President Woodrow Wilson awoke from another nightmare. In his bedroom, in the private quarters of the White House, his butler, Brooks, and his wife, Edith, entered quickly. His morning guests would be here soon, they reminded him urgently. Brooks helped him to dress, pulling a starched white shirt over his listless left arm. Then Edith draped a shawl over her husband’s left side. She didn’t want their visitors to be able to see that Woodrow was partially paralyzed. She thought it wasn’t anyone’s business that he had had a stroke.
Several blocks away, Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees James Cox and Franklin Roosevelt tied Windsor knots onto their collars. They wanted to look their best when they went to see President Wilson at the White House on this fine July morning.
A few weeks earlier, they had won the Democratic nomination at the party convention (there were no primary elections for party picks at that time). President Wilson’s blessing would mean a lot to Cox and Roosevelt. They were planning to be the future of the Democratic Party.
Woodrow Wilson wasn’t at all sure he wanted to give that blessing. Wilson’s own presidency had been full of conflict and controversy. There was the war, of course. That deadly, tragic, costly war. Then there was his mission of trying—and failing—to sell the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations to the American people. Wilson had wanted to build a foundation for lasting peace. He felt he must prevent the world from sliding into war yet again. The League of Nations was the way to do it. President Woodrow Wilson had a feeling that women would vote for the league—and that’s why he had decided to support woman’s suffrage. But that hadn’t always been the case.
President Woodrow Wilson hadn’t exactly been a fan of the women’s movement. A Presbyterian minister’s son with a conservative upbringing, he’d always tried to avoid the issue of woman’s suffrage. Women were meant to be at home, he thought. Not voting. Not having opinions about important things, like politics. That was the job of men.
When Wilson became president, Alice Paul and the Woman’s Party decided there was just one way to get him to take woman’s suffrage seriously. They were going to wave the issue right under his nose until he couldn’t ignore it any longer. So, on March 3, 1913, the day before Wilson’s inauguration, Alice organized a huge suffrage parade through Washington. More than five thousand marchers—including Carrie Catt—paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue, banners in hand.
Wilson could still remember that protest. Washington had never seen anything like it. Women marching? Demanding rights? Mobs of men approached the parade and threw women to the ground, pulling their banners from their hands and smashing them to bits. Women were bruised and pushed, their clothes ripped. The police stood by and watched—they did not even try to protect the women.
The march, and the violent backlash, made front-page headlines.
It was bad press for the president. Women making a fuss. Violence and protests in front of the White House. And all the day before his inauguration.
Within the next months, Suffs bombarded Wilson. They demanded that women be given a voice in the United States of America. Still, Wilson squirmed and avoided them. Finally, in October 1915, when he was facing reelection, he announced his support for woman’s suffrage—but only if granted by the states, not by federal amendment.
His reasoning was strictly political. Wilson wanted to win back progressive voters who were against some of his first-term policies, which included getting involved in the war, restricting free speech, and segregating the federal workforce. He also wanted to win the support of women in western states who already could vote. If he didn’t throw support behind suffrage now, there was no way they’d vote for him.
Alice Paul hadn’t been impressed with Wilson’s about-face on suffrage. Carrie Catt saw a potential ally in him, though. Carrie had been strictly against the war. Still, after the United States entered the European conflict in the spring of 1917, she sensed that throwing her support behind the League of Nations and bringing the women of America to President Wilson’s side would be rewarded in the long run. So, temporarily, NAWSA prioritized war work, though they still kept up their demands for the vote.
Wilson was grateful for her help. From that time on, the president always listened to Carrie Catt and considered her requests.
Between Carrie’s wartime cooperation and Alice Paul’s loud protestation, both women could take credit for showing President Wilson that American democracy should begin at home: women deserved to vote. And now, after the war, Wilson needed women to support his plan for the League of Nations. It wasn’t nearly as popular with men as he’d hoped it would be.
Democratic presidential candidate James Cox had dashed to Washington to meet President Wilson directly from a meeting with the Woman’s Party. Alice Paul and Sue White really were spark plugs, he thought. And stubborn, too. They wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“My time, my strength, and my influence will be dedicated to your cause,” he’d told the women. He promised to do “everything in [his] power” to see the federal amendment through and make women’s political rights the law of the land.
Cox knew very well that the upcoming ratification vote in Tennessee was a chance to give the Democratic Party a boost. He would try his best to nudge Governor Albert Roberts to pass the amendment in Tennessee. Get all those women on board for November, thankful to Democrats. Then they’d vote for him in the presidential election. Without women’s votes, he wasn’t quite sure he’d have enough to win the upcoming election.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a brash young assistant secretary of the navy, was Cox’s running mate. Roosevelt was an appealing candidate. He had a famous name, Ivy League connections, and good looks and charm. Democrats also hoped he would appeal to suffragists, who counted FDR as a dependable, longtime friend of the Cause.
Cox hoped they had the White House in the bag.
In Marion, Ohio, just a few states west of James Cox and President Wilson’s meeting in Washington, D.C., Warren Gamaliel Harding was rehearsing a speech. Harding liked to think of himself as a likable guy. Whether he was respected was another story. He was a bit of a follower. Usually he just watched where the political winds blew and sailed with them.
Today, Warren G. Harding wanted to captivate his audience like he never had before. This balmy July afternoon was the official start of his campaign to be the next Republican president of the United States.
Marion, Ohio, had never experienced anything quite like it. Republican legislators and thousands of spectators poured in. Every store downtown was dressed up in red, white, and blue bunting. Every house had a photo of Harding in its front window.
At two o’clock that afternoon, Harding greeted his audience at Marion’s Chautauqua pavilion. The crowd of thousands stood on their chairs, cheering wildly and waving flags as he took the stage.
If you’d squinted closely at the crowd, though, you might have caught sight of a small group of women who weren’t cheering. They were members of the Woman’s Party. They’d come to scope out this presidential candidate; to see where he stood on woman’s suffrage.
Harding’s speech that afternoon urged a “return to normalcy” after the war. It was time to put “America first,” he said—meaning to avoid Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations. Harding was a conservative. He didn’t want to make changes to America’s social order. The way things were—with America looking out for itself, and white men holding most of the power—was just fine by him.
The Woman’s Party members listened to his speech and tapped their toes impatiently. Finally, toward the end of Harding’s speech, he nodded to the topic they wanted to hear about: woman’s suffrage.
“The womanhood of America…is about to be enfranchised,” Harding said. “It is my earnest hope, my sincere desire, that the one needed State vote be quickly recorded in the affirmative of the right of equal suffrage and that the vote of every citizen shall be cast and counted in the approaching election.”
The Woman’s Party members’ ears perked up. It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but it was at least something.
Then, always eager to please, Harding tried to soothe the worries of the nation’s Antis as well: “And to the great number of noble women who have opposed [woman’s suffrage], I venture to plead that they will accept the full responsibility of enlarged citizenship and give…their suffrage and support.”
The Suffs rolled their eyes and groaned. Harding was so wishy-washy.
From Washington, Alice Paul made her annoyance with Harding’s lukewarm support clear to reporters: “Only by action and not by the expression of polite interest will women be satisfied.”