The Suffragette Who Voted Against Two World Wars

She was a representative - the first female representative in American history - from a state that wasn't even a state when she was born just outside of Missoula, in the Montana Territory, in 1880. Jeanette Rankin was born to John - a Canadian rancher/builder - and Olive, who had moved herself 3/4 of the way across the country to teach school in Montana before marrying John and settling in as a housewife to take care of their soon-to-be seven children, of which Jeanette was the oldest. Montana's statehood, and entry into the Union, was nine years away when Jeanette was born.

In an effort to make sure that the state university was located in Missoula, the city leaders made a deal with Helena - 100 miles to its east - that Missoula would back Helena's push to be the state capital (opposing Anaconda, 100 miles to Missoula's southeast) in exchange for Helena's backing on the university issue. It worked. Montana State University - now the University of Montana - opened its doors in 1895. Jeanette graduated with a degree in biology seven years later. 

From there Jeanette Rankin criss-crossed the country. When John Rankin passed away in 1904, Jeanette visited an uncle in California and began volunteering at the Telegraph Hill Settlement House, the first of its kind in San Francisco, but modeled after Jane Addams' groundbreaking Hull House in Chicago, which made an effort to assist immigrants living in the United States. San Francisco had a large number of immigrants in need of help (thanks, in part, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882), and so the settlement house formula of providing education services to children as well as health services for their families was followed by Telegraph Hill. Eventually they expanded to include a kitchen, garden, gymnasium, library, and an operating room. Telegraph Hill would launch the first school nurse program on the west coast. 

Armed with an interest in social work, Jeanette graduated from - the now-Columbia University School of Social Work in 1909. Jeanette again traversed the country, this time to Spokane, Washington to help needy children, and found herself as a student volunteer on a women's suffrage campaign. Washington State would end up becoming the fifth state to allow women to vote, and Rankin ended up working as a field secretary for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), whose previous presidents included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Carrie Chapman Catt. 

NAWSA's strategy was hard but simple: getting enough states to give women the right to vote would force the federal government to act. In late 1910, Rankin found that her home state of Montana was about to introduce a women's suffrage resolution. The resolution was a hoax in some capacity, however, but Rankin was able to convince a state legislator to introduce the resolution, anyway. In February 1911 Rankin testified in support of women's suffrage, becoming the first woman to address the Montana legislature in the process. Her testimony likely swung the majority of the Montana House of Representatives to support women's suffrage, which the state adopted in 1914. 

Rankin spent much of the next two years organizing support through NAWSA where it was most needed, visiting 15 states from Delaware to Florida. She organized immigrant workers in Manhattan's Garment District after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and ultimately helped win basic workplace safety regulations. With plenty of political experience came an opportunity: the women's suffrage brought women the right to hold office.

In 1916, when over 300 women were running for office in Kansas alone, Rankin declared her candidacy for one of Montana's two congressional seats. You may be asking yourself, "Self, how could she do this?" And I simply respond, "Women had the right to vote in Montana, which means women had the right to hold office." 

Rankin's campaign was managed by her brother Wellington, a Harvard grad and Rhodes Scholar who settled into public life as a lawyer who specialized in industrial accident cases, a niche that brought him into conflict with many of the state's largest corporations, like the Anaconda Copper Company, the largest employer in the state. Oh, the Anaconda Copper Company just so happened to own most of the state's newspapers, and completely ignored Rankin's campaign. It didn't work.

Rankin, who campaigned on many popular Progressive Party issues: nationwide suffrage, child welfare laws, and Prohibition, was the first woman to hold national office, the first female member of Congress. She would say in a statement after her election was official:

"I am deeply conscious of the responsibility, and it is wonderful to have the opportunity to be the first woman to sit in Congress. I will not only represent the women of Montana, but also the women of the country, and I have plenty of work cut out for me."

The 19th Amendment was still over two years away from being introduced.

Rankin's first day in office was April 2, 1917 and the House of Representatives paused for "sustained applause" when Rankin was sworn in. The day began, however, with a breakfast for Rankin hosted by both NAWSA and it's more militant faction, the National Women's Party led by Alice Paul - a rare show of unity between the two groups.

