Legacy: A Novel Page 9

  In the scrapbook there is one newspaper clipping which summarizes the opposition my great-aunt faced:

  Who opposes these Amazon women? Honest politicians resist because they can’t guess how women will vote, dishonest ones because they fear women might support reform movements. The brewing interests pour in vast sums of money lest their saloons be closed, and the South is solidly opposed for fear of what black women might do if they ever voted. Protestant churches which accept St. Paul’s fulminations against women fight tooth and nail, and recently Cardinal Gibbons enrolled his Catholics against them. But the most effective foe is the wealthy woman like Anne Starr who testifies that real women don’t want or need these so-called rights.

  When I pointed to this formidable list of enemies, Nancy pushed the scrapbook away, looked up in disbelief, and asked: ‘Norman, how did she muster the courage to fight such an array?’

  I shared a conclusion taught me by my mother, who would, in her day, fight her own battle for a worthy cause: ‘All Starr children were reared to believe that they had a family stake in the Constitution. Emily saw the document as a national legacy which needed her protection. She said once: “If Jared and Simon gave their lives defending freedom, the least we can do in our generation is continue their work.” Her battle came naturally … inevitably.’

  It was someone not favorable to suffragists who devised the idea of inviting the two Starr women to debate, first in Washington, then in the major cities, and at first Anne, always gracious and condescending, simply swamped ungainly Emily, whose voice tended to become rasping as the evening progressed. Anne had one trick which delighted audiences and won them to her side:

  ‘I have here in my hand a copy of the noble speech delivered on the floor of the Senate by one of our greatest political leaders, George Vest of Missouri: “For my part I want when I go home—when I turn from the arena where man contends with man for what we call the prizes of this paltry world—I want to go back, not to the embrace of some female ward politician, but to the earnest, loving look and touch of a true woman. I want to go back to the jurisdiction of the wife, the mother; and instead of a lecture upon finance or the tariff, or upon the construction of the Constitution, I want those blessed loving details of domestic life and domestic love.” ’

  Invariably when Anne read this, standing erect and looking exactly like the kind of wife the senator had been describing, much of the audience broke into cheers, and Emily sometimes had difficulty getting them to listen to her.

  But Kate Kedzie was a fighting woman, and one night when she was in the audience listening to Anne annihilate Emily, a fugitive idea popped into her head, and she spent the next morning in the Boston Public Library. That night the rejuvenation of Emily Starr and her crusade began, for when Anne started reading Senator Vest’s oration on the proper role of women, Emily leaned forward, attracted attention to herself, and nodded warmly as the eight minutes of purple prose soared to its conclusion that women wanted nothing more than what men generously allowed them.

  When Anne finished, to the usual applause, Emily went over, shook her hand as if she had surrendered the debate, then strode to the podium in forceful steps, and told the audience: ‘Like you, I was enchanted by Senator Vest’s ringing advice on how women ought to behave. He says he doesn’t want us to be worrying about the Constitution. Well, you know by now that I do worry about it, a great deal, and I wonder who is the best judge of what women want from the Constitution, Senator Vest or me?’

  Then, imitating the way in which Anne produced Vest’s speech on women, she unfolded a paper and proceeded to read another of that same senator’s famous orations:

  ‘ “The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and sickness. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains.” ’

  And on and on. As she poured forth Vest’s impassioned defense of dogs, listeners had to realize that he had said much the same about women. Here and there people began to chuckle and then burst into guffaws, for the two speeches sounded identical. Emily’s punch line was devastating: ‘Senator Vest seems confused as to whether he wants a woman or a puppy dog. I want women who have an interest in their Constitution and who want to amend it so that justice is given to all.’ Now the same audience that had applauded Vest’s first speech on women, cheered with real animation Emily’s adroit use of his second speech on his affection and respect for dogs.

  Unwisely, Anne tried to continue using the Vest speech on women in Boston and Hartford, but when Emily practically laughed her off the stage with his oration on dogs, she stopped. But Kate Kedzie would not let her escape, and in Pittsburgh, when Anne avoided the Vest speech, Emily said remorselessly:

  ‘Two weeks ago my opponent drew much laughter when she read a senator’s speech ridiculing what we women want. But when I found another speech by the same man proving how ridiculous his words were and how empty, she stopped using hers. Well, because you’ve read about this in the papers, I’m going to read you both speeches, hers and mine, and you’ll see that our opponents can’t tell the difference between real women and dogs.’

  She read in tones of such withering scorn, revealing Anne Starr as a pampered woman of curious persuasions, that the enmity between them became mortal. Never again would Anne allow herself to be in the same house or room or debating hall with her sister-in-law. This meant that Emily was now completely cut off from her family, but whenever she went to jail, the papers still referred to her as the daughter of Confederate General Hugh Starr, devoted right-hand man to General Lee.

  In early 1918 it looked as if Kate and her indomitable women might gain their victory in Washington just as our male troops were gaining theirs in Europe, but women like Emily Starr underestimated the venom with which leading American politicians would fight against them. William Borah of Idaho thundered, so did William Bankhead of Alabama, James Wads-worth of New York, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Pitchfork Ben Tillman of South Carolina, before he died. Assured of their numbers, these implacable foes grudgingly allowed a Senate vote in early February 1919, and the women lost by one.

