Instantly a cable was received at the White House carrying news to the suffragists of the final capture of the elusive last vote. Following immediately on the heels of this cable came another cable calling the new Congress into special session May 19th.
In the light of the President’s gradual yielding and final surrender to our demand, it will not be out of place to summarize briefly just what happened.
President Wilson began his career as President of the United States an anti-suffragist. He was opposed to suffrage for women both by principle and political expediency. Sometimes I think he regarded suffragists as a kind of sect-good women, no doubt, but tiresome and troublesome. Whether he has yet come to see the suffrage battle as part of a great movement embracing the world is still a question. It is not an important question, for in any case it was not inward conviction but political necessity that made him act.
Believing then that suffragists were a sect, he said many things to them at first with no particular care as to the bearing of these things upon political theory or events. He offered, successively, “consideration,” an “open mind,” a “closed mind,” and “age-long conviction deeply matured,” party limitations, party concert of action, and what not. He saw in suffrage the “tide rising to meet the moon,” but waited and advised us to wait with him. But we did not want to wait, and we proceeded to try to make it impossible for him to wait, either. We determined to make action upon this issue politically expedient for him.
When the President began to perceive the potential political power of women voters, he first declared, as a “private citizen,” that suffrage was all right for the women of his home state, New Jersey, but that it was altogether wrong to ask him as President to assist in bringing it about for all the women of the nation. He also interested himself in writing the suffrage plank in the Democratic Party’s national platform, specifically relegating action on suffrage to the states. Then he calmly announced that he could not act nationally, “even if I wanted to,” because the platform had spoken otherwise.
The controversy was lengthened. The President’s conspicuous ability for sitting still and doing nothing on a controversial issue until both sides have exhausted their ammunition was never better illustrated than in this matter. He allowed the controversy to continue to the point of intellectual sterility. He buttressed his delays with more evasions, until finally the women intensified their demand for action. They picketed his official gates. But the President still recoiled from action. So mightily did he recoil from it that he was willing to imprison women for demanding it.
It is not extraordinary to resent being called upon to act, for it is only the exceptional person who springs to action, even when action is admitted to be desirable and necessary. And the President is not exceptional. He is surprisingly ordinary.
While the women languished in prison, he fell back upon words—beautiful words, too—expressions of friendliness, good wishes, hopes, and may-I-nots. In this, too, he was acting like an ordinary human being, not like the statesman he was reputed to be. He had habituated himself to a belief in the power of words, and every time he uttered them to us he seemed to refortify himself in his belief in their power.
It was the women, not the President, who were exceptional. They refused to accept words. They persisted in demanding acts. Step by step under terrific gunfire the President’s resistance crumbled, and he yielded, one by one, every minor facility to the measure, always withholding from us, however, the main objective. Not until he had exhausted all minor facilities, and all possible evasions, did he publicly declare that the amendment should pass the House, and put it through. When he had done that we rested from the attack momentarily, in order to let him consummate with grace, and not under fire, the passage of the amendment in the Senate. He rested altogether. We were therefore compelled to renew the attack. He countered at first with more words. But his reliance upon them was perceptibly shaken when we burned them in public bonfires. He then moved feebly but with a growing concern toward getting additional votes in the Senate. And when, as an inevitable result of his policy—and ours—the political embarrassment became too acute, calling into question his honor and prestige, he covertly began to consult his colleagues. We pushed him the harder. He moved the faster toward concrete endeavor. He actually undertook to win the final votes in the Senate.
There he found, however, that quite an alarming situation had developed—a situation which he Should have anticipated, but for which he was totally unprepared. Opposition in his own party had been growing more and more rigid and cynical. His own opposition to the amendment, his grant of immunity to those leaders in his party who had fought the measure, his isolating himself from those who might have helped—all this was coming to fruition among his subordinates at a time when he could least afford to be beaten on anything. What would have been a fairly easy race to win, if he had begun running at the pistol shot, had now become most difficult.