When Aunt Susan Came to Town

During the fall of 1896, the United States was caught in the throes of a presidential campaign that came down to a battle of the "haves" versus the "have-nots."  William McKinley, Republican, was the candidate of the establishment, of the capitalist interests, a proponent of a sound money policy based on the primacy of the gold standard.  His opponent, William Jennings Bryan, known as the "Boy Orator of the Platte," was the candidate for both the Democrats and the Populists.  Representing the common man, the farmer and the laborer, Bryan favored the free coinage of silver. 



Susan B. Anthony



In California, there was a little bit more on the ballot than a highly contested presidential election.  On November 3, California voters would be asked to decide whether or not women should be allowed the right to vote.  Women had already won the franchise in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, but this was the first attempt by California women to gain their rights as citizens through an amendment to the state constitution.  Throughout 1896, California suffragettes campaigned with enthusiasm, aided in their efforts by national suffrage leaders, such as Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, and the Reverend Anna Howard Shaw.

According to an account in the Sacramento Union, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Catt made an appearance in Sacramento in September of 1896 to rally men and women to their cause.  Speaking at the Metropolitan Theater on K Street between 4th and 5th Streets, the two addressed a crowd with a "ratio being about sixteen women to one man."  The meeting was opened by A. J. Bruner, an attorney and a leader in Sacramento's Republican County Committee.  Confirming the party's stand in favor of woman suffrage, Bruner went on to introduce the speakers, first Mrs. Catt and then Miss Anthony.



Mrs. Carrie
Chapman Catt

 In her address, Carrie Chapman Catt reminded the audience that there were 30,000 female college graduates in the United States, with one-fourth of women being the breadwinners in their families.  In spite of this demonstrated intelligence and value, she declared, men never extended the franchise to anyone unless that extension would somehow favor the party in power.  Mrs. Catt proved her point by using the example of the support of the Democratic Party for suffrage in Utah--only once Demcratic party leaders realized that it would be to their political benefit. 


When Miss Anthony, known affectionately to suffragettes as "Aunt Susan," took the stage, she reminded her Sacramento audience that it had been 25 years since her first visit to the capital city.  She reiterated one of the favorite themes of suffrage supporters, that the use of the word "male" in the state constitution gave the men and boys of the state a feeling of superiority over women, although educated men and women alike knew that this was not the case. 

After their presentation on that September evening, both Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt left Sacramento to bring their message to other areas in the state.  In just over a month, Miss Anthony was back in Sacramento, this time just one week before the election.  Accompanying her on this visit were the Reverends Anna Howard Shaw and Eliza Tupper Wilkes.


Rev. Anna Howard Shaw

Prior to their evening speaking engagement on October 30, 1896, the three suffragettes held court at a reception given by Mrs. E. R. Hamilton at her home at 5th and I Streets.  Mrs. Hamilton, Lizzie, was 51 years old, married since 1874 to Edward Randolph Hamilton, a banker some 14 years her senior.  According to the Sacramento Union, "[h]undreds of ladies took advantage of the occasion to pay their respects."  Light refreshments were served to the many women who crowded around the "trio of suffragist exponents," and all were "royally received" by their hostess.

After their busy afternoon at the Hamilton home, Miss Anthony, Reverend Shaw, and Reverend Wilkes had only a few hours respite before they were expected at the evening meeting, again held at the Metropolitan Theater.  This meeting began with a selection performed by Neale's Orchestra, a Sacramento institution under the direction of A. C. Neale that was a local favorite at dances, picnics, commencement exercises, and more.  Following the orchestral performance was a vocal solo by Mrs. Frances Moeller.  Mrs. Moeller was a 39-year-old widow who supported her teenage son by giving music lessons.  In addition to this, Mrs. Moeller was frequently sought out as a soloist at all manner of events and eventually became director of the Sacramento Ladies Choral Society.  Accompanying Mrs. Moeller as she sang on this crisp October evening was none other than the Reverend Shaw herself, one of the key speakers of the evening.

Sacramento in the 1890's

After the musical selections, the meeting was called to order by Mrs. Maggie Beattie Willis, the Kentucky-born wife of a local druggist.  Mrs. Willis, like Mrs. Hamilton who had hosted the afternoon reception, was the type of woman at the heart of California's movement, and really the suffrage movement across the nation--mainly women of the upper and middle classes, white, and Protestant.

According to the Sacramento Union, Miss Anthony argued that women's votes were necessary for the good of California, given the moral authority that was the purview of women.  She expressed optimism that the ballot measure allowing female suffrage would be passed by the male voters of the state on November 3.  After all, even the San Francisco newspapers had endorsed the measure, while one of Sacramento's two papers had done the same.  Hammering home her message, she reminded her audience that, as the current state constitution was written, "every foreigner and native, no matter how ignorant and uneducated, who has a vote, is the superior of the educated woman politically." 

Rev. Eliza Tupper
Wilkes

Next to address the meeting was the Reverend Eliza Tupper Wilkes.  A Unitarian minister, Reverend Wilkes initially came to California for her health, spending her winters in the Golden State during the early 1890's.  During those mild winter months, she served congregations in Alameda and Oakland, eventually settling for good in California after the turn of the century when she moved to Santa Ana. 

