Suffrage had loyal activists in TC

By LORAINE ANDERSON
landerson@record-eagle.com

March 08, 2009 10:01 am

—

The Library Hall in Traverse City "was crowded as never before," on March 7, 1879, when Susan B. Anthony stumped here for giving women the right to vote -- what then was called women's suffrage.

"Her power as a speaker is proven by the fact that she held her large audience for two hours and a half with little or no abatement of their interest even toward the close," the Grand Traverse Herald reported.

"Miss Anthony is as bright and as sharp as a Damascus blade, and woe the unlucky wight who gets in her way when once she is mounted on her hobby and rides full tilt against the oppressor, man. His head is decapitated so quickly and neatly that he is like the knight in the old story, who under similar circumstances never realized his loss until he attempted to sneeze."

What a difference five years can make, not to mention a new editor and publisher. Thomas T. Bates admired the famous crusader, but the Herald might not have been so effusive had Susan B. shown up in town five years earlier.

Dewitt C. Leach, the Herald's editor and publisher from 1867 to 1876, strongly opposed giving women the franchise back in 1874, when suffrage advocates campaigned in northwest Michigan to gather support for the state's first-ever ballot proposal to allow women to vote.

"'We do see danger in the suffrage movement; danger to woman; danger to the home circle; danger to society," he wrote before the election. "The privilege of voting carries with it labor, care and weighty responsibilities. A large majority of women are unwilling to have this burden, this responsibility, thrust upon them."

Not surprisingly, Leach apparently was not considered a peach of a fellow by movement leaders in northwest Michigan, including Judge T.J. Ramsdell, of Manistee, as well as S.W. and Fannie Fowler, publishers of the Manistee Times & Standard. In fact, supporters bypassed the Herald when advertising a June 13, 1874, suffrage convention in Traverse City.

They promised that "every argument put forth by the Grand Traverse Herald against the Measure will be fully met and answered."

That rankled Leach, but it didn't keep him away. About 150 people attended the afternoon session of the local suffrage convention and more than that came to an evening gathering, the Herald reported June 25, 1874.

Leach devoted a two-column account of the speakers' talk, headlined, "Mrs. Haslett's Speech -- She goes for the Editor of the Herald -- Our Notes Thereon."

"We have been metaphorically -- we might also say literally -- put through a course of sprouts," he wrote. "Mrs. Haslett, the principal speaker, had doubtless been told that her first duty would be to demolish the editor of the Herald. Right manfully did she come up to the task assigned her."

Leach's view of suffrage mirrored common 1874 sentiments. Michigan's male voters defeated the proposal overwhelmingly, 135,957 to 40,077.

But suffragists in Michigan didn't give up.

"The combined forces of ignorance, vice, and prejudice have blocked the wheels of advancing civilization, and Michigan, once the proudest of the sisterhood states, has lost the opportunity of inaugurating a reform," Fannie Fowler wrote in the Manistee paper after the 1874 election.

Yet she wasn't daunted.

"Now let the women of Michigan organize for a final onset," she said. "Through your woman suffrage associations and temperance leagues, by every honorable resource open to you, fight out this battle with a zeal that shall know no discouragement, a courage that shall never tire ... . This question must be decided by the whole people before we will bow to any adjustment contrary to the consent of the governed."

1914 convention

Things were a lot different in 1914. This time, city officials invited the Michigan Equal Suffrage Association to hold its annual convention here Nov. 3-5, a year after voters had defeated another suffrage proposal by almost 100,000 votes.

Thomas Bates died two years before, but his son, George, ran the four-year-old Record-Eagle and supported women's right to vote. Front-page stories followed the convention all three days, and the Record-Eagle ran two encouraging editorials.

"Traverse City is a Suffrage City. Her men and women are loyal to the cause," Mrs. M.S. Sanders, a Grand Traverse delegate, noted in her welcome speech.

Four years later, they were triumphant. With World War I near its end, Michigan men finally approved female suffrage in the state in 1918.

Women voted in their first Michigan election in 1919, a full year before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became federal law on Aug. 26, 1920. For the first time in history, women in every state could take part in that November's presidential election.

Those who did joined their men folk to give Republican Warren G. Harding a historic landslide. Never again would anyone be able to successfully run for office without considering the women's vote, in Traverse City, elsewhere in the state or indeed, anywhere in the nation.

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