President Woodrow Wilson convened Congress eight months early to consider the United States' response to Germany's resumption of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. However, just before the House adjourned for the afternoon, Rankin introduced the Susan B. Anthony amendment, guaranteeing women's suffrage in the Constitution. Her historic first day brought another first: the first woman to call for a constitutional amendment from the floor of Congress.

But of course this wasn't why Wilson brought Congress back. Later in the evening President Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany to "make the world safe for democracy." Rankin was in a bind: she needed support for the suffrage movement, but voting against war - even as a lifelong pacifist - might cause support for suffrage to suffer. 

Ultimately, Rankin and 49 other congressmen - including House Majority Leader Claude Kitchin (D-NC) and Extremely Pro-Military congressman Albert Britten (R-IL) voted against war, as well. 49 of the 56 No War votes in the House and Senate, however, were from Midwestern or Western states, so Rankin's vote was in line with the geography. But 373 representatives voted in favor (after the Senate passed the war resolution 82-6 two days earlier), and so with Wilson's signature, the United States went to war against the German Empire. NAWSA distanced themselves from Rankin, issuing a statement that read, "Miss Rankin was not voting [on war] for the suffragists of the nation - she represents Montana." The Helena Independent (please do remember how many of Montana's newspapers were mouthpieces for the Anaconda Company) wrote that Rankin was "a dagger in the hands of the German propagandists, a dupe of the Kaiser, a member of the Hun army in the United States, and a crying schoolgirl."

In 1918 Rankin opened debate on the House floor regarding what would eventually become the 19th Amendment - giving women the right to vote - by addressing her colleagues, "How shall we answer their challenge, gentlemen? How shall we explain to them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give them this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?" That bill failed, but Rankin noted that she was "the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote."

And here's what's important about the 19th Amendment. The 19th Amendment didn't really, if we're picking nits, give women the right to vote. Women already had the right to vote in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, obviously Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, and Washington. That's 20 of the 48 states. What the 19th Amendment did do was tell the other 28 states they could not deny women the right to vote.

Rankin was busy supporting miners' rights back home in Montana (where a large amount of Montana's natural resources benefitted the War effort) and earning the already-established hatred of the Anaconda Copper Company. She also personally investigated poor treatment of female workers at the U.S. Treasury Department, which resulted in the immediate institution of an eight-hour work day.

Redistricting shenanigans in Montana led Rankin to not run for re-election in the House, and instead focus on a bid in the Senate. However, the extremely powerful Nonpartisan League, who opposed Big Banks and corporations, encouraged its members to vote in the Democratic primary, not the Republican one - a massive blow to Rankin's chances, which saw her lose the Republican primary by fewer than 2,000 votes.

After traveling the world and the United States for much of the 1920s, Rankin moved to northeast Georgia where she designed a house with no electricity, running water, or telephone. Again, a lifelong pacifist, Rankin responded to the unfolding events in Europe by becoming a lobbyist for the National Council for the Prevention of War. She publicized Senator Nye's (R-ND) investigation into arms manufacturers and their role in bringing America into World War 1. Rankin resigned after the Great Depression took its toll on the NCPW's finances, as well as her increasing opposition to FDR's stance on the likelihood of joining World War 2. 

The looming crisis in Europe sent Rankin back home to Montana, where she ran against Jacob Thorkelson, a first-term Norwegian-born doctor who was a noted fascist and anti-Semite that would read selections from Sir Oswald Mosley into the Congressional Record. Mosley, a World War 1 veteran, was elected to Parliament at 22 years old and would eventually come to really appreciate the efforts of Benito Mussolini in Italy, and establish the British Union of Fascists. Thorkelson was A Problem that Rankin easily handled in the Republican primary.

Facing long-time Montana politician Jerry Joseph O'Connell in 1940, Rankin won endorsements from progressives such as Robert LaFollette and Fiorello LaGuardia. Rankin won the election with 54% of the vote - almost 25 years after her first election to Congress. What to do about Europe was the main topic House floor. When the Lend-Lease Bill (allowing the United States to let Britain and France borrow or rent war materials to fight Germany) was up for debate in February 1941 - ten months prior to Pearl Harbor - Rankin spoke from the floor and asked, "If Britain needs our material today, will she later need our men?" Her amendment to require congressional approval before sending American troops abroad failed. 

