HISTORY OF TENNESSEE
The Progressives and the Great War

*The progress made by the New South was symbolised by the celebration of Tennessee’s centennial.  People had suggested a centennial exposition since at least 1892, and many were inspired by the Columbian Exposition held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America.

*The exposition was to be held in 1896, the 100th anniversary of Tennessee’s entrance to the Union, but funding problems delayed everything but the dedication ceremony until 1897.  The Centennial Exposition was officially opened by Governor Robert Taylor, and the electricity was turned on from the White House by President McKinley.  16,000 Confederate veterans were there in the front row seats.

*Built around Lake Watauga, an artificial lake named after the first free and independent government in Tennessee (and America), the most famous structure was a reproduction of the Parthenon, meant to celebrate Nashville’s claim to be the Athens of the South, a centre of education and culture.  Memphis built their own pavilion, in the shape of a pyramid, and many other towns, colleges, and civic groups, and even other states, had their own pavilions and displays.

*The University of Tennessee displayed an X-Ray machine, in one of its earliest public demonstrations.  Other pavilions portrayed the latest technology of all kinds; there was even a Women’s Pavilion demonstrating the latest in kitchen equipment, although it also sponsored a Women’s Suffrage Day, inviting a number of prominent suffragettes to speak, notably Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, and Anna Shaw.  A Negro Pavilion had exhibits from black colleges around the South, showing the advances made by Southern blacks since the end of slavery, and brining Booker T. Washington to speak. 

*The Centennial Exposition was a tremendous success.  Like similar expositions, it was, in effect, a World’s Fair, and it was one of the few World’s Fairs to actually turn a profit outright (although it was a small one, less than $50).  President McKinley visited and so did his former (and future) opponent, William Jennings Bryan, as did over 1,676,000 other people. 

*Centennial Park remains in Nashville today, with Lake Watauga in its centre. 

*The original Parthenon was only meant to last a year, but it was so popular that Nashville managed to keep it up until 1920, when it was torn down to make way for a better version, built out of concrete (instead of lathes and plaster).  This building still stands today, serving as an art museum that attracts over 150,000 visitors a year, including classical scholars who study the building itself, which is extremely accurate, far more so than the broken and decayed remains of the original with remain in Athens.

*In the New South of the late 1800s, Southerners promoted not just economic and industrial expansion, but moral and political reform.  This was part of a nationwide movement for reform that would come to be known as Progressivism in the early 20th Century.

*Tennessee had been a deeply religious state since the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s, and after the Civil War, Tennesseans became increasingly concerned about the moral condition of the state.

*The rapid growth of the cities (and the presence of thousands of soldiers) had turned them into dens of iniquity.  Memphis was particularly famous for its gambling and prostitution, but all of Tennessee’s four major cities had red light districts.

*In 1863, Union officials had tried to clean up Nashville by loading as many prostitutes as they could catch on a steamboa named the Idahoe.  It was sent along the Cumberland and Ohio, but no-one would let the passengers disembark, so it finally returned to Nashville and the Army set up a system of legalised prostitution, with licenses and medical exams.  It later used the same system in other occupied towns, including Memphis.

*This was obviously not the sort of reform most rural Tennesseans envisioned, nor was prostitution seen as the only problem.  Gambling, drinking, crime, and poverty was all endemic to the cities, and rural folks saw these as proof that city people were morally inferior.  However, most of the evangelical Protestant churches of the countryside thought that sin was individual in nature, and, moreover, a part of a wicked world that could not be defeated except by saving people one at a time.

*This began to change in the 1880s.  Sam Jones, a Methodist minister from Georgia, began leading revivals across the South.  In 1884 and 1885 he visited Tennessee, and brought fire and brimstone with him.

*He condemned Nashville for its selfishness in the midst of the wealth of the New South.  One of the richest men in town, Steamboat Tom Ryman, who owned riverboats that featured gambling, saloons, and loose women, planned to break up his meetings and beat him up.  However, upon arriving, he listened to the sermon, and was saved.  When Jones announced that Ryman had come to beat him up, he admitted it, but said that Jones had whipped him instead with the Gospel of Christ.

