by Elaine Weiss
She’d been keeping track of the special session in Nashville while Harry was away and was disappointed to find no mention of her adored son in the local papers’ reports. She was hoping and praying that Harry would support ratification. She knew he was under a lot of pressure about it. So she’d written a seven-page letter to him, filled with family news, complaints about the rainy weather, a request for some piano sheet music, and that crucial maternal advice. Within hours of Harry’s vote for ratification, reporters, photographers—and Anti agents—were on their way to the hilltop house in tiny Niota to find Febb Burn.
It wasn’t hard to find Governor Roberts. He was in his office at the Capitol, receiving well-wishers, thanking the men who’d stuck with him. He’d proven to be among the most faithful, and courageous, suffrage men in the capital. Alice Paul wired her personal thanks for his “splendid fight” for ratification, which the governor must have especially enjoyed, given the disdain her workers displayed toward him. And Roberts could take pleasure in the congratulations of vice presidential nominee Franklin Roosevelt: “The action of Tennessee assures the greatest step that could possibly be taken for human rights and better American citizenship.” But there were other telegrams of a more menacing nature, such as the one signed by more than a hundred men in Fayetteville: “Protect the rights of our states against federal encroachment and force laws. Dissatisfaction that exists here will seriously endanger your election in November.”
The Suffs knew they must be constantly vigilant. Quite a few delegates were already grumbling that they wanted to go home, they were tired, they missed their families; asking them to stay for another three days was too much. The Antis, of course, were providing ample inducements for the delegates to leave: fake telegrams calling delegates home for family emergencies again proliferated, and threats of all kinds were deployed to break the ratification bloc. But the Suffs were not going to allow it. The Hermitage halls and lobbies were patrolled day and night even more vigorously, as were the other hotels and boardinghouses. Union Station waiting rooms and platforms were also guarded; taxi stands were surveyed hourly, ticket booths monitored. Rotations of suffrage men checked on ratification delegates through the night. Any man found walking with a suitcase was intercepted and escorted back to his room.
The Jack Daniel’s Suite did a more robust business than ever. Harriet Upton was again awakened by frantic reports that Republican men were missing. Kidnappings were rumored, and some appeared to be real, as search parties were dispatched. Two suffragist legislators complained that they were woken repeatedly, every half hour, by phone calls; they knew the calls were a ruse to keep them awake and cause them to be groggy when it came to vote the next morning. The Antis were stooping low, but they were desperate. During the night, Joe Hanover was warned by Antis to “get out of the way” during the next day’s confrontation over reconsideration. The Antis held embarrassing affidavits chronicling his bribery of Harry Burn, Hanover was told, and if he didn’t stand down in his defense of ratification, the Antis would unleash the documents.
On Thursday morning, the Antis received a jolt when they opened the morning Tennessean: the affidavits they’d fabricated, alleging Harry Burn’s corruption by Joe Hanover, were splashed over the front page and exposed as fraudulent. It was a scoop that neutralized any threat. It seemed the stenographer who’d been hired to take the dictation for the affidavits was a suffragist and, realizing the bogus nature of the testimony, handed copies of the texts over to the Tennessean. This morning they were in print—before they could appear in the afternoon Banner—along with strong denials and refutations from Joe Hanover and Harry Burn. The blackmail had been foiled.
Everyone returned to the house chamber for the morning session: the frazzled legislators and anxious onlookers. Cheers and applause rang from the galleries as the delegates filed in, with loud ovations for the heroes on both sides: Seth Walker, Joe Hanover, Banks Turner, and Harry Burn. All of the Anti delegates were in attendance, as well as all the men who’d voted for ratification. The question was whether any of the Suff men had been induced to change their minds overnight.
After the gavel and preliminaries, Harry Burn rose from his desk and asked for a point of personal privilege. The galleries buzzed. Burn handed a written statement to the clerk to be printed in the house journal: “I desire to resent in the name of honesty and justice the veiled intimidation and accusation regarding my vote on the Suffrage Amendment as indicated in certain statements,” Burn opened, “and it is my sincere belief that those responsible for their existence know that there is not a scintilla of truth in them.