On December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - Rankin was on her way to Detroit when she learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and arrived in Washington on the morning of December 8 preparing to oppose American action in World War 2. When Roosevelt asked a Joint Session of Congress for a declaration of war on Japan, debate opened in the House of Representatives. 

Rankin "repeatedly sought recognition," but with her reputation going before her, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn - still the longest-serving Speaker of the House - refused to let her speak. Other representatives asked her to either vote for war or to not vote at all, in order to maintain solidarity. "A chorus of hisses and boos" rained down on Rankin as she stated from the floor, "As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else." She voted no. The resolution to declare war on Japan passed 388-1. 

She faced immediate condemnation. Police officers had to escort Rankin to her office. Rankin's former campaign manager brother Wellington told her over the phone, "Montana is 110 percent against you."  Two days later, when Congress voted to declare war on Germany and Italy, Rankin simply voted "Present." The anger and indignation towards Rankin quickly turned to universal indifference. She focused on free speech issues and wartime fraud, and did not run for re-election in 1942.

The rest of her life was spent between Montana and Georgia, with trips to India - inspired by Gandhi. She led yet another protest against war - Rankin was nothing if not consistent - in Washington DC in 1968 against the Vietnam War, delivering a peace petition to the Speaker of the House. Two years later, Rankin was given a reception and a dinner in honor of her 90th birthday, and in 1972 Rankin was named the "World's Most Outstanding Feminist" by the National Organization for Women. Jeanette Rankin passed away in 1973, pondering yet another run for the House of Representatives. The year prior to her passing, a reporter asked if she would live her life all over again, to which she replied, yes "but this time I'd be nastier."

The 24-Year Old From Tennessee Who Changed The Country

Harry Thomas Burn was 22 years old when he was first elected to the Tennessee State Legislature. Harry was the oldest of four born to James & Febb Burn in Mouse Creek - now Niota - Tennessee, between Chattanooga and Knoxville. 

James Burn was the Niota depot stationmaster and opened some businesses around town. His mother, known by pretty much everybody as "Miss Febb," was a teacher after graduating from what is now Tennessee Wesleyan University. 

Women actually had the right to vote in the pre-Revolutionary Colonies. It was in early 1776 that Abigail Adams wrote her husband, and future 2nd President of the United States, John:

I long to hear that you have declared an independency - and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for your to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If [particular] care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

But by the time the Constitution itself was ratified in 1789, the delegates kicked it to the curb (also see: abolishing Slavery). Every state explicitly denied women the right to vote - except for New Jersey, who allowed female landowners to vote until 1807, when even they backed out and limited voting privileges to white dudes.

1848 saw the Seneca Falls Convention, in which 300 women and men not only advocated for women's suffrage (Suffrage: sounds Bad, is actually Good) but for equality for women in every aspect of societal and political life. The 1830s and 1840s were big decades for the women's suffrage movement. William Lloyd Garrison was the editor of The Liberator - a prominent and influential abolitionist newspaper from 1831 to the end of the Civil War - and became friends with Lucretia Mott, an early feminist and abolitionist who was influential on Garrison, who also became committed to women's rights. There was a definite crossover between the abolitionist and women's suffrage. 

Suffragettes like sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké spoke out:

Are we aliens because we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because we are the mothers, wives, and daughters of a mighty people?

Women's suffrage kinda sorta took a backseat to the Civil War. But when that [waves hands above head] Whole Thing ended, it was on. As the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were being debated, suffragettes pushed to have women included in the right to vote.  In 1866 Pennsylvania Senator Edgar Cowan introduced an amendment to provide for women's suffrage, and was promptly defeated 37-9.  There were two major women's suffrage camps:

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, wanted to get to vote by pressuring Congress to add an amendment to the Constitution. The American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone, wanted to slow-play it by pressuring state legislatures on a state-by-state basis. 

The NWSA argued that the 14th Amendment applied to giving women the right to vote - which was passed in 1868 and said that:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside...No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property...nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

That year, 1868, Kansas Senator Samuel Pomeroy introduced another bill that would provide universal suffrage. It was tabled...indefinitely.

