning attacks on Union forces, but also as the brutal commanding officer at the Fort Pillow Massacre, where hundreds of surrendering black Union troops were slaughtered by Forrest’s men. Forrest was also famous as a founder of the Ku Klux Klan, one of its first Grand Wizards. The photo made all the historical connections, raised the emotional stakes, expressed just what Pearson and Pinckard wanted it to convey. Pearson wrote a caption for the photo, displaying both her erudition and her heritage, saluting Jefferson Davis’s use of poet William Cullen Bryant’s battlefield hymn as a Confederate motto: “Truth crushed to the Earth will rise again.”
* * *
A few floors above, Carrie Catt knew that Harriet Upton had arrived when she heard a booming laugh echo down the Hermitage hallway. That was Upton’s distinctive laugh, and Catt was very glad to hear it. Upton, president of the Ohio state suffrage organization and recently appointed vice chair of the Executive Committee of the Republican National Committee, had been dispatched by Will Hays to demonstrate the party leadership’s concern about Tennessee and also to placate Mrs. Catt. Catt had also wired a personal plea to Upton, at home in Warren, Ohio, to hasten to Nashville: Upton was needed to “straighten out” the Republicans.
Catt and Upton had been suffrage colleagues for thirty years. Upton liked to joke that she discovered Catt, then a young, unknown Iowa delegate to the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s 1890 convention. Catt had delivered an impressive speech on Iowa’s progress, and when the news reporters asked Upton, acting as publicity director for the convention, to identify the striking, dark-haired lady who’d just bowled over the audience, Upton admitted she had no idea. Needing some vital statistics, Upton passed a note to Catt: “Who are you? Where were you born? Where educated? What have you done? Are you married?”
Catt penciled quick answers to each query: “Born in Wisconsin, educated in Iowa, did newspaper work in California. Am married; he is in the back of the hall. Am not a big gun, never will be. Carrie Chapman Catt.” And that, Upton liked to say, was one of the only instances she knew Carrie Catt to be absolutely wrong.
Upton, like Catt, had been one of Aunt Susan’s girls, and Anthony had valued Upton’s adroit political sense as well as her jovial nature. Besides her organizational and networking abilities, Upton had a talent for winning friends for the Cause with her good humor and could defuse tense situations with a witty aside. Upton served on NAWSA’s board, was its treasurer for years, and for a time its headquarters was actually located in Upton’s house in Warren.
Upton was comfortable with the rough-and-tumble of politics; her father had been an Ohio congressman, and she’d accompanied him on the campaign trail as well as to Washington. She also knew the ins and outs of Ohio political affairs: besides her Republican Party activities, she was in the thick of four failed attempts to convince the Ohio legislature to submit woman suffrage to a popular vote, had led two unsuccessful referendum campaigns (1912 and 1914), succeeded in obtaining presidential suffrage from the legislature in 1917 (only to have it repealed), and piloted the effort for Ohio’s ratification, which was still being challenged by the Antis. She’d faced off against the powerful liquor interests in her state time and again.
She knew both Warren Harding and Jimmy Cox quite well. In her role as head of Ohio Republican women, she’d attended the Harding Notification Day, seated on the stage behind the candidate while Alice Paul, Louisine Havemeyer, Anita Pollitzer, and Sue White watched from the far reaches of the pavilion. She knew Harding wasn’t the strongest of suffrage champions, but she believed he was sincere, and she was in Nashville to convince Republican legislators that Harding, and the party, needed them to ratify.
Catt was delighted to see her comrade. Upton was a large woman and equally bighearted, pragmatic but tender, with a depth of experience few could match. Catt could be candid with Upton, rely on her judgment, and relish her wickedly funny ripostes; she could use some humor just now. But Upton was also an “outsider,” another Yankee, and Catt was beginning to realize the double-edged nature of all her stinging “outsider” accusations: the Antis were having a fine time throwing them back in her face.