In her speech, Reverend Wilkes ridiculed those who claimed that access to the polls would "degrade" woman; if the polls were of such a state as to degrade the mothers and daughters of the nation, she argued, then heaven help the country.  Next taking on the objection that women should not vote as they could not fight, she reminded her audience of the great sacrifices women had made during the Civil War and of the role they played in saving the Union.

Before the final speaker of the night took the stage, the audience was favored with a vocal solo by Miss Belle Carrington.  Just 17 years old, a graduate from Sacramento High School, Belle helped to support her widowed mother and younger sister Alice by working as a musician and music teacher. Belle's mother, Aurelia Stone Carrington, had charge of the Chinese Mission School through the First Congregational Church of Sacramento, a position she would hold for over 20 years. 

The Reverend Anna Howard Shaw was the last speaker of the evening.  The first ordained female Methodist minister in the United States, Reverend Shaw was also a physician, receiving her medical degree from Boston College in 1886.  According to the Sacramento Union, her address was "full of sarcastic flings at men."  While she admitted that she did not know enough about the tariff or the myriad other financial questions facing the nation, she and most women were more than well equipped to deal with the moral issues at stake in a fast-changing United States.  In her opinion, the prosperity of the country depended more on the intelligence of its citizenry than on whether or not a gold or silver standard was used.

The speeches given in Sacramento in September and October of 1896 were indictive of some common themes in the California women's movement.  The theme of woman's positive moral influence grew out of the earliest attempts by women to step outside the domestic sphere.  From their work in the abolition movement to their advances onto local school boards, women had gradually been expanding their influence in the public sector, doing so in ways that were considered appropriate for women in their role as moral guardians.  The theme of women's intellectual abilities had more ambiguous undertones.  The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a new influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, bringing with them new languages and cultural mores, not to mention radical political practices like socialism and anarchism.  When Susan B. Anthony and others argued about woman's intellectual abilities, it was with this message:  men who worked in factories, foreign, uneducated, and advocating radical politics, could vote, yet white, middle-class college-educated Protestant women could not.

The Reverend Shaw may not have felt that the monetary issue was of prime importance, but Sacramento's newspapers did not agree.  Citizens following the visits of suffrage leaders to their city would have to turn to the pages of the Sacramento Union for coverage during the weeks leading up to the November 3 election.  Strangely, while it provided generous coverage of the woman's issue, it was not the Union who endorsed the suffrage amendment, leaving that to its rival, the Sacramento Bee.  The Bee's readers were encouraged to vote "yes" on Amendment 6, with the editorial board of the paper noting, "The Bee has always been in favor of woman suffrage....It has never been able to see any objections against woman suffrage that could not be made just as potent against male suffrage."   This ringing endorsement aside, the Bee had very little to say about the battle for women's votes.  Instead, the pages of this paper were devoted, nearly entirely, to what they saw as the more important battle, that between McKinley and Bryan for the presidency.  So vehement was the paper's support of William Jennings Bryan that every issue during the month of October 1896 sang the Nebraskan's praises and followed his progress intently. 

When November 3 had come and gone, the California's woman suffrage amendment had gone down in defeat.  Across the state, the measure had been defeated 55% to 45%.  In Sacramento County, the measure was defeated 60% to 40%.  After the election, Susan B. Anthony would blame the loss on the liquor interests, whose concern with woman's suffrage resulted from a fear that voting women would be able to initiate prohibition.

Sadly, Miss Anthony would not live to see California women get the vote in 1911.  Nor would Kentucky-born Maggie Beattie Willis, who would die in 1901 in Sacramento.  Young Belle Carrington, the singer, would marry in 1903 and move with her husband back to her native Ohio.  Lizzie Hamilton, whose reception had brought Sacramento women together in her home with Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw, and Eliza Tupper Wilkes, died in 1914, ten years after her husband, and is buried in Sacramento's historic City Cemetery.  There is no record as to whether she exercised her right to vote before her death.

Whether famous on the national level or well-known only in their community, the women involved in the Sacramento battle for suffrage paved the way for the California women to come.  While so many of them would not live to see either the California suffrage amendment of 1911 or the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, their daughters of today owe them a debt of gratitude.  We can only repay that debt by remembering their efforts and exercising the right to vote whenever the opportunity is available.

Sources:

Connolly, Elaine, and Dian Self.  Capital Women: An Interpretive History of Women in

     Sacramento, 1850-1920.  Sacramento: The Capital Women's History Project, 1995.

Gullett, Gayle.  "Constructing the Woman Citizen and Struggling for the Vote in California,

     1896-1911."  Pacific Historical Review, vol. 69, no. 4, (Nov., 2000), pp 573-593.

Sacramento Bee, accessed on microfilm at California State University, Sacramento, Library.

Sacramento Daily Union, accessed online through the California Digital Newspaper Collection,

     http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cdnc.
Biographical data on the Sacramento leaders of the suffrage movement was made available
     through Ancestry.com and FindAGrave.com.