Believe it or not, the Constitution, as originally written, did not deny women the right to vote. In fact, it neither denied nor gave the vote to anyone. Voting qualifications were left up to the states, with the sole requirement that whoever was eligible to vote for the most numerous branch of the state legislature would be eligible to vote for members of the House of Representatives.
Although New Jersey permitted women and free blacks to vote between 1776 and 1807 and there were sporadic but limited instances of women voting in local elections in various other states and communities, a concerted effort to secure voting rights for women did not begin until the 1840’s, often related to the movement to abolish slavery, which culminated in its abolition as well as the right of emancipated slaves to vote – but not women.
However, in 1869, the territory of Wyoming extended the right to vote to women, soon followed by the Utah and Washington Territories. In 1890, Wyoming was admitted to the Union, but only after it insisted that it would “stay out of the union a hundred years rather than come in without women suffrage.” By 1920, fifteen states extended the right to vote for women.
Earlier, in 1878, California Senator Aaron Sargent had introduced an amendment to the United States Constitution, drafted by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, to prohibit the states from denying the right to vote on account of sex. Finally, on June 4, 1919, after decades of demonstrations, marches, intense lobbying, opposition from the powerful liquor lobby, and delays due to the exigencies of World War I and the Spanish flu, the proposed Nineteenth Amendment was finally sent to the states for ratification. Within a week, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin ratified, while others began to consider the amendment. By the following summer, 35 of the 36 states needed to ratify had done so, while 11 of the required number of 12 states had voted to reject. Each side needed only one more state to either ratify or reject the amendment. Enter Tennessee.
In the summer of 1920, both sides set up their lobbying headquarters at the Nashville Hotel in the state’s capitol. Suffragists and their supporters wore yellow roses; the anti’s sported red roses, while both sides indulged in bribery, dirty tricks and keeping a tally of how each legislator would likely vote. On August 13, the amendment passed the state Senate fairly easily by a vote of 25 – 4, but the “War of the Roses” would take place in the near-evenly divided Tennessee House of Representatives.
Among those who arrived at the State House on August 18 for the crucial vote was 24-year-old Harry Burn, the youngest member of the House, whose views on the amendment were uncertain. Ominously, the red rose on his lapel signaled his intention to vote against ratification. When the session opened, the Speaker gave up the gavel, took the floor, and offered a motion to table the vote, hoping to avoid a vote prior to the impending elections. Bu a vote to table would also have the practical effect of killing the amendment. Burns voted “yes” to table. The vote was 48-47. The disheartened suffragists looked on in dismay. However, just before the Speaker announced the vote, Banks Turner, who had been listed as absent, appeared, having just finished a call with the Governor. He voted “no.”
Forty-eight to 48, the motion to table failed. The Speaker demanded a recount, huddled with Turner, then called for an immediate vote on the suffrage amendment itself. A 48 – 48 vote would doom its ratification. When Burn’s name was called, he mumbled a quiet, but history-making, “yes.” Pandemonium broke out as the news spread throughout the House, the galleries and beyond. Why had he changed his mind? Was this a pay-off?
The simple fact is, hours earlier he had received a hand-delivered, seven-page letter from his mother, affectionately known as Febb Burn, in which she wrote, “Vote for suffrage…I have been watching to see how you stood…Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt with her “Rats,” for ratification.
By one controversial vote and a letter from “Mom,” the 19th amendment was ratified, imposing a prohibition on states to refuse the right to vote on account of sex. Years later, Burn commented, “My mother was a college woman, a student of national and international affairs…She could not vote. Yet the tenant farmers on our farm, some of whom were illiterate could vote. On that roll call, confronted with the fact that I was going to go on record for time and eternity on the merits of the question, I had to vote for ratification.”