“I want to state that I changed my vote in favor of ratification first because I believe in full suffrage as a right; I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify; and I knew that a mother’s advice is always safest for a boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”
Suffragists in the gallery could take extra pleasure in noticing that Harry Burn had chosen to accessorize his suit with a suffrage white tie. “I appreciated the fact that an opportunity such as seldom comes to a mortal man to free seventeen million women from political slavery was mine; and I desired that my party in both State and nation might say that it was a Republican from the East mountains of Tennessee, the purest Anglo-Saxon section in the world, who made national woman suffrage possible at this date, not for personal glory but for the glory of his party.”
Burn’s earnest, emotional statement only enhanced his stature among his colleagues and the public, effectively thwarting the Antis’ attempts to smear him. The scheme was even belittled by the Anti hero of the senate, Herschel Candler: “There never was a finer, cleaner man than Harry Burn,” Candler said, defending his protégé. “The present charges are too ridiculous for utterance.”
Seth Walker never made a move for reconsideration on Thursday. It was obvious the Antis had not yet budged any one of the “Sterling 49,” as the Suffs called their house stalwarts. Walker needed more time. The house adjourned until Friday morning.
Having failed with Harry, the Antis trained their sights on his mother. On Thursday afternoon, Febb Burn sent a telegram to Abby Milton, complaining about the uninvited appearance of Anti leader Anne Pleasant on her doorstep: “Woman was here to-day, claims to be wife of Governor of Louisiana, and tried by every means to get me to refute and say that the letter I sent to my son was false. The letter is authentic and was written by me. . . . I stand squarely behind suffrage and request my son to stick to suffrage until the end. This woman was very insulting to me, and I had a hard time to get her out of my home.”
That same afternoon, Febb Burn received a much more welcome communication from Carrie Catt: “You are blessed with a brave and honest son, whatever the enemies of justice and decency may do now to show their vengeance upon him. He is bound to have a great future. You will ever be proud of him.”
* * *
The band in the Ryman Auditorium struck up “Dixie” when Seth Walker came onstage at the Antis’ rally to “Save the South” on Thursday night. He was introduced as “a young Andrew Jackson” and given a thunderous standing ovation. An all-star lineup of speakers, including Charlotte Rowe and Edward Stahlman, fed the crowd some of the reddest meat yet served during the campaign.
Walker lauded the Anti delegates who’d rejected ratification, who’d “signed their names in the blood of the South to keep this a white man’s country and a white man’s government,” and he boasted that he’d persuaded several more legislators to join his side; he claimed he had enough votes to rescind ratification. The crowd went wild. The Suffs got scared.
Before the session convened on Friday morning, Joe Hanover faced another ulcer-inducing problem. Charlie Brooks, though he’d hoped to make it back to Nashville, still hadn’t returned, putting a chink in the Suffs’ protective shield. And now Tom Dodson, a young East Tennessee lawyer who was an enthusiastic suffragist, needed to go home: his baby, who’d been si
ck for a few days, was reported to be dying. This wasn’t a spoof, it was real, and a heartbroken Dodson was intent upon taking the next train home. Dodson was on his way to Union Station when Hanover and the ratification leaders realized he was gone; his vote was needed to thwart reconsideration.
In a hasty conference, Newell Sanders again offered to charter a special train to get Dodson home if he would stay for the pivotal votes, and a delegation of Suffs dashed to the station, arriving just as Dodson’s train was blowing its departure whistle. In a scene straight out of a Perils of Pauline melodrama, two nimble suffrage men jumped onto the train, pleaded with Dodson to stay, and promised that the special express train would speed him home once the vote was complete. Dodson hesitated for a moment, then grabbed his bag. The three men jumped off the moving train and Dodson returned to the Capitol.
