At the beginning of the twentieth century, American women did not have the right to vote. Women mainly wanted to achieve right because “men made the laws that gave them control over women’s wages and property, that gave husbands authority over their wives, and that deprived women of their children in divorce” (Nash 11). Unfortunately, the efforts of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were nearly disregarded shortly after the end of the Civil War. The right to vote could only be permitted by each individual state, and the first state to do that was Wyoming in 1869. The same year Anthony and Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which later became known as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) after a merger. Unfortunately, at the start of the twentieth century, only four western states had granted women the right to vote until two highly educated suffragists thought it would be better to try a more radical approach. When Alice Paul and Lucy Burns decided to lobby Washington for the passage of a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, their actions drew attention to the suffrage movement by pressuring President Woodrow Wilson and his administration until all American women were finally granted that right.
Alice Paul was a highly educated Quaker from New Jersey and was often said to be like “a modernized version of Susan Anthony” (Coolidge 110). When Paul was in her early twenties, she became involved in a militant suffrage movement and was greatly influenced by Emmeline Pankhurst, a British suffrage leader. Paul met Lucy Burns while they were being detained in England. “A Vassar graduate, Burns also studied at Yale and the universities of Berlin, Bonn, and Oxford” (Weatherford 198). After the two met, “their adventures in and out of jail cemented a firm friendship…as faithful to each other as Susan Anthony and Mrs. Stanton” (Coolidge 112).
When Paul and Burns returned home, the two strongly agreed that campaigning state by state was a waste of time because by 1912, only nine states had voted for equal suffrage and they were all in the west. The reason western states granted women the right to vote was “because of the physical challenges of being in the unsettled western frontier, women were often more readily accepted in traditional male roles. Women commonly helped care for family farms and businesses, and were respected for their work both inside and outside of the home” (Nash 48). After they moved to Washington, their only intention was to lobby for a national amendment by raising national support, especially from the voters in the west.
In November, 1912, Paul and Burns gained “Anna Howard Shaw’s approval to take over NAWSA’s barley active Congressional Committee in Washington D.C.” (Cooney 185). The association was led by Shaw, who was skeptical of Paul and Burns because they were involved in the suffrage movement in England which had resulted in violence. Paul asked “the National Association to cooperate in organizing a great suffrage parade to take place in Washington the day before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson” (Harper 5:378). After they were given permission to take over the Congressional Committee, they had to raise their own funds and Paul quickly rounded up thousands of women to volunteer. “Nothing was more remarkable about Alice Paul than her ability to get work out of people…Paul wasted no time for thanks. Her eye was on the future. She presented another challenge in the perfect confidence that it would be met. It usually was” (Coolidge 113-14). When Burns attempted to obtain a permit for the parade, the police supervisor objected so they immediately “appealed to the Senate Committee for the District on the ground that as citizens and taxpayers they had the right to use the avenue, and a joint resolution was passed by Congress granting it” (Harper 6:108).
When Wilson arrived in Washington they day of the parade he was shocked to see that there were no crowds of people waiting to greet him. Almost everyone was on Pennsylvania Avenue watching the suffrage parade which was led by Inez Milholland. She represented a “free woman of the future’— crowned with the star of hope — armed with the cross of mercy, circled with the blue mantle of freedom, breasted with the torch of knowledge, and carrying the trumpet which is to herald the dawn of a new day of heroic endeavor for womanhood” (Cooney 193). Milholland was also a highly intelligent Vassar graduate who was “once charged with ‘inciting a riot’ in a police station, she was a suffragist the media could love” (Cooney 109). Women of all ages, races, and social classes marched in the parade that day.
Unfortunately, “the huge crowd of spectators, in town for the inauguration festivities, became unruly and turned into a mob” (Stevens 35). The mob brutally “attacked the marchers, spat on them, and threw lit cigars at them. Hundreds of marchers were injured” (Nash 88). The police were said to have done little to prevent the attacks which resulted in “an investigation and the Police Superintendent resigned” (Harper 6:109). When the news about the chaos reached the rest of the country through the press, many Americans were outraged when they heard hundreds of women were threatened and attacked at the nation’s capital. Although many were injured that day, it shined a new light on the movement and brought much needed publicity and sympathy toward women’s suffrage in America.
