Jailed for Freedom

Chapter 27. Republican Congress Passes Amendment

Appendices

Illustrations

Alice Paul Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont Democrats Attempt to Counteract Woman’s Party Campaign Inez Milholland Boissevain Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol Scenes on the Picket Line Monster Picket—March 4, 1917 Officer Arrests Pickets Women Put into Police Patrol Suffragists in Prison Costume Fellow Prisoners Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse Riotous Scenes on Picket Line Dudley Field Malone Lucy Burns Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket Forty-One Women Face Jail Prisoners Released “Lafayette We Are Here” Wholesale Arrests Suffragists March to LaFayette Monument Torch-Bearer, and Escorts Some Public Men Who Protested Against Imprisonment of Suffragists Abandoned Jail Prisoners on Straw Pallets on Jail Floor Pickets at Capitol Senate Pages and Capitol Police Attack Pickets The Urn Guarded by Miss Berthe Arnold The Bell Which Tolled the Change of Watch Watchfire “Legal” Watchfire Scattered by Police-Dr. Caroline Spencer Rebuilding it One Hundred Women Hold Public Conflagration Pickets in Front of Reviewing Stand, Boston Mrs. Louise Sykes Burning President Wilson’s Speech on Boston Common Suffrage Prisoners

To Alice Paul

Through Whose Brilliant and Devoted Leadership the Women of America Have Been Able to Consummate with Gladness and Gallant Courage Their Long Struggle for Political Liberty, This Book is Affectionately Dedicated

PREFACE

This book deals with the intensive campaign of the militant suffragists of America [1913-1919] to win a solitary thing-the passage by Congress of the national suffrage amendment enfranchising women. It is the story of the first organized militant ,political action in America to this end. The militants differed from the pure propagandists in the woman suffrage movement chiefly in that they had a clear comprehension of the forces which prevail in politics. They appreciated the necessity of the propaganda stage and the beautiful heroism of those who had led in the pioneer agitation, but they knew that this stage belonged to the past; these methods were no longer necessary or effective.

For convenience sake I have called Part II “Political Action,” and Part III “Militancy,” although it will be perceived that the entire campaign was one of militant political action. The emphasis, however, in Part II is upon political action, although certainly with a militant mood. In

Part Iii Dramatic Acts of Protest, Such As Are Now Commonly Called

militancy, are given emphasis as they acquired a greater importance during the latter part of the campaign. This does not mean that all militant deeds were not committed for a specific political purpose. They were. But militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a task, as it is the commission of deeds of protest. It is the state of mind of those who is their fiery idealism do not lose sight of the real springs of human action.

There are two ways in which this story might be told. It might be told as a tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be told as a ruthless enterprise of compelling a hostile administration to subject women to martyrdom in order to hasten its surrender. The truth is, it has elements of both ruthlessness and martyrdom. And I have tried to make them appear in a true proportion. It is my sincere hope that you will understand and appreciate the martyrdom involved, for it was the conscious voluntary gift of beautiful, strong and young hearts. But it was never martyrdom for its own sake. It was martyrdom used for a practical purpose.

The narrative ends with the passage of the amendment by Congress. The campaign for ratification, which extended over fourteen months, is a story in itself. The ratification of the amendment by the 36th and last state legislature proved as difficult to secure from political leaders as the 64th and last vote in the United States Senate.

This book contains my interpretations, which are of course arguable. But it is a true record of events.

DORIS STEVENS.

New York, August, 1920.

“I do pray, and that most earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the women o f the nation into a self-respect which mill compel them to, see the absolute degradation o f their present position; which will compel them to break their yoke of bondage and give them faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their allegiance to women first . . . . The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it. O to compel them to see and feel and to give them the courage and the conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they face the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!”

Susan B. Anthony, 1872.

Part I. Leadership

Leadership

Chapter 1 A Militant Pioneer—Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony was the first militant suffragist. She has been so long proclaimed only as the magnificent pioneer that few realize that she was the first woman to defy the law for the political liberty of her sex.

The militant spirit was in her many early protests. Sometimes these protests were supported by one or two followers; more often they were solitary protests. Perhaps it is because of their isolation that they stand out so strong and beautiful in a turbulent time in our history when all those about her were making compromises.

It was this spirit which impelled her to keep alive the cause of the enfranchisement of women during the passionate years of the Civil War. She held to the last possible moment that no national exigency was great enough to warrant abandonment of woman’s fight for independence. But one by one her followers deserted her. She was unable to keep even a tiny handful steadfast to this position. She became finally the only figure in the nation appealing for the rights of women when the rights of black men were agitating the public mind. Ardent abolitionist as she was, she could not tolerate without indignant protest the exclusion of women in all discussions of emancipation. The suffrage war policy of Miss Anthony can be compared to that of the militants a half century later when confronted with the problem of this country’s entrance into the world war.

The war of the rebellion over and the emancipation of the negro man written into the constitution, women contended they had a right to vote under the new fourteenth amendment. Miss Anthony led in this agitation, urging all women to claim the right to vote under this amendment. In the national election of 1872 she voted in Rochester, New York, her home city, was arrested, tried and convicted of the crime of “voting without having a lawful right to vote.”

I cannot resist giving a brief excerpt from the court records of this extraordinary case, so reminiscent is it of the cases of the suffrage pickets tried nearly fifty years later in the courts of the national capital.

After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government’s case, Judge Hunt read his opinion, said to have been written before the case had been heard, and directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty. The jury was dismissed without deliberation and a new trial was refused. On the following day this scene took place in that New York court room.

JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all my sex are, by your Honor’s verdict doomed to political subjection under this so-called republican form of government.

JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot. listen to a rehearsal of argument which the prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by jury of my peers as an offender against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property, and——

JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.

Miss ANTHONY—But, your Honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this highhanded outrage upon my citizen’s rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury

JUDGE HUNT—The prisoner must sit down, the Court cannot allow it.

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