  Emily, now sixty-one, was so distraught by the defeat and so infuriated by the opposition of religious leaders who trivialized her crusade that she was trapped into a pathetic error which alienated her friends and destroyed her future effectiveness in the movement. When a leading churchman exulted: ‘The Senate rejection of women’s suffrage proves that the devout people of the United States still adhere to the Christian principles of our Constitution,’ she sat in fury reviewing the notes of her great-grandfather Simon Starr and the journal of James Madison. Satisfied as to the truth, she published a pamphlet whose opening sentences made cautious women cringe:

  It is time we realized that religion had practically nothing to do with the drafting of our Constitution. Practical human beings wrote it, and since they were subject to every frailty that you and I suffer, if they committed error or oversight, it ought to be corrected.

  The outcry was tremendous, but those who did not instantly dismiss the pamphlet as atheism learned something about the genesis of their country:

  It is wrong for Reverend Waterson to depict the framers as praying for divine guidance and seeking God’s counsel before composing our Constitution. True, the delegates were religious men and most attended church on the weekends, but once they convened in the meeting hall, they did not allow religious matters to enter their deliberations. Since three of the delegates had been trained for the ministry, religious values must have been taken into consideration, but look what happened to these three would-be clergymen. Hugh Williamson of North Carolina became licensed as a Presbyterian clergyman, but he quit early to become a scientist. Abraham Baldwin of Georgia, after graduating from Yale, was asked to stay on as its chaplain and later
was offered a professorship of divinity, but chose instead to become a lawyer-politician. And the great James Madison studied for the ministry at Princeton, found he had no vocation, and turned to politics.

  Not one of these men, or any other, sponsored religious positions in the Convention. However, at the close of one long day of angry debate, Dr. Franklin proposed that tempers might be softened if each session opened with prayer. His suggestion brought little support and was not even brought to a vote, but Madison’s cryptic notes suggest that it occasioned a lot of parliamentary maneuvering before it was allowed to die. Curiously, it was effectively disposed of by Clergyman Williamson, who observed dryly that the matter should be dropped because the Convention had no funds to pay a minister.

  A careful reading of documents circulating at the time proves that whereas the delegates were in general a religious group, they were terrified of the religious intolerances they had read about in history or observed in their own colonies. They resisted every attempt to insert in their Constitution any flaming reaffirmations of human rights or religious freedoms, and in the end their only reference to religion was the brief, sharp warning that comes at the very end of the substantial part of the law: ‘No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.’

  But in their austerity the delegates underestimated the essentially religious nature of the American people. Families went to church. Their children were baptized. Clergymen were respected. Public prayer was common, and there was general obedience to an inherited ethic. However, the infant United States was not a Christian nation and the founders did not so describe it, but it was a nation dedicated to Judeo-Christian principles. Therefore, when a powerful surge of opinion demanded a Bill of Rights, Congress acquiesced, and if it had not, the Constitution would probably have been rejected.

  But even in the famous First Amendment, the statement regarding religion is negative and protective: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,’ and not until that safeguard from oppression had been established did the positive promise come: ‘or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ The framers were tough-minded practical men who respected religion for the moral balance it contributes to society, but the structure of government they devised was pragmatic rather than religious, and it worked. Now, as pragmatists like our forefathers, we women want to ensure that it still works.

  When she was abused from all sides for being an atheist, Emily retaliated with a second pamphlet even more incendiary than the first, for now she argued that all religion was notoriously anti-woman. She cited pagan rites, which sacrificed women to pagan gods; the Jewish religion, which segregated women infamously; the Catholics, who denied women any serious role in the governance of their church; the Puritan religions of New England, which did not protest when their older women were hanged as witches; and she closed with a blast against the Mormons, who denigrated women, and the Quakers, who separated them from men in their Philadelphia meeting houses. She concluded her diatribe with a plea and a threat:

  Please cleanse your faiths of antique practices which deny women full partnership, because the women of America will no longer kowtow to the fulminations of St. Paul.

  An outcast, she was advised not to be present in the Senate chamber on 4 June 1919 when the final vote was taken, so she did not participate in the joyous applause when women finally won. After a century of struggle, Congress had passed a bill which did not actually establish suffrage; it merely invited the individual states to ratify or reject a simple one-sentence amendment: ‘The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.’

  That night there was celebration, to which Emily was not invited, but early next morning she sought out Kate, and warned: ‘Now our real fight begins. We’ve got to persuade three-fourths of the states to ratify. That’s thirty-six. And the enemy will oppose us with greater fury than ever before.’

  She was correct. The fight was brutal, with many of America’s most generous and thoughtful men vilifying women who sought to soil themselves with the vote. Her friends in the movement told her bluntly: ‘Stay under cover. With the charges of atheism, you do us more harm than good.’ So for the remainder of 1919 and early 1920 she traveled back roads, avoiding public meetings and newspaper people, meeting quietly with old friends who needed her fortifying strength: ‘Keep working. We must have thirty-six, but we can count on only thirty-three.’