*Ryman went on to build the Union Gospel Tabernacle to hold revivals and church meetings for all denominations.  It later served as a theatre and convention centre.  When Ryman died in 1904, his funeral was held there, and Sam Jones returned to preach it.  He suggested to the 4,000 people in attendance that the place be re-named Ryman Auditorium, and it was.  It eventually served as the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943-1974, and still stands in Nashville to-day.

*Jones gave sermons in Memphis that reduced grown men to tears.  In Knoxville he spoke out in favour of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, one of the best organised of the groups that sought to close the saloons in the cities.  Above all, Jones, who was a reformed alcoholic himself, told his congregations to become active in politics, and to use their power to change society for the better.

*The best way to do this, most people felt, was by attacking the saloons.  All over the state, temperance groups were formed for this purpose.  Drinking in moderation might be all right, but when men got together in towns to drink at the saloons, they spent all their family’s money, got in fights, and generally caused trouble and ruined their own lives.  Women in particular opposed the saloons, because so many families were ruined by drunk and abusive husbands and fathers.

*In 1885, the different temperance organisations formed the Tennessee Temperance Alliance with the goal of holding a referendum on banning alcohol in the state.  In 1886, enough pro-referendum legislators were elected to the General Assembly that a referendum was scheduled for September 1887.  Sam Jones came to the state to campaign in support of the amendment, while conservative Democrats and Republicans ridiculed him and his followers.

*The referendum failed, despite support in East Tennessee and most rural areas.  Because the cities had large black populations who were able to vote as long as they voted more or less as the white political bosses wanted them to, many temperance supporters blamed blacks for the failure of the referendum, and ended up throwing their support behind the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s that increased segregation and decreased black political power.

*Despite their best efforts, the reformers of the late 1800s did not have the political support they needed, and they remained a largely unsuccessful effort.

*By 1910, Memphis was the murder capital of America, with a murder rate close to seven times that the national average, and twice that of Atlanta, the second most murderous city in the nation.

*Fortunately, Tennessee enjoyed prosperity during the first two decades of the 20th Century, so many people had the time and money to try to correct all the problems they saw.  Cities began to pave their streets, set up power lines, telephone systems, and trolley lines.  One reason people in Memphis were able to kill each other so often is because after the city cleaned up the swamps around it in the 1890s, yellow fever was not keeping down the local population any more.  Still, people wanted more.

*Most of the progressive leaders in Tennessee were not politicians, and Tennessee politics of the late 19th Century still mostly depended on which side you supported in the Civil War.  Instead, Tennessee progressivism came from businessmen, church leaders, educators, and sometimes local politicians who wanted to improve their communities both economically and spiritually.

*Despite the feeling of the late 19th century that the cities were corrupt and wicked, many of the most successful progressives were city-dwellers who wanted to improve their own homes, although they were supported by the rural people, and, in truth, most of them were only one generation off the farm themselves.  Most were middle class, and their leaders tended to be fairly prosperous, but there were progressives from all levels of society.

*Many leading progressives were also the wives of prosperous men.   For the most part, Tennesseans subscribed to the concept of separate spheres, in which men did public business while women managed the household, although Tennessee’s cities did offer more jobs for women than they had before—many were hired on as clerks and secretaries, using the new technology of the typewriter.  Leading progressive women used their husbands’ money and their own free time to crusade for their favourite causes.

*Most of Tennessee’s progressive women did not attack the notion of separate and different roles for men and women, but instead used that to their advantage.  If men were breadwinners, they had to be made to stop spending their income of liquor in the saloons.  If women were weaker and in need of protection, then it was necessary to end prostitution for their own protection.  If women were naturally more moral than men, it stood to reason that they ought to be able to vote, in order to provide some moral guidance to politics.

