Books: Jailed for Freedom
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Doris Stevens >> Jailed for Freedom
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28 Prepared by:
Samuel R. Brown
brown@albertus.edu
Page numbers for scholarly reference are shown in curled brackets
thus {45} throughout the text. The page number is placed at the
start of the text of the printed page. Footnotes are shown in
square brackets thus [1] and are placed at the bottom of the page.
{iii}
Jailed for Freedom
By Doris Stevens
{iv}
{v}
To Alice Paul
Through Whose Brilliant and Devoted Leadership the Women of
America Have Been Able to Consummate with Gladness and Gallant
Courage Their Long Struggle for Political Liberty, This Book is
Affectionately Dedicated
{vi}
Blank page
{vii}
Preface
This book deals with the intensive campaign of the militant
suffragists of America [1913-1919] to win a solitary thing-the
passage by Congress of the national suffrage amendment
enfranchising women. It is the story of the first organized
militant ,political action in America to this end. The militants
differed from the pure propagandists in the woman suffrage
movement chiefly in that they had a clear comprehension of the
forces which prevail in politics. They appreciated the necessity
of the propaganda stage and the beautiful heroism of those who
had led in the pioneer agitation, but they knew that this stage
belonged to the past; these methods were no longer necessary or
effective.
For convenience sake I have called Part II "Political Action,"
and Part III "Militancy," although it will be perceived that the
entire campaign was one of militant political action. The
emphasis, however, in Part II is upon political action, although
certainly with a militant mood. In Part III dramatic acts of
protest, such as are now commonly called militancy, are given
emphasis as they acquired a greater importance during the latter
part of the campaign. This does not mean that all militant deeds
were not committed for a specific political purpose. They were.
But militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a task,
as it is the commission of deeds of protest. It is the state of
mind of those who is their fiery idealism do not lose sight of
the real springs of human action.
There are two ways in which this story might be told. It might be
told as a tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be
told as a ruthless enterprise of compelling a hostile
administration to subject women to martyrdom in order to hasten
its surrender. The truth is, it has elements of both ruthlessness
and martyrdom. And I have tried to make them appear in a true
proportion. It is my sincere hope that you
{viii}
will understand and appreciate the martyrdom involved, for it was
the conscious voluntary gift of beautiful, strong and young
hearts. But it was never martyrdom for its own sake. It was
martyrdom used for a practical purpose.
The narrative ends with the passage of the amendment by Congress.
The campaign for ratification, which extended over fourteen
months, is a story in itself. The ratification of the amendment
by the 36th and last state legislature proved as difficult to
secure from political leaders as the 64th and last vote in the
United States Senate.
This book contains my interpretations, which are of course
arguable. But it is a true record of events.
Doris Stevens.
New York, August, 1920.
{ix}
Contents
Preface {vii}
Part I
Leadership
Chapter
1 A Militant Pioneer-Susan B. Anthony {3}
2 A Militant General-Alice Paul {10}
Part II
Political Action
1 Women Invade the Capital {21}
2 Women Voters Organize {35}
3 The Last Deputation to—President Wilson {48}
Part III
Militancy
1 Picketing a President {63}
2 The Suffrage War Policy {80}
3 The First Arrests {91}
4 Occoquan Workhouse {99}
5 August Riots {122}
6 Prison Episodes {141}
7 An Administration Protest-Dudley Field Malone Resigns {158}
8 The Administration Yields {171}
9 Political Prisoners {175}
10 The Hunger Strike-A Weapon {184}
11 Administration Terrorism {192}
12 Alice Paul in Prison {210}
{x}
13 Administration-Lawlessness Exposed {229}
14 The Administration Outwitted {241}
15 Political Results {248}
16 An Interlude (Seven Months) {259}
17 New Attacks on the President {271}
18 The President Appeals to the Senate Too Late {280}
19 More Pressure {295}
20 The President Sails Away {301}
21 Watchfires of Freedom {305}
22 Burned in Effigy {314}
23 Boston Militants Welcome the President {319}
24 Democratic Congress Ends {326}
25 A Farewell to President Wilson {330}
26 President Wilson Wins the 64th Vote in Paris {336}
27 Republican Congress Passes Amendment {341}
Appendices {347}
{xi}
Illustrations
[Note: The photographs and illustrations appearing in this book
