“A New Woman in Old Fashioned Times”:
Party Women and the Rhetorical Foundations of Political Womanhood
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
BY
Emily Ann Berg Paup
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Advisor
December 2012
© Emily Ann Berg Paup 2012
i
Acknowledgments
My favorite childhood author, Louis May Alcott, once wrote: “We all have our
own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving, and we all have the power to
make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing.” These words have guided me
through much of my life as I have found a love of learning, a passion for teaching, and an
appreciation for women who paved the way so that I might celebrate my successes. I
would like to acknowledge those who have aided in my journey, helped to keep me
believing, and molded me into the scholar that I am today.
I need to begin by acknowledging those who led me to want to pursue a career in
higher education in the first place. Dr. Bonnie Jefferson’s The Rhetorical Tradition was
the first class that I walked into during my undergraduate years at Boston College. She
made me fall in love with the history of U.S. public discourse and the study of rhetorical
criticism. Ever since the fall of 2002, Bonnie has been a trusted colleague and friend who
showed me what a passion for learning and teaching looked like. Dr. Dale Herbeck and
Dr. Charles E. Morris III were also inspirational figures at Boston College, and I would
not be where I am today without their guidance and support.
As I ventured to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, I had the
privilege of working with some of the best rhetorical scholars in the country. I am
honored to have had the privilege to work with Dr. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. Her career,
scholarly work, and educational guidance served as the inspiration for this Dissertation. I
hope that it is an addition to the groundbreaking work that she has done for women in
history, and I am grateful for her patience and direction throughout the years. I also
ii
would like to thank Dr. Edward Schiappa, who has been a pillar of support in my
educational and professional life. His open door and candid professional advice is
invaluable.
The other members of my committee were influential in the development and
execution of this project. I am indebted to Dr. Zornitsa Keremidchieva, who has been a
constant source of inspiration and support. She went above and beyond the duties of an
outside committee member and helped to form this project as a whole. Dr. Mary Vavrus
has always been reassuring and helpful, and I thank her for the support. I also thank Dr.
Lisa Norling, who opened my eyes to interdisciplinary approaches to the study of women
in history. In addition, I owe much of my development as a scholar to Dr. Kirt Wilson,
from whom I received the best possible education and encouragement.
Next I would like to recognize the Department of Communication Studies at the
University of Minnesota for the funding and support through the years. I also would like
to thank the University of Minnesota for the 2011-2012 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
An archival project such as this is not completed without the help of others in a scholarly
community. I would like to thank the staff at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
Drs. Ronald and Mary Zboray, Dr. Jill Norgren, and Dr. Anne Mattina for their critical
assistance. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Terry Check, Dr. Aric Putnam, Dr.
Katherine Johnson, Dr. Jennifer Kramer, and the rest of the Communication Department
at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University for their support during the
final stages of this dissertation.
I owe my success in graduate school to close friends and colleagues who rode the
waves with me. I learned a lot from Meg Kunde, Justin Killian, Jess Prody, and Sam
iii
Boerboom, who were all integral members of a supportive graduate community.
Jeremy Rose has also always been there for me as a friend and as a colleague. In addition,
Sara Ann Mehltretter Drury and Chara Van Horn are two women whom I admire and am
lucky to call friends. Finally, Diane Odash has been there every step of this journey. I am
eternally grateful for her friendship and support.
Finally, I could not have completed this project without the unfailing love and
encouragement of my family. Adam and Elizabeth Berg are two loving and
compassionate siblings who have always been there no matter what. My husband, Dan
Paup, is my rock, without whom I would have no direction or purpose. Thank you for
your faith in me. Finally, I thank my parents, who encouraged all of their children to
pursue their dreams. Their dedication to my education, encouragement, and support has
been unfailing. Words cannot express how appreciative and lucky I am to have the family
that I do. My maternal grandfather, John L. Parker, loved learning, and my mother has
always expressed to me how proud he would have been of my pursuit of a PhD. I hope to
live up to his example and spread his love of learning as a teacher and scholar.
iv
Dedication
To my parents. Thank you for encouraging me to learn.
v
Abstract
Women have been involved in party politics in the U.S. in a variety of ways since
the American Revolutionary War. They began as participants from within the home and
grew to have leadership roles within partisan organizations themselves. This evolution in
role was possible because of the rhetorical efforts of party women during the Gilded Age.
Through case studies of Populist Party leader Mary Elizabeth Lease, Prohibition Party
founder Frances Elizabeth Willard, key Republican Party player Judith Ellen Foster, and
presidential candidate Belva Bennett Lockwood, the narrative of female political activism
is expanded and nuanced. All four women acted with political agency inconsistent with
their contemporary dominant socio-political system. By deepening the archive of female
historical discourse and through analysis of rhetorical patterns of party women in the late
nineteenth century, scholars gain insight into the political culture, the power of rhetorical
agency, and the rhetorical power of women. This history creates a model of rhetorical
discourse for political women of the future, putting historical rhetorical practice in
conversation with contemporary rhetorical strategies.
vi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................ i
Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv
Abstract ............................................................................................................................... v
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi
Chapter One: Introduction .................................................................................................. 1
Chapter Two: Mary Elizabeth Lease, The Feminized Populist ........................................ 58
Chapter Three: Frances E. Willard and Judith E. Foster, Principled Partisans .............. 100
Chapter 4: Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate ........................................... 158
Chapter Five: Precedents and Directions ........................................................................ 207
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 225
Introduction
1
“The world was wide, and I would not waste my life in friction
when it could be turned into momentum.”
~Frances Elizabeth Willard1
Chapter One: Introduction
During a classroom discussion about the presidential election in September 2012,
I asked my students to discuss the candidates. Throughout the course of this conversation,
I asked them to name the female candidates for President of the United States. When it
was clear that they were not aware of any female candidates, I asked them whom the first
woman was ever to run for President. One young student in the front row raised his hand
and answered enthusiastically, “Hillary Clinton!” Another proclaimed “Margaret Chase
Smith!” Although the young woman who answered Margaret Chase Smith impressed me,
given the lack of education about female politicians in our schools today, this classroom
exchange reiterated a realization that I have had for quite some time now. Students are
unaware of the dynamic political culture that currently exists, with its multitude of
candidates and voices. Perhaps even more significantly, society at large is also
uneducated about our history. Another anecdote will help to illustrate this point. As I
walked into the classroom during the summer of 2011, I prepared to prompt a discussion
about Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s recent presidential
campaign announcement. As I looked for news stories that covered the event, a CNN
blog caught my attention. Its title was “Michele Bachmann, Evangelical Feminist?”2
Although the blog acknowledges that “evangelical women have long been involved in
political activism,” it suggests that their presence in “white house” partisan politics “took
off in the 1980s.” I continued to prepare for class, determined to teach my students the
rich history of evangelical feminism that dominated partisan discourse in the 1880s.
Introduction
2
As a teacher and scholar, I encourage engagement with context. I believe
that one of the most important components of an informed citizenry is knowledge of the
historical development of ideas and their relevance. Familiarity with historical discourse
is integral for engagement with contemporary debates and issues. In order for students to
fully understand how their own context exists in a continuum, the past and present must
be in conversation with each other. We have an obligation as scholars, teachers, and
citizens to educate. The study of historical rhetorical practice is one way to accomplish
this goal. I believe that in order to be an engaged citizen, it is integral that one is aware of
the political culture in which one lives and the political culture that came before. It is out
of experiences like those described above that this project was born.
There are three female candidates for President of the United States in 2012:
Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Peace and Freedom Party candidate and television
personality Roseanne Barr, and Party for Socialism and Liberation candidate Peta
Lindsay.3 Although all are nominees of third parties and do not receive much national
recognition, they continue a tradition of female political party leadership that began more
than a century ago. The history and case studies that follow profile women as they led
political parties during an age when female party leadership blossomed and set the stage
for women’s future contributions. This project examines the rhetorical efforts of party
women during the Gilded Age, a period of great partisan and social transition. It does not
incorporate the stories of all political women, nor does it generalize the experiences of
these women to all others. It claims, however, that their rhetorical activities as political
party leaders are exemplary case studies through which to analyze the changing role of
Introduction
3
women in politics. Party women in the Gilded Age created a model of rhetorical
discourse for future female political leaders.
Women have been involved in party politics in the United States in a variety of
capacities since the American Revolutionary War. They began as participants from
within the home and grew to have leadership roles within partisan organizations
themselves. This evolution in role was possible because of the rhetorical efforts of party
women. Women were systematically excluded from politics in the nineteenth century.
They did not have access to the types of public forums afforded to their white, male
counterparts. Leadership in politics, and specifically party politics, in the United States
was neither a common nor a socially acceptable activity for women. As the political
climate changed in the late nineteenth century, however, opportunities arose that enabled
women to question their prescribed status as “non-political” citizens. This project
describes and analyzes the speeches and writings of women who assumed leadership
roles and gained power within political parties. They also acted as rhetorical agents,
speaking on behalf of political candidates and about party-supported policies. Finally, in
a few cases, women presented themselves as candidates for political office. Through an
analysis of the rhetoric of key female political party leaders during the late nineteenth
century, I argue that their accomplishments reflect the resources that exist in rhetorical
agency and in the strategic appropriation of cultural expectations.
In order to limit what is a large undertaking, this project focuses on the activities
of women from 1884 to 1892, and specifically on the female leadership within the
Populist, Prohibition, Republican, and Equal Rights Parties. During this eight-year
period, several women emerged as leaders and gained national prominence as speakers
Introduction
4
and policymakers. Third parties, without the realistic possibility of electoral
success, aimed predominantly aimed at spreading a message, a role, I argue, that was
uniquely suited to female participation. As a dominant party of the Gilded Age, the
Republican Party was not as quick to embrace female leadership. However, in a few
significant cases, they utilized women. The case studies provide a look at women in
varying geographic locations, with distinctive backgrounds and worldviews, who
represented different political parties. All of them used specific rhetorical techniques to
carve a space for female participation in the political party system. By the election of
1896, women participated in large numbers in the campaign activities of the Republican
and Democratic parties. During the Progressive era and the final campaign for woman
suffrage in the early twentieth century, participation and recognition of women’s
contribution to party politics increased substantially. I contend that the activities of
women during the Gilded Age established the basis for this growth in women’s political
activism.
The following project adds a layer to an already complex historical and scholarly
narrative. The Gilded Age was a period of great cultural and political transformation.
Specifically, the era gave rise to issue-oriented politics and the potential power of third
party organizations. What is missing from this story is the influence that women had on
these changes in political culture. Historians and political scientists have begun to
recognize the important contribution that women made to Gilded Age politics; this
project studies how they framed their roles and their discourse. The advent of third parties
that focused on specific issues, reform movements involving women, and changes in the
political landscape provided the circumstances in which women could become party
Introduction
5
leaders. I provide three case studies that examine the rhetorical strategies women
used to facilitate this transformation.
The first case study considers the rhetoric of Populist Party leader Mary Elizabeth
Lease and her adoption of personae based on expected gendered norms that were reinterpreted as reasons for her unique ability to lead the Populist Party as a woman. The
second analyzes the national political party convention addresses of Prohibition Party
leader Frances Elizabeth Willard and Republican Party leader Judith Ellen Foster. As
women who engaged in debates with each other about women and partisanship, Willard
and Foster presented a rhetorical model that highlighted the nation’s past and woman’s
ability to be the ultimate patriotic authority. The third traces the public communication of
Belva Bennett Lockwood, who ran for President of the United States in 1884 and 1888.
Lockwood crafted a model of discourse based on her own past accomplishments and the
exceptional qualities that women could bring to political culture. Each woman created a
model of rhetorical behavior that carved out space for female leadership in the future.
All four women acted with a political agency inconsistent with the dominant
socio-political system. Through the re-appropriation of cultural expectations, these
women justified their presence in “male space” and forged a future role for women in
politics. Their experiences as leaders of different political parties offer an expanded
narrative of female political party leadership during the Gilded Age. Although each
woman’s history and activities are distinctive, patterns emerge when seen in relation to
each other. I conclude with a reflection on the study of rhetorical history and the
pedagogical contributions studies like this might make. This study is an attempt to define
Introduction
6
political womanhood during its formative years and postulate implications for
women in politics in the 21st century and beyond.
The Gilded Age: An Age of Transformation
The Gilded Age in the United States is characterized as an era of transition and
growth as economic, cultural, and political changes modernized society.4 Historian
Charles Calhoun recognizes that “some eras exhibit greater change than others, and that
certainly was true of the nineteenth century in the United States.” He specifies that the
Gilded Age “saw a rapid acceleration in the country’s transformation.”5 Employment
patterns changed as more women and immigrants entered the workforce, while labor
shifted from agriculture to industry. The national population doubled, cities matured,
railroads expanded, and inventions like the telephone and electricity altered daily life.
These changes led to the development of a national market and industrialization, which
then led to the rise of big business. Innovators and businessmen made vast fortunes, often
by exploiting the newly formed laboring class as the period was marked by “the contrasts
between crushing poverty and opulent excess.”6
An integral part of Gilded Age transformation was a changing political culture.
To consider these changes, we must understand what “politics” meant at the time.
Citizens in the nineteenth century defined “politics” narrowly. Rebecca Edwards defines
nineteenth-century politics as “the system by which factions and parties won control of
government through elections. In an era when government services were scarce and party
affiliations the key factor in legislative votes, elections dominated the public’s
understanding of political structure.”7 In this environment, political parties were the
“most important political structures of the era.”8 Jo Freeman claims that “political parties
Introduction
7
constructed the framework in which politics was, and is, conducted” in the
nineteenth century.9 Political parties organized voters, educated the public on policies and
issues, and ran candidates for office. Parties dominated the political environment, and
party identification was strong. As a result, “party switching” was relatively rare and the
“principal aim in campaigns was to inspire the party faithful to get to the polls rather than
to persuade others to come on board.”10
As Gilded Age culture was transformed, party politics grew in importance. Paula
Baker calls the period “the high tide of partisan politics,” as the largest number ever of
eligible citizens voted and publicly supported parties.11 While participation expanded, the
era traditionally has been considered a time of rampant political corruption.12 Historians
recently, however, have concluded that Gilded Age politicians were “not just intense
partisans but also hard-working public servants, serious about issues and governance.”13
The Republicans and the Democrats “waged one of the most intense partisan struggles
for political power in U.S. history” from 1870-1896.14 Locked in political stalemate, the
two major parties worked hard to gain every possible vote. Although historical evidence
suggests that this led to exploitation, backroom deals, and bribery, it also led to an
increased amount of public participation. Political campaigns involved mass rallies,
parades, and celebrations that provided voters with a substantial portion of their political
education and popular entertainment.”15 Political interest was expressed through public
support of candidates and policies.16 Ultimately, the two major parties needed the support
of the party faithful in order to succeed in elections and influence public policy. Worth
Robert Miller describes the Gilded Age as a time when “politicians and parties truly
Introduction
8
engaged the American public on fundamental issues concerning the direction of
the nation and the role government should play in national life.”17
In this environment, politics shifted from “mass” to “interest group” politics.18
Because of social and cultural changes, politicians were forced to address issues of
concern to their constituencies. As more citizens were concerned about specific issues
like agriculture, moral reform, and labor, an opportunity arose for issue-oriented political
parties to enter the debate. Partisan messages in the later half of nineteenth century
became more committed to educating the public about political philosophies and
advertising their party’s candidates.19 Industrialization, economic hardship, and changing
labor practices led many to distrust the major party organizations. Republican and
Democratic leaders “struggled to address these issues with only partial success.”20 One of
the period’s characteristic features was a growth in the number of third parties that posed
a challenge to the Republicans and the Democrats. Although the Democratic and the
Republican Party still dominated the electoral system, third parties were important spaces
in which to enact alternative policy initiatives and political beliefs. The Prohibition Party,
the Populist Party, and the Equal Rights Party were among the partisan groups that
emerged during the Gilded Age.21
Nineteenth Century Politics and Gender
Defining the Gilded Age as a period of cultural and political transformation is
incomplete without understanding how gender defined and regulated the changes.