*Progressives also wanted good roads, good schools, and sound government free from corruption.

*Tradition opposed most of Progressivism, of course.  City mayors promised to protect the men who voted for them by keeping their saloons open.  Tennessee had a powerful liquor industry that fought against temperance, or the increasingly popular prohibition, and it opposed women’s suffrage, too, knowing that most prohibitionists were women.  Even rural people, who wanted the cities cleaned up did not want to spend their own money on new roads and schools, or really much of anything, in part because tax money still came primarily from property taxes, meaning that the burden fell excessively on rural land-owners.

*Temperance and prohibition had been issues in Tennessee since the 1830s, and even though the 1887 referendum to impose prohibition on the whole state failed, there was another law on the books that the prohibitionists could use.  The 1877 ‘Four-Mile Law’ prohibited any saloons (outside of towns) that were within four miles of a school.  There were tiny country schools all over Tennessee, and it was often hard to find a spot four miles from any rural school to run a legal saloon.

*Eventually the Four-Mile Law was modified to allow prohibition to be extended to towns as well through the ‘local option.’  Any town or city that wanted to could vote on going dry.  Gradually, most small towns voted out liquor, and in 1907 even Knoxville did so, despite the mayor’s opposition.  By that point, only Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, and LaFollette (in Campbell County, 45 miles north of Knoxville) still served alcohol.

*This did not stop anyone from buying, alcohol, of course.  Illegal saloons called ‘blind tigers’ operated all across the state, and nothing successfully stopped anyone from making moonshine.

*The Bourbons (Conservative Democrats) who still dominated Tennessee’s politics hated the reformers.  They were used to running things behind the scenes and picking their own candidates for office.  The reformers, though, wanted more transparent government, and usually refused to vote for anyone who did not support the right issues.

*Bourbon dominance collapsed in Tennessee due to internal Bourbon politics, as they adopted popular policies to fight one another for political dominance.

*The man who really destroyed the Bourbons was one of their own, Edward Ward Carmack.  A vicious newspaper editor and particularly racist even by the standards of the day, he once suggested repealing the XV Amendment.  In 1896 he was elected to Congress on a pro-silver campaign.  In 1901 he was made a US Senator. 

*In 1905, the state’s other senator died 5 days after taking office.  Robert Taylor felt he deserved the seat, but the General Assembly instead sent the current governor, James Frazier, and promoted the speaker of the state senate, John Cox, to the governorship.  Carmack was a friend and ally of Frazier and Cox, so Taylor challenged him for his US Senate seat in 1906.  No longer could the Bourbons decide the state’s politics in back rooms; too many people wanted offices and did not want to wait their turns.

*Taylor won, with the support of the cities, while Carmack had most of the rural vote.  Cox also lost his bid for election to the governorship (although it was during his tenure that Tennessee’s flag was adopted in 1905; it was designed by LeRoy Reeves, or Johnson City, a National Guard captain and an attorney).  The governorship went to Malcolm Patterson, instead, the son of the man who ran against Carmack for Congress in 1896.

*Carmack decided to challenge Patterson in the gubernatorial election of 1908, and he would use prohibition as his platform.  He had never really been a prohibitionist before—most Bourbons weren’t—but he thought it would be a good issue among the rural people who tended to support him anyway. 

*However, when Patterson saw that Carmack was taking up a progressive cause like prohibition, he realised he needed to counter with some reforms of his own.  As governor, he supported public education, passed a pure food and drug law to inspect food quality, created a state highway system and a reform school for boys. 

*Carmack soon claimed to support all those things, too.  In fact, the only major campaign difference between Carmack and Patterson was that Carmack wanted state-wide prohibition and Patterson preferred the local option.

*Patterson defeated Carmack, who went back to newspaper work, joining up with the brand-new Nashville Tennessean (founded by Middle Tennessee politician Luke Lea in 1907) as editor.  Carmack used the paper to attack Patterson and all his allies, but particularly Duncan Cooper, a man who had once been one of Carmack’s earliest political allies and even his employer.

