The Woman's Hour

The reaction of NWP to Catt’s announcement is anything but joyous. They fear that her premature claims of victory will short-circuit their own attempts to apply pressure to hesitant Tennessee politicians. Sue White organizes a street team to conduct polls and assess the true state of affairs. She logs over 1600 miles in ten days between Ohio and the far reaches of Tennessee.

Desperate times call for desperate measures as White recalls her initial NWP baptism by fire. Although still nominally a NAWSA member, White agrees to help burn Woodrow Wilson in effigy in front of the White House gates to call attention to his hypocrisy: The President is busy making speeches in post-war Europe about the importance of liberty for all citizens while the women of his own country still lack the vote. White is jailed for her part in the protest and later receives a prison pin from Alice Paul to commemorate her sacrifice. The protest gets White ejected from NAWSA entirely. Now fully committed to NWP, White wages her own battle for ratification in Tennessee, while feeling undermined by Catt’s victory announcement.

Assisting White in her Tennessee campaign for NWP is Anita Pollitzer, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish cotton merchant from Charleston: “Pollitzer loved the work: it was like being a soldier, spy, and agitator all rolled into one. Her job was to find things out and shake things up” (163). Pollitzer interviews sympathetic Republican state legislators about their colleagues’ weaknesses to learn how to best persuade them to back the amendment. Like White, Pollitzer is dismayed by Catt’s press release. 

In the ten days leading up to the Tennessee primary, players on both sides of the ratification issue ramp up their campaigns: “This was the fieldwork of democracy, the tough, sweaty, unglamorous enterprise of retail politics. Before the advent of radio or television broadcasting, this was how candidates won elections” (165).

NAWSA and NWP send their emissaries to all parts of the state to canvass politicians and get them to sign a pro-ratification pledge. However, resolve has begun to weaken even among legislators who had previously agreed to help. The Antis have raised the specious concern that voting in favor of the amendment would leave politicians open to the charge of violating their state oath of office since the Tennessee constitution makes no provision for a woman’s vote. Even though Suff legal teams refute this claim, legislators remain nervous about their political futures.

The Antis also play on the racist fears of the region by opening a museum displaying documents and photos of black leaders supporting women’s suffrage. They even warn of national Force Bills that might penalize the South for failure to comply with the amendment if it became law.

No side’s efforts seem at all certain to succeed:

As all the Suffs, Antis, and politicos sprinted around the state, they warily watched the calendar and eyed the clock. […] And despite all the frenetic activity, ratification remained totally unpredictable; as the days passed, the uncertainties seemed only to multiply (184).

A few days before the Tennessee primary elections, Catt suffers what appears to be a heart attack but turns out to be angina. She has been working at a breakneck pace and must take a break while assigning some of her speaking engagements to surrogates. Sue White and NWP, stretched thin for resources and cash, plead with Alice Paul to send more of both. The Suffs and Antis continue to besiege presidential candidates Harding and Cox to take a stand on ratification in Tennessee, but both politicians sidestep the issue.

When Catt does return to the podium, she accuses the Antis of importing New York lawyers to form their Constitutional League, hoping to appeal to her audience’s mistrust of outsiders by accusing the Antis of underhandedness: “Their way is to put a few publicity-seeking women in the limelight, while they themselves work in stealth” (189). The Constitutional League has frightened Tennessee legislators into believing that they are violating their state oaths of office by voting in favor of the national amendment. The Antis retort that Catt herself isn’t a Southerner and that she aligns with the abolitionist cause.

After a week filled with drama, accusations, and counter-charges, the Tennessee primary is finally held on August 5. When Roberts wins the nomination for governor, he does what no one expects. He immediately calls for the General Assembly to meet on August 9 to vote on the Nineteenth Amendment. 

Legislators from all parts of Tennessee converge on Nashville for the special session. Upon arrival, they are greeted by Antis eager to pin red roses to the policymakers’ lapels, while Suffs present them with yellow roses:

They stormed into Nashville aboard steaming trains, riding the iron horses that had made the city great […] 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’ (198).

On Sunday morning, Governor Roberts calls a strategy session with his aides. He is intent on forcing the amendment to pass at all costs. His plan is immediately upset when Speaker of the House Seth Walker unexpectedly announces that he won’t support the amendment, acceding to the demands of railroad industry lobbyists. Roberts had been counting on Walker, a key ally, to introduce the bill in the House and push it through to the Senate. After receiving the news of Walker’s defection, Roberts immediately requests additional support from James Cox, the Democratic presidential nominee, threatening that the amendment is sure to fail otherwise.

Meanwhile, the Suffs are hearing disturbing news that men who pledged to support the amendment are reneging on their promises. Rumors are flying that someone has gotten to Walker, heretofore the Suffs’ biggest supporter in the House. They also learn that the Antis are hosting a hospitality suite on the eighth floor of the Hotel Hermitage, plying amenable legislators with free whiskey and bourbon, despite Prohibition.