Political culture throughout most of the nineteenth century was, by definition, a “male
preserve.” As Freeman, describes, “The very places where men congregated for political
purposes— the polling place, the barber shop, and the saloon – were closed to women, or
Introduction
9
at least respectable women. The personal networks through which information
flowed and within which decisions were made were male networks.”22 Politics was, in
essence, a “male dominion.”23 Women were institutionally restricted from “political
citizenship,” which T.H. Marshall defines as “the right to participate in the exercise of
political power, as a member of a body invested with political authority or as an elector
of the members of such a body.”24 Women in the nineteenth century, by virtue of their
sex, did not have access to these rights. As a result, men and women participated in
“distinct political subcultures, each with its own bases of power, modes of participation,
and goals.”25
Partisanship, raucous public political activity, and a right to vote defined male
political participation. Constitutional constraints and certain social pressures, however,
restricted female participation. Women were considered to be pure, pious, submissive,
and emotional – characteristics suited to the home, but not to electoral party politics. In
addition, society was structured around the doctrine of “coverture,” which meant that
married women were legally and civilly “covered” by their husband’s identity in respect
to their wages, their body, and their political identity.26 This, in turn, made women’s
enfranchisement unnecessary. As Francis Cutting, a Democrat from New York, said in
1855, “by the act of marriage itself the political character of the wife shall at once
conform to the political character of the husband.”27 Without the right to vote or formally
participate in electoral politics, women and men operated in different political worlds for
most of the nineteenth century.
The Gilded Age provided an opportunity for women to enter this “male” space in
unprecedented ways. Most scholars identify involvement in the social reform movements
Introduction
10
of the time as women’s most important political role. Concerns about labor
conditions, alcohol abuse, rights of women in cases of divorce, and suffrage led women
to engage in public life in record numbers. Most women’s political histories focus on
woman suffrage, women’s reform organizations, and legal issues affecting women of the
time.28 In their 1990 collection of essays on women in politics, Louise Tilly and Patricia
Gurin consider women’s political activity that began in the 1880’s as primarily
“nonelectoral.” That is, they write that reform groups such as suffrage, temperance, and
labor organizations worked for “nonelectoral ends,” instead of seeking a “radical
redistribution of power.” Even the National Woman’s Party, established during the final
push for woman suffrage, was considered an officially “nonpartisan” organization. In
addition, they argue that “only after 1920 was women’s politics able to expand to include
electoral efforts to shape government policies.”29 This literature is extensive and
significant, as it traces female involvement in public issues and of female public action.
Scholars can rightfully claim that “women’s route to politics lay through moral reform.”30
The women who participated in these movements worked toward different goals
than did the women who infiltrated the political party system at the same time. Women in
party politics and women in reform movements were working in parallel ways.31 Jo
Freeman described the difference in the following way: “While one body of women
demanded the right to vote, another tried to influence the men who could vote.”32 This
often led to conflict, as leaders of the suffrage movement would often take issue with
women in party politics, and vice versa. The issue of party alignment came to a head in a
heated exchange between leaders of the temperance movement (a debate which is
Introduction
11
detailed in Chapter 3). By the end of the nineteenth century “there were three
major types of female political activists: feminists, reformers, and party women.”33
These reform movements struggled for recognition, most working for decades
before seeing any form of success. The suffrage movement, in particular, struggled to
gain institutional support. No social movement can bring about desired legislative reform
until it coalesces with a party. Suffrage leaders understood the need to work with political
parties and leaders, which is evidenced by their constant campaign for woman suffrage to
be adopted on political party platforms. The Republicans consistently refused, and
eventually some suffragists found success with third parties like the Prohibition and the
Populist parties. Freeman describes the problem in the following way:
With suffrage, women could enter the polls, but voting was just the foyer to the
political house, not the living room where candidates were chosen, nor the dining
room where the spoils were divvied up, nor the kitchen where the deals were
made. To enter these rooms women had to pass through several doors; the
doorkeepers were the major political parties.34
As reform “shifted to the passage of laws, women first circulated petitions, then lobbied
and spoke to legislative committees, then worked for candidates they thought would
support their program.”35 As a result, the Gilded Age was a period of transition for
women in party politics as well. Freeman writes that women won suffrage “after they
proved themselves to be an important political force.”36 The roots of this effort were
formed during the Gilded Age.
The Development of the Party Woman: A Brief History
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12
Freeman begins her groundbreaking historical narrative, A Room at a
Time: How Women Entered Party Politics, in the following way: “At the beginning of the
nineteenth century, there was only the bare framework of a political house and women
were merely observers. By the end of the century the house was built. Women were still
outside, but they had cracked open the door.”37 The Gilded Age was the period between
the end of Reconstruction and the end of the nineteenth century that set the stage for the
women’s sizable public participation in the first decades of the twentieth century. As
early as the American Revolution, women took on political leadership roles within the
home. In the antebellum United States, women tested acceptance of public involvement
by campaigning for the Whig party in their “proper” feminine roles. Significantly, a
theme emerges in the discourse. Just as female social reformers often worked within the
“cult of true womanhood,”38 so too did female political party participants. After the Civil
War and Reconstruction, there was an explosion of political parties and increased female
participation. During the Gilded Age, women became partisan organizers, leaders, and
candidates. They began slowly to enter the public sphere, while rhetorically recognizing
expected social behavior. Accordingly, this is the period from which the case studies in
this project are taken. By proving their ability to participate in the public sphere through
demonstrating what they could bring to partisan politics as women, women like the ones
studied in this project began to transform public culture.
Women began to create a distinctive political identity as early as the American
Revolution. This initial involvement set an early precedent for more overt involvement
later in the nineteenth century. This early period was filled with a tension between the
desire to participate publicly and the need to remain in the domestic arena. Women
Introduction
13
involved themselves politically during the Revolution by boycotting imported
goods, petitioning, and running their husband’s farms and businesses while they were
away at war – all activities typically reserved for men, but still consistent with a woman’s
role in the home and the community.39 The home was thus transformed into a political
space through domestic forms of political activity like boycotting tea, forming spinning
societies, etc.40 The Revolutionary War offered women the opportunity to create political
identities.41 As Kerber writes, “Women were challenged to commit themselves politically
and then to justify their allegiance. The war raised once again the old question of whether
a woman could be a patriot – that is, an essentially political person – and it also raised the
question of what form female patriotism might take.”42 As the Revolution ended, the
rejection of monarchy meant less of a focus on power in the state and more on the power
of individuals in their households.43 This, in turn, led to more involvement on the part of
the women in civic life.
Women were praised for their sense of civic duty, and their participation in party
politics grew out of privileging female patriotism. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, “Republican Motherhood” defined women’s role in the politics of the nation as
raising patriotic children.44 This role presupposed material understanding of patriotic
values and civic ideals. “Republican Motherhood” is one of the first instances of female
party loyalty, as women were charged with instilling virtue and party loyalty in their
sons. The idea that women could play a political role in the domestic sphere continued
well into the 19th century. Women could not participate publicly in politics, but they were
supposed to cultivate political minds in their homes.
Introduction
14
As the nation developed in the early nineteenth century, woman’s role in
party politics grew. There is extensive evidence that women in Washington D.C. attended
debates, held political discussions with other women and directly with politicians, and
played a role in “shaping the national discourse.”45 Although most activity remained
domestic, women engaged in forms of political activity. Louise Young claims that the
role of political wife became an important aspect of women’s political participation.46
She cites Abigail Adams as an example of one of the first political partnerships. John
Adams frequently discussed political issues with his wife, leading her to comment in a
letter in 1780, “What a politician you have made me.”47 Women began to shape their
involvement in politics while using the social tools at their disposal, which made the
transition to their involvement in public less radical.
In the early Republic, there were only a few instances of recorded public party
participation by women. Initially suffrage rights were given to women in the New Jersey
Constitution, which some attribute to substantial Federalist Party support.48 There is also
evidence that as early as 1786, the mother of politician Benjamin Hawkins was
electioneering for her son.49 Without the right to suffrage, women participated in party
politics in other ways. They were present at political dinners, canvassed for candidates,
edited partisan newspapers, and petitioned the government.50 In fact, the presence of
women at Federalist Party campaign events helped shape what is now called a “grass
roots campaign.”51 Women’s involvement in politics from the home was integral to their
eventual involvement in public. Edwards argues that the reason party leaders began to
speak directly to women was because of their role in the home.52 That is, women were
assumed to have an influence on the political views of the men in their lives. Rosemary
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15
Zagarri asserts that through direct messages to women, “Federalist orators
transformed the females from passive bystanders into active participants in the day’s
events.”53 In early political campaigns, women were tasked with preparing food for
rallies, making banners, decorating meeting spaces, and cheering on their partisan
husbands.54 These activities were appropriate for the “domestic” women’s sphere, but
they opened the door for their direct involvement in electoral campaigns in the decades
that followed.
Some of the earliest women’s civic organizations involved public issues.55 These
benevolent organizations confronted issues such as prostitution, “male seduction,”
abolition of slavery, and protecting children.56 Published reports of meetings of
benevolent organizations suggest that women debated political issues, and sometimes
criticized public policy.57 Although formative activities of party identity, these efforts
were defined as “private, feminine, and non-political.”58 As Boylan describes,
“Politicians accepted benevolent women’s claims, trickling tax monies into their
treasuries and adopting the women’s own descriptions of their public service.”59
Women’s groups argued that their work “served ‘the interests of civil society’ by
improving the moral character of the poor and promoting social order.”60
In the 1830s, women learned about political organization, speaking, and tactics
from their involvement with these reform societies.61 Much of this history is explored in
the literature about the abolition movement. Sarah and Angelina Grimké are often cited
as the first politically active women in America. In fact, Flexner and Fitzpatrick’s history
begins with abolitionist organizations, formed in the late 1830s, when the Grimké sisters
began much of their public work.62 Because speaking in public was not allowed, and
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16
addressing men and women in the same “promiscuous” audiences was
considered inappropriate, women often engaged in other forms of political participation.
The most common was to petition, an activity which Susan Zaeske claims was a way for
women to assert their rights of citizenship by making demands on their political
representatives.63 Once speaking in public became more acceptable, women began to
speak directly to legislative committees, and eventually worked for candidates that they
thought would support their issues. As reform “shifted from moral suasion to electoral
politics,” women became more interested in political culture and efficacy.64
The Jacksonian era brought with it the first direct, public involvement of women
in electoral politics when the Whig Party became politically powerful.65 Throughout the
1830s and 1840s, the Whig party became nationally recognized as the party opposing
Andrew Jackson’s Democrats, electing Whig President William Henry Harrison and
winning a majority in Congress in 1840.66 Dinkin attributes the increase in female interest
to the widening of male suffrage, which encouraged more political participation
generally, an increase in the number of women being educated, and a growing number of
ladies’ literary societies where women often discussed public issues.67 As the previously
cited historians have suggested, this was not always a separate female political culture.
Often women “act[ed] in conjunction with men.”68 The Whig Party encouraged female
involvement as women participated in grassroots political efforts during the election of
1840. In fact, the Henry Clay societies during the election of 1844 are considered by
many to be the first women’s campaign clubs.69
The Whig Party recognized and, thus, institutionalized many of the social reform
efforts for which women had advocated, and they included men and women in their
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17
political messages. Elizabeth Varon calls this a “revolution in campaign
tactics.”70 Terming female involvement in Whig politics “Whig womanhood,” she argues
that women could publicly adopt Whig identities because of their interest in Whig
policies and act as persuaders of their voting husbands. In addition, Whig women were
“mediators,” whose gender roles allowed them to continue the tradition of “Republican
Motherhood” through their patriotism, devotion to community values, and “tempering
political passions.”71 That is, women often gathered information at events that “allowed
them to mold partisan families.”72 Despite an increase in the amount of activity, Whig
women writers and campaigners made it clear through their rhetoric that their action was
consistent with their subject position as women.73
A few key regional examples highlight women’s experience. Whig women in
Tennessee participated overtly in campaign rallies and discussions during the presidential
campaigns of 1840 and 1844.74 In addition, upper- and middle-class white women across
the South “played an active, distinct, and evolving role in the political life of the Old
South.”75 Some historians have framed women’s involvement in the Whig campaigns as
symbolic and passive,76 but evidence suggests that women actively participated, making
speeches, writing pamphlets, participating in rallies and parades, and running political
meetings.77 For example, Anne Newport Royall published political pamphlets and a
weekly partisan paper in the 1830s,78 Amelia Bloomer wrote Whig mottoes, and Jane
Field gave an address in Illinois during the campaign of 1844.79
The primary evidence of Whig female participation is of women “subverting”80
their domestic sphere, using their position to involve themselves actively in the
campaigns. Massachusetts was a Whig “stronghold,”81 leading Ronald and Mary Zboray
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18
to investigate the participation of three Whig women: Eliza Davis, Mary Pierce,
and Annie Lawrence. Zboray and Zboray find evidence of active electioneering and
political conversation, stating that, “these women reveal through their writings a level of
political involvement – ranging from personal sacrifice in the name of the party to
introspection on the interrelationship of politics and gender – that intensified as the
campaign unfolded.”82 Their writings display are important scholarly engagements with
economic concerns, political corruption, partisan ideology, and modes of political
communication.83
In addition, Virginian Lucy Kenney wrote tracts on behalf of William Henry
Harrison in 1840.84 Kenney published a series of pamphlets in the 1830s, including one
that supported Andrew Jackson and his Vice President, Martin Van Buren. In 1838,
however, Kenney abandoned the Democratic Party and became a Whig.85 An avid
supporter of slavery, Kenney ideologically could not support Northerner Van Buren. In
addition, she wrote and asked Van Buren for compensation for “her efforts on their
behalf,” to which Van Buren “offered her a mere dollar.”86 The Whigs offered her a
thousand dollars for her services, and she in turn wrote a pamphlet denouncing Van
Buren. This prompted a response from Democratic supporter Eliza B. Runnells. Runnels
wrote that Kenney possessed none “of the elevated tone of feeling and celestial goodness,
that has distinguished the female character.”87 During the 1840 election, Kenney became
the most active female crusader for the Harrison campaign, publishing two pamphlets.88
Kenney had clear personal animosity toward Van Buren, which is evidenced in
her pamphlet, “The Strongest of All Government is that which is Most Free.”89 In writing
the political pamphlet, Kenney was directly participating in a campaign in a way few
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19
women had before her. Kenney was, in essence, a representative of the
campaign itself, acting as a mouthpiece and partisan supporter. Her rhetoric reflects the
thrust of Harrison’s campaign. What is significant about her literature is that it served two
cooperative purposes. First, Kenney is overtly campaigning for Harrison, using partisan
rhetoric and campaign jargon to convince the public to vote Whig in 1840. Second,
Kenney seems to be carefully navigating between her role as campaign spokesperson and
female member of society through the use of analogy. Her use of analogy simultaneously
acts as political strategy and as justification for her right to construct that strategy. By
crafting a “kingly” persona of Van Buren, alluding to biblical, historical, and symbolic
images, and placing Harrison in the institutional fabric of the nation, Kenney acts as a
female campaigner. Kenney’s pamphlet uses mainstream political rhetoric to justify her
occupation of male political space.
Even white women from the “arch-conservative Deep South” participated in the
male realm of party politics, although their experience emphasized the “cult of
domesticity” more obviously than those in Massachusetts or Virginia. “Their actions
denied the fictional rigidity of separate spheres, blurring the line between public and
private that antebellum U.S.s never quite fixed, despite the rhetorical support it constantly
received.”90 Olsen provides evidence from newspapers and private letters that thousands
of women, all white but varying in social class, were at political rallies, debates,
barbeques in Mississippi, while elite women wrote public letters and gave speeches, and
one woman edited a partisan newspaper.91 Olsen points to an interesting tension, though,
through an examination of their discourse. Although their presence and participation
represented overt political participation, their actions and their rhetoric emphasized their
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belief in their “subordinate position.” 92 The Southern defense of social
20
hierarchy required Southern women to adhere to the white male superiority hierarchy,
which was the justification for slavery. Women often sat in galleries as passive observers,
not participants, to avoid being part of the “raucous male crowd.”93 Evidence from
newspaper articles demonstrates that women wrote political arguments while using
language that reinforced gender hierarchy by referencing manliness and honor.94 This is
clear from the example of Harriet Prewett, who became the editor of her husband’s
Yazoo City newspaper the Weekly Whig upon her husband’s death. Prewett displayed a
keen interest in partisan politics through her writings, and even attended the state Whig
convention in 1851, but she “strove to affirm her femininity and disavow any ambition
(intentional or not) to violate the ideology of separate spheres.”95
Although it was primarily in the Whig party that there was an increase in female
involvement, Frances Wright campaigned for Democrat Martin Van Buren. However, the
Democratic Party expended much effort to distance itself from her. The Whigs also used
“Fanny Wrightism”96 as an example of the sort of public role that women should not play
in politics.97 Women’s party participation continued to grow in the 1850s and became
increasingly public. Varon offers evidence that in addition to Whig women, more
Democratic women became involved in the 1850s.98 Women involved in the woman
suffrage movement also became increasingly partisan. Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Mary Livermore, Belva Lockwood, and others were on the campaign trail during
the 1850s.99 This was not yet widely accepted behavior, however. As DeFiore writes, the
ardent partisanship displayed in 1844 and 1848 did not turn political participation into an
organized campaign for woman’s rights in Tennessee. She posits that there were two
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21
reasons for this. One was that it was acceptable for women to participate
alongside male members of their families, but “with self-imposed limits to evade the
possibility of being tarred with the brush of Fanny Wrightism.”100 Dinkin writes of a
decline in newspaper stories of women at political rallies after 1848, which he posits was
because of the Seneca Falls Convention and the advent of the woman suffrage movement,
suggesting that those had a negative effect on female partisan activity.101
The politics of reform, abolition, and the sectional crisis led women to
increasingly support the creation of the Republican Party in the 1850s.102 As soon as the
party came into being, women volunteered and attended meetings – including woman’s
rights leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton.103 Famed woman’s rights advocates and
abolitionists Lydia Marie Child and Clarina Howard Nichols spoke on the campaign trail
for Republican presidential candidate John C. Fremont in 1856, leading Edwards to
conclude that Nichols was arguably the first woman to go on a partisan stump speaking
tour.104 Northern women’s increased presence in partisan politics was linked to the rise of
sectionalism, as evidence by individuals like Harriet Beecher Stowe who followed her
publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin with a public awareness campaign and petition drive
against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.105 Similarly, Hannah Ropes wrote a tract criticizing
President Franklin Pierce and the Democrats,106 and Jane Grey Swisshelm of Minnesota
wrote articles critical of the Democratic administration. Swisshelm had been politically
active earlier as well, publishing a weekly abolitionist newspaper called the Pittsburg
Saturday Visitor in the 1840s, often writing articles endorsing the Liberty Party and the
Free Soil Party. She also worked for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, and opened the
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Senate press gallery to women.107 There is also evidence that Mary Todd
22
Lincoln influenced her husband’s campaign rhetoric and his views on slavery.