*Cooper threatened Carmack, and both started carrying guns.  In November 1908, Duncan Cooper and his son Robin ran into Edward Carmack in downtown Nashville.  They shouted at each other, and Duncan Cooper ran at Carmack, who drew his gun and fired two shots, hitting Robin Cooper, who drew his own gun and shot Carmack dead.  Carmack was the last newspaper editor ever killed in Tennessee for his writing.  He is commemorated by a statue on the statehouse grounds.

*Carmack became a martyr for the prohibitionists.  The Tennessean claimed that Carmack had been murdered by the liquor industry.  Even Tennesseans with nothing against a friendly drink came to resent the apparent power of the liquor industry.  Under public pressure, the legislature approved state-wide prohibition in 1909, despite Governor Patterson’s veto.

*Both Coopers were convicted of second degree murder, but Robin Cooper’s conviction was overturned on a technicality and Governor Patterson pardoned Duncan Cooper, saying no court could have tried him impartially.  Patterson suffered tremendous public criticism, and even the liquor industry backed away from him.

*Patterson ran for governor again in 1910, and his enemies boycotted the Democratic convention so that he was nominated unopposed.  The Republicans nominated Ben Hooper (an illegitimate son of Cocke County), and prohibitionist Democrats offered him their support.  Finally, Patterson withdrew and the Democrates convinced Senator Bob Taylor to run.  Although Taylor was extremely popular, people hated Patterson so much that it hurt all the Democrats, and Hooper won in 1910 and again in 1912.

*Hooper worked hard at reform, improving schools (and making attendance mandatory for all children within walking distance of a school), regulating the state’s banks, changing the state’s method of execution from hanging to electrocution, and trying to actually enforce the liquor laws, which were routinely ignored.  In all this, he had support from both Republicans and many Democrats, which was typical of Progressive leaders, as progressivism was not a political party, but a state of mind.

*Unfortunately for Hooper, he was opposed by many powerful figures, too.  Although Knoxville had voted itself dry, none of Tennessee’s other major cities did so, and even when statewide prohibition was enacted, they openly ignored it, and many of their leaders protected the saloons.  In Nashville, Mayor Hillary Howse announced that he didn’t just protect the saloons, he patronized them too.

*Even more determined to oppose prohibition was the mayor of Memphis, Ed Crump.  He had been elected in 1910 as a progressive reformer, but instead of shutting down the saloons and red-light district, he cleaned them up and kept them quiet, so decent middle-class people wouldn’t have to notice them.  He promoted himself as an enemy of the interests, and did fight the utility companies and railroads for cheaper rates for Memphis.  He also provided better schools, parks, and cleaner streets for everyone in Memphis, white and black.  In general, while Crump was in charge of Memphis, blacks were encouraged to vote, as long as they voted for Crump and his friends—and they did, in large numbers.  However, many of Crump’s constituents, black and white, opposed prohibition, so Crump did too.

*In 1914, the Democrats finally realized that the people wanted prohibition and would vote for it, so they withdrew their support from Hooper and nominated their own prohibition candidate, Thomas Rye, who won.

*In 1915, Rye oversaw the passage of the ‘Ouster Law,’ which allowed public officials to be removed from office if they did not enforce prohibition.  Ed Crump and Hillary Howse were thrown out of office almost immediately.  Crump ran for re-election in 1916 and won, but resigned in favour of one of his allies.  Crump was then elected a city trustee of Memphis, and ran the city from behind the scenes, and eventually built up such a power base that he nearly ran the state, so that he became known as Boss Crump.

*In 1916, Rye won re-election, and by 1917, all saloons were closed.  Nashville even closed down its brothels, throwing a thousand prostitutes out of work.

*1916 was also an election year for the US Senate, and it was the first Senatorial election in Tennessee since the ratification of the XVII Amendment required the popular election of Senators.  Kenneth McKellar of Memphis won, beating Ben Hooper.