are available on the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium
website www.ctdlc.org Follow the link to the Connecticut TALENT
Program]
Alice Paul
Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont
Democrats Attempt to Counteract Woman’s Party Campaign
Inez Milholland Boissevain
Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol
Scenes on the Picket Line
Monster Picket-March 4, 1917
Officer Arrests Pickets
Women Put into Police Patrol
Suffragists in Prison Costume
Fellow Prisoners
Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse
Riotous Scenes on Picket Line
Dudley Field Malone
Lucy Burns
Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket
Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket
Forty-One Women Face Jail
Prisoners Released
“Lafayette We Are Here”
Wholesale Arrests
Suffragists March to LaFayette Monument
Torch-Bearer, and Escorts
{xii}
Some Public Men Who Protested Against Imprisonment of Suffragists
Abandoned Jail
Prisoners on Straw Pallets on Jail Floor
Pickets at Capitol
Senate Pages and Capitol Police Attack Pickets
The Urn Guarded by Miss Berthe Arnold
The Bell Which Tolled the Change of Watch
Watchfire “Legal”
Watchfire Scattered by Police-Dr. Caroline Spencer Rebuilding it
One Hundred Women Hold Public Conflagration
Pickets in Front of Reviewing Stand, Boston
Mrs. Louise Sykes Burning President Wilson’s Speech on Boston
Common
Suffrage Prisoners
{xiii}
“I do pray, and that most earnestly and constantly, for some
terrific shock to startle the women o f the nation into a self-
respect which mill compel them to, see the absolute degradation o
f their present position; which will compel them to break their
yoke of bondage and give them faith in themselves; which will
make them proclaim their allegiance to women first . . . . The
fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more
debasing because they do not realize it. O to compel them to see
and feel and to give them the courage and the conscience to speak
and act for their own freedom, though they face the scorn and
contempt of all the world for doing it!"
Susan B. Anthony, 1872.
{xiv}
Blank page
{1}
Part I
Leadership
{2}
Blank page
{3}
Chapter 1
A Militant Pioneer-Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony was the first militant suffragist. She has been
so long proclaimed only as the magnificent pioneer that few
realize that she was the first woman to defy the law for the
political liberty of her sex.
The militant spirit was in her many early protests. Sometimes
these protests were supported by one or two followers; more often
they were solitary protests. Perhaps it is because of their
isolation that they stand out so strong and beautiful in a
turbulent time in our history when all those about her were
making compromises.
It was this spirit which impelled her to keep alive the cause of
the enfranchisement of women during the passionate years of the
Civil War. She held to the last possible moment that no national
exigency was great enough to warrant abandonment of woman's fight
for independence. But one by one her followers deserted her. She
was unable to keep even a tiny handful steadfast to this
position. She became finally the only figure in the nation
appealing for the rights of women when the rights of black men
were agitating the public mind. Ardent abolitionist as she was,
she could not tolerate without indignant protest the exclusion of
women in all discussions of emancipation. The suffrage war policy
of Miss Anthony can be compared to that of the militants a half
century later when confronted with the problem of this country's
entrance into the world war.
The war of the rebellion over and the emancipation of the
{4}
negro man written into the constitution, women contended they had
a right to vote under the new fourteenth amendment. Miss Anthony
led in this agitation, urging all women to claim the right to
vote under this amendment. In the national election of 187'2 she
voted in Rochester, New York, her home city, was arrested, tried
and convicted of the crime of "voting without having a lawful
right to vote."
I cannot resist giving a brief excerpt from the court records of
this extraordinary case, so reminiscent is it of the cases of the
suffrage pickets tried nearly fifty years later in the courts of
the national capital.
After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government's
case, Judge Hunt read his opinion, said to have been written
before the case had been heard, and directed the jury to bring in
a verdict of guilty. The jury was dismissed without deliberation
and a new trial was refused. On the following day this scene took
place in that New York court room.
JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner
anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
Miss ANTHONY-Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in
your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot
every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my
civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all
alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of
citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that
of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all my sex
are, by your Honor's verdict doomed to political subjection under
this so-called republican form of government.
JUDGE HUNT-The Court cannot. listen to a rehearsal of argument
which the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in
presenting.
Miss ANTHONY-May it please your Honor, I am not arguing the
question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence
{5}
cannot in justice be pronounced against me. Your denial of my
citizen's right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as
one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as
one taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by jury of my peers
as an offender against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred
right to life, liberty, property, and
JUDGE HUNT-The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.
Miss ANTHONY-But, your Honor will not deny me this one and only
poor privilege of protest against this highhanded outrage upon my
citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since
the day of my arrest last November this is the first time that
either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been
allowed a word of defense before judge or jury
JUDGE HUNT-The prisoner must sit down, the Court cannot allow it.
Miss ANTHONY-Of all my persecutors from the corner grocery
politician who entered the complaint, to the United States
marshal, commissioner, district attorney, district judge, your
Honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my
political sovereigns . . . . Precisely as no disfranchised person
is entitled to sit upon the jury and no woman is entitled to the
franchise, so none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to
practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the
bar-hence, jury, judge, counsel, all must be of superior class.
JUDGE HUNT-The Court must insist-the prisoner has been tried
according to the established forms of law.
Miss ANTHONY-Yes, your Honor, but by forms of law, all made by
men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and
against women; and hence your Honor's ordered verdict of guilty,
against a United States citizen for the exercise of the
"citizen's right to vote," simply because that
{6}
citizen was a woman and not a man . . . . As then the slaves who
got their freedom had to take it over or under or through the
unjust forms of the law, precisely so now must women take it to
get their right to a voice in this government; and I have taken
mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.
JUDGE Hunt-The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not
allow another word.
Miss ANTHONY-When I was brought before your Honor for trial I
hoped for a broad interpretation of the constitution and its
recent amendments, which should declare all United States
citizens under its protecting aegis . . . . But failing to get
this justice, failing even to get a trial by a jury-not of my
peers-I ask not leniency at your-hands but rather the full rigor
of the law.
JUDGE HUNT-The Court must insist (here the prisoner sat down).
The prisoner will stand up. (Here Miss Anthony rose again.) The
sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100.00 and the
costs of the prosecution.
Miss ANTHONY-May it please your Honor, I will never pay a dollar
of your unjust penalty . . . . And I shall earnestly and
persistently continue to urge all women to the practical
recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, "Resistance to
tyranny is obedience to God."
JUDGE HUNT-Madam, the Court will not order you stand committed
until the fine is paid.
Miss Anthony did not pay her fine and was never imprisoned. I
believe the fine stands against her to this day.
On the heels of this sensation came another of those dramatic
protests which until the very end she always combined with
political agitation. The nation was celebrating its first
centenary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at
Independence Square, Philadelphia. After women had been refused
by all in authority a humble half moment in which to present to
the Centennial the Women's Declaration of Rights,
{7}
Miss Anthony insisted on being heard. Immediately after the
Declaration of Independence had been read by a patriot, she led a
committee of women, who with platform tickets had slipped through
the military, straight down the center aisle of the platform to
address the chairman, who pale with fright and powerless to stop
the demonstration had to accept her document. Instantly the
platform, graced as it was by national dignitaries and crowned
heads, was astir. The women retired, distributing to the gasping
spectators copies of their Declaration. Miss Anthony had reminded
the nation of the hollowness of its celebration of an
independence that excluded women.
Susan B. Anthony's aim was the national enfranchisement of women.
As soon as she became convinced that the constitution would have
to be specifically amended to include woman suffrage, she set
herself to this gigantic task. For a quarter of a century she
appealed to Congress for action and to party. conventions for
suffrage endorsement. When, however, she saw that Congress was
obdurate, as an able and intensely practical leader she
temporarily directed the main energy of the suffrage movement to
trying to win individual states. With women holding the balance
of political power, she argued, the national government will be
compelled to act. She knew so well the value of power. She went
to the West to get it.