Female participation in early partisan electoral campaigns and social activism laid
the groundwork for female party action during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Activities during the antebellum period demonstrate how political parties began to
embrace issues important to women and illustrate examples of women exercising their
right to participate. However, the overwhelming pattern of female involvement in party
campaign activity was within her role as a “domestic” participant.
This changed after the Civil War. Experiences during the Civil War taught
women how to organize, fundraise, and manage. Women involved with the Sanitary
Commission delivered speeches, raised money, produced circulars, and oversaw other
organizations.108 Women filled jobs vacated during the war, and many widows had to be
self-supporting after the war. The number of women employed in government also grew
after the Civil War. By 1872, women were employed in the Treasury Department, Patent
Office, Census Bureau, and Department of the Interior, and by 1900, 27% of government
employees were women.109 Women working and speaking in public became ordinary.110
The Civil War created a new conception of woman, or as Mary Buhle writes, “women
learned the techniques of organization and mobilization; they gained a sense of selfreliance and spiritual depth through their common triumphs and sorrows.”111 By the
Reconstruction era, female mass participation in party politics was visible in both urban
centers and rural communities. Although most women did not yet have decision-making
power and could not be delegates, female participation was becoming a significant part of
political culture.112
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23
The Republican Party was the primary focus for many female activists
during the Gilded Age. Woman’s rights leaders frequently attempted to persuade the
Republican Party to adopt woman suffrage and prohibition planks in their platform.
Many became frustrated at the lack of support and focused their party loyalties elsewhere.
Others continued to support Republican Party candidates. As the party of progress and
reform, women often felt the Republicans might best address their issues. This
relationship was dynamic and complex, and is explored in detail in Chapter 3.
The Gilded Age was unique as an era marked by a rise in third party activity. As
Edwards comments, “In the 1870s and 1880s, reformers who broke from the Republicans
promptly encamped with other parties”113 This presented a distinct opportunity for female
involvement in leadership and policy-making. Edwards notes that women inspired men
and exerted indirect moral influence. But the new coalitions also began to argue that
women should have direct political power.”114 The Greenback Party was one of the first
to attract “reform-minded women.”115 The 1880 Greenback candidate for the presidency
was General James B. Weaver, who would also become the 1892 Populist Party
candidate for president. According to Edwards, “Several workingwomen’s associations
sent voting delegates to the 1880 national convention; in a few states, Greenbackers were
the first ever to nominate a woman for statewide office.”116 The Greenback Party was the
first of many third parties created to advocate for specific political issues.
The Farmers’ Alliance came into existence in reaction to a worsening economy in
the West during the late 1880s. Middle-class populist women saw themselves as speaking
for poor farming women, and they played an active role.117 Women frequently
participated in meetings and edited newspapers.118 It was a woman who played a key role
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in the creation of the Populist Party, or the “People’s Party.” Kansas-native
Annie Diggs lobbied at a variety of Farmer’s Alliance conventions and helped launch the
Populist Party.119 The Populist Party was active until it merged with the Democratic Party
in 1896.120 Populists frequently, “drew on Republican precedents to explain America’s
economic problems in domestic moral terms.”121 Populists also acted to decrease the
compromising moral positions that many poor women faced (i.e. prostitution), and
argued for federal assistance. The Populists believed that ending poverty, giving women
the vote, and enacting prohibition would improve work and home life. 122
The Prohibition Party also embraced female leadership, in part because of the
issue to which it was most dedicated. Freeman calls the post-Reconstruction campaign
for temperance the “first mass movement of American women.” Women who sought to
improve “what they saw as the cause of their family problems, the easy availability of
hard liquor,” founded the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874.123
Willard became President in 1879, and took partisan steps by dedicating resources from
the WCTU to the Prohibition Party.124 After hopes that Republican James Garfield would
support prohibition and suffrage proved fruitless, Willard formed her own “Home
Protection Party” in 1881, which then merged with the Prohibition Party in 1882.125
The “Home Protection” campaign utilized resources from the WCTU to
encourage federal legislation to literally protect the home from the evils of alcohol. The
WCTU provided a space in which women could act publicly in the name of the
protection of their private sphere. That is, “The WCTU built the bridge to wider political
activity by connecting women’s socially acceptable concern with the home to issues
subject to legislative action, and from there to the election of the men who made these
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decisions.”126 Four women immediately became paid campaign speakers for the
25
Prohibition Party, and several women served on the party’s national committee.
Throughout the end of the 19th century, almost 30% of delegates at the Prohibition
Party’s national conventions were women.127 The Prohibition Party was not nationally
successful, and in the 1890s Willard began to consider aligning with the Populist Party
instead. Her hope was that the Populists and the Prohibitionists might form one large
party to combat the Republicans and the Democrats. When the “People’s Party” refused
to endorse temperance on their platform, the WCTU moved away from partisan politics
in general.128
Besides an increase in participation as campaigners and party activists, women
also began to run for political office during the third party system. Notably, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton was one of the first, and ran for U.S. Congress in 1866 in the 8th
Congressional District of NY as an Independent. Victoria Woodhull was the first woman
to address a Congressional committee in 1871, and was the first woman nominated for
the Presidency in 1872.129 Californian Marietta Stow created the Equal Rights Party, and
in 1882 ran for Governor of California. Belva Bennett Lockwood, the first woman to be
admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court, ran for President of the United
States on an Equal Rights Party ticket in 1884 and 1888. The Equal Rights Party also
nominated Linda Gilbert for Governor in 1888.130
Although most political parties toward the end of the nineteenth century
acknowledged women’s potential in varied ways, the Democratic Party was the least
progressive. The Democratic Party did not begin to institutionally involve women in
campaigns until the 1880s and 1890s, almost 20 years after the Republican Party, let
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26
alone grant them positions of leadership. However, Anthony and Harper
recorded that women were permitted to address small groups at the Democratic national
convention in 1876 and 1880.131 There are only a few instances when the Democratic
Party utilized women in their partisan efforts. In the 1870s, Emma Webb and Terese
Esmond were sent on speaking tours to combat the efforts of Republican Anna
Dickinson. Brooklyn native Lizzie O’Brien Pollock made speeches on behalf of
Democratic candidate Winfield S. Hancock in 1880.132 Kate Chase Sprague, daughter of
Senator, Ohio Governor, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, worked to
gain the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 1868 for her father. Her
efforts led her to become the first woman to actively participate in a nominating
convention. Although she was barred from the convention floor, she caucused and met
with Democratic delegates.133
With the exception of the Democrats, political parties cultivated overt female
participation.134 Whether as candidates or leaders on the campaign trail, women in the
1880s and 1890s began to carve out a distinct space on the partisan landscape for overt
female leadership. By 1896, women’s partisan political contribution was large as
“women in all parties marched, canvassed, and monitored the polls on election day.”135
Women could vote in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. Once Utah became a state
that year, women were elected to several state positions, including the state legislature.136
States that had already granted women suffrage rights were the most likely to produce
candidates. Colorado elected three women to the State legislature that year, as well as
several others to municipal positions. The Democrats in Utah elected three women to the
state legislature in 1896, and the Republican State Central Committee of Utah named a
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27
woman vice-chairman and secretary. Furthermore, three women were elected to
the Idaho state legislature in 1898.137
Republican and Democratic women became very involved in the 1896 election
between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. Women campaigned hard for
Republican William McKinley in 1896, even organizing a campaign headquarters in New
York that published tracts in several languages and organized grass roots efforts.138 Mary
F. Henderson, the wife of a former Republican senator from Missouri, wrote a tract called
“The Issue of the Campaign – Sound Money,” which the party distributed nationally.139
Even Northern African American women were working on the campaign trail, led by Ida
B. Wells Barnett. She traveled the state of Illinois to campaign for McKinley, and the
Republican women who had formed their own State committee had a nurse meet her at
every campaign stop to assist with her newborn baby.140 Women had such considerable
influence on the election in 1896 that the party recognized their contribution by giving
the Women’s National Republican Association (WNRA) headquarter offices in
Washington D.C.141
Democratic women displayed excitement for the campaign of William Jennings
Bryan, writing pamphlets on the silver question, which was the primary issue in Bryan’s
campaign.142 There is evidence that William Jennings Bryan’s wife Mary advised him on
speeches; it even reported in the Chicago Tribune that his wife wrote Bryan’s first major
speech delivered to Congress. Although there was no equivalent to Republican Party
leader Judith Ellen Foster, there were a limited number of campaign clubs, although they
rarely continued to operate in non-election years.143 Nellie Fassett Crosby established the
Women’s National Democratic League in 1904.144
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Regional suffrage victories opened the door for female politicians.145 In
28
addition, the early twentieth century allowed the Socialist Party to become a political
contender. Women quickly became leaders within the Socialist organization at the
beginning of the twentieth century.146 Socialists formally utilized women and recognized
women’s issues. The “woman question” was mentioned for the first time at the 1908
convention, and an official outline for a woman’s organization was written. A committee
called the Woman’s National Committee (WNC) was formed as part of the national
party.147 As Buhle writes, “the inauguration of the WNC marked a major turning point in
the Socialist women’s movement. Although the independent women’s clubs continued to
ponder the pros and cons of affiliation, those newly formed and fully sanctioned women’s
branches of the party gave the WNC their full support and gained representation for their
views.”148 The original members of the WNC did not believe in autonomous women’s
organizations, and made it a point to eliminate the independent clubs so that women
would become directly involved in party activities. Stressing that party membership was
key, the WNC acted as organizers, propagandists, and theorists.149 The Socialist Party’s
evolution from an all-male organization to one with females on the Executive Committee
represents the evolution of women in partisan politics in general during the Fourth Party
System. As women’s issues became integral to the public conversation, political parties
began to take notice and utilize female leadership and involvement.
This can be illustrated clearly by examining female involvement during the
election of 1912. Freeman calls 1912 a “springboard for women’s political activism.”150
Three more states had ratified woman suffrage, and four states elected women to
legislatures. Women played a crucial role in the founding of the Progressive Party.
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29
Representatives of the National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA), including Jane Addams, Louise DeKoven Bowen, and Lillian Wald attended
the Republican National Convention and made a presentation about the addition of a
suffrage plank to the platform.151 The rejection of this and several other issues on the
agenda led hundreds of progressive Republicans to walk out after William Howard Taft
received the nomination for President. This group promptly announced the formation of a
new party that would nominate Theodore Roosevelt as its candidate. Progressives were
concerned about the power and corruption in political parties, often fighting to return the
nation “to the people.” They fought for initiatives like the direct election of U.S.
Senators, the ballot referendum and recall, voter registration, and state regulation of
parties.152 Protective women’s labor legislation became part of the Progressive agenda,
and woman suffrage found the largest number of male supporters in the Progressive
movement.153
After the Progressive Party dedicated itself to woman suffrage, women became
heavily involved. As Progressives, women acted as delegates to the national convention
and assisted in drafting the party platform, action which was unprecedented in the history
of partisan politics in the United States.154 In fact, between 12 and 40 women were
delegates to the Progressive Party convention, and only two women each were delegates
to the Democratic and Republican conventions.155 Although the press might have
exaggerated female participation, the Progressive Party encouraged women and “took the
lead by making equality an issue.”156 According to a New York Times article, about half
of every car of a chartered train from New York to Chicago to go to the first Progressive
Party convention in 1912 was filled by women.157 Progressive women worked in their
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30
own political organizations and worked with men, actions that combined
approaches of the Populist, Prohibitionist, Republican, Democrat, and Socialist Party’s
female auxiliary organizations and party organization, and the nonpartisan reform
movements.158
After women’s participation in the Progressive Party was officially recognized
and praised by the New York Times, thus legitimizing women as political actors,
Democrats and Republicans started women’s bureaus. In New York, the Democratic
Party employed Florence Jaffrey Harriman to head its branch. Republicans had more
experience with women’s work, and as President of the WNRA, Helen Varick Boswell
traveled the country to organize women in several states, including an organization of
African American women.159 Women campaigned and discussed the election across the
nation.
If 1912 was a “springboard” for political action, 1916 finally saw women’s
involvement come to full fruition. In 1916, Roosevelt led Progressives back to the
Republican Party, increasing the involvement of women.160 The Hughes alliance was
formed to elect former New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes as a Republican and a
national Women’s Committee was formed as part of the alliance, headed by Frances
Kellor. In September of 1916, the Women’s Committee launched a campaign train to 28
different states, which was completely funded and run by women. Under the support of
the Republican National Committee, the women publicly campaigned for Hughes across
the country. All of the women were suffragists.161 In addition, Democratic women finally
began to organize across the nation in 1916. They formed the Women’s Wilson and
Marshall Clubs, and Wilson headquarters in states like New York and Illinois had
Introduction
women’s bureaus.162 Montana, a state that approved woman suffrage in 1914,
31
elected the first woman to national political office. Republican Jeanette Rankin was
elected to the U.S. Congress, although she lost re-election in 1918.163 Rankin was not the
only female to run for national office. Frances C. Axtell, a state legislator in Washington,
ran for U.S. Representative in 1916 and lost by only 3,000 votes. President Wilson then
appointed Axtell to the Employees Compensation Commission.164 Furthermore, Rebecca
Latimer Felton of Georgia was appointed the first woman to U.S. Senate in 1922,
although she only served for one day.165 The second decade of the twentieth century
brought with it the election of women to political office across the country.166
By 1920, along with the passage of the 19th Amendment finally granting women
suffrage, women were firmly involved in major party organizations. Although the 19th
Amendment was not yet ratified, many women were in attendance at both the Republican
and Democratic national conventions. Twenty-six women had voting power at the
Republican convention, and 139 women were delegates or alternates. The Democrats had
318 female delegates.167 Women gave speeches, participated in platform discussions, and
seconded nominations. It took more than a century for women to be fully immersed in
political party life, and their role is still being negotiated today.
As the above history illustrates, women were firmly entrenched in partisan
politics by 1920, and the Gilded Age fostered that growth. As Freeman indicates, “By the
end of the century women listened to speeches and attended political events with men,
were highly regarded as campaign orators, were eagerly employed by the parties to
canvass their voters, and had their own political clubs and party organizations in some
states”168 Prior to Reconstruction, women were involved in partisan politics, but mostly
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32
from within their designated “private sphere.” By 1896, women were
participated publicly in unprecedented numbers and activities. Just as the Gilded Age was
a period of cultural and political transition, it was also an era of transformation between
these two norms of behavior for women in party politics.