*In 1919, the XVIII Amendment was ratified, outlawing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages nation-wide, and prohibition ceased to be a major issue in Tennessee politics, but it had already shaken apart the old Democratic Party.

*On a national level, the progressives did not just want to make America a better place, some wanted to make the world itself safe for democracy, but in the late nineteen-teens, the world was a very unsafe place indeed.

*Throughout the 19th Century, Europe, although increasingly powerful and militarised, managed to avoid major wars between its countries for 99 years after the defeat of Napoleon.  Partly Europe’s energy was focused outwards, for this was the great era of imperialism, when Europe conquered almost the entire world.  Unfortunately, Germany and Italy got into the race for colonies late, and did not get many compared to Britain or France, and were jealous as a result.

*In the process of conquering the world, Europe developed its old traditions of militarism, a glorification of the military and a focus on military power.  This was useful during the period of colonisation, but with nothing Africa and Asia divided among the nations of Europe, the armies began to grow restless, and a generation grew up weeping like Alexander because there were no more worlds left to conquer.

*Europe had kept the peace for so long through what was called the balance of power.  This was a series of alliances so that each country, if attacked, would be defended by several others.  With each country having a series of these alliances, any attack on anyone was liable to draw most of Europe into a war, so no-one dared attack his neighbour.

*The balance of power was upset, however, by the actions of one rash man.  Gavrilo Princip was a student in Sarajevo, capital of the province of Bosnia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, one of many uneasy ethnic areas that wanted independence.  Princip learned that they heir to the throne of Austria was coming to town on a state visit.  This was Archduke Franz Ferdinand who, with his wife who he dearly loved, rode through town in an open car.  Princip and some fellow nationalists plotted to kill the Archduke who, as luck would have it, ran into Princip while taking a shortcut through a back street in Sarajevo.  Princip shot the Archduke’s wife, Sofia, who died instantly, then shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand near the heart.  The Archduke’s dying word was his wife’s name.

*Austria accused not Bosnia, but neighbouring Serbia of arranging the assassination.  Serbia was an independent country that shared historical and ethnic ties with Bosnia, and wanted to see Bosnia leave Austria and be added to Serbia so all these Slavic peoples could be in one nation-state together.  After making demands Serbia could not meet, Austria declared war on Serbia in July, 1914.  Then all the alliances began to operate.

*Russia was a Slavic nation like Serbia, and prepared to move troops against Austria.  Germany, in turn, began to mobilise her troops.

*Germany had long had a plan for a war in Europe.  It was called the Schlieffen Plan after Count Alfred von Schlieffen who devised it.  In this plan, Germany would attack France and defeat her quickly.  Before Russia could move (because it was assumed Russia would take a long time to get ready) Germany would have beaten France and could then attack Russia.  The problem was, Germany could not just do half of it and attack Russia, so, when Russia began to threaten Germany’s ally Austria-Hungary, Germany declared war on Russia’s ally, France, and invaded.

*When the Germans invaded France, they did so through the small country of Belgium.  Great Britain, an ally of France and Russia anyway, but reluctantly so, had also promised years ago to protect Belgium from any invaders.  Furthermore, when the invasion began, rumours, mostly false, began to spread that the Germans were treating the Belgians terribly.  Although they were not the kindest of occupiers, the most unbelievable claims (such as the roasting and eating of Belgian babies) were unbelievable because they were, in fact, untrue.  Nonetheless, they were viscerally very moving.  Consequently, when the Germans invaded Belgium, the British had to come to the aid of France.

*The Ottoman Empire also joined the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, who became known as the Central Powers, opposed to the Allied powers of France, Britain, Russia, and a few others.  Italy was supposed to ally with Germany and Austria, but decided to sit back and see who was going to win.  When things started looking good for the Allies, Italy switched sides.