As a countermeasure, Catt now gave the signal to NAWSA headquarters to release to the press the small southern good-luck charm she’d been holding: a letter addressed to the men of the legislature of Tennessee from Lady Astor, the first woman to take a seat in the British Parliament. Nancy Astor was born a Virginia girl, one of the beautiful Langhorne sisters of that proper southern family; no outsider she. Catt had requested the note, and Lady Astor had gladly obliged:
“I want to send a message to the men of the South, because I come from the South, and feel that I know and understand it, as one only can understand the place of one’s birth and childhood,” Astor wrote.
I know the strong sense of justice and honor that lives in the hearts of the people. I know their chivalry, too, and it is just because I appreciate that chivalry that I, as a woman, am anxious that it should be representative of the present and not only of the past—that it should be a progressive chivalry, equal to the needs and aspirations of the women of today, not content to give merely what was demanded of it in the old days.
Thirty-five states have given their hand and seal [in ratifying the federal amendment] but one is lacking. Will not the South give that one? Remember we are making a new world and women—mothers—long to have a share in the sort of world in which their children must live. We have moral courage and spiritual vision. Give us the chance to help you. . . .
Whether Lady Astor’s plea had any real effect upon the legislators of Tennessee is questionable, but it helped drive home Catt’s point: the whole world was watching.
Over the course of the weekend, as the opposing armies massed and the legislators assembled, the lobby of the Hotel Hermitage became the central gathering spot, the place to meet, talk and argue, cajole or confront friends and foes. It was neutral, but hardly tranquil, ground. The beaux arts grandeur of the space—its soaring marble columns and ornate vaulted ceiling, the swags, garlands, and rosettes carved into the wall borders, the Persian carpets below and cut-glass chandeliers above—gave a sense of both gravitas and gaiety to the animated conversations transpiring in the lobby. For more sensitive planning or clandestine plotting, the rattan chairs in the airy loggia or the dark banquettes of the lower-level (men only) Grill Room were favored.
By Saturday afternoon, the lobby was thrumming with conversation. Sun rays slanted through the painted glass skylight, bathing the room in a rosy glow, illuminating the puffs of tobacco smoke wafting above the feathered and flowered hats of ladies and the bare heads of linen-suited gentlemen. As viewed from above, from the balustrade of the lobby’s mezzanine level, the number of Anti red roses seemed to multiply with each passing hour, swelling like a scarlet bloom of algae over the Tennessee marble floor tiles, overwhelming the smaller islands of yellow.
The Antis were descending upon Nashville in force. Mary Kilbreth, president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, had come in from New York on the Saturday morning train, joining a brigade of Anti leaders landing throughout the day: Dolly Lamar from Macon, a leader of the Georgia Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage; Winifred Wyse of the Maryland antisuffrage organization; Frances Williams from Virginia; and Harriet Frothingham from Boston, president of the Massachusetts Antis, along with several of her associates. Beatrice Shil
lito, a leader of the Ohio Antis, was comfortably settled into her room at the Hermitage and had already delivered a rousing speech to an appreciative audience at Nashville’s George Peabody College for Teachers. Dozens of Anti representatives from other states were on the way. Expected on Sunday morning were Laura Clay of Kentucky and Kate Gordon from New Orleans; their arrival promised to be especially delicious for the Antis.
Male antisuffragists, displaying all the chivalry expected of them, took up their positions on the ramparts. Augmenting the team from the American Constitutional League who’d already arrived from New York and Baltimore were Ruffin Pleasant, former governor of Louisiana, and James Pinckard of Alabama, joining their wives; Judge John Tyson of Montgomery and Martin Lee Calhoun of Selma also made the trip. Two Maryland lawmakers traveled to Nashville on a mission to persuade their fellow lawmakers to emulate Maryland in rejecting the amendment.
Besides these visitors, Tennessee’s own Antis emerged from every corner of the three Grand Divisions to make their way to Nashville. They were heeding the call “To Arms, to Arms” that Josephine Pearson and her colleagues had issued earlier in the week, a summons presented in stirring verse:
They are knocking, knocking, knocking,
Knocking at your gate;