The Rhetorical Study of Party Women in the Gilded Age
How women entered party politics is an important research question that scholars
have only recently begun to explore. According to political scientist Denise Baer, “an
entire area of political science central to the political influence of women – political
parties – has been both ignored and misunderstood.”169 Political scientists have largely
overlooked women as a factor in political party activity. The fact that by 1980, women
were almost equal in representation in political parties as their male counterparts has “for
the most part been unrecognized by women and politics scholars”170 Suffering from a
lack of data, most political scientists focus their research on women in parties during the
second half of the twentieth century.171
According to historian Jo Freeman, “Political historians ignored women’s
political work because women could not vote for most of our history, and even when they
could, were seen as auxiliaries to political life, playing only minor, supporting roles.”172
A few notable historical works have begun to rectify this and have added important
contributions to our understanding of party women during the Gilded Age. Historians
Robert Dinkin’s, Rosemarie Zagarri’s, and Rebecca Edwards’ books provide a historical
narrative for the involvement of women in partisan politics in the nineteenth century.173
Freeman’s A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics and Melanie
Gustafson, Kristie Miller, and Elisabeth Perry’s collection of essays We Have Come to
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33
Stay: American Women and Political Parties: 1880-1960 provide important
historical background for the nineteenth century, but primarily focus on the 20th century.
Paula Baker’s works are also influential pieces of historical scholarship about the
gendered nature of political culture in the nineteenth century.174 There are also a few
essays that look at activities of specific female partisan activities, particularly women in
the Whig Party and women in the Progressive Party.175 Most agree that by the end of the
Gilded Age, elections “became less an act of male solidarity and more of a civic duty.”176
After this period, women moved into a political world from which they had been
consistently excluded. According to Cordery, educated women who “were more free of
the separate sphere” in the Progressive era was “clearly the legacy of Gilded Age activists
on all fronts.”177 This project attempts to identify how the rhetorical activities of party
women during this period established the foundation for this shift.
The study of the individual voices of party women in the late nineteenth century
offers distinctive contributions to women’s rhetorical history. This study adds to the
scholarship of Ronald and Mary Zboray and Elizabeth Varon, whose examinations of the
rhetorical activities of party women during the antebellum United States has enhanced
our knowledge of political culture.178 The late nineteenth century public address archive
includes the rhetoric of dominant politicians, as well as important recent additions of the
rhetoric of activist women. The rhetorical activities of women involved in party politics
are an important extension of the textual archive. Such studies are recent and few in
number. Studying women from the late nineteenth century partisan political culture helps
to trace developing rhetorical patterns
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As illustrated by the complex history of research on politically active
women in the late nineteenth century, it is important to avoid grouping the attributes and
actions of these women into an essentialized whole. That is, rather than considering
nineteenth century “political women” as a group with the same characteristics and
tendencies, it is imperative to recognize social context and circumstances and its
influence on role and activity. The party women discussed in this project belong to what
Iris M. Young calls a “serial collectivity.”179 Young uses Sartre’s concept of a “series,”
from his Critique of Dialectical Reason, as a framework for gender that recognizes the
similarities of sex and the differences in personal circumstances, including age, class,
ethnicity, cultural background, marital and maternal circumstances, and the like.
Specifically, Young describes Sartre’s concept of a serial collective “whose members are
unified passively by the objects around which their actions are oriented or by the
objectified results of the material effects of the actions of others.”180 When studied this
way, one can begin to consider a unified concept of gender, while recognizing the
importance of differences of ethnicity, class, culture, and experience.
Despite their different class, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds, the women in
this project were confronting similar boundaries and limitations because of the
prescriptions on gender roles. As Young writes, “the unity of the series derives from the
way that individuals pursue their own individual ends with respect to the same objects
conditioned by a continuous material environment, in response to structures that have
been created by the unintended collective result of past actions.”181 Specifically, these
women can be seen as a unified collective by the restrictions they faced in relation to
participation in the “objects” of political culture. Approaching Gilded Age party women
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as a collective provides a perspective for a project that recognizes similarities
and differences in the nineteenth century political female experience. Explaining the
concept of seriality, Young enumerates its varied forms, including “material structures
arising from people’s historically congealed institutionalized actions and expectations
that position and limit individuals in determinate ways that they must deal with.”182
Nineteenth century political culture exhibited this sort of “social positioning.” As
Gustafson, Miller, and Perry write, “in writing women’s political history, scholars must
take into account as many of these factors of difference, commonality, and tradition as
they can discover and reconstruct.”183
When considering Edwards’ definition of “nineteenth century politics” cited
above as a system driven by political party control and electoral success, one must begin
to contemplate what access to this system represented. Some women during the Gilded
Age began to resist their limitations. These women can be considered as a serial
collective – women with different backgrounds who were confronting institutionalized
socio-political constraints. Belonging to a “serial collective” can prompt action, without
defining what specific form that action might take.184 Women who worked within
political parties for electoral purposes were unified by their exclusion from the rights of
political citizenship. In particular, these women all acted against the institutionalized
norm that their sex precluded them from participating in nineteenth century U.S. politics.
At the same time, party women had varied experiences, identities, and goals. They
worked for different political parties, and for varied reasons. Knowing how these women
worked within the party machinery in order to act as political citizens offers a more
nuanced view of politically active women during the late nineteenth century.
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36
The Gilded Age provided an opportunity for women to transition from
being simply participants to being influential leaders in partisan political culture.
According to Freeman, “multiple social, economic, and political changes were
simultaneously expanding women’s sphere, expanding the role of government, erasing
the demarcation between male and female realms, and redefining politics.”185 As has
been demonstrated, women’s participation in party politics evolved throughout the course
of the nineteenth century. This study focuses on the end of that period. The years between
1884-1892 demonstrate kairos, or an “opportune”186 rhetorical moment of entry into a
political system that had systematically excluded women from positions of leadership for
more than a century. Scholars must understand that “place and time are also critical to
understanding women’s partisan opportunities and choices.”187 If one understands kairos
as “a moment of rhetorical prowess and control completely dependent on the context of
the situation,”188 one can begin to explore an answer to this question: why were these
women successful at gaining leadership within political parties at this particular historical
moment? One answer involves knowledge of the political parties within which these
women gained positions of power. The Populist, Prohibition, and Equal Rights Parties all
emerged on the political scene because of certain Gilded Age social concerns. As
Freeman claims, “women were particularly visible in states where the Prohibition and
Populist parties brought them directly into party politics because reform and party
coincided.”189 The focus, dynamics, and structures of these parties provided a point of
entry for these women.
A second answer to the above question involves an appreciation of the rhetorical
agency demonstrated by each woman and the rhetorical skill with which they navigated
Introduction
37
norms of expected gender behavior. As was surveyed earlier, women were
denied access to “political citizenship.” As such, their emerging leadership within
political parties during the late nineteenth century is a noteworthy accomplishment. In
addition to the personal and situational factors that helped them to gain agency, it is
important to discover how that agency was expressed. Scholars have debated and
problematized the concept of rhetorical agency for decades. The traditional approach to
agency has been to define it as a “communicative process of inquiry and advocacy on
issues of public importance”190 that is largely in the control of the rhetor. Leff describes
this “humanistic” approach to agency as one that “positions the orator both as an
individual who leads an audience and as a community member shaped and constrained by
the demands of the audience.”191 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell further defines rhetorical
agency as “the capacity to act,” or “to have the competence to speak or write in a way
that will be recognized or heeded by others in one’s community.”192 The women
examined in this project had agency in part because of their personal backgrounds and
experiences. Each had access to education, communities, and organizations that enhanced
and encouraged their political growth. Their power must, in some ways, be attributed to
their training, qualifications, and systems of support.
A post-modern critique of agency decenters the speaking subject, claiming that
the “humanistic” approach described above disregards social and cultural constraints
related to access.193 As Casey Kelly describes, “this critique of subjectivity challenges
simplistic notions of agency that over determine an individual's ability to construct or
even transcend their material conditions through rhetorical power.”194 Nan Johnson
reiterated this problem at the 2004 meeting of the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies when
Introduction
38
she brought up concerns about the “complications of who has access to
rhetorical agency and how rhetorical agency is obtained.”195 Campbell bridges these
interpretations by claiming that agency is “communal, social, cooperative, and
participatory and, simultaneously, constituted and constrained by the material and
symbolic elements of context and culture.”196 To continue to extend this concept, this
project seeks to continue Kelly’s call to understand agency as “the individual or
collective capacity to recognize moments in which structures are open to reinterpretation
and then act to resignify the social order.”197 For this project, agency is “the complex
process by which a communicative act materializes out of a combination of individual
will and social circumstances.”198 This project contends that certain women found agency
in spite of, and in some cases, because of their social constraints. Party women found
agency within the very institutional structure that denied them access by seizing moments
of entry in political parties that could benefit from their leadership through use of
particular rhetorical strategies.
A Model of Political Womanhood
The Gilded Age was a foundational era for the growth of women’s leadership
within U.S. political parties. The years between 1884-1893 saw significant advances for
the role of women in political parties as female leadership materialized. During this
period, women began to carve a space for themselves as political party leaders. Freeman
claims that it was in the 1880s and 1890s that women arrived “as a factor in politics.”199
These new patterns presented an opportunity for women in electoral party politics,
fostering overt female partisanship and a debate about women’s new political identity.200
As Edwards writes, the period “produced a series of political experiments, some initiated
Introduction
39
by the major parties and others by third-party challengers…Gilded Age
campaigns thus produced multiple, overlapping searches for effective models of political
manhood and womanhood that would meet the needs of a new age.”201 New political
parties that were formed around issues of the day were created and led by women.
Women also used established political parties to achieve policy goals, working alongside
men to bring about desired political change.202 Women became influential party members
and political candidates themselves.
The women analyzed here found agency through the power of language that
draws on cultural expectations. Their rhetorical patterns exhibit a type of enthymeme, or
a cultural assumption based on “common knowledge.” Women found sources of power
by making claims that highlighted, reinforced, or re-interpreted their prescribed gendered
behavior, insinuating that they were acting in ways consistent with those modes of belief.
The enthymeme signifies the shared beliefs of the audience, and thus consists of
assumptions “based on the shared experience of speaker and hearer” and “dependent on
audience, context, time, and place.”203 For party women in the 1880s, interpretations of
expected norms of female behavior became powerful enthymemes upon which to build a
justification for their leadership in political parties.
Each case study presented here argues that female political party leaders created a
model of rhetorical discourse for political women to use in the future. Their rhetorical
strategies gained them entry into a system defined as male. Analyzing these patterns can
enlarge the available narrative of how, why, and in what ways women became involved
in political life. The women studied enriched the arsenal of rhetorical techniques for
political women to use. In addition, the rhetorical strategies identified here nuance our
Introduction
40
understanding of female political agency of the time. The stylistic and
substantive argument choices made demonstrate recognition of contextual forces at work
in relation to the development of political parties during the era. In other words, these
women exhibited awareness of their expected cultural role and the rhetorical needs of the
parties within which they gained power. As Gustafson, Miller, and Perry contend,
“women’s different political styles influenced strategies that brought about important
changes in the political landscape. Their activism had an impact on party structures, and
their concerns colored party ideology.”204 The women studied here became ideal
spokespeople for the parties they represented because of the way they framed their
political role as women. As such, the women studied here changed the political scene
during the Gilded Age.
Chapter Two is the first of three case studies to focus on the different experiences
of female political party leaders. This chapter looks at the rhetorical strategies of Mary
Elizabeth Lease, the famed speaker and leader of the Populist Party. Lease delivered over
160 speeches during the 1890 campaign season. She was lauded as a capable and
eloquent orator, and she spoke at the 1892 Populist national convention.205 Examining
Lease’s rhetorical activities offers insight into the reasons women played such a
significant rhetorical role within the Populist Party. Because of the rhetorical nature of
the Populist movement itself, Lease is an example of a woman who acted as woman and
as a party leader – a new and different public role.
The Populist Party called for a return to “moral” politics and a protection of the
family. “Morality” was considered the be the “very essence of femininity.” 206 Although
Michael Goldberg claims that Lease “flaunted her masculine style” and exaggerated a
Introduction
“masculinist persona,”207 I argue that Lease played an important role as a
41
woman in the success of populist rhetorical campaigns. Lease adopted different feminine
personae, each of which gave her credibility as an “ideal” Populist spokesperson. Current
rhetorical scholarship of female activists of the time establishes that it was common for
women to assert their femininity in public. As Edwards writes, “Most politically active
women demonstrated female consciousness. They believed their gender identity was a
useful political tool – probably the most powerful available to them – and they deployed
it in the service of their goals.”208 Lebsock reiterates, “However slimy politics might be,
who better than the nation’s house-keepers to clean it up?”209 This case study explores the
performance of femininity for partisan purposes. Lease used cultural behavioral
expectations to gain agency as a political leader. She acted as a religious, moral, and
domestic political “guide” to present herself as a credible and formidable Populist leader.
All of these roles were in keeping with cultural expectations of appropriate female
behavior. Historian Lori Ginzberg asks in reference to the early 19th century: “To the
defenders of Republican Motherhood, mothers had borne the responsibility to influence
their children to be virtuous citizens: how much wider an impact might they have as
teachers?”210 I seek to answer this question by exploring Lease’s use of these
expectations as justification for female political leadership in the future. Lease’s rhetoric
expanded the reach of women within a partisan organization.
Chapter Three follows the rhetoric of two prominent but opposed party women
who used parallel argumentative structures. This chapter examines the debate about
partisanship that happened within the WCTU and the political party involvement of its
two primary participants, Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster. During the
Introduction
42
1888 WCTU national convention, WCTU President Willard announced that the
organization should provide absolute support for parties willing to put temperance on
their platform. This action was understood as a pledge of support for the Prohibition
Party.211 The action was definitive but not unexpected, as women like Willard had been
heavily involved in the formation and leadership of the Prohibition Party throughout the
previous decade. The Prohibition Party “offered a particularly strong model for women’s
participation.”212 Several women served on the party’s national committee and almost
thirty percent of the delegates at the Prohibition Party’s national conventions were
women.213 Willard was integral to the national campaign efforts of the Prohibition Party
as she led policy initiatives, toured the nation on behalf of candidates, and served as a key
decision maker and orator.
Some, however, opposed Willard’s partisan agenda. Foster and other women
protested by leaving the WCTU organization and forming the Non-Partisan Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union.214 Foster had been an active member of the WCTU and had
served as Iowa’s Superintendent of the Legislative Department.215 She tried to maintain
the WCTU’s traditionally nonpartisan approach, arguing that position forcefully at
conventions throughout the 1880s.216 Although Foster ardently emphasized the need for
women to work in non-partisan ways for reform as a member of the WCTU, Foster was
an avid Republican. She worked for years to increase female influence in the Republican
Party.217 She described the role that she envisioned women could play in the Republican
Party when in 1892, addressing the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, she said “We are here to help you, and we have come to stay.” Foster formed
the Women’s National Republican Association (WNRA), an auxiliary to the National
Introduction
League of Republican Clubs in 1888.218 The WNRA distributed literature, sent
43
speakers during campaigns, and assisted the Republican National Committee with
fundraising and grassroots efforts.219 Foster herself gave speeches during several
presidential campaigns, with a goal to increase female influence in the Republican
Party.220
Despite their party differences, Willard and Foster both offered similar messages
about women’s distinct role in politics, arguing that women’s moral superiority could
clean up political corruption.221 More importantly for this study, though, both Willard and
Foster re-framed women’s political role as authorities on patriotism and civic duty. Like
Lease, both women adopted certain personae that helped to justify their presence in the
political institution, which in their case was the national party convention. Both women
also attempted to claim patriotism for the party they represented. Working within
different political environments, Willard and Foster fostered identification with their
immediate audiences through assumptions about national duty, unity, and patriotism.
Accordingly, they added women to the group tasked with performing this duty. Through
an examination of Willard’s Prohibition Party convention address in 1888 and Foster’s
Republican Party convention address in 1892, one can continue to develop an awareness
of female political leaders’ argumentative strategies as a model of discourse. Willard and
Foster used stories of the nation’s past and women’s traditional roles in it to enact a more
particular form of female patriotic leadership. Historically, “political and civic virtue,”
was “something achieved through active, public participation in political affairs.” 222
Willard and Foster argued that women could protect and influence that civic virtue in a
unique way, justifying their political participation. As the first women to address national
Introduction
44
party conventions, each structured her speech to avoid alienating her audience,
while asserting her right to participate as a female political citizen who embodied
patriotism.
The final case study in Chapter Four analyzes the rhetorical techniques of Belva
Ann Bennett Lockwood, the Equal Rights Party candidate for President of the United
States in 1884 and 1888. Perhaps the most radical of the women studied in this project,
Lockwood not only was a party leader but also a candidate for national office. Lockwood
and fellow woman’s rights activist Marietta Stow were the first women to share a ticket
for President and Vice President of the United States. In 1884, Lockwood attended the
Republican Convention and was rebuffed when she asked if they would draft a resolution
to support woman suffrage. Lockwood wrote a letter to Stow’s Women’s Herald of
Industry expressing her concern over the current state of political affairs and the need for
a female candidate. In the letter she wrote, “if women in the states are not permitted to
vote, there is no law against their being voted for,” and asserted, “it is quite time that we
had our own party; our own platform, and our own nominee.”223 She was then nominated
for the presidency by the newly formed Equal Rights Party, with Stow as her running
mate for Vice President.224
Whether as candidates or leaders on the campaign trail, women in the 1880s and
1890s began to carve a space on the partisan landscape for overt female participation.