She was a shrewd tactician; with prophetic insight, without
compromise. To those women who would yield to party expediency as
advised by men, or be diverted into support of other measures,
she made answer in a spirited letter to Lucy Stone:
"So long as you and I and all women are political slaves, it ill
becomes us to meddle with the weightier discussions of our'
sovereign masters. It will be quite time enough for us, with
self-respect, to declare ourselves for or against any party upon
{8}
the intrinsic merit of its policy, when men shall recognize us as
their political equals . . . .
"If all the suffragists of all the States could see eye to eye on
this point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every
party and politician not fully and unequivocally committed to
`Equal Rights for Women,' we should become at once the moral
balance of power which could not fail to compel the party of
highest intelligence to proclaim woman suffrage the chief plank
of its platform . . . . Until that good day comes, I shall
continue to invoke the party in power, and each party struggling
to get into power, to pledge itself to the emancipation of our
enslaved half of the people . . . ."
She did not live to see enough states grant suffrage in the West
to form a balance of power with which to carry out this policy.
She did not live to turn this power upon an unwilling Congress.
But she stood to the last, despite this temporary change of
program, the great dramatic protagonist of national freedom for
women and its achievement through rebellion and practical
strategy.
With the passing of Miss Anthony and her leadership, the movement
in America went conscientiously on endeavoring to pile up state
after state in the "free column." Gradually her followers lost
sight of her aggressive attack and her objective-the
enfranchisement of women by Congress. They did not sustain her
tactical wisdom. This reform movement, like all others when
stretched over a long period of time, found itself confined in a
narrow circle of routine propaganda. It lacked the power and
initiative to extricate itself. Though it had many eloquent
agitators with devoted followings, it lacked generalship.
The movement also lost Miss Anthony's militant spirit, her keen
appreciation of the fact that the attention of the nation must be
focussed on minority issues by dramatic acts of protest.
{9}
Susan B. Anthony's fundamental objective, her political attitude
toward attaining it, and her militant spirit were revived in
suffrage history in 1913 when Alice Paul, also of Quaker
background, entered the national field as leader of the new
suffrage forces in America.
{10}
Chapter 2
A Militant General—Alice Paul
Most people conjure up a menacing picture when a person is called
not only a general, but a militant one. In appearance Alice Paul
is anything but menacing. Quiet, almost mouselike, this frail
young Quakeress sits in silence and baffles you with her
contradictions. Large, soft, gray eyes that strike you with a
positive impact make you feel the indescribable force and power
behind them. A mass of soft brown hair, caught easily at the
neck, makes the contour of her head strong and graceful. Tiny,
fragile hands that look more like an X-ray picture of hands, rest
in her lap in Quakerish pose. Her whole atmosphere when she is
not in action is one of strength and quiet determination. In
action she is swift, alert, almost panther-like in her movements.
Dressed always in simple frocks, preferably soft shades of
purple, she conforms to an individual style and taste of her own
rather than to the prevailing vogue.
I am going recklessly on to try to tell what I think about Alice
Paul. It is difficult, for when I begin to put it down on paper,
I realize how little we know about this laconic person, and yet
how abundantly we feel her power, her will and her compelling
leadership. In an instant and vivid reaction, I am either
congealed or inspired; exhilarated or depressed; sometimes even
exasperated, but always moved. I have seen her very presence in
headquarters change in the twinkling of an eye the mood of fifty
people. It is not through their affections
{11}
that she moves them, but through a naked force, a vital force
which is indefinable but of which one simply cannot be unaware.
Aiming primarily at the intellect of an audience or an
individual, she almost never fails to win an emotional
allegiance.
I shall never forget my first contact with her. I tell it here as
an illustration of what happened to countless women who came in
touch with her to remain under her leadership to the end. I had
come to Washington to take part in the demonstration on the
Senate in July, 1913, en route to a muchneeded, as I thought,
holiday in the Adirondacks.
"Can't you stay on and help us with a hearing next week?" said
Miss Paul.