Also, the NWSA argued the 15th Amendment (1869) should also guarantee suffrage for women, which said:

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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

In the year that the 15th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, Myra Bradwell - a woman of good character - passed the Illinois State Bar exam, giving her "sufficient training to be admitted to the practice of law." That said, the Illinois Supreme Court took a Hard Pass on Those Shenanigans, saying that the "strife" of being a lawyer would destroy her femininity. 

How could they legally justify such a thing? There's a common law doctrine of "coverture" - a holdover from feudal Norman law that essentially said that, prior to marriage, a woman could do normal things, like execute a will, sign a contract, sue or be sued, etc. But once she got married those rights were suspended under a "marital unity" clause in which the husband/wife's were consolidated under one entity: the husband's. Once married, women basically didn't have legal rights anymore. Using an offshoot of the Coverture clause - aka Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment, the Illinois Supreme Court batted Myra Bradwell down. She appealed. This eventually became Bradwell v. Illinois, and the Supreme Court (with one exception) said the 14th Amendment doesn't apply to women who happen to have passed the Bar and want to be lawyers. Justice Joseph P. Bradley, who had a history of a narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment, went so far as to write of the importance of the "respective spheres of man and woman," with the woman's role of wife/mother naturally following the "law of the Creator."

Still, progress towards women's suffrage continued to be made. Wyoming gave women the right to vote in 1869. 

Another challenge came in 1875, and still the Supreme Court used a narrow interpretation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause, this time in the case of Virginia Minor. Minor was a prominent Missouri suffrage leader who tried to register to vote in 1872 and was denied by registrar Reese Happersett, on the grounds that she was a woman. Her husband, Francis, was a lawyer and supported her test case. Minor sued Happersett using the 14th Amendment as a defense, and it went to the Missouri Supreme Court, who ruled that the "almost universal practice of the States" granted voting rights to men, only, saying that the 14th Amendment explicitly gave voting rights to the formerly enslaved, and should not be used as a precedent to change other laws. 

Minor v. Happersett went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1874. The Minors said women's suffrage was implied by the intent of the Founding Fathers. The Supreme Court said that the only thing in question was whether the Constitution specifically gave women the right to vote and that, no, it didn't. The State of Missouri was represented by a three-sentence written objection that was whole-heartedly endorsed by the Supreme Court. But the tide was starting to turn.

Thirty years after the Seneca Falls Convention, five years after Bradwell v. Illinois, four years after Minor v. Happersett, a Constitutional Amendment was proposed in 1878 to give women the right to vote.  California Senator Aaron A. Sargent - whose wife, Ellen Clark Sargent, was a friend of Susan B. Anthony - introduced the bill to the Senate. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others testified before the Senate in support of the bill. Five months later a petition with 30,000 signatures was brought before Congress. The bill failed, 34-16.

In 1888 the House of Representatives voted for limited suffrage for spinsters or widows who owned property. It failed. But progress was being made. Colorado granted partial women's suffrage in 1893, Idaho in 1896. Washington state granted women the right to vote in 1910, California followed in 1911. 

Anti-Suffragists were making their case. In 1897 prominent Anti-Suffragist Helen Kendrick Johnson published Woman and the Republic, in which she said:

Progress is a magic word, and the Suffrage party has been fortunate in its attempt to invoke the sorcery of the thought that it enfolds, and to blend it with the claim of woman to share in the public duty of voting...As I read political history, the facts go to show that the fundamental principles of our Government are more opposed to the exercise of suffrage by women than are those of monarchies. To me it seems that both despotism and anarchy are more friendly to woman's political aspirations than is any form of constitutional government, and that manhood suffrage, and not womanhood suffrage, is the final result of the evolution of democracy.

As we've seen in recent years, there's a lot of notoriety to be had when you look like the people you are trying to oppress.

On April 14, 1910 suffragettes met with President William Howard Taft to lobby for women's suffrage. Taft, who was over 350 pounds, got so mad he exclaimed that if women got the right to vote, "power might be exercised by the least desirable person." He cheered himself up by going to the Washington Senators/Philadelphia Athletics game on Opening Day. Taft threw out the first pitch of the game, and a tradition of president throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day was born. 