This fusion between seeking office and campaigning for progressive legislation led to
Lockwood’s presidential campaign. Lockwood put forth a model of discourse that
celebrated female accomplishment. She used her career and her struggles with gendered
cultural expectations as evidence of her leadership ability and political expertise.
Introduction
45
Lockwood’s rhetoric is an example of the rhetorical strategy of a usable past, or
“a body of beliefs and ideas about the past that help a public or society understand both
its past, present, and by implication, its future.”225 The use of the past is rhetorically
powerful and can be manipulated toward particular persuasive ends. Because the past is
symbolically constructed, its use is a productive argument strategy that can create
identification between a rhetor and her audience. Her past became usable for Lockwood
insofar as it provided shared meaning for her and the “male” political world.
Lockwood’s candidacy was a rhetorical re-framing of behavioral expectations.
Her rhetoric was not just an assertion of her ability to be a presidential candidate, but was
also evidence of the type of leadership and momentum that women in politics needed as
the twentieth century dawned. She recounted her past accomplishments as evidence of
her intelligence and experience. She referenced her past experiences through the lens of
her physical capabilities to argue that even though she was a woman, she was just as
qualified to serve in office. Finally, Lockwood referred to past instances of female
collective action to express the power of women as a group. She enacted the philosophy
of the Equal Rights Party, which espoused political and social equality, by creating a
persona that was based on personal qualifications and a desire for equality of opportunity.
Lockwood argued that women had an important political role to play because of the
exceptional qualities they could bring to the table. Specifically, she used the past to assert
herself as a leader. She crafted a unique political female persona through the
interpretation of her own past, using it as an example of the qualities of a political
candidate. In so doing, Lockwood used the past to facilitate momentum for future
behavior.
Introduction
46
Conclusion
The women examined here represented different political parties but faced similar
cultural constraints. As a result, they articulated a rhetoric with varied partisan goals, but
parallel social aims. In order to conceptualize their role, I focus on their rhetorical
strategies as they gained agency within a political system that had denied them access. In
an attempt to create a persona suited for the “male” world of party electoral politics, the
women studied here made strategic use of cultural arguments that fostered identification
with their audience and exerted a new female political role. They all believed that
political womanhood was about claiming rights regardless of sex and presented strong
arguments for the power of women because of their sex. These case studies enhance our
understanding of the rhetorical strategies of activist women, the potential for agency
within the parties that dominated the political scene during the Gilded Age, and models
for political womanhood that each woman left for future generations.
The case studies show us the diverse contributions that women made to the
arsenal of rhetorical strategies for female activists of the time. Women helped shape the
arguments of the political parties they represented. They also demonstrated potential
rhetorical behavior that other women could emulate in order to become leaders in
partisan organizations. The rhetorical discourse of party women enhances our knowledge
of the period and its political culture. Gustafson, Miller, and Perry’s claim that “that new
perspectives can be gained from studying women in political parties,” because “historians
have often mentioned women only in ways that made them tangential to the story being
told.”226 They continue, “political parties can be a rich resource for examining the
challenges that women, both disenfranchised and enfranchised, faced in their struggles
Introduction
for voice and power in the nation’s political arena.”227A rhetorical perspective
47
can highlight how women carved this space for themselves.
This project concludes with a discussion on the importance of the “rhetorical
study of historical events” and the “historical study of rhetorical practice.”228 Studying
the argument strategies used by female party leaders during the Gilded Age nuances our
understanding of the transformations occurring in the political culture. Specifically, the
rhetoric of party women gives us a deeper knowledge of the partisan system as a group of
gendered and issue-oriented organizations. Further, this historical recovery project grants
us expanded access to an archive of rhetorical practice that serves as a model of
discourse. The party women studied present rhetorical strategies that are exemplary
standards. Kathleen Turner contends:
Historical research provides an understanding of rhetoric as a process rather than
as simply a product; it creates an appreciation of both the commonalities among
and the distinctiveness of rhetorical situations and responses; it tests theory and
complements criticism while standing as a distinct and valid approach in and of
itself.229
Turner’s synthesis is a key way to understand the significance of doing rhetorical history.
Approaching primary documents through a rhetorical lens leads to the discovery of
patterns and identities. Rather than re-creating the past, rhetorical historians interpret the
past in order to understand historical and contemporary patterns of discourse.
Historians have shown that women influenced the issues and strategies that
political parties used during the Gilded Age to increase awareness, get out the vote, and
connect with citizens.230 This project demonstrates how they accomplished that. As “men
Introduction
discovered that women excelled at crucial aspects of winning elections,”231
48
women stepped into unprecedented leadership roles, creating a form of political
womanhood that was both consistent with and divergent from cultural norms of behavior.
The female party leaders in this project are examples of women who “excelled” at
rhetorical leadership. The case studies highlight women’s civic engagement, while
placing women in the mainstream political culture of their day. Specifically, an
examination of female political party leadership can offer a more complex approach to
the study of women, political leadership, and rhetorical practice.
The study of rhetorical activities also has an important pedagogical contribution
to make. By expanding the archive of female historical discourse and through analysis of
rhetorical patterns of women in the late nineteenth century, scholars gain insight into the
political culture, the power of rhetorical agency, and the rhetorical power of women. In
addition, this history creates a model of rhetorical discourse for political women of the
future, putting historical rhetorical practice in conversation with contemporary rhetorical
strategies. Analyses of the past connect us across historic time.232 Rhetorical history
allows us to contextualize the present. This is part of the contribution that I hope to make
as a scholar. My interest in studying women’s involvement in partisan politics is to help
tell an historical narrative that, to use Maurice Halbwachs’ terms, “renders the present
familiar.”233
Women’s research in public address has recently exploded in studies that look at
women in politics, particularly women like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Sarah
Palin. I argue that it is only through understanding the rhetorical actions of party women
of the past that we can begin to understand actions, cultural expectations, and social
Introduction
49
interpretations of party women in the present. As women embark on entering
political leadership in full force, it is important to understand the historic circumstances
from which their efforts arise. We have an obligation to not only know this history, but to
teach it. Female presidential campaigns of the nineteenth century, female leadership in
early political parties, and the first forays of women into political office provide not just a
historic grounding, but an interpretive base for understanding gendered expectations of
female politicians today.
Notes for Chapter One
1
Frances Elizabeth Willard, My Happy Half Century: The Autobiography of an American Woman
(London, UK: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, 1894).
2
Dan Gillgoff, “Michele Bachmann, Evangelical Feminist?” June 27, 2011,
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/27/michele-bachmann-as-evangelical-feminist/.
3
For more on each, visit the Green Party website at www.gp.org, the Peace and Freedom Party website at
www.peaceandfreedom.org, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation at www.pslweb.org.
4
The term the “Gilded Age” was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The
Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, written in 1873. The “Gilded Age” is widely considered by historians to be
the period characterized by industrial and urban growth from the 1870s-1890s, after the period of
Reconstruction and before the Progressive period, The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political
History, ed. Michael Kazin, Rebecca Edwards, and Adam Rothman (Princeton, NJ: Princeont University
Press, 2010), viii. For a more detailed account of the changes during the Gilded Age, see The Gilded Age:
Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America 2nd Edition, ed. Charles W. Calhoun (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlfeild Publishers, Inc., 2007). See also Robert W. Cherny, American Politics in the Gilded
Age: 1868-1900 (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1997); Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System:
1853-1892 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979).
5
Charles W. Calhoun, “Introduction,” The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America 2nd
Edition, ed. Charles W. Calhoun (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007): 1.
6
Calhoun, “Introduction,” 2; Judith Freeman Clark, The Gilded Age (New York: Infobase Publishing,
2006), ix.
7
Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the
Progressive Era (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 9.
8
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 9.
9
Jo Freeman, A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics (New York, NY: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 7; see also Richard L. McCormick, “The Party Period and Public Policy:
An Exploratory Hypothesis,” The Journal of American History 66.2 (1979): 281.
10
Charles W. Calhoun, “Public Life and the Conduct of Politics,” The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the
Origins of Modern America 2nd Edition, ed. Charles W. Calhoun (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc., 2007): 254.
11
Paula Baker, The Moral Frameworks of Public Life: Gender, Politics, and the State in Rural New York,
1870-1930 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991), xvi.
Introduction
12
50
For more on Gilded Age politics see Worth Robert Miller, “The Lost World of Gilded Age Politics,” The
Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1.1 (2002): 49-67; Vincent P. De Santis, “The Political Life
of the Gilded Age: A Review of the Recent Literature,” The History Teacher 9.1 (1975): 73-106; Calhoun,
“The Political Culture: Public life and the Conduct of Politics,” 239-264.
13
Charles W. Calhoun, “The Political Culture: Public Life and the Conduct of Politics,” 240.
14
Lewis L. Gould, “Party Conflict: Republicans versus Democrats, 1877-1901,” The Gilded Age:
Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America 2nd Edition, ed. Charles W. Calhoun (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007): 265.
15
Worth Robert Miller, “The Lost World of Gilded Age Politics,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and
Progressive Era 1.1 (2002): 51.
16
McCormick, 282.
17
Miller, 50.
18
Suzanne Lebsock, “Women and American Politics, 1880-1920,” Women, Politics, and Change ed.
Louise A. Tilly and Particia Gurin (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992): 36-37.
19
Michael McGerr, "Political Style and Women's Power, 1830-1930," Journal of American History 77
(December 1990): 869.
20
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 7.
21
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 13-16.
22
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 7.
23
Michael Lewis Goldberg, An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 7.
24
T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 5.
Although Marshall’s academic subject position as a sociologist in post-World War II Great Britain makes
his categories of citizenship gendered, according to the critique of Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon in
Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, "Civil Citizenship Against Social Citizenship? On the Ideology of
Contract-Versus-Charity," in The Condition of Citizenship, ed. Bart Van Steenbergen, 90-107 (London:
Sage Publications, 1994), his definition is still useful. In conjunction with Edwards definition of nineteenth
century politics, it allows scholars to consider what political citizenship meant in the context of the
nineteenth century.
25
Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,"
American Historical Review 89 (June 1984): 623.
26
Linda Kerber, "The Revolutionary Generation: Ideology, Politics, and Culture in the Early Republic," in
The New American History, ed. Eric Foner (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997), 38.
27
Nancy Cott, "Marriage and Women's Citizenship in the United States, 1830-1934," American Historical
Review 103, no. 5 (1998): 1456.
28
Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United
States, Enlarged Edition (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 38;
Melanie Gustafson, Kristie Miller and Elisabeth Perry, We Have Come to Stay: American Women and
Political Parties, 1880-1960, ed. Melanie Gustafson, Kristie Miller and Elisabeth Perry (Albuquerque, NM:
University of New Mexico Press, 1999), x; Linda Gordon, "U.S. Women's History," in The New American
History, ed. Eric Foner, 262 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997); Judith Ann Giesberg, Civil
War Sisterhood: The U.S. Sanitary Commission and Women's Politics in Transition (Boston, MA:
Northeastern University Press, 2000), 3; Nancy Isenberg, Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 3-6.
29
Louise A. Tilly and Patricia Gurin, "Introduction: Women, Politics, and Change," in Women, Politics,
and Change, ed. Louise A. Tilly and Patricia Gurin, 10-11 (New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation,
1990).
30
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 28.
31
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 3.
32
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 3-4.
33
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 4.
34
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 7.
35
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 28.
36
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 3.
Introduction
37
51
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 27.
This term originated in Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," U.S. Quarterly,
Summer 1966: 151-174. The term reflects the four “cardinal virtues” by which women were judged in the
nineteenth century. These were “piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (152).
39
Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics,” 624.
40
Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect & Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York, NY:
W.W. Norton & Co., 1986), 35-38.
41
The Revolutionary period gave the country a few women who are now revered in history for their
political thought: Judith Sargent Murray, Susannah Rowson, Mercy Otis Warren, and Hannah Webster
Foster. See Kerber, Women of the Republic, 269, 11.
42
Kerber, Women of the Republic, 9.
43
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 17.
44
Kerber, Women of the Republic, 283.
45
Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a
Government (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 119; Robert J. Dinkin, Before Equal
Suffrage: Women in Partisan Politics from Colonial Times to 1920 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1995), 21-22.
46
Louise Young, "Women's Place in American Politics: The Historical Perspective," Journal of Politics 38
(August 1976): 304-307; Peggy Eaton traveled with her husband on his Senate campaign, leading Robert
Dinkin to call her the first women in U.S. history to join an extensive political campaign as a political wife.
Catherine Allgor calls Dolley Madison a “politician” because of her position as social leader. She was
considered one of the primary hostesses in Washington D.C., often serving as hostess for President Thomas
Jefferson as well her husband. Allgor also refers to Louisa Catherine Adams and John Quincy Adams as a
“political team.” While living in Philadelphia, Louisa Catherine Adams created an intellectual salon with
politicians, newspaper editors, judges, etc., all of whom eventually became supporters of Quincy Adams.
She traveled extensively during her husband’s campaign and called upon the wives of congressmen and
other influential men of Washington. See Dinkin, 23; Allgor, 54, 148.
47
Dinkin, 15.
48
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 27, 33. More can be read on this event in Judith A. Klinghoffer and Lois
Elkis, “’The Petticoat Electors’: Women’s Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776-1807.” Journal of the Early
Republic, 12.2 (Summer 1992): 159-193.
49
Dinkin, 17.
50
Petitioning the government was a common form of political participation utilized by female social
reformer at the time. See Alisse Portnoy, Their Right to Speak: Women's Activism in the Indian and Slave
Debates (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 6; Dinkin, 27; Susan Zaeske, "Signatures of
Citizenship: The Rhetoric of Women's Anti-Slavery Petitions," Quarterly Journal of Speech 88, no. 2 (May
2002): 147-168.
51
Young, "Women's Place in American Politics,” 309.
52
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 13.
53
Rosemarie Zagarri, "Gender and the First Party System," Federalists Reconsidered, ed. Doron Ben-Atar
and Barbara B. Oberg (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 122.
54
McGerr, 867.
55
Baker, 632.
56
Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore, MD: The John
Hopkins University Press, 1990), 173. See also Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American
Feminism: The Woman and the City, 1800-1860 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1978).
57
Anne Boylan, “Women and Politics in the era before Seneca Falls,” Journal of the Early Republic 10
(Fall 1990): 373.
58
Boylan, 372.
59
Boylan, 368.
60
Boylan, 373-374.
61
Baker, 634.
62
Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s rights Movement in the United
States, Enlarged Edition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 42-43.
38
Introduction
63
52
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 27; Susan Zaeske, "The 'Promiscuous Audience" Controversy and the
Emergence of the Early Woman’s rights Movement," Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 191-207. See
also Susan Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, & Women’s Political Identity
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
64
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 29.
65
President William Henry Harrison was the first Whig to be elected President of the United States in
1840. The Whigs also won a majority in Congress that same year. See Freeman, A Room at a Time, 33.
66
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 13.
67
Dinkin, 24-25.
68
Dinkin, 3.
69
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 33.
70
Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel
Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 3.
71
Varon, 3.
72
Jayne DeFiore, "Come and Bring the Ladies: Tennessee Women and the Politics of Opportunity During
the Presidential Campaigns of 1840 and 1844," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 51 (1992): 197-212.
73
Women like Virginian Lucy Kenney wrote tracts on behalf of William Henry Harrison in 1840. Kenney
clearly felt personal animosity toward Van Buren, which is evidenced in her pamphlet, “The Strongest of
All Government is that Which is Most Free.” Kenney was overtly campaigning for Harrison, using partisan
rhetoric and campaign jargon to convince the public to vote Whig in 1840. In addition, Kenney seems to be
carefully navigating between her role as campaign spokesperson and female member of society through the
use of analogies consistent with her private, domestic role. Whig women in Virginia, Tennessee,
Mississippi, and Massachusetts display similar rhetorical tendencies. See DeFiore; Christopher Olsen,
"Respecting 'The Wise Allotment of Our Sphere': White Women and Politics in Mississippi, 1840-1860,"
Journal of Women's History 11, no. 3 (1999): 104-125; Varon; Zboray and Zboray.
74
Jayne DeFiore, "Come and Bring the Ladies: Tennessee Women and the Politics of Opportunity During
the Presidential Campaigns of 1840 and 1844," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 51 (1992): 198.
75
Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel
Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 1.