The media attention had a negative effect on Shaw who was president of the association, so “Paul became impatient because the committee had to answer to NAWSA, which she considered too conservative.” Paul and Burns founded “the Congressional Union (CU) in April, 1913, which was still affiliated with NAWSA, but unlike the Congressional Committee, its sole purpose was to lobby for a national suffrage amendment” (Nash 88).
Since over three-million women already had the right to vote in the west, Paul and Burns asked the Democrats to support the enfranchisement of all American women in December, 1913. Burns told Democrats that “it is unthinkable that a national government which represents women should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom” (Stevens 40). But Wilson still believed suffrage should be won by each state individually, so during his speech to Congress in December, he failed to mention a single word about it.
The CU focused on campaigning in the western states, urging those to boycott Wilson in the next election. Paul “arranged a motor pilgrimage from San Francisco to Washington carrying a suffrage petition eighteen thousand feet long and bearing half a million names” (Coolidge 120-21). Milholland, the iconic figure who led the suffrage parade in Washington, was one out of the hundreds of women who dedicated herself to the western campaign. Unfortunately, Milholland collapsed while she was asking the president “how long must women wait for liberty.” Sadly, she died because of poor health just a few months later (Stevens 53). Many Americans were devastated to hear of her death, especially because she believed in the cause so much that she traveled across the country in poor health and happened to die along the way, shortly after she was addressing the president.
As the First World War started to develop, “Wilson resisted the appeals of every sort of delegation with which…Paul contrived to harass him.” Therefore, after numerous attempts to convince the president to support suffrage, “twelve women emerged on January 10, 1917, four with lettered place cards and eight with the purple, white, and gold banners of the party” and stood at the White House gates (Coolidge 121-22). The pickets held up banners that read: “MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE” (Stevens 59). President Wilson continued to avoid the issue, but managed to tip his hat to the ladies when he passed them as he took walks around the White House. Most people assumed the picketing would not last long, especially after the weather got bad. But little did they know; the ladies would not give up so easily.
Many people were outraged to find out the suffragists were picketing a possible war-time president, which was believed to be unpatriotic. NAWSA did not support picketing the president, so Paul and Burns decided to split from Shaw because of their differences. “At a meeting in Washington in March 1917, the Congressional Union was officially changed to the National Woman’s Party and…Paul was elected chairman” (Harper 5:676). “The ‘silent sentinels’ as the pickets were called because they rarely spoke, changed hourly, the new team marching out of NWP through Lafayette Square, and to the gates of the White House” (Nash 94). The women marched every day and “through rain and snow, day and dark, summer and winter, sign-carrying women would encircle the White House” (Weatherford 210).
Paul and Burns feared that everything they had worked for would be forgotten if their plans were delayed because of the war, just as it had when the Civil War occurred, so they “became even more critical of Wilson’s administration” (Nash 94). At the beginning of April 1917, pickets stood in front of the White House gates during a war session, holding up banners that stated: “RUSSIA AND ENGLAND ARE ENFRANCHISING THEIR WOMEN IN WAR-TIME. HOW LONG MUST AMERICAN WOMEN WAIT FOR THEIR LIBERTY?” But just a few days later “Congress declared the United States to be at war with Germany. President Wilson voiced his memorable, ‘We shall fight for the things we have always carried nearest our hearts –for democracy for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Government.’” His speech irritated many suffragists because they obeyed the law, yet had no say in government matters. (Stevens 67).
It did not take long before a group of angry boys attacked the pickets and tore down banners on June 20, 1917 that read: “TO THE RUSSIAN ENVOYS, WE THE WOMEN OF AMERICA TELL YOU THAT AMERICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. TWENTY MILLION AMERICAN WOMEN ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO VOTE. PRESIDENT WILSON IS THE CHIEF OPPONENT OF THEIR NATIONAL ENFRANCHISEMENT. HELP US MAKE THIS NATION REALLY FREE. TELL OUR GOVERNMENT IT MUST LIBERATE ITS PEOPLE BEFORE IT CAN CLAIM FREE RUSSIA AS AN ALLY” (Stevens 74).
