As soon as Suffrage was assured by this sixty-fourth vote, Senator Keyes and Senator Hale in a convulsive effort to leap on the fast disappearing band-wagon announced that they would vote for the Amendment, thus giving the Suffragists two extra votes.
As this was a new Congress it was necessary for the House to pass the Suffrage Amendment again. On May 21, 1919, therefore, the new House passed it by three hundred and four votes to eighty-nine—forty-two more than the required two-thirds. It will be remembered that, when the previous House passed it on January 10, 1918, the vote was two hundred and seventy-four to one hundred and thirty-six—only one vote more than the required two-thirds.
The Amendment then went to the Senate.
In her Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, Maud Younger says:
Four months later, on June fourth, for the fifth time in a little more than a year, we sat in the Senate gallery to hear a vote on the Suffrage Amendment. The new Congress, coming in on March fourth, had brought us two more votes—we now had our eleven. There was no excitement. The coming of the women, the waiting of the women, the expectancy of the women, was an old story. A whole year had passed in the winning of two votes. Every one knew what the end would be now. It was all very dull.
We walked slowly homeward, talking a little, silent a great deal. This was the day toward which women had been struggling for more than half a century! We were in the dawn of woman’s political power in America. Several days before the Senate passed the Amendment, Alice Paul left Washington to arrange for an immediate ratification by the legislatures in session.
XVI
RATIFICATION
“WOMEN ARE FREE AT LAST IN ALL THE LAND”
Chant Royal