Women's Suffrage (part 2 of 3)

A One-Vote Oddity

Women’s suffrage continued (part 2)

 

There was some encouraging—though painful—news. Another member of the House, Thetus Sims a democrat from Tennessee, was in excruciating pain from a broken arm which he refused to have set until he had voted in support of the amendment. And Republican House Leader James Mann of Illinois, in the hospital for the last six months, refused to be kept away from the vote. Feeble and hardly able to stand, he returned to the House floor to cast an “aye” of support.

Two other sick democrats (Henry Barnhart, IN, and Robert Crosser, OH), one on a stretcher, showed up for the roll call vote. And New York Republican Frederick Hicks left the deathbed of his wife to honor his promise to her to cast his vote for a woman’s right to vote. Every one of those votes was needed. The final vote was 274-136 for the amendment—just enough to reach the two-thirds majority.

If any one of those five (Sims, Mann, Barnhart, Crosser or Hicks) had failed to show up and cast his vote, the amendment would have failed to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to pass.

They were sick, but they knew they had a duty. One was in extreme pain but his resolve held. One’s wife was dying, but he knew he had a duty deepened by a promise.

 These brave men took both their privilege and their duty seriously. They are models for how each individual citizen in our country should respond on Election Day.

Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. The battle for a woman’s right to vote was not yet over. The Senate lay ahead and the story was not yet over.

(Continued next post)