Many feared for the president’s safety because the large crowds could be a potential threat, so Paul was strongly advised to stop the picketing by the District chief of police. “She failed to see why picketing which had been legal in January had become less so in June. Her lawyers had advised her it was permissible” (Coolidge 126). The next day the pickets returned with a banner that stated the exact words of Wilson’s famous speech: “WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WE HAVE ALWAYS HELD NEAREST OUR HEARTS, FOR DEMOCRACY, FOR THE RIGHT OF THOSE WHO SUBMIT TO AUTHORITY HAVE A VOICE IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT” (Stevens 75). The pickets were promptly attacked, their banners were snatched away from them and the police proceeded to arrest the women. “Witnesses, however, could not help but admire the courage and poise of the women in the face of abusive and violent mobs” (Cooney 345).
Each day, more and more women were attacked and arrested as they continued to picket. The women who were arrested where each ordered to pay a twenty-five dollar fine for “obstructing traffic.” Since the pickets believed that they were not guilty of any crime, they refused to pay. A woman named Gilson Gardner, who was a member of the NWP spoke at her hearing and stated: “It is impossible for me to believe that we were arrested because we were obstructing traffic or blocking the public highway. We have been carrying on activities of a distinctly political nature, and these political activities have seemingly disturbed certain powerful influences. Arrests followed. I submit that these arrests are purely political and that the charge of an unlawful assemblage and of obstructing traffic is a political subterfuge” (Stevens 80-81).
The accused women were later sentenced to “sixty days in the workhouse in default of a twenty-five dollar fine” (Stevens 81). More women continued to picket which resulted in their arrest. On August 14, 1917 after Wilson returned from a mission in Russia, the pickets displayed banners which read: “TO ENVOY ROOT. YOU SAY THAT AMERICA MUST THROW ITS MANHOOD TO THE SUPPORT OF LIBERTY. WHOSE LIBERTY? THIS NATION IS NOT FREE. TWENTY MILLION WOMEN ARE DENIED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THE RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT.
TELL THE PRESIDENT THAT HE CONNOT FIGHT AGAINST LIBERTY AT HOME WHILE HE TELLS US TO FIGHT FOR LIBERTY ABROAD. TELL HIM TO MAKE AMERICA SAFE BEFORE HE ASKS THE MOTHERS OF AMERICA TO THROW THEIR SONS TO THE SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY ON EUROPE. ASK HIM HOW HE CAN REFUSE LIBERTY TO AMERICAN CITIZENS WHEN HE IS FORCING MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BOYS OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY TO DIE FOR LIBERTY.”
“KAISER WILSON, HAVE YOU FORGOTTON HOW YOU SYMPATHIZED WITH THE POOR GERMANS BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT SELF-GOVERNED? 20,000,000 AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNED. TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE” (Stevens 87-88).
The mob brutally attacked the pickets, tore their banners apart and surrounded the NWP headquarters when Burns attempted to hang a banner off the balcony hoping that it would not be destroyed. “Later in the day someone fired a shot into the second floor of NWP headquarters, narrowly missing two women.” During the next three days “the pickets were kicked, dragged, battered, and bruised by members of the crowds and by police. Paul was violently dragged by a sailor down a sidewalk for nearly thirty feet” (Cooney 351).
On August 17, pickets were quickly arrested and were sent to the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. The workhouse had extremely poor living conditions where sheets were only changed yearly and the food had worms. One night, a seventy year-old woman “was dragged across a courtyard in the dark, and down a corridor, where she was roughly thrown into a cell, landing on the bed” (Coolidge 131). Some women were treated even worse. “Burns, a vocal leader, was treated especially harshly. She was beaten and her wrists were handcuffed high on her cell door” (Nash 97).
Since women were given different sentences, news of the treatment they received at the workhouse surfaced and the press distributed the stories throughout the nation. Many people were shocked and appalled, especially ones from the west, when they heard how women were being treated just because they wanted the right to political freedom. When Paul and eleven other women were picketing in October 1917, they were immediately arrested and Paul was sentenced to seven months. As she was on her way to the District jail, she managed to tell reporters that they were “being imprisoned, not because we obstructed traffic, but because we pointed out to the President the fact that he was obstructing the cause of democracy at home, while Americans were fighting for it abroad” (Stevens 113).