*At the time the War was seen as a great adventure.  This generation that had thought it had no great task before itself suddenly rushed into the streets to dance and cheer and celebrate.  Their time had come when they could fight for the glory of their country, as their ancestors had done.  Thousands of young men volunteered for the armies of their nations, and Europe went to war cheering.

*The Great War, as it was called at the time, was characterised by the use of new technology.  The most important were machine guns, poison gas, U-boats, and, to a much lesser extent, aircraft.

*Machine guns made it difficult for armies to attack one another.  Instead, troops pinned down by machine gun fire dug personal foxholes, then connected these foxholes with ditches that they expanded into trenches.  These in turn they made deeper and better and more extensive, with communications trenches connected them, bombproof shelters off the side of them, and twists and turns designed to isolate any invading enemy soldiers.  The trenches eventually stretched for hundreds of miles across the French countryside, which was completely cratered by shells until it looked like the surface of the moon.

*The war, at least in the West, devolved into a stalemate, with two vast armies sitting in trenches facing each other across no-man’s-land, and occasionally attacking one another and being mowed down by machine guns.  Millions of men were killed, almost an entire generation in all the European nations that took part in the War.

*America did not get involved much early in the War.  Thanks to the Monroe Doctrine, America valued her independence.  Many people also opposed war on both moral end economic grounds (war being expensive), but others, calling themselves the ‘preparedness movement’ wanted to build weapons and improve the army just in case.  Although Wilson was an idealist and a pacifist, he went along with this.

*Wilson was re-elected in 1916 on a platform of peace; his slogan was ‘he kept up out of war.’  However, some things would eventually force him into the War.

*Part of Germany’s strategy was to blockade Britain with U-boats, but this backfired.  In 1915, a German U-Boat fired upon the Lusitania, a British passenger ship carrying several Americans (and, illegally and unknown at the time, a supply of weapons) and sank it.  1,200 passengers, including 128 Americans, died.  Many Americans wanted to go to war, but Wilson refused.

*In 1917, the British intercepted and decoded a German telegram from Arthur Zimmerman, the foreign secretary, making an offer to Mexico.  If Mexico would help Germany and attack the United States, Germany would return to Mexico all the land that Polk took from them during the Mexican War.  Wilson and America were angry about the Zimmerman note, but still Wilson counselled peace.

*In March, the Germans sank three more American ships, and even Wilson, who had campaigned for office with the slogan ‘he kept us out of war’ felt compelled to ask for a declaration of war.

*At Wilson’s behest, America went to war, but not for conquest or power or prestige, but to defeat the tyrants who began the war, and make the world safe for Democracy.  This Great War, Wilson said, would be the last war—it was a war to end war.

*To get mobilized quickly, the US government instituted a draft.  This was not popular, but was felt to be necessary.  By the end of the war, 61,069 Tennesseans had been inducted into the Army, about 19,000 as Volunteers.

*The most famous of all American draftees was a Tennessean, Alvin York.  Despite having religious objections to the war, he eventually served with distinction.  During the Meuse-Argonne offensive of October 1918, he and seven other soldiers under his command captured 132 Germans (including 3 officers) and killed 28 others.  He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour (being one of 6 Tennesseans to receive it), along with many other American and foreign decorations, and ended up being the most decorated American soldier in the entire war.

*During WWI, Congress had the states create Councils of Defense to whip up support on the homefront for the war.  Tennessee’s Council of Defense was headed by Rutledge Smith of Cookville, the man who was also in charge of the Selective Service in Tennessee. 

*He encouraged women to register for war work, but many of them did not, out of fear that it would lead to them being drafted.  Only about 10% of the eligible women in Tennessee signed up.  Rutledge blamed this on German sympathizers, saying they had destroyed support for registration by connecting registration with Women’s Suffrage.

*Women who did not register were denounced by other women as German sympathizers, and people who did not buy enough bonds were considered unpatriotic, and under the Sedition Act passed by President Wilson, anyone who criticized any aspect of the war of the Government’s management of it could be arrested for sedition.

