Nashville now and then: Pointed parliamentary procedure

Tennessee's ratification of women's suffrage: the rest of the story... Also, longhorns on the loose in downtown Nashville, and a big week for birthdays on Music Row
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Email | Print By E. Thomas Wood

Alabama getaway

This week in 1920, many of America's 22 million women were hailing Tennessee as "the perfect 36," as a vote by its General Assembly on August 18th of that year appeared to have ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. A seven-decade national struggle to gain the right for women to vote seemed to have ended in the State Capitol in Nashville.

But 36 State House members, regarding Tennessee's situation as far from perfect, banded together in a last-ditch attempt to maintain the status quo in their state and in the country as a whole.

Tennessee schoolchildren now learn — from excellent resources like Tennessee History for Kids, among other means — that a young McMinn County legislator named Harry T. Burn (D-Niota) cast the deciding vote in favor of the amendment after receiving a letter from his mother urging him to support women's suffrage. What most histories don't mention, however, is the drama that ensued after that vote.

On Saturday morning, August 21, the 36 die-hard anti-suffragists had beat a retreat to Decatur, Ala., out of reach of the sergeant-at-arms, in an effort to make a quorum impossible in the legislature and thus prevent the defeat of a motion to reconsider ratification. Supporters of the women's vote decided they didn't really need a quorum and defeated the motion. The "antis," as they were known, then obtained a temporary injunction to keep the governor from forwarding the ratification document to Washington.

On the night of Monday, August 23, the state's attorney general went to the home of Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice D. L. Lansden. At the AG's request, and without seeking out the antis to hear their side of the case, Lansden set aside the lower court's injunction. Bright and early Tuesday morning, Governor Albert Roberts signed the ratification and sent it off to Washington.

"Announcement early today that Justice Lansden had issued the writ, followed an hour later by the statement that the Governor had mailed the certification, was a bombshell in the camp of the anti-suffrage forces and an agreeable surprise to the suffragists," The New York Times reported on August 24. "There had been no intimation that such a course was planned, and a small circle of the suffrage leaders had kept the secret well."

Fuming at the "high-handed tactics and unprecedented methods" to which the governor and chief justice had resorted, opponents of the amendment trooped back from Alabama amid vows of further legal action. The way the act was spirited off to the nation's capital, they said in a statement, was "at least, if not revolutionary in character, in such violation of established law and procedure as to seem almost incredible."

In Washington, where the amendment had the support of President Woodrow Wilson, no procedural qualms would hold it up further. On August 26, 1920, after receiving Tennessee's documentation, U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed off on the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment, making it the law of the land. All subsequent legal challenges would fail.

Our safety at steak

It was just a short item, buried in the August 30, 1864 issue of the Nashville Daily Press, next to the big ad for "splendid photographs" of Generals Grant and Sherman. But for residents of Union-occupied Nashville, the news was a reminder of the perils of urban life during wartime.

The report told of an incident not too far out of the ordinary in those days, as the Union Army was using Nashville as a staging area. A herd of cattle, requisitioned by the occupying forces, was being driven through town the night before when "a large, long-horned steer... broke loose from the drove." The animal rambled through the streets of Rutledge Hill, "seeking whom he might devour." Three women suddenly found themselves face to face with the creature as it charged down Market Street, "wild as a young buffalo on the plains."

Two of the imperiled damsels were able to clamber over a wall to safety, but the third was less fortunate: The rampaging ruminant "knocked her down, and tore her clothing considerably; she endeavored to extricate herself from the reach of the furious animal, but as she rose from the ground, the steer again would gore her, which he repeated until the lady, perfectly exhausted, fell down in an insensible condition."

Moving on to another target, the unruly quadruped then attacked a man "and gored him until life was extinct." All of which goes to show, said the paper, that "it is well for people to be on their guard."

Birthdays of note this week — with a bit of a country accent:

• Mulleted melody-maker-turned-stage-parent Billy Ray Cyrus, and former Nashville Gas chief Bill Denny — August 25
• Soon-to-be-greatly-missed ex-Tennessee Titan Drew Bennett — August 26
• Country chanteuses Sherrié Austin and Shania Twain — August 28
• Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Janice Holder — August 29
• The Queen of Country Music, Kitty Wells — August 30