However, the 1918 midterm elections swept the Republicans into power in both the House and Senate because of voter outrage over the fact that Woodrow Wilson had violated his pledge of keeping us out of a war with Germany. Wilson asked for a declaration of war on Germany in April 1917. Wilson, a Democrat, was also opposed to the 19th Amendment. However he changed his mind at the 11th hour when he thought the amendment would pass.
With both houses of Congress the Republicans were able to pass the 19th Amendment in 1919. In the House it passed with 304 ayes and 89 nays. Ninety-one percent of the Republicans voted for it. In the Senate there were 56 ayes and 25 nays. Eighty-two percent of the Republican Senators voted for it. When the Amendment was passed to the states for ratification it was fiercely resisted by Democrats everywhere. However 26 of the 36 states needed to ratify it were controlled by the Republicans. The vote to ratify the Amendment was taken on August 18th 1920 in Tennessee. We were the 36th and last state needed to ratify the amendment.
Alice Paul was a vigorous, outspoken Suffragette and once arrested went on a hunger strike. Her jailers force fed Paul raw eggs (down her nose) until she vomited blood. She was then committed to an asylum with authorities hoping Alice Paul would be declared insane. Her doctor replied, “Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.” No more than three years passed before the 19th Amendment was ratified.
Harry Burn was a legislator from East Tennessee and at 22 was the youngest member of the state legislature. On August 18th, 1920, he was 24 and wearing a red rose on his lapel to signify his opposition to the 19th Amendment. The amendment easily passed the Tennessee senate but stalled in the house when thousands of pro and anti-amendment activists arrived in Nashville to turn up the heat.
If Burn and his fellow anti-amendment representatives all voted against the amendment it would be defeated by one vote. A motion to table the amendment was defeated by a 48 to 48 tie. The speaker called for a ratification vote.
Earlier that morning Harry Burn received a note from his strong willed mother, Phoebe Ensminger Burn, or Miss Febb as her friends and family called her. She wrote “Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don’t keep them in doubt. I notice some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet.” The letter ended as an endorsement for the famous suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt. She urged her son to “be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.”
Fearing his mother more than the mob outside the capital and his colleagues in the legislature he changed his vote in favor of the 19th Amendment. Burn fled to the attic of the capital in order to hide until the mob outside dispersed. The following day he spoke again to the Tennessee state legislature. He said “I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify. I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”
And that is how the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law.
This history was sourced from Tennessean Greg Segroves’ website here. Read the rest of his post on racist Democrats denying women the right to vote, imposing Jim Crow laws on black Americans as Republicans fought them at every turn.
(Quotes from Segroves’ site are lightly edited for clarity only.)