*For the most part, sedition cases were dropped after the war ended, but they turned many people against the government.  This is particularly unfortunate as, for the most part, Tennesseans whole-heartedly supported the war, and should not have needed to be coerced and bullied by the government.

*The Women’s Suffrage movement that was connected with war work during WWI had existed in the United States, although mostly in the North, since before the Civil War.  Most of the early women’s rights activists turned their attention to slavery, however, feeling that as good Christian women they needed to help others before they helped themselves.  The fact that many of them were ignored or criticized for their involvement in politics just made them even more determined to gain political rights.  After all, most women in the 19th Century did not get the same access to education that men did, they could not vote, they could not serve on juries, and they had many other legal and social limitations.  Even women who did work did not control their earnings—it all belonged to the man of the house.

*One of the reasons women were not thought suitable for voting was that they were such fragile, angelic creatures (the ‘angel of the household,’ the ‘queen of the home’), and the polling places were so rough, wild, and dangerous.  It wasn’t suitable for decent women to be shoved around by poor people, drunks, and black men at the polls.  Besides, if a woman wanted political influence, she could get it just as easily by guiding her husband and sons in how to vote, whereas if she didn’t really care about politics, letting her vote was essentially giving a second vote to her husband.

*Even when women began working out of the house more and more in the late 19th century, voting was still seen as too much of a public and masculine activity for women.

*Eventually things began to change nationwide.  In the late 19th century, women began, in some states, to get the power to make contracts, sue in court control their own wages, and own their own property.  Tennessee passed the Married Women’s Property Law in 1913.

*Some schools began to offer coeducational classes as well, including UT, which had a number of women students by the time of the 1897 Centennial Exhibition.  In many states, women began to get the right to vote in local elections, particularly for school boards, and in some states, mostly in the west, women were given the right to vote in all elections.

*In the South, though, many people, male and female, opposed women’s suffrage.  Many felt that they Bible had ordained separate roles for men and women, and that a woman’s place truly was in the home.  Some anti-suffragists also felt that if women were allowed to vote, it would open the door for blacks in the South to start demanding the rights they were supposed to have, but which were often kept from them (although some pro-suffragists also used racism, by suggesting that allowing women to vote would mean that there would be twice as many white votes to counter the black vote).

*Like most of Tennessee’s reforms, the push for women’s suffrage came from the educated urban middle and upper class, who had time to spend on political activism.  These women had already gotten the hang of public action by founding libraries, parks, orphanages, and other charitable organizations, and many of them were part of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and organization that supported women’s suffrage in the hopes that they would vote for prohibition on a national level.

*In 1889 Lide Meriwether, who would eventually become president of the WCTU, founded the state’s first women’s suffrage league in Memphis.  In 1897, she was elected president of the Tennessee Equal Rights Association, which was associated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association.  This was the same year as the Tennessee Centennial Exhibition, which invited several prominent national suffrage leaders to come speak.

*Perhaps the most successful of all Tennessee’s suffrage leaders was Anne Dallas Dudley (photograph on book cover and page 231), a Nashville housewife.  She used the traditional image of women as nurturing wives and mothers to promote her cause, saying that if women were given the vote, “a woman’s home will be the whole world, and her children, all those whose feet are bare, and her sisters, all those who need a helping hand.”  When a man once told here that only men should vote because they defended their country by bearing arms, Dudley replied "Yes, but women bear armies."

*Furthermore, during WWI, the suffragists did register for war work in large numbers, so the accusation that it was a vehicle for women’s suffrage was not entirely false.

*Most of Tennessee’s suffragists were associated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association, but some were involved in the more radical and left-wing National Woman’s Party, which engaged in civil disobedience, even picketing the White House during WWI and comparing President Wilson to Kaiser Wilhelm, calling him a tyrant for not supporting women’s suffrage.  Tennessee’s state chairwoman for the NWP was Sue Shelton White of Jackson, and she was arrested for burning President Wilson in effigy in front of the White House.  She spent five days in jail, and more respectable suffragists like Anne Dallas Dudley were disgusted, feeling that this hurt their cause.