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) was founded in 1911, with membership originally consisting of people from two camps: wealthy Northeastern families who just didn't want to upset the status quo, and wealthy Southerners who were afraid that equal rights for women would naturally lead to equal rights for minorities. It's said that NAOWS membership numbered 350,000. Anya Jabour, a history professor at the University of Montana, explained that: "Many of the women in the anti-suffrage movement felt that the political system was a corrupt space, and if women joined it, they would inevitably become just as corrupt as the men." And, as with pretty much everything else in American society, it sort of came down to race. Broadsides were distributed that said women's suffrage would eventually lead to "Negro domination of our government."

The movement marched forward. In 1912 Oregon, Arizona, and Kansas all passed a suffrage bill. Note how all of these are western states, which tended to be more progressive than their eastern counterparts. A year later, in 1913, a petition was delivered to the Senate with over 75,000 signatures and followed with a parade in what was called "The Siege of the Senate." According to the New York Evening Journal:

Women were jeered, tripped, grabbed, shoved, and many heard "indecent epithets" and "barnyard conversation." Instead of protecting the parade, the police "seemed to enjoy all the ribald jokes and laughter, and part participated (sic) in them." One policeman remarked that the women should stay home where they belonged. The men in the procession heard shouts of "Henpecko" and "Where are your skirts?" As one witness explained, "There was a sort of spirit of levity connected with the crowd. They did not regard the affair very seriously."

The New York Times ran an editorial that year which stated:

The benefits of woman suffrage are almost wholly imaginary. Its penalties will be real and hard to bear.

On March 19, 1914 the Senate - eight months after the Siege - which required a 2/3 super-majority to support it - failed to pass giving women the right to vote by 11 votes, 35-34. World War 1 happened. As it does. By 1918, after the House of Representatives had passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, President Woodrow Wilson, now a converted suffragette (because he needed it for the war effort), spoke in favor of giving women the right to vote. This time it failed in the Senate by two votes. 

1918 featured a mid-term election in the middle of a - wait for it - GLOBAL PANDEMIC. President Wilson was fighting for his 14 Points and League of Nations, but also trying to garner support for universal suffrage. After getting blasted by Helen H. Gardener and Carrie Chapman Catt, Woodrow Wilson advocated for universal suffrage in his 1919 State of the Union. The Senate fell one vote short on February 10, 1919 - mainly opposed by Southern congressmen. Less than four months later, the Senate - 41 years after Aaron Sargent formally proposed women's suffrage, and 71 years after the Seneca Falls Convention - suffragettes had the votes. Needing a 2/3 super-majority, the Senate passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment 56-25. Two votes made the difference.

The stage was set. See, The Rules say that 75% of the states have to approve an Amendment before it actually becomes A Thing. In 1920 there were 48 states, so you need 36 state legislatures to approve it before it can be an Amendment. But November 1920 was a full-on election. By June 1920 - with a presidential and congressional election coming five months later - anti-suffragists were saying that anything that happened that Summer would be undone with the election. At this point, 35 states had approved women's suffrage, eight had voted against it. There were five states yet to hold a vote, but four of those states refused to call a special session to consider giving women the right to vote. One more state voting for the Amendment would seal it. Tennessee agreed to hold a special session. The Tennessee State Senate passed the measure easily, the fight stalled in the Tennessee State House of Representatives. This brings us back to the youngest state legislator in Tennessee, 24-year old Harry Burn. 

The fight descended on Nashville, setting up camp in The Hermitage Hotel, half a mile from the Tennessee State Capitol building. The vote was set for August 1920. Tennessee state legislators were paired off - those opposed to women's suffrage, wearing a red rose on the lapel of their suit, and those in favor of giving women the right to vote, wearing a yellow rose. Allegations of corruption ran deep as anti-suffrage forces tried to bribe or coerce State Representatives. Industrialists didn't want women to have the right to vote, as women might end up voting for tougher labor laws. The Alcohol lobby wasn't interested in women having the right to vote because of Prohibition, so they set up the Jack Daniel's Suite at The Hermitage Hotel, ready to lube up the legislators.