76
Ronald T. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, "Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of
1840: Three Perspectives from Massachusetts," Journal of the Early Republic 17, no. 2 (Summer 1997):
278.
77
Varon, 71; Young, “Women’s Place in American Politics,” 311; DeFiore, 78.
78
Dinkin, 23.
79
Dinkin, 31.
80
Zboray and Zboray, “Whig Women,” 282-283.
81
Zboray and Zboray, “Whig Women,” 278. See also Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, Voices
Without Votes: Women and Politics in Antebellum New England (Durham, NH: The University of New
Hampshire Press, 2010).
82
Zboray and Zboray, 280.
83
Zboray and Zboray, 281.
84
Varon.74-103.
85
Varon, 74-75.
86
Varon, 75.
87
Qtd in Varon, 75.
88
Varon, 77.
89
Lucy Kenney, The Strongest of All Government is That Which is Most Free: An Address to the People of
the United States (n.p.: n.p., 1840).
90
Christopher Olsen, "Respecting 'The Wise Allotment of Our Sphere': White Women and Politics in
Mississippi, 1840-1860," Journal of Women's History 11, no. 3 (1999): 104-125.105.
91
Olsen, 105.
92
Olsen, 105.
93
Olsen, 110.
94
Olsen, 112.
Introduction
95
53
Olsen, 116.
Frances Wright was one of the first women to speak on political issues in public. She delivered a series
of lectures in the early 1830s, but came under sharp social critique. She was called an “unnatural woman,”
and a “female monster.” “Fanny Wrightism” was a term coined to describe extreme, often shameless,
political radicals. For more on Frances Wright see William R. Waterman, Frances Wright (New York, NY:
AMS Press, Inc., 1967); Robert J. Connors, "Frances Wright: First Female Civic Rhetor in America,"
College English 62, no. 1 (September 1999): 30-57; Elizabeth Ann Bartlett, Liberty, Equality, Sorority: The
Origins and Interpretation of U.S. Feminist Thought: Frances Wright, Sarah Grimke, and Margaret Fuller
(Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1994); DeFiore, 209.
97
DeFiore, 202.
98
Varon, 96.
99
Young, "Women's Place in American Politics,” 320.
100
DeFiore claims that women participated in rallies because they were formatted like the revival meetings
of the Second Great Awakening. When this changed, they lost their ability to participate, DeFiore, 209-210.
101
Dinkin, 37.
102
Dinkin, 39.
103
Dinkin, 44-45.
104
Nichols delivered more than 50 stump speeches in 1856. See Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 29;
Dinkin, 45.
105
Dinkin, 43-44.
106
Dinkin, 46.
107
Dinkin, 50.
108
Mari Jo Buhle, Women and U.S. Socialism, 1870-1920 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1981),
50.
109
Dinkin, 65.
110
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 29.
111
Buhle, 50.
112
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 35.
113
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 40.
114
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 40.
115
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 40.
116
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 40.
117
Edwards, 101.
118
Dinkin, 89.
119
Dinkin, 90.
120
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 36.
121
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 92.
122
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 96.
123
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 29.
124
Melanie Gustafson, "Partisan Women in the Progressive Era: The Struggle for Inclusion in American
Political Parties," in Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History, ed. Vicki L. Ruiz
and Ellen Carol DuBois (New York, NY: Routledge, 2000), 244.
125
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 34.
126
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 30.
127
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 43.
128
Dinkin, 87.
129
Dinkin, 67.
130
Dinkin, 73.
131
Anthony and Harper, 435.
132
Dinkin, 78.
133
Dinkin, 64.
134
Gustafson, “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 243.
135
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 36.
136
Dinkin, 107.
96
Introduction
137
54
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 37.
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 37.
139
Dinkin, 97.
140
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 38.
141
Dinkin, 97.
142
Dinkin, 99.
143
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 36.
144
Gustafson, "Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 245.
145
A 1910 law in Colorado that required there to be equal numbers of men and women on committees of
major political parties, to be selected by open primaries, and that required each committee at the county and
municipal level to have a woman as either chair or vice chair, brought Democratic women into politics in a
significant way. Women had been able to vote since 1894, and the requirement that women participate
equally in political parties gave them an advantage. This provided leadership and office-holding
opportunities. According to Muncy, “the Democratic Party hierarchy granted its imprimatur to more female
candidates than did the Progressive Party.” Some more progressive members of the Colorado Democratic
party formed a committee separate from the main state party to decide primary candidates in 1912, and five
of the 11 members were women. The committee proposed Helen King Robinson for state senator,
recommended five women for state representatives, and collected enough petition signatures to put all of
those women on the state ballot. In addition, a side group pressured mainstream Democrats to put women
up for nomination as well, and the Democratic Party nominated six more women for state representatives.
In the end, 26% of the candidates nominated for office were women, including Katherine Williamson as a
candidate for U.S. Representative, Robyn Muncy, “‘Women Demand Recognition’: Women Candidates in
Colorado’s Election of 1912.” We Have Come to Stay: American Women and Political Parties: 1880-1960
ed. Melanie Gustafson, Kristie Miller, Elisabeth I. Perry (Albuquerque, NM: The University of New
Mexico Press 1999), 45-50.
146
Women’s limited participation in the Socialist Party began primarily in the 1870s among GermanAmerican women. Mari Jo Buhle describes German-American Socialist thought as “rich in genuine
idealism yet rooted in the common people’s struggle for existence.” See Buhle, 5. Women’s involvement
began in auxiliary groups that planned events, participated in rallies, and educated communities on socialist
thought. Many viewed the Socialist movement as the way to fight for women’s equal wage, and women’s
auxiliaries began to adapt themselves to women in the industrial workforce. The Frauenbund (the women’s
federation) was created in New York in 1883, and was the first political women’s sector in the Socialist
movement. Women soon began to see the potential of the Socialist movement. Female socialist speakers
such as Martha Moore Avery, who joined the Socialist Labor Party in Boston, drew large crowds and
gained national attention. The head of the WCTU in Iowa was Marion Howard Dunham, who joined the
Socialists and served as Midwest coordinator for Socialist women’s clubs. In addition, Josephine Conger
became the leading editor of the Socialist women’s movement, and encouraged women to participate
through sending letters to the socialist press, and working with their sisters in the National American
Woman Suffrage Association. Corinne Stubbs Brown, Elizabeth H. Thomas, Carrie Rand Herron, and five
others were eight of the 128 delegates at the founding meeting of the Socialist Party of America in 1901 in
Indianapolis. See Buhle.
147
Buhle, 147, 150.
148
Buhle, 150.
149
Anna Maley from Minnesota became an intellectual and a platform speaker, embarking on a lecture tour
in 1910. Maley also convinced the party to increase the WNC from five to seven members, gained a
headquarters and a secretary, and direct access to the treasury. In 1911, Caroline Lowe took over the WNC
and encouraged the growth of its educational services. Lena Morrow Lewis was considered the “most
prominent woman in the national Socialist party,” and was the first woman appointed to the National
Executive Committee of the Socialist Party. Lewis was a member of the WNC, the WCTU, NAWSA, and
became a dramatic street-speaker, infamously using “soapbox agitation.” While the WNC and other
Socialist women became leaders in the party, many abandoned electoral projects to organize and assist
labor unrest, strikes, and woman suffrage between 1909-1920. See Buhle, 152-162.
150
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 75.
151
Gustafson, “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 246.
138
Introduction
152
55
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 48.
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 21, 47.
154
Gustafson, “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 247.
155
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 70.
156
Gustafson, “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 247.
157
Gustafson, “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 242.
158
Freeman, A Room at a Time, Jane Addams was a key player in the Progressive Party. Addams had
devoted her career to improving the lives of working class women and providing them with the education
and resources necessary to participate in public life. This can be in her creation of Hull House and
subsequent leadership in the settlement house movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. Addams
became engaged in partisan politics precisely to continue her agenda, believing that indirect partisan
affiliation could not advance reform movements. She firmly believed that women could only influence
policy through involvement, which led to her advocacy for partisanship and active participation in the
suffrage movement. Jane Addams traveled to campaign in 1912, and even had the honor of seconding
Roosevelt’s nomination and delivering a speech to the Progressive Party’s national convention. See
Victoria Bissell Brown, "Jane Addams, Progressivism, and Woman Suffrage: An Introduction to Why
Women Should Vote," in One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, ed.
Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, 183 (Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995); Louise W. Knight, Citizen: Jane
Addams and the Struggle for Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Freeman, 72;
Gustafson, “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 247-249.
159
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 71.
160
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 76.
161
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 76; For a more detailed account of the Women’s Committee and the
Hughes Train, see Molly M. Wood, "Mapping a National Campaign Strategy: Partisan Women in the
Presidential Election of 1916," in We Have Come to Stay: American Women in Political Parties 18801960, ed. Melanie Gustafson, Kristie Miller and Elisabeth I. Perry, 77-86 (Albuquerque, NM: University of
New Mexico Press, 1999).
162
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 78.
163
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 80.
164
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 80.
165
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 39.
166
Clara Munson was elected mayor of Warrenton, Oregon in 1913 as a member of the Citizens Party. In
1915, Socialist Jessie Wallace Hughan ran for Alderman of New York City, Secretary of State in 1918, and
Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1920. Stella Blanchard ran for Congress from California’s Eleventh
District in 1914. Anne Martin became the first woman to run for U.S. Senate in 1918, campaigning for a
seat from Nevada. For a list of women who ran for political office before 1920, see Her Hat was in the
Ring!: U.S. Women Who Ran for Political Office Before 1920, 2010,
http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/wchmiel1/women%20in%20politics/Party%20Affiiliation.htm
(accessed March 1, 2010).
167
Alice Donaldson, "Women Emerge as Political Speakers," Speech Monographs 18, no. 1 (March 1951):
54.
168
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 27.
169
Denise Baer “Political Parties: The Missing Variable in Women and Politics Research,” Political
Research Quarterly 46.3 (Sep, 1993): 547-576.
170
Baer, 559.
171
For scholarship on contemporary political campaigns and the representation of women in the political
science disciplines see Barbara C. Burrell, A Woman’s Place Is in the House: Campaigning for Congress in
the Feminist Era (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996) and R. Darcy, Susan Welch, and
Janet Clark, Women, Elections, and Representation (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
172
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 9.
173
Dinkin’s book Before Equal Suffrage: Women in Partisan Politics from Colonial Times to 1920 focuses
on the long nineteenth century. Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the
Early American Republic (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) focuses on the early
nineteenth century. Edwards’ book Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the
153
Introduction
56
Civil War to the Progressive Era focuses on the later half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the
20th century.
174
Baker, “The Domestication of Politics”; Baker, The Moral Frameworks of Public Life.
175
See Gustafson, Melanie. “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era: The Struggle for Inclusion in
American Political Parties”; Elsa Barkley Brown, “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere:
African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom,” Public Culture 7 (1994): 107146; Christopher Olsen, “Respecting ‘The Wise Allotment of Our Sphere’: White Women and Politics in
Mississippi, 1840-1860.” Journal of Women’s History 11.3 (1999): 104-125; Zboray, Ronald T. and Mary
Saracino Zboray. “Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of 1840: Three Perspectives from
Massachusetts.” Journal of the Early Republic 17.2 (Summer 1997): 277-315; Boylan, 363-382; Varon;
DeFiore;
176
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 22.
177
Stacy A. Cordery, “Women in Industrializing America,” The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of
Mondern America 2nd Edition, ed. Charles W. Calhoun (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2007): 137.
178
Zboray and Zboray, Voices Without Votes; Varon,
179
Iris M. Young, "Gender as Seriality: Thinking About Women as Social Collective"," Signs 19 (Spring
1994): 713-738.
180
Young, "Gender as Seriality”, 724. Young is referencing Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of “seriality” from
his 1976 Critique of Dialectical Reason. Sartre uses people waiting for a bus as an example of a series.
They are related to one another insofar as they are all waiting for a “material object” (the bus), but all have
different identities, experiences, and goals (724-725).
181
Young, "Gender as Seriality”, 724.
182
Young, "Gender as Seriality”, 732-733.
183
Gustafson, Miller, and Perry, “Introduction,” x.
184
Young, "Gender as Seriality”, 730.
185
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 3.
186
William C. Trapani, “Materiality’s Time: Rethinking the Event from the Derridean esprit d’a-propos,”
Rhetoric, Materiality, & Politics ed. Barbara Beisecker and John Lucaites (New York, NY: Peter Lang
Publishing, 2009): 341. See also Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee, Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary
Students 4th Edition (New York, NY: Pearson Longman, 2008).
187
Gustafson, Miller, and Perry, “Introduction,” x.
188
Carol M. Laperle, “Rhetorical Situationality: Alice Arden’s Kairotic Effect in The Tragedy of Master
Arden of Faversham,” Women’s Studies 39 (2010): 177.
189
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 37.
190
Ronald Walter Greene, “Rhetorical Agency as Communicative Labor,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.3
(2004): 188.
191
Leff, “Tradition and Agency in Humanistic Rhetoric,” 135.
192
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean,” Communication and Critical/Cultural
Studies 2.1 (2005): 3.
193
See Dilip Gaonkar, “The idea of rhetoric in the rhetoric of science,” Rhetorical hermeneutics: invention
and interpretation in the age of science ed. A.G Gross & W.M. Keath (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1997): 25-85.
194
Casey Kelly, “Women’s Rhetorical Agency in the American West: The New Penelope,” Women’s
Studies in Communication 32.2 (2009): 210.
195
Cited in Geisler, 10.
196
Campbell, “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean,” 3.
197
Kelly, 210.
198
John Logie qtd. in Cheryl Geisler, “How Ought We to Understand the Concept of Rhetorical Agency?
Report from the ARS,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34.3 (2004): 14.
199
Freeman, We Will Be Heard, 1.
200
Gustafson, “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 243.
201
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 8.
202
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 8.
Introduction
203
57
Douglas Walton, “Enthymemes, Common Knowledge, and Plausible Inference,” Philosophy and
Rhetoric 34.2 (2001): 96.
204
Gustafson, Miller, and Perry, “Introduction,” xiii.
205
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 103.
206
Carol Mattingly, “Telling Evidence: Rethinking What Counts in Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly
32.1 (2002): 106.
207
Michael Lewis Goldberg, An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 178-179.
208
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 8. See also Lebsock, 35-41; Dow, “Frances E. Willard.”
209
Lebsock, 35.
210
Lori Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the 19th-Century
United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 17.
211
Gustafson, “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 244; Willard formed her own political party called
the “Home Protection Party” in 1881. The Home Protection Party merged with the Prohibition Party in
1882, Freeman, A Room at a Time, 34.
212
Edwards, “Gender, Class, and the Transformation of Electoral Campaigns,” 14.
213
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 43.
214
Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 4.
215
Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 3.
216
Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 3.
217
Gustafson, "Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 7.
218
Gustafson, “Partisan Women in the Progressive Era,” 245.
219
Freeman, 35.
220
Gustafson, 7.
221
Dinkin, 96.
222
James Jasinski “The Feminization of Liberty, Domesticated Virtue, and the Reconstitution of Power and
Authority in Early American Political Discourse,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 79.2 (1993): 155.
223
Belva A. Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," National Magazine, March 1903: 729.
224
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 728-733; Dinkin, 73..
225
John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth
Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 15.
226
Gustafson, Miller, and Perry, “Introduction,” x.
227
Gustafson, Miller, and Perry, “Introduction,” x.
228
David Zarefsky, "Four Senses of Rhetorical History," in Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases,
ed. Kathleen Turner, 19-32 (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1998).
229
Kathleen Turner, “Rhetorical History as Social Construction: The Challenge and the Promise.” Doing
Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1998: 2.
230
Gustafson, Miller, and Perry, “Introduction,” xi.
231
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 67.
232
Barbie Zelizer, “Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies,” Critical Studies in
Mass Communication 12 (June 1995): 226.
233
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory Ed. Lewis Coser (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1992).
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
58
“Take a firm hold of the plow of progress and hang on…”
~Mary Elizabeth Lease1
Chapter Two: Mary Elizabeth Lease, The Feminized Populist
The Minneapolis Tribune reported in 1894: “Mrs. Lease is the first woman in
American politics. The Anthonys, the Willards and the Stantons have only tried to annex
woman’s world to politics. Mrs. Lease is mixing up with man politics and acting like a
woman.”2 Mary Elizabeth Lease’s unprecedented effort to participate in the “male”
sphere of public politics while maintaining her femininity was even recognized by her
contemporaries. Rather than work in organizations outside of the mainstream political
process, Lease charged into a partisan world where women were marginalized. Because
women’s participation in party politics was not integral to electoral success, they were
deemed unimportant and unwanted. Lease contested this view, working within the
burgeoning world of third-party politics to confront issues common to all
underrepresented groups. Capitalizing on the opportunity to form and lead a new political
party, Lease attempted to work within the existing political system to bring about change.