Naturally, Paul immediately aggravated the guards by demanding they open a window because of the extremely hot conditions the women had to work in. When the guards refused, she threw a book and shattered one of the windows. As a punishment, for the next two weeks, Paul remained in solitary confinement in the District jail. After confinement, Paul had become weak and looked unhealthy so she was admitted to the prison hospital where she was placed next to Rose Winslow, a fellow suffragist, and together they swore to a hunger strike. One time after Winslow had been force-fed; she wrote a note that found a way back to her husband, explaining the details of the force feedings. Winslow wrote: “Alice Paul is in the psychopathic ward. She dreaded forcible feeding frightfully, and I have to think how she must be feeling. I had a nervous time of it, gasping a long time afterward, and my stomach rejecting during the process…One feels so forsaken when one lies prone and people shove a pipe down one’s stomach” (Stevens 118).
Soon after the nation grew aware of the poor living conditions, the unlawful imprisonment, and the force feedings the pickets had to endure, the women were sent back to the District jail where Paul had never left. When the women heard about the hunger strike, they too refused to eat. Paul continued to be “force-fed through a tube shoved down her throat while she was being held down by prison guards” (Cooney 357). Paul’s attorney, Dudley Field Malone, a “presidential appointee” disagreed with the president and wrote him a letter saying its time “that men in this generation, at some cost to themselves, stood up to battle for the national enfranchisement of American women” (Cooney 354). When Malone found out that Paul was in the psychopathic ward, he demanded that she be returned to the prison hospital.
Burns wrote a note which stated: “I refused to open mouth. Gannon pushed the tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted my head all I could, but he managed to push it up. It hurts nose and throat very much and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out covered with blood” (Cooney 361). Paul and Winslow were on hunger strike for twenty-two days in a row, “and several others were soon likely to die” (Coolidge 133). Altogether, there were about thirty suffragist that were on hunger strikes while in District jail, since “eight were in a state of almost total collapse, the Administration capitulated” (Stevens 130).
In late November 1917, the prisoners were suddenly released without explanation. Just a few months later, “January 10, 1918, a vote on the Susan B. Anthony amendment for women’s suffrage was scheduled in the House…Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana –the first woman elected to Congress –opened the debate” (Nash 102). The amendment won by just one vote. However, it took well over a year later, even with President Wilson’s blessing, before it would be passed in the Senate.
During a session held by Congress in May 1919, the House passed the amendment on its fifth try since 1887, and then went to the states for ratification just one month later. Tennessee was the last state to ratify. The NWP waited nervously because they knew they were one vote shy until Harry “Burn, a legislator from an anti-suffragist district in the mountains, had listened to his mother, who had encouraged him to vote for ratification” (Nash 109). Finally, “on August 26, 1920, the Secretary of State of the United States proclaimed the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution to be the law of the land” (Stevens 48). The following November, all American women had the right to vote in national elections.
Women’s suffrage in the United States was a long drawn-out battle that exhausted many women until their deaths throughout the years. But when Alice Paul and Lucy Burns decided to lobby Washington for the passage of a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, their actions drew attention to the suffrage movement by pressuring President Woodrow Wilson and his administration until American women were finally granted that right. Because of their efforts, and the efforts of many others, women in America stand on higher grounds today, having served as Supreme Court Justices, Secretary of State, and even aiming for the presidency. Today, voter turnout rates for women have equaled or exceeded voter turnout rates for men; however, women still continue to struggle for equal wages in the workplace, among many other things.
Works Cited
Coolidge, Olivia. Women's Rights: The Suffrage Movement in America, 1848-1920. New York: Dutton, 1966. Print.
Cooney, Robert P.J., Jr. Winning the Vote. Santa Cruz: American Graphic Press, 2005. Print.
Harper, Ida Husted, ed. The History of Woman Suffrage, 1900-1920. 6 vols. New York: Anno Press, Inc, 1969. Vol. 5. Print.
Harper, Ida Husted, ed. The History of Woman Suffrage, 1900-1920. 6 vols. New York: Anno Press, Inc, 1969. Vol. 6. Print.