The delegates filed into the chamber, cheered by their sympathizers in the galleries, eyed suspiciously by their colleagues on the opposing side. The desk of one delegate, whose teaching position had been threatened by Antis if he didn’t vote to reconsider, was surrounded by state schools commissioner Albert Williams and other members of the Roberts administration in a demonstration of protection and defiance. Joe Hanover looked haggard. Harry Burn and Banks Turner wore yellow roses.
Seth Walker was pale and agitated. Despite his claims of the night before, he really didn’t have three solid defections in his pocket. He needed more time and tried to adjourn until Monday; he could surely pry a few more votes by then. But the suffrage line held firm, and the Monday adjournment was voted down 49 to 47. Walker looked crushed and made no motion to reconsider. Josephine Pearson and the Anti women in the galleries were disgusted. The Suffs swiftly moved to adjourn until Saturday morning, by which time Walker’s control over the reconsideration motion would have expired. The Saturday motion passed. The Suffs had prevailed.
Suff women burst into applause and broke into song, leaving the chamber singing patriotic airs, tears flowing down their cheeks. They stopped at Governor Roberts’s office on the first floor and serenaded him in thanks for his help. Out the doors and down the steps of the Capitol they sang “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” over and over, their voices ringing especially loud as they emphasized the phrase “sweet land of liberty.”
“You are all heroes,” exclaimed Carrie Catt in praise of the ratification delegates who’d held fast, “your names will forever be written on the hearts of American women.” The Suffs began to believe that ratification was finally safe.
“The victory is complete,” Alice Paul crowed. “It is a victory for humanity.”
The Antis grew more frantic now. They’d run out of time and made little headway. They came up with a new plan. In the middle of the night, around two o’clock on Saturday morning, Josephine Pearson’s phone rang in her Hermitage room, an urgent summons from Anti headquarters. She quickly dressed and made her way down a side stair, joining her fellow Antis in a secret mission. Shielded by darkness, twenty-five delegates opposed to ratification had left their beds and, in small groups, made their way to a train stop on the south side of the city. Pearson and her comrades bade an emotional adieu to their brave soldiers; Seth Walker gave instructions to his men. At three thirty a.m. the delegates boarded a special L&N train bound for Alabama, over the state line, on an assignment to break the house quorum and delay a final vote on reconsideration until Walker could drum up a few more votes. The “Red Rose Brigade” reached Decatur by daybreak.
When the forty-nine pro-suffrage delegates, including the returned Charlie Brooks, entered the house chamber on Saturday morning, they were met by only eight Anti legislators, plus Speaker Walker. The rest were gone. In a delicious move, Tennessee suffrage women sat at the desks of the missing Anti delegates. Walker’s control of reconsideration had expired, so Tom Riddick gleefully took hold, moving that the house table the reconsideration motion. Walker protested, but the Suff delegates took pleasure in tweaking their Speaker as they merrily rolled on to the final procedural steps, reaffirming the house’s ratification and sending it on to Governor Roberts’s desk for his certification.
It was done. Ratification was complete. The finale brought a round of delirious cheering, and a suffragist on the floor rang the mini Liberty Bell. But Carrie Catt couldn’t yet go home.
What followed has been described as an opéra bouffe, a wild, theatrical attempt by the Antis to stall and stymie enactment of the federal suffrage amendment. But the Antis’ machinations were desperate and dangerous enough to cause the Suffs significant worry. The legal jousting began immediately, as the Constitutional League obtained an injunction restraining Governor Roberts from certifying the legislature’s ratification, which froze matters for a maddening few days. Catt was forced to remain in Nashville to supervise the Suffs’ pushback while Alice Paul screamed from Washington that the Antis’ legal maneuvers could postpone women’s enfranchisement for months or years, certainly keeping women from the polls in November. That’s definitely what the Antis intended.
And the “indignation meetings” began, targeting the legislators who’d supported ratification. The rallies debuted in Harry Burn’s county of McMinn, where Anne Pleasant denounced Burn in the Athens courthouse and seven hundred people reputedly signed a petition demanding that he change his vote.
