That weekend, newspapers across the country spread the word: the Tennessee Senate had voted yes to woman’s suffrage.
The Suffs had really needed the confidence boost. Especially because the house still hadn’t scheduled its vote on the amendment.
Antis tried to appear unfazed by the Suffs’ senate victory. Big deal! Charlotte Rowe told the press. The senate vote was no indicator of suffrage’s strength. The Antis were setting their sights on the house, where they were sure the amendment would be defeated. But while the Antis may have tried to appear cool and calm, behind the scenes their strategy meetings were frantic.
The Suffs held their own frenzied meetings, with Joe Hanover taking charge of strategy in the statehouse. Rumors continued to fly around. Apparently, some legislators were having second, and third, thoughts. And Major Edward Stahlman, the newspaper tycoon who’d promised Carrie Catt he had her back, had now switched to the Anti side. Carrie had suspected there was something shady about him. After all, his newspaper, the Banner, had published Nina Pinckard’s cruel letter about Carrie only moments after Stahlman had declared himself pro-Suff. Now the Banner was going further, publishing a whole flurry of articles tarnishing the Suffs’ names. So the railroads have gotten to Stahlman, too, Carrie said to Harriet, jabbing her finger at the latest issue of the Banner.
The Suffs had to stay focused. Their strategy was clear: once again, they had to find their delegates and convince them to stay on their side. They took their responsibilities seriously, inviting legislators to lunch and dinner, for a ride in the country, or for a game of cards. Anything to keep them out of the clutches of Anti workers. Or corporate lobbyists.
Finding these legislators wasn’t so simple. All of them were tired and grumpy. Many had packed their bags to head home for the weekend. It made the Suffs very nervous to think of the lawmakers moving entirely outside of their grasp.
At the White House, Woodrow Wilson was feeling chipper. He spent his days sitting in his wheelchair, reading the paper in the sun of the portico. He worked for as many hours as his health allowed.
August was a humid month in Washington, D.C., and Wilson fanned his face with the paper to cool down. His first order of business for the day was to catch up on the ratification situation in Tennessee.
Ratification in that state was halfway there, Wilson’s secretary reported to him. National woman’s suffrage was almost clinched. For Woodrow Wilson, that meant one thing: thanks to all these new women votes, his League of Nations ideas would possibly become a reality—and he could take credit for a historic achievement.
But there was a hitch, Wilson soon learned: the Democratic Speaker of the Tennessee house, Seth Walker, was standing in the way of ratification. Walker was preventing the vote from even reaching the house floor!
At this, the president furrowed his brow. What could he do to help out the Suffs, he wondered. On Friday evening, he decided to send a telegram to Seth Walker, expressing “the earnest hope that the house over which you preside will concur in the suffrage amendment.”
When the message reached Seth Walker in Nashville, he didn’t take well to it. He answered the president’s plea the next day. His tone was abrupt, even arrogant: “I have the profound honor to acknowledge your wire of Aug 13,” Walker wrote. “[But] I do not believe that men of Tennessee will surrender honest convictions for political expediency or harmony.” Apparently, even the president of the United States of America couldn’t persuade him.
Carrie Catt was feeling under attack. Between the Anti women’s nasty rumor-spreading, Nina Pinckard’s slanderous opinion piece about her, and now Senator Herschel Candler’s rant, Carrie may as well have been a punching bag.
On top of that, she was being flooded with anonymous letters, letters that were “vulgar, ignorant, insane,” as she characterized them. They lashed out at her personally and said disgusting things about all suffragists. Carrie was also convinced that her phone was being tapped at the hotel.
Harriet Upton started noticing a man hanging outside Carrie’s room, leaning with his ear to the door. It was obvious that he was listening in. Ex-cuse me, Harriet would bark, and he would scamper away. Other Suffs also noticed men loitering in the hallways near their rooms.
The Antis suspected that the Suffs were playing dirty tricks, too. Newspapers that held an Anti point of view, like the Chattanooga Times and now Edward Stahlman’s Banner, were suddenly hard to find at Nashville newsstands. The Antis accused the Suffs of buying bundles of papers from delivery trucks, then destroying each issue before it could reach the hands of readers.
The Antis knew that the looming confrontation in the house was possibly their last stand. They were starting to get more aggressive—even physical. Harriet Upton was jostled in the Hermitage elevator by a group of Tennessee Anti women. They also shouted vile anti-Semitic slurs at Joe Hanover as he passed through the Hermitage lobby. It was getting nasty.
So what if the senate ratified the suffrage amendment? Josephine huffed to herself. She and the Antis were going to swing the house delegates against ratification—no matter what it took. They sniffed out any delegate who seemed noncommittal, uncertain, or open to having his mind changed. If he remained in Nashville over the weekend, they accidentally-on-purpose ran into him. If he was at home, they showed up at his door.
If sweet-talking didn’t lead a man to their side, there were other ways to convince him that it was in his interest to vote against ratification. The Antis had a backup plan: bribery. Railroad men were swarming Tennessee, dangling lucrative jobs over the delegates’ noses. Edward Stahlman could be seen circulating through the Hermitage, hard at work on legislators who’d pledged to ratify but now might be convinced to change sides. There were rumors of sacks of money being shipped into Nashville, too. Joe Hanover heard that Antis were even paying house members to not vote at all.
Enthusiasm for ratification was cooling, reporters noted. The excitement after the senate win was running low. And those smooth-talking corporate men in the Hermitage lobby—the railroad men, the textile factory and liquor lobbyists—were the main reason, pro-Suff Senator John Houk believed. And the Suffs simply didn’t have the same kind of corporate support—or cash—that the Antis did.
On Sunday evening, Senator Houk set off alarm bells: “I believe one of the most powerful lobbies in the history of the Tennessee legislature is now at work to defeat ratification,” he announced to reporters, “and if ratification is defeated the special interests of the state will be responsible.”
Sue White knew just what John Houk was talking about: her latest polling numbers were slipping—again. Men who’d pledged for ratification were now hesitating. It was the Louisville and Nashville Railroad at work. She was convinced of it. The L&N had influenced the Tennessee legislature and politicians for generations. Powerful men like Edward Stahlman and Seth Walker were pushing the company’s position against ratification—and the delegates were too intimidated to say no. There was no doubt anymore that Betty Gram had been onto something when she’d accused Seth Walker of cozying up to railroad interests just a few days before.
No man would be allowed to double-cross Sue White without a fight. Sue threatened to reveal the name of any delegate trying to wriggle out of his promise to vote for ratification. She’d show them for the hypocrites they were, she insisted.
By Sunday evening, August 15, the situation in the house seemed murkier than ever. After another long day of strategizing, Carrie Catt sat down at the writing desk in her hotel room. Wearily she pulled out a pen and paper. She needed to vent—but outside the hearing range of all those eavesdropping men and reporters. The best way to do it was to jot all her thoughts down. So she wrote a letter to a friend in New York, summing up the situation in Nashville:
We now have 35½ states. We are up to our last half of a state. With all the political pressure, it ought to be easy, but the opposition of every sort is here fighting with no scruple, desperately. Women, including L. Clay and K. Gordon, are here appealing to Negro phobia and every other cave man’s prejudice.
Men, lots of them, are here. What do they represent? God only knows. We believe they are buying votes. We have a poll of the House showing victory but they are trying to keep them at home, to break a quorum and God only knows the outcome. We are terribly worried and so is the other side.