Nash, Carol Rust. The Fight for Women's Right to Vote: In American History. Springfield: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 1998. Print.
Stevens, Doris. Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote. Troutdale: New Sage Press, 1995. Print.
Weatherford, Doris. A History of the American Suffragist Movement. Santa Barbara: ABC- CLIO, Inc, 1998. Print.
Alice Paul was a highly educated Quaker from New Jersey and was often said to be like “a modernized version of Susan Anthony” (Coolidge 110). When Paul was in her early twenties, she became involved in a militant suffrage movement and was greatly influenced by Emmeline Pankhurst, a British suffrage leader. Paul met Lucy Burns while they were being detained in England. “A Vassar graduate, Burns also studied at Yale and the universities of Berlin, Bonn, and Oxford” (Weatherford 198). After the two met, “their adventures in and out of jail cemented a firm friendship…as faithful to each other as Susan Anthony and Mrs. Stanton” (Coolidge 112).
When Paul and Burns returned home, the two strongly agreed that campaigning state by state was a waste of time because by 1912, only nine states had voted for equal suffrage and they were all in the west. The reason western states granted women the right to vote was “because of the physical challenges of being in the unsettled western frontier, women were often more readily accepted in traditional male roles. Women commonly helped care for family farms and businesses, and were respected for their work both inside and outside of the home” (Nash 48). After they moved to Washington, their only intention was to lobby for a national amendment by raising national support, especially from the voters in the west.
In November, 1912, Paul and Burns gained “Anna Howard Shaw’s approval to take over NAWSA’s barley active Congressional Committee in Washington D.C.” (Cooney 185). The association was led by Shaw, who was skeptical of Paul and Burns because they were involved in the suffrage movement in England which had resulted in violence. Paul asked “the National Association to cooperate in organizing a great suffrage parade to take place in Washington the day before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson” (Harper 5:378). After they were given permission to take over the Congressional Committee, they had to raise their own funds and Paul quickly rounded up thousands of women to volunteer. “Nothing was more remarkable about Alice Paul than her ability to get work out of people…Paul wasted no time for thanks. Her eye was on the future. She presented another challenge in the perfect confidence that it would be met. It usually was” (Coolidge 113-14). When Burns attempted to obtain a permit for the parade, the police supervisor objected so they immediately “appealed to the Senate Committee for the District on the ground that as citizens and taxpayers they had the right to use the avenue, and a joint resolution was passed by Congress granting it” (Harper 6:108).
When Wilson arrived in Washington they day of the parade he was shocked to see that there were no crowds of people waiting to greet him. Almost everyone was on Pennsylvania Avenue watching the suffrage parade which was led by Inez Milholland. She represented a “free woman of the future’— crowned with the star of hope — armed with the cross of mercy, circled with the blue mantle of freedom, breasted with the torch of knowledge, and carrying the trumpet which is to herald the dawn of a new day of heroic endeavor for womanhood” (Cooney 193). Milholland was also a highly intelligent Vassar graduate who was “once charged with ‘inciting a riot’ in a police station, she was a suffragist the media could love” (Cooney 109). Women of all ages, races, and social classes marched in the parade that day.
Unfortunately, “the huge crowd of spectators, in town for the inauguration festivities, became unruly and turned into a mob” (Stevens 35). The mob brutally “attacked the marchers, spat on them, and threw lit cigars at them. Hundreds of marchers were injured” (Nash 88). The police were said to have done little to prevent the attacks which resulted in “an investigation and the Police Superintendent resigned” (Harper 6:109). When the news about the chaos reached the rest of the country through the press, many Americans were outraged when they heard hundreds of women were threatened and attacked at the nation’s capital. Although many were injured that day, it shined a new light on the movement and brought much needed publicity and sympathy toward women’s suffrage in America.
The media attention had a negative effect on Shaw who was president of the association, so “Paul became impatient because the committee had to answer to NAWSA, which she considered too conservative.” Paul and Burns founded “the Congressional Union (CU) in April, 1913, which was still affiliated with NAWSA, but unlike the Congressional Committee, its sole purpose was to lobby for a national suffrage amendment” (Nash 88).