"I'm sorry," said I, "but I have promised to join a party of
friends in the mountains for a summer holiday and . . ."
"Holiday?" said she, looking straight at me. Instantly ashamed at
having mentioned such a legitimate excuse, I murmured something
about not having had one since before entering college.
"But can't you stay?" she said.
I was lost. I knew I would stay. As a matter of fact, I stayed
through the heat of a Washington summer, returned only long
enough at the end of the summer to close up my work in state
suffrage and came back to join the group at Washington. And it
was years before I ever mentioned a holiday again.
Frequently she achieved her end without even a single word Of
retort. Soon after Miss Paul came to Washington in 1913, ;she
went to call on a suffragist in that city to ask her to donate
;some funds toward the rent of headquarters in the Capital. The
woman sighed. "I thought when Miss Anthony died," she said, "that
all my troubles were at an end. She used to come to me for money
for a federal amendment and I always told her it was wrong to ask
for one, and that besides we would never get it. But she kept
right on coming. Then when she died we
{12}
didn't hear any more about an amendment. And now you come again
saying the same things Miss Anthony said."
Miss Paul listened, said she was sorry and departed. Very shortly
a check arrived at headquarters to cover a month's rent.
A model listener, Alice Paul has unlimited capacity for letting
the other person relieve herself of all her objections without
contest. Over and over again I have heard this scene enacted.
"Miss Paul, I have come to tell you that you are all wrong about
this federal amendment business. I don't believe in it. Suffrage
should come slowly but surely by the states. And although I have
been a life-long suffragist, I just want to tell you not to count
on me, for feeling as I do, I cannot give you any help."
A silence would follow. Then Miss Paul would say ingenuously,
"Have you a half hour to spare?"
"I guess so," would come slowly from the protestant. “Why?”
"Won't you please sit down right here and put the stamps on these
letters? We have to get them in the mail by noon."
"But I don't believe …”
"Oh, that's all right. These letters are going to women probably
a lot of whom feel as you do. But some of them will want to come
to the meeting to hear our side."
By this time Miss Paul would have brought a chair, and that ended
the argument. The woman would stay and humbly proceed to stick on
endless stamps. Usually she would come back, too, and before many
days would be an ardent worker for the cause against which she
thought herself invincible.
Once the state president of the conservative suffrage forces in
Ohio with whom I had worked the previous year wrote me a letter
pointing out what madness it was to talk of winning the amendment
in Congress "this session," and adding that
{13}
"nobody but a fool would ever think of it, let alone speak of it
publicly." She was wise in politics; we were nice, eager, young
girls, but pretty ignorant-that was the gist of her remonstrance.
My vanity was aroused. Not wishing to be called "mad" or
"foolish" I sat down and answered her in a friendly spirit, with
the sole object of proving that we were wiser than she imagined.
I had never discussed this point with anybody, as I had been in
Washington only a few months and it had never occurred to me that
we were not right to talk of getting the amendment in that
particular session. But I answered my patronizing friend, in
effect, that of course we were not fools, that we knew we would
not get the amendment that session, but we saw no reason for not
demanding it at once and taking it when we got it.
When Miss Paul saw the carbon of that letter she said quietly,
pointing to the part where I had so nobly defended our sagacity,
"You must never say that again and never put it on paper." Seeing
my embarrassment, she hastened to explain. "You see, we can get
it this session if enough women care sufficiently to demand it
now."
Alice Paul brought back to the fight that note of immediacy which
had gone with the passing of Miss Anthony's leadership. She
called a halt on further pleading, wheedling, proving, praying.
It was as if she had bidden women stand erect, with confidence in
themselves and in their own judgments, and compelled them to be
self-respecting enough to dare to put their freedom first, and so
determine for themselves the day when they should be free. Those
who had a taste of begging under the old regime and who abandoned
it for demanding, know how fine and strong a thing it is to
realize that you must take what is yours and not waste your
energy proving that you are or will some day be worthy of a gift
of power from your masters. On that glad day of discovery you
have first freed
{14}
yourself to fight for freedom. Alice Paul gave to thousands of
women the essence of freedom.
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