This year the Republican and Progressive State conventions endorsed woman suffrage, the Democrats refusing to do so. At the national Republican convention in Chicago the Kentucky member of the Resolutions Committee voted for the suffrage plank in its platform. At the national Democratic convention in St. Louis all the twenty-six delegates, on account of the "unit ruling," cast their votes for the State's rights suffrage plank.
During 1917 suffrage work was displaced by war work, of which Kentucky suffragists did a large share. They were asked to raise $500 for the Women's Oversea Hospitals of the National Association and more than doubled the quota by the able management of Mrs. Samuel Castleman of Louisville. Under the direction of Mrs. E. L. Hutchinson of Lexington a plan to raise money for an ambulance to be named in honor of Miss Laura Clay, the pioneer suffragist, was successfully carried through.
In 1918 for the first time there was every reason to believe that a resolution to submit a State amendment would pass the Legislature, but a majority of the State suffrage board voted to conform to the desire of the National Association to avoid State campaigns and concentrate on the Federal Amendment and no resolution was presented.
At the State convention, held March 11, 1919, resolutions were adopted calling upon all Kentucky members of Congress to vote for the Federal Suffrage Amendment; calling on the Legislature to ratify this amendment, when passed, at the first opportunity and asking it to enact a law giving to women a vote for presidential electors. Miss Clay, who for over thirty years had been the leader of the suffragists, withdrew from the State association, which she had founded, and formed a new organization to work for the vote by State action alone, as she was strongly opposed to Federal action. It was called the Citizens' Committee for a State Suffrage Amendment and opened headquarters in Lexington. It issued an "open letter to the public," an able argument for the State's control of its own suffrage and an arraignment of interference by Congress, which it declared would "become possessed of an autocratic power dangerous to free institutions." It conducted a vigorous campaign against every move for a Federal Amendment and met the representatives of the old association at the Republican State convention in May to prevent their securing an endorsement of it. In an eloquent speech before the platform committee Miss Clay urged it to reaffirm the State's rights plank in the National platform and pledge the party to secure the submission to the voters of a State suffrage amendment and to support it at the polls. The plank adopted was as follows: "We reaffirm our belief in the justice and expediency of suffrage for women and call upon our representatives in the Congress of the United States, in the Legislature and in all executive positions to use their votes and their influence for all measures granting political rights to women."
The Federal Suffrage Amendment was submitted by Congress June 4. Both organizations urged their claims at the Democratic State convention in September and the platform contained the following plank:
We favor the ratification by the Legislature of Kentucky at its next session of the amendment to the Constitution of the United States extending to women the right of suffrage and we urge our representatives in the Legislature and all executive or other officers to use their votes and influence in every legitimate way to bring about the ratification of the same. We pledge ourselves to support in the next General Assembly, if the Federal Amendment has not become operative by that time, the submission of an amendment to the State Constitution granting suffrage to women on the same terms as to men and when the amendment is submitted to support it at the polls as a party measure.
Every candidate for the nomination for Governor had stood on a suffrage platform and the successful Democratic candidate, Governor James D. Black, defeated at the election by Edwin P. Morrow, was a staunch and life-long suffragist. When he was filling out Governor Stanley's unexpired term and he received a telegram in June, with all other Governors of Southern States, from the Governor of Louisiana, asking him to oppose ratification of the Federal Amendment, he gave to Mrs. Breckinridge a ringing interview for use in the press to the effect that he would not oppose it. Governor Morrow, a Republican, had always been a friend of woman suffrage in whatever form it was asked.
Kentucky suffragists could easily remember when they could poll but one vote in Congress—that of John W. Langley. When in 1919 the final vote was taken on the Federal Amendment but one of the State's ten votes in the Lower House, that of A. B. Rouse of Covington, was cast against it. There was one vacancy. Senator George B. Martin voted for the resolution and Senator J. C. W. Beckham against it. He had voted against it in February, when, having passed the House, it was lost in the Senate by a single vote.
Ratification. The November legislative election in 1919 resulted in a Republican House and a Democratic Senate. The Republicans caucused and agreed to vote for ratification. Governor Morrow urged it in a vigorous message personally delivered to the Legislature in which he said:
A government "of the people by the people" can not and does not exist in a commonwealth in which one-half of its citizens are denied the right of suffrage. The women of Kentucky are citizens and there is no good or just reason why they should be refused the full and equal exercise of the sovereign right of every free people—the ballot. Every member of this General Assembly is unequivocally committed by his party's platform declaration to cast his vote and use his influence for the immediate enfranchisement of women in both nation and State. Party loyalty, faith-keeping with the people and our long-boasted chivalry all demand that the General Assembly shall break all previous speed records in ratifying the Federal Suffrage Amendment and passing all measures granting political rights to women.