Since over three-million women already had the right to vote in the west, Paul and Burns asked the Democrats to support the enfranchisement of all American women in December, 1913. Burns told Democrats that “it is unthinkable that a national government which represents women should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom” (Stevens 40). But Wilson still believed suffrage should be won by each state individually, so during his speech to Congress in December, he failed to mention a single word about it.
The CU focused on campaigning in the western states, urging those to boycott Wilson in the next election. Paul “arranged a motor pilgrimage from San Francisco to Washington carrying a suffrage petition eighteen thousand feet long and bearing half a million names” (Coolidge 120-21). Milholland, the iconic figure who led the suffrage parade in Washington, was one out of the hundreds of women who dedicated herself to the western campaign. Unfortunately, Milholland collapsed while she was asking the president “how long must women wait for liberty.” Sadly, she died because of poor health just a few months later (Stevens 53). Many Americans were devastated to hear of her death, especially because she believed in the cause so much that she traveled across the country in poor health and happened to die along the way, shortly after she was addressing the president.
As the First World War started to develop, “Wilson resisted the appeals of every sort of delegation with which…Paul contrived to harass him.” Therefore, after numerous attempts to convince the president to support suffrage, “twelve women emerged on January 10, 1917, four with lettered place cards and eight with the purple, white, and gold banners of the party” and stood at the White House gates (Coolidge 121-22). The pickets held up banners that read: “MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE” (Stevens 59). President Wilson continued to avoid the issue, but managed to tip his hat to the ladies when he passed them as he took walks around the White House. Most people assumed the picketing would not last long, especially after the weather got bad. But little did they know; the ladies would not give up so easily.
Many people were outraged to find out the suffragists were picketing a possible war-time president, which was believed to be unpatriotic. NAWSA did not support picketing the president, so Paul and Burns decided to split from Shaw because of their differences. “At a meeting in Washington in March 1917, the Congressional Union was officially changed to the National Woman’s Party and…Paul was elected chairman” (Harper 5:676). “The ‘silent sentinels’ as the pickets were called because they rarely spoke, changed hourly, the new team marching out of NWP through Lafayette Square, and to the gates of the White House” (Nash 94). The women marched every day and “through rain and snow, day and dark, summer and winter, sign-carrying women would encircle the White House” (Weatherford 210).
Paul and Burns feared that everything they had worked for would be forgotten if their plans were delayed because of the war, just as it had when the Civil War occurred, so they “became even more critical of Wilson’s administration” (Nash 94). At the beginning of April 1917, pickets stood in front of the White House gates during a war session, holding up banners that stated: “RUSSIA AND ENGLAND ARE ENFRANCHISING THEIR WOMEN IN WAR-TIME. HOW LONG MUST AMERICAN WOMEN WAIT FOR THEIR LIBERTY?” But just a few days later “Congress declared the United States to be at war with Germany. President Wilson voiced his memorable, ‘We shall fight for the things we have always carried nearest our hearts –for democracy for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Government.’” His speech irritated many suffragists because they obeyed the law, yet had no say in government matters. (Stevens 67).
It did not take long before a group of angry boys attacked the pickets and tore down banners on June 20, 1917 that read: “TO THE RUSSIAN ENVOYS, WE THE WOMEN OF AMERICA TELL YOU THAT AMERICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. TWENTY MILLION AMERICAN WOMEN ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO VOTE. PRESIDENT WILSON IS THE CHIEF OPPONENT OF THEIR NATIONAL ENFRANCHISEMENT. HELP US MAKE THIS NATION REALLY FREE. TELL OUR GOVERNMENT IT MUST LIBERATE ITS PEOPLE BEFORE IT CAN CLAIM FREE RUSSIA AS AN ALLY” (Stevens 74).
