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Introduction

After the adoption of the
Federal Suffrage Amendment in 1920, women encountered major difficulties
in carrying their agenda into the established political parties. This
was especially true in the Republican party in New York, where political
leaders were deeply hostile to that agenda. Women faced a difficult
choice after the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment: should they continue
their activism in separate women's organizations, or join men in partisan
politics? These choices were complicated by the fact that women's organizations
had generated a substantial social agenda of progressive legislation
that neither the Democratic nor Republican party was likely to implement
without further pressure from women.

Objectives

To understand the difficulties
women activists encountered when attempting to work within the established
political parties after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment; to
explore the conflicts between suffrage and anti-suffrage women; to understand
the efforts to defeat the reelection campaigns of Senator James Wadsworth
from New York in 1920 and 1926 as part of larger challenges facing suffragists
after obtaining the vote.

Lesson Ideas

Begin by reading the memorial
from Alice Wadsworth of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage
to Charles E. Fuller, 11 December 1917. What arguments did Wadsworth
use against the Federal Suffrage Amendment? How did she associate the
proposed amendment with anti-Americanism?

Continue
to explore the conflicts between suffragists and anti-suffragists by
reading "Women
Call Upon Wadsworth to Quit," 23 November 1919, and "Republican
Women Criticise Miss Hay," 8 December 1919. Discuss the following
questions: Why did the League of Women Voters oppose Wadsworth's reelection?
What was Mary Garrett Hay's role in the effort to defeat Wadsworth in
the Republican primary? Why were Hay's activities threatening to the
Republican party?

Read "A
Teapot in a Tempest," 5 February 1921. How did New York governor
Nathan Miller and suffrage activist Carrie Chapman Catt differ in their
attitudes toward "nonpartisanship?" How does this 1921 debate still
speak to issues in American politics today?

Six
years later, Senator Wadsworth was finally defeated in his next reelection
campaign. Explore the mobilization of women to defeat Wadsworth in 1926
by reading "Women
Will Seek Wadsworth Defeat," 20 September 1926,
"Keeps
Out of Senate Fight," 21 September 1926, and "Miss
Hay Hits Wadsworth," 9 November 1926. How had the position of the
League of Women Voters changed since 1920? What do you think may have
accounted for that change? How did Hay's position now differ from the
official position of the League of Women Voters?

Three-page
paper assignment: Read Carrie Chapman Catt, "A
Teapot in a Tempest," The Woman Citizen, 5 February 1921,
and Mary G. Kilbreth, "The
New Anti-Feminist Campaign," The Woman Patriot, 15 June 1921.
Compare and contrast the viewpoints expressed by the authors in the
two publications toward woman suffrage and women's political activism.