  Finally, it all depended on what happened in Tennessee, where in a small hill town a twenty-four-year-old member of the state’s lower house, one Harry Burn, was under extreme pressure. His mother preached: ‘Vote for the women, son. Only decent thing to do,’ but the clergymen and the business leaders hammered: ‘Don’t disgrace yourself with a vote for those Amazons.’

  Emily, whose calculations convinced her that the vote might hinge on Burn, quietly stopped by his home to talk with mother and son. With him, she accomplished nothing: ‘Ever’body tells me it ain’t right for women to mix theirselves in politics.’ But with Mrs. Burn, she had a better reception, and long into the night the two women talked. Next morning, when Harry set out for the capital, his mother told him: ‘Don’t forget to be a good boy. Vote for suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt.’

  When Emily reached the capital on the eve of the final vote, she was horrified to learn that the opposition had brought in so much free liquor that the entire legislature was blind-drunk and no vote could be taken. That night she slept in a rooming house where no one knew her, and the hours were endless: Oh no, not back to the beginning again. Fight it once more through the House? Once more through the Senate? I wouldn’t have the strength.

  Next day the sobered Tennessee Senate ratified the amendment, and now all focused on the lower house, where the opposition had what they judged to be enough votes to defeat the women one last time: ‘Harry Burn is with us. Eddie took care of him.’

  When Emily slipped into the hall where the legislators would meet, a suffragist recognized her, and whispered: ‘We think it’s going to be forty-eight to forty-eight. We’ve lost.’

  ‘How about Harry Burn?’

  The woman looked at her list, and said: ‘He went over to the other side. Damn.’

  In the breathless counting of votes, there were two surprises. The women lost one vote but picked up two, and if Harry Burn voted with them, they would win. If not, it would be the predicted tie, which would mean that they had lost yet again.

  All turned to stare at the young fellow who had been pressured by both sides. When the clerk called for his vote, he replied in a whisper ‘Yea,’ and it seemed as if the entire capital burst into curses and cheers. The Constitution of the United States had been modified in accordance with orderly procedures laid down a hundred and thirty-three years before.

  That night Emily Starr, an outcast from her family, her friends and even her own group of crusaders, stood in the smallest bedroom of the little Tennessee boardinghouse, still clad in her long black dress and outmoded hat, experiencing the terrible loneliness that can overtake good people when they have won a significant battle. She felt no sense of triumph. An involuntary cry escaped: ‘Oh, Philip! It needn’t have been so.’

  Then she stiffened, averted her eyes from the small mirror, and said: ‘It was wrong and it had to be set right.’

  Richard

  Starr

  1890–1954

  Since my grandfather died when I was only three, I can scarcely claim that I knew him, but I do remember his coming to our house and bouncing me on his knee. He was tall and thin, and cranky, except to me, and he smelled of tobacco. I certainly remember his funeral. It was a cold, misty day, and someone said something I can still recall: ‘The day is as mean as the man.’

  He had not always been that way, and some of the stories about him that were repeated in our home bespoke a kindlier young man. But financial reverses in the Grea
t Depression embittered him, and it was his sour behavior in his later years which dominated the stories.

  In the early days of his marriage he was well-to-do or even rich, the result of an inheritance from his mother, one of the Greer textile family of New Hampshire, so he never really had to work. He was in what they called at the time ‘investments,’ and since he was neither brilliant nor particularly adept at managing money, his adventures turned out poorly, and the Crash of 1929 damaged him.

  It was then that he developed the great passion of his life, for he became known as ‘the man who hated Roosevelt.’ When I was a boy the letters F.D.R. were anathema in our house, for my grandfather had said that he had tried to turn America into a Communist state.

  ‘It began with those damn-fool amendments,’ he stormed. ‘Why meddle with the Constitution? Like they say, “Why fix it if it ain’t broke?” ’

  He described the Seventeenth Amendment, which called for the election of senators by popular vote, a tragic mistake: ‘In the old days you had men of property and breeding in the state legislatures, and they could be depended upon to appoint men like themselves, men of substance, to the Senate.’ He believed that to allow the general public to determine the character of our upper chamber was the first step toward revolution: ‘Just watch what comes out of the Senate now,’ and when the first laws were enacted, he went about crying: ‘The rot has begun!’

  His opinion of the Nineteenth Amendment was sulfurous: ‘The brightest day in the history of the Starr family was when my grandfather, General Hugh, cast his lot with Robert E. Lee … the darkest was when that crazy daughter of his, Aunt Emily, started working for women’s suffrage.’ Of course, he inherited his impression of the infamous Emily from his mother, Anne Greer, whose scornful memory of her sister-in-law intensified as the years passed. She once told my grandfather of that hideous night when Emily had made a fool of her: ‘She mimicked me, she laughed at me, humiliated me in every way, and I never spoke to her again as long as she lived. She was a dreadful person and she introduced alien ideas into American politics.’