Many feared for the president’s safety because the large crowds could be a potential threat, so Paul was strongly advised to stop the picketing by the District chief of police. “She failed to see why picketing which had been legal in January had become less so in June. Her lawyers had advised her it was permissible” (Coolidge 126). The next day the pickets returned with a banner that stated the exact words of Wilson’s famous speech: “WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WE HAVE ALWAYS HELD NEAREST OUR HEARTS, FOR DEMOCRACY, FOR THE RIGHT OF THOSE WHO SUBMIT TO AUTHORITY HAVE A VOICE IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT” (Stevens 75). The pickets were promptly attacked, their banners were snatched away from them and the police proceeded to arrest the women. “Witnesses, however, could not help but admire the courage and poise of the women in the face of abusive and violent mobs” (Cooney 345).
Each day, more and more women were attacked and arrested as they continued to picket. The women who were arrested where each ordered to pay a twenty-five dollar fine for “obstructing traffic.” Since the pickets believed that they were not guilty of any crime, they refused to pay. A woman named Gilson Gardner, who was a member of the NWP spoke at her hearing and stated: “It is impossible for me to believe that we were arrested because we were obstructing traffic or blocking the public highway. We have been carrying on activities of a distinctly political nature, and these political activities have seemingly disturbed certain powerful influences. Arrests followed. I submit that these arrests are purely political and that the charge of an unlawful assemblage and of obstructing traffic is a political subterfuge” (Stevens 80-81).
The accused women were later sentenced to “sixty days in the workhouse in default of a twenty-five dollar fine” (Stevens 81). More women continued to picket which resulted in their arrest. On August 14, 1917 after Wilson returned from a mission in Russia, the pickets displayed banners which read: “TO ENVOY ROOT. YOU SAY THAT AMERICA MUST THROW ITS MANHOOD TO THE SUPPORT OF LIBERTY. WHOSE LIBERTY? THIS NATION IS NOT FREE. TWENTY MILLION WOMEN ARE DENIED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THE RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT.
TELL THE PRESIDENT THAT HE CONNOT FIGHT AGAINST LIBERTY AT HOME WHILE HE TELLS US TO FIGHT FOR LIBERTY ABROAD. TELL HIM TO MAKE AMERICA SAFE BEFORE HE ASKS THE MOTHERS OF AMERICA TO THROW THEIR SONS TO THE SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY ON EUROPE. ASK HIM HOW HE CAN REFUSE LIBERTY TO AMERICAN CITIZENS WHEN HE IS FORCING MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BOYS OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY TO DIE FOR LIBERTY.”
“KAISER WILSON, HAVE YOU FORGOTTON HOW YOU SYMPATHIZED WITH THE POOR GERMANS BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT SELF-GOVERNED? 20,000,000 AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNED. TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE” (Stevens 87-88).
The mob brutally attacked the pickets, tore their banners apart and surrounded the NWP headquarters when Burns attempted to hang a banner off the balcony hoping that it would not be destroyed. “Later in the day someone fired a shot into the second floor of NWP headquarters, narrowly missing two women.” During the next three days “the pickets were kicked, dragged, battered, and bruised by members of the crowds and by police. Paul was violently dragged by a sailor down a sidewalk for nearly thirty feet” (Cooney 351).
On August 17, pickets were quickly arrested and were sent to the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. The workhouse had extremely poor living conditions where sheets were only changed yearly and the food had worms. One night, a seventy year-old woman “was dragged across a courtyard in the dark, and down a corridor, where she was roughly thrown into a cell, landing on the bed” (Coolidge 131). Some women were treated even worse. “Burns, a vocal leader, was treated especially harshly. She was beaten and her wrists were handcuffed high on her cell door” (Nash 97).
Since women were given different sentences, news of the treatment they received at the workhouse surfaced and the press distributed the stories throughout the nation. Many people were shocked and appalled, especially ones from the west, when they heard how women were being treated just because they wanted the right to political freedom. When Paul and eleven other women were picketing in October 1917, they were immediately arrested and Paul was sentenced to seven months. As she was on her way to the District jail, she managed to tell reporters that they were “being imprisoned, not because we obstructed traffic, but because we pointed out to the President the fact that he was obstructing the cause of democracy at home, while Americans were fighting for it abroad” (Stevens 113).