The Antis’ goal was to foment such public reaction against ratification, and the delegates who’d supported it, that the men of the legislature would be forced, for their own political survival, to return and rescind approval of woman suffrage by a majority vote. The rallies also demonized Governor Roberts, calling for his resignation and, failing that, his defeat in November. As these protest rallies continued around the state, with Seth Walker, Charlotte Rowe, and Edward Stahlman featured speakers, they grew more virulent, tainted with the danger of mob action. The theme of “Save the South” and the overtly racist tone of the rallies resonated with sympathetic citizens who were affiliated with the newly rejuvenated Tennessee Ku Klux Klan. One observer at the scene of a particularly vicious indignation meeting targeting senate ratification leader Andrew Todd asserted that Charlotte Rowe and the other speakers had inflamed the crowd’s anger to a boil, and if Todd had come anywhere near the meeting in the courthouse square, he likely “would have been lynched.”
The Suffs deployed their own legal teams in the courts. When the Tennessee attorney general was finally able to convince a judge to dissolve the injunction against the governor, the Antis moved their legal assault to the federal level, attempting to enjoin the U.S. secretary of state from accepting Tennessee’s ratification and proclaiming the Nineteenth Amendment as law. Still, on Tuesday morning, August 24, Charl Williams stood vigilantly watching over the shoulder of Governor Roberts as he signed the certification of Tennessee’s ratification at his messy desk. The certification papers were immediately placed in an envelope and mailed special delivery to Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby in Washington. Carrie Catt could finally pack her bags.
On Wednesday, August 25, Catt, Harriet Upton, Marjorie Shuler, and Charl Williams, under the watchful eyes of the angels of commerce, left Nashville’s Union Station aboard a train connecting through Chattanooga. During the layover, Abby Milton brought Mrs. Catt to her home for a goodbye kiss from the three little Milton daughters, whom the Chief had befriended during her brief convalescence weeks before. Catt taught the girls the steps of her ratification dance, her expression of victory and relief, which the girls enjoyed reenacting long after Mrs. Catt had waved good-bye.
Catt and her traveling companions hoped to arrive in Washington in time to attend the proclamation-signing ceremony in Secretary Colby’s office. So did Alice Paul, who arranged for photographers and movie cameras to record the historic event. Neither group wanted to share the limelight with its rival; even in their hour of mutual triumph, the rift between NAWSA and the National Woman’s Party could not be healed. Bainbridge Colby had no desire to be caught in the messy middl
e of a suffragist feud or give the Antis any more time to invent another obstruction. When the Tennessee documents were delivered to him in the early morning hours of August 26, he decided to simply sign the proclamation in the privacy of his home: no women, no cameras. The Nineteenth Amendment entered the Constitution of the United States with neither Carrie Catt nor Alice Paul present.
News of the proclamation of the Nineteenth Amendment reached Tennessee by midmorning, prompting jubilation among the Tennessee Suffs and sour denunciation by the Antis. “Tennessee has not ratified Nineteenth Amendment,” Seth Walker wired to Bainbridge Colby. “This legislature has no power to act, and has not acted,” he insisted. Within days, Walker would summon the Red Rose Brigade back to Nashville and, in the absence of the pro-suffrage delegates, ram through a repeal of the house’s ratification. The senate acquiesced when Walker cleverly tied the legislators’ per diem pay to the nullification measure, and a frightened Governor Roberts, trying to appease the Anti Democrats, signed it. The papers were sent to Secretary Colby, and Walker himself went to Washington to convince Colby, but it didn’t matter: the Nineteenth Amendment was safely within the Constitution. Later in September, under intense pressure from Republicans who wanted a modicum of credit for giving women the vote, the governor of Connecticut relented, allowing the legislature to ratify, though it made no difference. Still, Constitutional League lawyers would pursue their legal efforts to strike down the validity of the amendment all the way to the Supreme Court. Not until 1922, in an opinion written by Justice Louis Brandeis, would the Supreme Court finally bring the Antis’ legal crusade to an end.