As a result, she became a well-known national public figure and one of the Populist
Party’s most famous orators of the late nineteenth century.
As a leader of the Populist Party, a labor organizer, a member of the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and a woman suffragist, Lease created a rhetoric
that spoke to all “underrepresented” groups. Her message to this diverse audience was
about the meaning of political representation, citizenship, and patriotism. Through an
examination of several speeches delivered from 1888 to 1896 in different contexts, one
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
59
can see that Lease’s rhetoric was an expression of traditional feminine behavior.
By highlighting her persona as a moral and religious leader and domestic political guide,
Lease’s message emphasized progressing toward the common goal of equality. Lease did
not just balance these personae; she also merged them to justify political citizenship in
order to legitimize her presence in party politics. Specifically, Lease referenced
traditionally feminine norms of behavior to become an ideal Populist Party
representative. She successfully combined gendered behavioral expectations with the
traditional arguments of the Populist Party. Accordingly, Lease became the ideal Populist
spokesperson, and she helped to define the rhetorical patterns of the People’s Party itself.
Her assertion of her prescribed gender role gave her ethos as a Populist. Through her
interpretation of socially prescribed feminine behavior, Lease argued that fundamental
human progress relied on pride in one’s values and value as a citizen.
In a speech given in 1896 to the Wichita Woman Suffrage Association, Lease said
that she, “felt proud to stand before an assemblage of women who had the moral courage
to take a stand for their rights…”3 Her emphasis on woman’s moral leadership in her
capacity as Populist spokesperson makes her rhetoric politically significant. Brooke
Speer Orr argues that Lease “used the concepts of female civic duty and women’s
presumed ‘moral authority’ to enter the public sphere, but once there she adopted
traditionally masculine political styles.”4 I argue that Lease pushed the norms of female
political participation in what might have been considered a “masculine” oratorical style,
but used “feminine” argumentative forms. In other words, Lease adopted what Orr
considers “masculine” style such as speaking in public, debating, campaigning, and
confronting her opponents verbally.5 What is perhaps more significant, though, was
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
60
Lease’s construction of a persona that was simultaneously feminine and
acceptable as a political party spokesperson, a markedly masculine role.
Lease’s rhetoric ultimately was about power. Throughout most of the nineteenth
century, partisanship defined male political involvement.6 Political parties were the center
of public political activity in most communities, acting as the center of entertainment,
social life, and culture for men. In addition, party loyalty was of primary concern for
politically involved males, and straying from one’s party was unthinkable.7 Because men
were defined by their party, married women were not independent of their husband’s
political identity. Lease was able to circumvent this difficulty by rhetorically combining
Populist Party and woman’s rights appeals. She made partisanship a mark of principle,
not a mark of gender. By acting as a party spokesperson who embodied ideal
“womanhood,” Lease turned partisan politics into a debate about issues rather than party,
a conversation about representation and citizenship, instead of partisanship and loyalty.
As Lease said, “If you men will vote for principle once and quit voting for party, the
victory will be ours.”8
Lease and the Populist Party
Scholarship on Lease is limited. She is mentioned in narratives about the Populist
Party, but only as a popular speaker. Little has been published on her background, and
even less on her rhetorical significance beyond her perceived notoriety. Richard Stiller
wrote a novelistic portrayal of Lease’s career, and James Costigan and Betty Lou Taylor
wrote M.A. Theses on her life.9 The most extensive rhetorical treatments of Lease’s
career are those of Orr and Thomas Burkholder, both of whom analyze Lease’s rhetorical
abilities. As Orr writes, “An investigation of how and why Lease moved into overtly
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
61
public activities at a time when women’s access to public political realms was
severely limited reveals how women’s status was changing during this dynamic
period.”10 I suggest that her career reveals not only gender dynamics, but also shifts in
party influence and leadership. It is not just Lease’s participation in the “male” sphere of
party politics that is important, but that she used femininity to build an ethos as a Populist
Party leader.
Mary Elizabeth Clyens was born the sixth of eight children to Joseph and Mary
Elizabeth Murray Clyens on September 11, 1850, in Ridgeway, PA.11 She was influenced
by radical political tendencies at an early age, as her parents had been exiled from Ireland
because of their activist work against the Penal Code of England.12 Her father was an
outspoken Irish activist who campaigned unsuccessfully against local British landowners
as an impoverished farmer during the Irish Potato Famine. Joseph Clyens reportedly
attempted to lead a revolt, but local authorities learned of his plans and set out to arrest
him, forcing him and his family to flee to the United States.13 He later died a prisoner of
war in Andersonville, the notorious Confederate Civil War prison.14 Lease also had
unusual access to advanced education. Her mother was a linguist and worked hard to
educate her children, teaching them to read Latin, Greek, and French. Clyens attended
school at Olear, PA, and then St. Elizabeth’s Academy in Allegany, NY, where she
received a teaching certificate at the age of 15.15 She first taught at a school near Ceres,
PA, and later at St. Ann’s Academy for girls in Osage Mission, Kansas, from 1871 to
1873.16
She married local drugstore owner Charles A. Lease on January 30, 1873.17
Financial hardships during the depression of 1873 forced them to move to Denison, TX,
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
where Lease worked as a laundress and her husband as a drugstore clerk.18 In
62
1874, she was asked to join the WCTU of Texas by Sarah Acheson, who was the wife of
Charles’ employer. Her first public speaking experience was at one of these meetings.19
By 1884, the Leases moved to Kingman County, KS. Over the course of 11 years, Lease
gave birth to five children, two of whom died before the age of 1.20 She told an
interviewer with the Denison Sunday Gazetteer that she would do housework while
reading a newspaper article pinned to the wall so that she “might waste no time in
digesting its contents.”21 While living in Kingman County, she wrote an article for the
local newspaper called “Are Women Inferior?”22 She also continued to pursue
intellectual growth by forming the “Hypatia Club,” a group of women “dedicated to
intellectual improvement.”23
She began to study law in 1884 under the guidance of the law firm Eby and
McMacon, and passed the Kansas Bar in 1885.24 Soon after, Lease became involved in
several local activist organizations. In addition to involvement in the WCTU, Lease
became a member of the Knights of Labor. By 1886, the Knights of Labor had organized
more than 250 local assemblies, including five in Wichita. Lease joined No. 3306 and
served as “general and district organizer,” and was even named “Master Workman” in
recognition of her work.25 In 1888, she became editor of a reform paper called The
Wichita Independent. As an active woman suffragist, she helped organize the Wichita
Equal Suffrage Association and traveled the country to speak about women’s equality
issues.26 Famed suffragist Susan B. Anthony said of her: “Mrs. Lease is a splendid
agitator. She is a magnificent intellect and a tremendous factor in the movement.”27
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
63
Lease’s political career blossomed in Kansas, which was a hotbed of
political activity in the nineteenth century. According to Raymond Miller’s landmark
article on the history of Populism, between 1880 and 1885, the population increased by a
third and the value of property doubled.28 Miller attributed this to the potential for
prosperity because of the high prices of wheat and corn and the expansion of railroads.
The production of wheat and corn, though, would soon lead to a declining economy. In
fact, Kansas was primarily a wheat-producing region in the 1870s, but the production of
corn became profitable and took over as the primary product of the state in the early
1880s, which caused the prices to drop. Populist officials in Kansas claimed that farmers
lost over $235 million between 1884 and 1894.29 In addition, industrial production in the
Northeast was booming. According to Ecroyd, “Between 1860 and the early 1900s the
rapid growth of industry left the farmers and miners of the West and South feeling they
were in a colonial relationship to the East. As the fortunes of industry climbed, the
fortunes of agriculture fell.”30
Politically, Kansas was a stronghold for the Republican Party until the economic
crisis of the 1880s, when the Union Labor Party and the Farmers’ Alliance materialized.31
The Farmers’ Alliance was an officially nonpartisan organization formed in Texas in
1877. The Alliance began as a conglomeration of farmers formed to figure out how best
to deal with the crop-lien system.32 The Alliance encouraged farmers to act together for
their common interests. Throughout the early 1880s, several small Alliances appeared
throughout the South and Midwest. According to Edwards, “Decades before Populism,
agricultural societies like the Grange had built a tradition of civic cooperation among
rural men and women that later extended to partisan politics.”33
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
64
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats demonstrated much public
interest in the problems of farmers and laborers. Thus, a door was open for a party willing
to represent those groups.34 In the fall of 1889, Alliance members, former Union Labor
Party members, and others held a “People’s convention” in Cowley County, Kansas.
There, they announced that their public support would only be given to candidates who
pledged to legislate “in favor of the producing classes.”35 In December of 1889, the
Northern Alliance and the Southern Alliance held separate meetings in St. Louis, MO,
and drafted a platform “proposing new federal interventions in the economy.”36 The
Farmers’ Alliance thus became a political organization, and their first action was a
successful campaign to remove Kansas Senator John J. Ingalls. Lease was one of the
most prominent speakers in that campaign.37
In the early 1890s, The Populist Party united the Farmers’ cause with the Labor
movement.38 According to Orr, the Populist Party aimed “to politically and economically
empower farmers and workers and challenge the corporate, financial, and political
elites.”39 As a result, membership in the Party consisted of reformers from different
groups, including farmers, laborers, unionists, prohibitionists, woman suffragists, and
others.40 According to Edwards, “Populists believed that Republicans’ printing of paper
money…followed by return to the gold standard, had contracted the nation’s currency
and caused widespread poverty and unemployment.”41 Populists also believed that
society was adversely affected economically by uneven wealth distribution and the
exploitation of the working class.42 Burkholder writes, “Convinced that the old political
parties were ‘in cahoots’ with the Eastern ‘money powers,’ Kansas Populists sought to
remove their representatives from office and replace them with representatives of ‘the
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
people.’”43 Kansas became the center of Populist activism. As Ecroyd writes,
65
“Kansas was the hotbed of Populism as a political movement….the source of the
movement’s greatest strength, and the scene of its greatest triumphs.”44 By 1892, the
People’s Party launched a national platform, held a convention, and nominated a
candidate for President of the United States. General James B. Weaver polled over one
million votes in the 1892 presidential election, including 22 electoral college votes from
Kansas, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada.45
Because Populism began in the West, it was more open to the inclusion of
women, perhaps because men and women were integral parts of frontier life. As Margaret
Walsh writes, “Women and men were dependent on each other for reproduction, within
the home, in daily work patterns and in the connections which built local society.
Relationships between women and men were more important than individualistic
achievements by either women or men.”46 Women had a more prominent place in public
life, and the Populist Party embraced women as important figures in the political process.
In fact, Sara E.V. Emery was one of the first members of the Union Labor Party to call
publicly for financial reforms in 1888, just prior to the formation of the Populist Party.
The Union Labor Party distributed a pamphlet written by Emery called “Seven Financial
Conspiracies Which Have Enslaved the American People.” It was circulated for almost
ten years, and over 400,000 copies were printed, “making it a strong candidate for being
the single most widely read of all Populist works.”47 Women also frequently participated
in meetings and edited newspapers.48
Women played key roles in the creation of the Populist Party from the Alliance.
Kansas-native Annie Diggs lobbied at a variety of Farmers’ Alliance conventions and
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
helped launch the Populist Party.49 According to an article in the Kansas City
66
Times in 1894, “The Populists are great believers in the force of women in politics.”50 As
Lease claimed in her 1891 speech to the WCTU,
The farmers and laborers could not well exclude their mothers, wives and
daughters, the patient burden bearers of the home, who had been their faithful
companions, their tried friends and trusted counselors through long, weary years
of poverty and toil. Hence the doors of the Farmers’ Alliance were thrown open
wide to the women of the land. They were invited into full membership, with all
the privileges of promotion; actually recognized and treated as human beings.51
Middle-class populist women saw themselves as speaking for poor farming
women, and played an active role.52 The Knights of Labor also hired many prominent
Populist women as lecturers. Sue Ross Keenan of Oregon, Emma DeVoe of Illinois, and
Eva Valesh of Minnesota all lectured within their various regions.53 Fannie McCormick
of Kansas edited a Populist newspaper and ran for state school superintendent. In
addition, women from Kansas, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, California, and Arkansas
were delegates to the 1892 national convention.54 The Populists nominated Ella Knowles
for Attorney General in Montana, the first female state school superintendent in North
Dakota was a Populist, and Evangeline Heartz won a seat as a Populist to the state
legislature in Colorado.55 In fact, women were involved that the Party ridiculed.
According to Edwards, “Opponents nonetheless ridiculed the party for advocating
women’s rights because its women held power as decision makers….Republicans
implied that women’s power rendered the new party shrill and irresponsible.”56
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
67
The difference between Western and Southern populists lay in the
involvement of women in their organizations. Like other parties in the South, southern
white populists were less apt to involve women in their day-to-day activities or in their
messages. Although southern women were less active in party activities, some southern
men recognized the importance of including women because of their potential influence
over their husbands, and occasionally invited white and black women to their rallies.57
Rebecca Felton was the only southern woman who was renowned as a speaker, and she
emphasized the need for women to have an independent income and for husbands to help
their farmer wives.58
Lease was the most renowned female Populist in the nation.59 In June of 1886,
Lease was invited to speak to two meetings of the Farmers’ Alliance in Harper County,
KS. That she had lived on a farm near Kingman for a short time entitled her to
membership. Because the Alliance did not admit professionals, she only gained
admittance to the Farmers’ Alliance by proving she had never taken a fee as a lawyer.60
She was a stump speaker for the Union Labor Party in 1888, including speaking at the
1888 Union Labor Party state convention. Although the Union Labor Party was not
recognized nationally and soon vanished,61 Lease became a popular and sought after
speaker for the new Populist Party.62
Lease delivered over 160 speeches during the 1890 campaign season. Lease was
lauded as a capable and eloquent orator, and she was considered one of Populism’s “most
potent” speakers.63 Although she is historically famous for the phrase “raise less corn and
more hell,” there is now doubt among historians as to whether she actually uttered that
phrase.64 One of the earliest historians of Populism, O. Gene Clanton, called Lease the
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
“stem-widening prophetess of Kansas Populism.”65 She was recognized as a
68
primary reason that Senator Ingalls was defeated in 1891, which brought national fame.
As the Kansas Historical Society claims, when Lease joined the campaign, she traveled
“hundreds of miles by stagecoach crisscrossing Kansas. It was at a county convention
that Lease proposed the list of candidates should rightly be called the ‘party of the
people.’ Two months later, Lease gave the opening address at the state convention of the
People’s Party in Topeka.”66
Lease was described as being almost six feet tall and having a “contralto voice.”67
A reporter from the Salina Daily Republican on Dec. 19, 1893 wrote that her voice was
“remarkably loud” and “capable of much expression.”68 She spoke twice in 1891 at the
triennial convention of the National Council of Women in Washington D.C. on “Women
in the Farmers’ Alliance.”69 In April of 1891, Lease went on a two-week speaking tour in
Missouri. In June of 1891, she spoke to a crowd of 1500 at the local anniversary
celebration of the Knights of Labor.70 In August of 1891, she headlined as the “Modern
Joan of Arc,” delivering four lectures at Chautauqua in Lithia Springs, just outside of
Atlanta. In addition, she was the first woman to address the Georgia State Legislature.71
Throughout her career she was also considered by the Populist Party as a candidate for
the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, the Kansas governorship, and other offices. Her
supporters seriously considered her candidacy, as evidenced in The Wichita Eagle: “Mrs.
Lease is a forcible woman of much more ability than the average legislator elected,
regardless of party”72 On the other hand, her critics made statements like the following:
“Lease’s female ‘nervous system’ could not endure the trials of legislating, which were
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
‘not encountered in housekeeping.’”73 Lease rejected to being put on the ballot
69
as a candidate and only served as a party spokesperson.