Naturally, Paul immediately aggravated the guards by demanding they open a window because of the extremely hot conditions the women had to work in. When the guards refused, she threw a book and shattered one of the windows. As a punishment, for the next two weeks, Paul remained in solitary confinement in the District jail. After confinement, Paul had become weak and looked unhealthy so she was admitted to the prison hospital where she was placed next to Rose Winslow, a fellow suffragist, and together they swore to a hunger strike. One time after Winslow had been force-fed; she wrote a note that found a way back to her husband, explaining the details of the force feedings. Winslow wrote: “Alice Paul is in the psychopathic ward. She dreaded forcible feeding frightfully, and I have to think how she must be feeling. I had a nervous time of it, gasping a long time afterward, and my stomach rejecting during the process…One feels so forsaken when one lies prone and people shove a pipe down one’s stomach” (Stevens 118).
Soon after the nation grew aware of the poor living conditions, the unlawful imprisonment, and the force feedings the pickets had to endure, the women were sent back to the District jail where Paul had never left. When the women heard about the hunger strike, they too refused to eat. Paul continued to be “force-fed through a tube shoved down her throat while she was being held down by prison guards” (Cooney 357). Paul’s attorney, Dudley Field Malone, a “presidential appointee” disagreed with the president and wrote him a letter saying its time “that men in this generation, at some cost to themselves, stood up to battle for the national enfranchisement of American women” (Cooney 354). When Malone found out that Paul was in the psychopathic ward, he demanded that she be returned to the prison hospital.
Burns wrote a note which stated: “I refused to open mouth. Gannon pushed the tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted my head all I could, but he managed to push it up. It hurts nose and throat very much and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out covered with blood” (Cooney 361). Paul and Winslow were on hunger strike for twenty-two days in a row, “and several others were soon likely to die” (Coolidge 133). Altogether, there were about thirty suffragist that were on hunger strikes while in District jail, since “eight were in a state of almost total collapse, the Administration capitulated” (Stevens 130).
In late November 1917, the prisoners were suddenly released without explanation. Just a few months later, “January 10, 1918, a vote on the Susan B. Anthony amendment for women’s suffrage was scheduled in the House…Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana –the first woman elected to Congress –opened the debate” (Nash 102). The amendment won by just one vote. However, it took well over a year later, even with President Wilson’s blessing, before it would be passed in the Senate.
During a session held by Congress in May 1919, the House passed the amendment on its fifth try since 1887, and then went to the states for ratification just one month later. Tennessee was the last state to ratify. The NWP waited nervously because they knew they were one vote shy until Harry “Burn, a legislator from an anti-suffragist district in the mountains, had listened to his mother, who had encouraged him to vote for ratification” (Nash 109). Finally, “on August 26, 1920, the Secretary of State of the United States proclaimed the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution to be the law of the land” (Stevens 48). The following November, all American women had the right to vote in national elections.
Women’s suffrage in the United States was a long drawn-out battle that exhausted many women until their deaths throughout the years. But when Alice Paul and Lucy Burns decided to lobby Washington for the passage of a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, their actions drew attention to the suffrage movement by pressuring President Woodrow Wilson and his administration until American women were finally granted that right. Because of their efforts, and the efforts of many others, women in America stand on higher grounds today, having served as Supreme Court Justices, Secretary of State, and even aiming for the presidency. Today, voter turnout rates for women have equaled or exceeded voter turnout rates for men; however, women still continue to struggle for equal wages in the workplace, among many other things.
Works Cited
Coolidge, Olivia. Women's Rights: The Suffrage Movement in America, 1848-1920. New York: Dutton, 1966. Print.
Cooney, Robert P.J., Jr. Winning the Vote. Santa Cruz: American Graphic Press, 2005. Print.
Harper, Ida Husted, ed. The History of Woman Suffrage, 1900-1920. 6 vols. New York: Anno Press, Inc, 1969. Vol. 5. Print.
Harper, Ida Husted, ed. The History of Woman Suffrage, 1900-1920. 6 vols. New York: Anno Press, Inc, 1969. Vol. 6. Print.
Nash, Carol Rust. The Fight for Women's Right to Vote: In American History. Springfield: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 1998. Print.
Stevens, Doris. Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote. Troutdale: New Sage Press, 1995. Print.
Weatherford, Doris. A History of the American Suffragist Movement. Santa Barbara: ABC- CLIO, Inc, 1998. Print.