Friday, August 18, 1920 saw impassioned speeches from both sides in the Tennessee State Legislature. House Speaker Seth L. Walker hollered:

The hour has come. The battle has been fought and won, and I move...that the motion to concur in the Senate action goes where it belongs - to the table.

Basically, Walker was asking for the vote to be tabled until after the November elections. Harry Burn wore a red rose on his lapel, signifying his intention to vote for the right for women not to vote. Burn was facing re-election in a few months, and McMinn County was pretty divided. Burn voted twice to table the vote until the next legislature, hoping that he could stay in the good graces of party leadership and his constituents, get re-elected, and then do it all again. But the vote was 48-48, which led to Speaker Walker calling for an immediate re-vote, calling on the legislators to consider the issue of women's suffrage "on its merits." It would be decided in the special session, not by kicking the can down the road until after November.

Rep. Burn had two items on or near his lapel: the red rose pin, and a letter from his mother, "Miss Febb." The seven-page letter updated Harry on the goings-on around town and the farm, but also:

Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt. I notice some the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet....Be a good boy and help Mrs. [Carrie Chapman] Catt put the 'rat' in ratification.

Armed with the letter from his mother, when it was time for the roll call, Burn's name appeared fairly early in the proceedings. He gave a soft-spoken "Aye," voting for ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. It took a little while for everyone who had gathered to watch the vote to realize what had just happened. When all legislators had cast their ballot, the result was 49-47 in favor. 24-year old Harry Burn's vote was the deciding one. Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, and women had the right to vote. Yellow roses rained down on the floor of the House from Suffragists in the gallery.

Immediately Speaker Walker called for a motion to reconsider. It failed. Burn inserted a statement into the Journal of the Tennessee State House of Representatives, saying:

I knew that a mother's advice is always safest for a boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification. I appreciated the fact that an opportunity such as seldom comes to a mortal man to free 17 million women from political slavery was mine.

The Knoxville Sentinel published a limerick:

There is a young man from Niota

Who for precedent cares no iota

He sprung a surprise

When he flopped to the 'Ayes,'

And enraptured the feminine voter!

But the fight wasn't over just yet. 37 Anti-Suffragist Tennessee legislators quickly boarded a train bound for Decatur, Alabama in an effort to prevent a quorum for any further action. That failed, too. Two Anti-Suffragists swore in an affidavit that Burn had been bribed, leading to a grand jury investigation into his actions. He was cleared. 

Miss Febb registered to vote on October 9, 1920 and was eligible to vote in the 1920 mid-term elections. Her voter registration card still had masculine pronouns because they didn't have time to reprint new cards. Now faced with a grueling re-election campaign in McMinn County as That Guy What Let Women Vote, his campaign attracted nationwide attention, and not necessarily positive:

People from all over the country went into my county. They held indignation meetings, passed resolutions...When I went home for a weekend I would generally keep a bodyguard around so that no one would attack me.

Burn narrowly won re-election to another two-year term. 

In 1923, Burn was admitted to practice law in Tennessee and did so for the rest of his life, also serving in the State Senate from 1948 to 1952, and becoming the president of a bank. He died at his home in Niota in 1977. Before his death, but years after that fateful vote, Burn recalled:

I had always believed that women had an inherent right to vote. It was a logical attitude from my standpoint. My mother was a college woman, a student of national and international affairs who took an interest in all public issues. She could not vote. Yet the tenant farmers on our farm, some of whom were illiterate, could vote. On that roll call, confronted with the fact that I was going to go on record for time and eternity on the merits of the question, I had to vote for ratification.

And people really say that one vote doesn't matter.

Less than a month after the official ratification of the 19th Amendment, Connecticut became the 37th state legislature to ratify it. Vermont followed in February 1921. Maryland didn't ratify the Amendment until 1941. Virginia? 1952. Alabama: 1953. Florida was the 43rd state to do so...in 1969. South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina all followed suit by the end of 1971. Mississippi had the distinction of being the last of the original 48 states to officially give women the right to vote...in 1984.