Women's Rights & Issues

niyad

(113,306 posts) Tue Sep 30, 2014, 10:21 PM Sep 2014

September 30, 1918: President Wilson Speaks Out in Congress for Woman Suffrage

September 30, 1918: President Wilson Speaks Out in Congress for Woman Suffrage

It was truly stunning and historic when President Wilson unexpectedly came into the Senate at 1:00 this afternoon to speak for fifteen minutes on the necessity and justice of that body voting in favor of the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment.

It has already been approved by the House, which on January 10th, the day after President Wilson endorsed it, gave it exactly the 2/3 majority needed. But the Senate had been postponing action, and because Democrats constitute 22 of the 34 votes pledged to vote against the Anthony Amendment, a pro-suffrage pep-talk by a Democratic President was welcomed by all factions of the suffrage movement.
In his address, Wilson went so far as to call the suffrage amendment a “War Measure,” the highest priority a President can assign to legislation he wishes to be passed. He said, in part:

I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the Constitutional amendment proposing the extension of suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of this great war of humanity in which we are engaged … It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it. I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the amendment because no disputable principle is involved but only a question of the method by which the suffrage is to be extended to women…

This is a people’s war and the people’s thinking constitutes its atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing room or the political considerations of the caucus. If we indeed be democrats and wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they wish to be led nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions. Our professions will not suffice. Verification must be forthcoming when verification is asked for…

This war could not have been fought, either by the other nations engaged or by America, if it had not been for the services of women – services rendered in every sphere – not merely in the fields of effort in which we have been accustomed to see them work, but wherever men have worked and upon the very skirts and edges of the battle itself. We shall not only be distrusted but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise them with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the other great free nations will enfranchise them … The executive tasks of this war rest upon me. I ask that you lighten them and place in my hands instruments, spiritual instruments, which I do not now possess, which I sorely need, and which I have daily to apologize for not being able to employ.

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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/09/30/september-30-1918-president-wilson-speaks-out-in-congress-for-woman-suffrage/