*Eventually an organized anti-suffrage movement was founded.  It was led by John Vertrees, a Nashville lawyer, but supported by many women, too, including Josephine Pearson, head of the Tennessee branch of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.  She made her name trying to refute the claim that the only people who really opposed women’s suffrage were the big railroads, the liquor companies, and the factories that used child labour—all big business interests that were easy to attack.  While there was some truth to this accusation, women like Josephine Pearson showed that many ordinary people, including many women, were not comfortable with the movement.

*Like many suffragists, those of Tennessee tried to get a state constitutional amendment passed, first seriously suggesting it in 1915.  Governor Ben Hooper supported it, but this was not enough.  In 1917, the women asked for a little less:  not full suffrage, but a limited franchise in which they could vote in municipal elections and for the President of the United States.  Although this failed in 1917, it was passed again in 1919, and signed by Governor Albert H. Roberts.

*At the same time, though, the national suffrage movement had gotten the XIX Amendment through Congress, stating that The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.  However, it needed ¾ of the states to ratify it, and by 22 March 1920, 35 had, but one more was needed.  Suddenly, Tennessee was in the national spotlight, as one of the few Southern states where suffrage was thought to have a chance.

*This was tough.  Governor Roberts supported suffrage, and wanted to call the legislature to session to vote on it.  Technically, though, the State constitution said that no legislature could vote on an amendment until another election had been held since the amendment was made available for voting—thus allowing the next election to be a sort of referendum on the amendment.  However, some of Robert’s advisors insisted that he could call a special session of the legislature anyway, and when President Wilson, who had finally decided to support women’s suffrage, asked him to, he did.

*Nashville was suddenly swarming with suffragists and anti-suffragists.  The suffragists wore yellow roses to distinguish themselves, and the antis wore red.  Reports from the time say that hotel lobbies were seas of red and yellow.  The state prohibition law was broken, because, as one Tennessean explained to an out-of-state suffrage worker, ‘In Tennessee, whiskey and legislation go hand in hand, especially when controversial questions are urged.’

*On 9 August 1920, the fighting began.  Some anti-suffrage state senators were so obnoxious to their opponents that it hurt their own side of the argument, losing them much public sympathy.  The senate approved suffrage by a 25 to 4 vote on 13 August, which put it all up to the house of representatives.

*Seth Walker, Speaker of the House, had pledged to support suffrage, but at the last minute changed his mind, and put all his effort into beating it, both in debate and through parliamentary manœuvers and technicalities.  Finally, the vote was scheduled for 18 August, and it seemed that there would be enough votes to defeat the measure. Suffrage supporters were told that all they could do was pray.

*The first vote was simply to table the resolution approving the amendment, letting it die without ever being voted on.  To everyone’s surprise, it tied, 48 to 48, and thus did not pass.  Someone pledged to vote to table the resolution had changed his mind. 

*The legislature then voted on the amendment itself, and it passed 49 to 47. Harry Burn, an East Tennessee Republican and, at 24, the youngest member of the House, had gotten a telegram from his mother the night before, saying ‘Don't forget to be a good boy,’ and telling him to vote for suffrage, and although he had voted to table it, when it actually came to a vote on the amendment itself, he followed his mother’s advice.  At this point, Seth Walker changed his vote to favour the amendment, so that it officially passed with 50 votes, the number traditionally expected for constitutional issues.

*Harry Burn hired a bodyguard when he got back home, but his district re-elected him anyway.

*Women’s suffrage was now the law of the land throughout the United States thanks to the State of Tennessee, and women cast their votes in 1920, overwhelmingly electing the (supposedly) handsome Warren G. Harding.  This alone proved that women would not necessarily elect the better man.

This page last updated 24 June, 2005.