The State Suffrage Association persuaded the National American Association to attack the constitutionality of this referendum in the courts and suit was accordingly brought. Eventually it was sustained by the Supreme Court of Ohio and was carried to the U. S. Supreme Court by George Hawk, a young lawyer of Cincinnati. It rendered a decision that the power to ratify a Federal Amendment rested in the Legislature and could not be passed on by the voters.
The Legislature in an adjourned session in 1920 gave women Primary suffrage in an amendment to the Presidential bill, but the final ratification of the Federal Amendment in August made all partial measures unnecessary, as it completely enfranchised women.[144] Thus after a struggle of seventy years those of Ohio received the suffrage at last from the national government, but they were deeply appreciative and grateful to those heroic men of the State who fought their battles through the years.
FOOTNOTES:
[139] The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, treasurer of the National Woman Suffrage Association 1893-1910; president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association 1899-1908 and 1911-1920.
[140] These conventions were held in the following order: Athens, Springfield, Cleveland, Sandusky, London, Youngstown, Toledo, Warren, Columbus, Elyria, Lima, Columbus, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Lima, Dayton, Columbus (last three years).
[141] The executive officers who finished the work of the State Association were as follows: Honorary president, Mrs. Frances M. Casement, Painesville; president, Mrs. Upton, Warren; first, second and third vice-presidents, Zara du Pont, Cleveland; Dora Sandoe Bachman, Columbus; Mrs. J. C. Wallace, Cincinnati; corresponding secretary, Mrs. Kent Hughes, Lima; recording secretary, Margaret J. Brandenburg, Oxford; treasurer, Zell Hart Deming, Warren; member of the National Executive Committee, Mrs. O. F. Davisson, Dayton. Chairmen: Organization Committee, Elizabeth J. Hauser, Girard; Finance, Miss Annie McCully, Dayton; Industrial, Rose Moriarty, Cleveland; Enrollment, Mrs. C. H. Simonds, Conneaut; member Executive Committee at Large, Mrs. Malcolm McBride, Cleveland.
[142] Miss Allen was counsel in all court cases of the Ohio suffragists from 1916 to 1920. In 1920 she was elected Judge in the Common Pleas Court of Cuyahoga county (Cleveland), the first woman in the United States to fill such an office.
[143] Several years before the "wets," this time under the name of the Stability League, had initiated an amendment, which, if it had been carried, would have prohibited the submission of the same amendment oftener than once in six years. Thus the suffragists in 1916, 1917 and 1918 were in the courts for months each year.
[144] In the presidential campaign of 1920 Mrs. Upton was appointed vice-chairman of the Republican National Executive Committee, the highest political position ever held by a woman, and she had charge of the activities of women during that campaign. Her last work for woman suffrage was during the strenuous effort to obtain the 36th and final ratification of the Federal Amendment from the Tennessee Legislature in the summer of 1920, when she went to Nashville at the request of the National Republican Committee.—Ed.