She was also one of five delegates at large to represent Kansas at the 1892
Populist Party convention.74 The Arkansas Gazette even attributed Alliance political
victories in November of 1890 to Lease and her “army of Kansas women of like
spirit.”75After the convention, Lease traveled with presidential candidate General James
Weaver across the West and the South. She spoke at almost every campaign event, often
speaking up to eight times per day and in front of audiences of several thousand.76
According to fellow Populist Annie Diggs, General Weaver would often introduce Lease
as “our Queen Mary.”77 She also had several other speaking engagements in 1892,
including lecturing for the Y.W.C.A. in Iowa, at the Women’s League and Women’s
Industrial League Congress, and on “Issues of the Time” at Peerless Hall in Wichita.78
Her speaking style was natural and passionate. She delivered strongly argued and wellprepared speeches, often speaking extemporaneously.79 Her obituary in the New York
Times stated that she had a resounding voice and a knack for forceful phraseology that
carried conviction and enthusiasm.”80 As Clanton writes, Lease “had that special
something that made her a magnetic orator.”81 A pamphlet written by the Kansas
Historical Society even dubs her “the voice of the Populist Party.”82
As a prominent member of the Populist Party, Lease was appointed President of
the Kansas State Board of Charities in 1893. Her tenure was short-lived, however,
because of a public disagreement with Kansas Populist Governor Lorenzo D. Lewelling,
who had been elected in 1892. Lease was concerned about the trend of fusion between
the Populists and Democrats that existed in local elections in November of 1893, and
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
70
spoke out against the “corrupt” men in the Party who took advantage of that
political position. Her opponents accused her of being upset that Lewelling had attempted
to appoint a non-Populist as a member of the Board of Charities. Lewelling attempted to
have her removed from office that year, but she filed a petition in the Kansas Supreme
Court. The Supreme Court forced her reappointment in February of 1894, but this led to
the beginning of her dissatisfaction within the Populist Party.83 During the 1894
campaign, the party split into so-called fusionists and anti-fusionists. The Populist Party
was active until it merged with the Democratic Party in 1896.84
Lease is a unique female figure from the Gilded Age because she conflated the
argumentative styles of two political spheres. On the one hand, she acted as a mouthpiece
for the Populist Party through the use of arguments common to party rhetoric of the time.
In speeches at both Populist Party events and in her capacity as a woman’s rights activist,
Lease used religious imagery, morality, agrarian principles, and civic duty to be
persuasive, all of which were cited as prevalent throughout Populist discourse. On the
other hand, Lease spoke distinctively as a female leader continuing a female tradition.
She persuaded her audiences to accept her arguments not only because she was a
Populist, but also because she was a woman. Acting as a religious, moral, and patriotic
authority allowed Lease to participate in party rhetoric in an even more legitimate way in
her capacity as a female politician. In fact, her womanhood made her the ideal Populist
speaker. This, in turn, legitimized both Populist argument and her place as a female in the
“male” sphere of politics.
Religious and Moral Guide
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
71
Women were considered to be the moral compass of society, which
stems from, some argue, the history of the relationship between women and religion.
Women’s political participation began as early as Anne Hutchinson, who offered sermons
in her community asserting her religious beliefs, even when the political elite ordered her
to cease and eventually expelled her from the Massachusetts colony.85 This public
participation through religious means led Quaker women to serve as ministers and leaders
in their local communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many of the early
women’s rights leaders like Lucretia Coffin Mott, Susan B. Anthony and the Grimké
sisters were Quakers.86 Edwards writes that discourse of the time suggests that U.S.
society believed that women were more spiritual and moral than men. Thus, “this
ideology of female moral superiority offered a rationale for women’s involvement in a
host of reform activities, and it quickly led them into politics.”87
Although it was common for the Populists to use religious appeals in their
oratory, Lease’s use of biblical allusion was distinctive. Lease adopted a prophetic
persona, acting as a religious guide who could lead people toward future righteousness.
In addition, she did so through references to the use of biblical prophets. Her use of
religious appeals was significant because it recalled for the audience a distinctly female
form of argumentation. Lease was proving not only that she could toe the party line by
using popular Populist appeals. Through use of religious allusions and the Bible as a text,
Lease did more than use “acceptable” feminine argument forms. Acting as a religious
guide, or prophet, made her political voice acceptable in traditionally male space.88
According to Amos Kiewe, prophetic rhetoric is “addressed to audiences with the
specific objective of influencing people to take a different course of action,” and is
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
always “action oriented.”89 Further, her interpretive use of the Bible conjured
72
trust from her audience because of her womanly religious authority, giving her even more
ethos as a Populist speaker.
The use of revivalist style, biblical allusions and metaphors, and modern
approaches to religious doctrine were considered commonplace in Populist oratory.90
Some historians even describe Populist rhetoric as having an “evangelical political
impulse,” claiming that party spokespersons often attempted to elevate U.S. society to
higher moral ground.91 Populist campaign meetings often resembled the religious revivals
of the antebellum period, consisting of large outdoor gatherings of families and
impassioned oratory.92 As Edwards writes, “Christian imagery pervaded party rhetoric.”93
Lease’s speaking style certainly had an “evangelical fervor.”94 Orr writes, “Her speeches
more closely resembled religious revival oratory than any sort of constrained academic,
political language, prompting her opponents to mock that she encouraged chaos and
‘hollering crowds.’”95
Lease exemplified the Populist revivalist style in most of her speeches. She often
used biblical authority as the basis for an argumentative appeal, specifically through a
“prophetic logos.” This rhetorical style is based on the idea that “God invents” and the
prophet “delivers” a particular message.96 A few key examples from Lease’s Populist and
woman’s rights speeches showcase this pervasive rhetorical strategy. In a speech she
delivered at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago as a representative for the
Populist government of Kansas, she said, “From Kansas shall come the fulfillment of
scripture. Up from her plains, baptized with the blood of martyrs, shall come the prophet
Ezekiel’s vision, that breathing upon the dry bones of the world’s oppressed will clothe
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
73
them with new life, resurrecting the wisdom of the seers, the justice of Christ,
and all humanity will enjoy that liberty which the winds of Kansas forever play on
Aeolian harps…”97 Lease spoke in a prophetic way, framing Kansas as the holy place of
the future. For Lease, Kansas was the land that was living by God’s plan and would
continue to live righteously. Through vivid imagery and references to prophets, Christ,
and the ancient Greek God of the Winds (the Aeolian harps), Lease presented the
Populist Party as the guiding voice of Christianity. She also presented herself as the
prophet who could speak God’s vision through reference to the prophet Ezekiel.
Lease also used a prophetic appeal through the use of ancient prophets in her 1891
speech to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Lease proclaimed that the
Populists were “sending out the gladdest message to oppressed humanity that the world
has heard since John the Baptist came preaching in the Wilderness … The movement
among the masses today is an echo of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, an honest endeavor on
the part of the people to put into practical operation the basic principles of Christianity.”98
She continued, “let no one for a moment believe that this uprising and federation of the
people is but a passing episode in politics. It is a religious as well as a political
movement, for we seek to put into practical operation the teachings and precepts of Jesus
of Nazareth.”99 She made reference to the Old Testament as well when she said, “But we
shall have the golden age of which Isaiah sang and the prophets have so long foretold;
when the farmers shall be prosperous and happy, dwelling under their own vine and fig
tree.”100 All of these references emphasize individuality, spirituality, and safety. Through
biblical allusions, Lease spoke as the Populist voice of “the people,” encouraging faith,
guidance, unity, and strength.
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
74
Significantly, she acted with what Woodyard calls “prophetic pathos,” a
rhetorical move when “the prophet calls for a fundamental reordering of the audience’s
value system as a means to alleviate social injustice and replicate the natural ordering of
creation.”101 Whether referencing John the Baptist or Jesus of Nazareth, Lease called
upon biblical texts to encourage a future that was simultaneously new and traditional. She
spoke of advancing forward to a new era that replicated the values of the teachings of
Jesus. Lease acted as the voice of this movement, as a religious guide or prophet who
could see the future, through the use of biblical texts. For Lease and the Populists, their
new third party was the rightful voice of common citizens, and could represent them
faithfully and virtuously because of its adherence to these religious traditions.
Lease was able to advocate Populist principles as a religious authority, a role that
was considered socially acceptable for women to adopt. In her speech at the 1890
Populist convention, Lease promoted unity, while guiding a moral community. She said,
“”Let us unite prohibitionists and resubmissionists, republicans, and democrats, to stamp
out this unholy monster, the money power. Let our motto be more money and less
misery.”102 By using inclusive language like “us” and “our,” Lease automatically added
herself to the group as a partisan actor. She was clearly speaking on behalf of all those
who might have felt that they did not have a political party to truly represent their
interests. Although she promoted unity among political actors regardless of sex, Lease
also set herself up as a religious authority. The phrase “stamp out this unholy monster,”
suggested that she not only could identify those who were immoral or profane, but she
also was the right person to lead the group toward righteous actions. Through reference to
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
75
biblical texts, and as a woman and prophet, Lease became an even more
legitimate voice for the Populist religious cause.
Lease frequently highlighted her ability to be moral because of her womanhood.
This not only gained her entrance into party politics, but also made her particularly
appealing as a leader. By highlighting women’s traditional “strengths”, Lease interpreted
her involvement as not just welcome, but necessary. The Populists believed that ending
poverty, giving women the vote, and enacting prohibition would improve work and home
life. The party frequently “drew on Republican precedents to explain America’s
economic problems in domestic moral terms.”103 Populists used Republican and
Prohibitionist sentiments, arguing that men and women had a duty to protect the home.104
As an inherently moral woman, Lease was an ideal spokesperson for the party as she
campaigned for the protection of the home and its values. Lease advocated for this
Populist position in her capacity as female moral guide, interpreting past social norms for
her present rhetorical needs.
An excerpt from Lease’s address to the 1890 Kansas Populist convention
showcases her persona as moral guide. Lease said, “With such a party as is here
assembled today representing the great common people of today, the question is upon
what success depends. The old parties are depending upon the boodle they can circulate,
but this party does not depend upon the greasy boodle.”105 The “old parties,” in contrast
to the Populists, were painted as immoral and impure, depending on the “greasy boodle.”
Using the word “boodle” enabled Lease to speak as the representative of a more pure
political practice. Not only was this a common Populist Party line, but it was considered
appropriate feminine public rhetoric.
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
76
Perhaps the most obvious representation of Lease’s persona as moral
guide is present in her woman’s rights speeches. In a speech delivered in 1894 at
Representative Hall in Topeka, KS, Lease described why she believed women belonged
in politics:
As politics or the science of government is the basic rock of the altar at which we
worship – the foundation of the home – the foundation of the social system in
which we live – the structure upon which rests the happiness or unhappiness of
our people – women have resolutely entered that domain of politics and bid fair to
maintain there, as else where, her standard: “For God and Home and Native
Land.”106
Although it may seem as if Lease was simply proving herself as an educated member of
society, she was doing much more for the role of women in politics. She was
demonstrating phronesis, or practical wisdom, thus proving her ethos as a political leader.
Her understanding of the workings of government and its impact on citizens’ everyday
lives builds her credibility as a Populist leader.
Further, by linking government practice to basic home life, Lease suggested that
politics should be devoid of personal gain and interest and instead be concerned with the
average citizen and their happiness. Lease linked her moral guidance with the Populist
tendency to be interested in the affairs of the “people” in an uncorrupt way. This passage
also presented Lease as a spiritual leader. By describing politics as an “alter” of
“worship,” Lease’s authority on the subject included how politics worked, but she could
best speak on how to fulfill a political role. In her capacity as moral guide, Lease used the
ideals of faith and worship to justify a leadership role in politics and present the roots of
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
77
her moral positions. Finally, her reference to the WCTU through the slogan
“For God and Home and Native Land,” the group’s mantra, connected her to other female
moral leaders. This is exemplified in Lease’s 1893 statement to the Labor Congress in
Chicago, IL: “We women, I repeat, are not going to sacrifice our loved ones to help out
greedy bondholders. Ours is the mission to prevent you men from fighting, and we are
going to do it, you may be sure.”107
In her “female” capacity as moral guide, Lease could bring credibility to the
Populist Party as an authority on moral values. In her 1890 convention speech she said,
“We are depending upon the votes of freemen for our success, votes of men who will not
be bought or sold.”108 She used the pronoun “we” to insert herself into the conversation,
not even considering that she might be an outsider. More important, those voting a
Populist ticket were not immoral and would avoid accepting bribes and other forms of
political corruption. In essence, Lease justified her participation on the Populist oratorical
platform as a Populist and as a woman. In other words, as a woman, Lease could act as a
religious and moral guide for the Populists, setting them apart from other parties. Lease
was an appropriate spokesperson for the party of the moral high ground precisely because
she was a woman, wife, and mother.
A Domestic Political Guide
Lease’s rhetoric exemplified the common Populist appeal to the “ideal” national
values of democracy, independence, and self-sufficiency. Lease used patriotism in a
particularly female way to speak as party authority through recalling women’s civic duty
as Republican Mothers. That is, her power as a Populist orator stemmed from her
traditional role as a political guide within the home. This is evident in her use of the
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
78
founding of the nation. First, talk of conspiracy and monarchy was common in
Lease’s rhetoric in her capacity as a Populist and an activist. In his analysis of Populist
speech making, Jeffery Ostler asserts that, “expressions of an English conspiracy against
American liberties” was frequent in Populist rhetoric.109 According to Ostler,
“conspiratorial rhetoric” is often used by third parties as a way to “legitimize
extraordinary action.”110 Lease delivered her first public speeches on a statewide lecture
tour of Kansas on behalf of the Irish Nationalist “land war” cause, “calling for an end to
British landlordism and the exploitative ‘rack-rent’ system and advocating Ireland’s
home rule.”111 Her rhetoric was riddled with allusions to the British government,
frequently suggesting that the current economic and political system in the United States
reflected life under British rule.
Specifically, Lease linked the leaders of corporations in the United States with the
values of monarchy. In seconding the nomination of James B. Weaver for President in
1892, Lease said, “Give him to us and we will drive from the American shores the
English robbers with their stolen gold, and we will make plutocrats and monopolists
cringe and tremble. Give us Weaver, and no earthly power can keep us from sweeping on
to victory in November.”112 In a speech at Cooper Union in 1896, Lease said, "All history
is illustrated by the fact that new liberties cannot exist with old tyrannies. New ideals ever
seek new manifestations. The ideals of Christ could not live under the tyrannies of the
Roman government. The ideals of the founders of this Government could not exist under
the tyrannies of royal rule."113 In her speech in 1893 to the Columbian Exposition, she
said,“…and kings shall be no more, and the world will not tolerate hungry poor or idle
rich; neither shall be found tyrants, small or great, but they who obey the divine
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
79
injunction to earn their bread in the sweat of their face; honest toilers shall
constitute a state.”114 In these statements, Lease showed that history, as well as religion,
authorized the need for change, and the people of the United States were in need of a new
form of government to protect their liberties. By presenting this parallel to the American
Revolution and the fight against British “tyranny,” Lease not only presented the Populists
as the genuine “American” political ideal, but also became the person who could guide
the people toward that ideal.
Lease made the same sort of argument in her speech to the WCTU in 1891, a
speech about woman’s rights, which could also be described as a piece of Populist
campaign oratory. Lease said, “Crowns will fall, thrones will tremble, kingdoms will
disappear, the divine right of kings and the divine right of capital will fade away like the
mists of the morning when the Angel of Liberty shall kindle the fires of justice in the
hearts of men.”115 Here Lease spoke as a Populist warning against the threat of a new
monarchy to advance a different cause. One could argue, then, that she used Populist
partisan rhetoric to advance the fight for woman’s rights. This rhetorical positioning
makes Lease more than either a Populist mouthpiece or a woman’s rights activist. She
made woman’s issues and Populist issues one, using both to strengthen her position as a
female political spokesperson. Lease’s persona as a female political authority made her
arguments salient for both causes.
In addition to linking the Populist cause with the historical fight against
“tyranny,” Populists frequently emphasized traditional agrarian values, which included
the right to own land and be independent and self-sufficient. In addition, “yeomen” or
small farmers were considered “ideal citizens,” a tradition linking back to men like
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
Thomas Jefferson.116 Based on what Burkholder calls the “agrarian myth,”
80
Populists often argued that agrarian culture needed to be preserved in the face of growing
industrialization, mechanization, and financial corruption.117 Ostler suggests that
Populists also rooted their values in the traditions of “radical republicanism,” which
“originated among urban mechanics in the pre-revolutionary period and flourished in the
Jacksonian era.” According to Ostler, “Radical republicans accepted some aspects of a
market economy, but they invoked ideals of liberty and independence to denounce
monopoly, speculation, inequality of wealth, and deferential politics.”118 These values
were most often highlighted through anecdote, metaphor, and historical allusion in order
to solicit nostalgic emotional responses. Further, these ideals encouraged a common
cause between Populists and woman’s rights activists. According to Burkholder, both
groups’ “standards of decency and righteousness were virtually identical to those
embraced by the simple, honest, self-sufficient yeoman. Thus, the ideological affinity
between suffragists and Populists was strong.”119
Lease often used past texts to emphasize that she and the Populists were
continuing the genuine “American” tradition. For instance, in her 1893 speech at the
Columbian Exposition, she said, “Patrick Henry pled for liberty; Washington fought for
it; the philosophy of Jefferson perpetuated it; but Kansans live it.”120 In other words, the
Populists were continuing the quest for freedom that began with the early
Revolutionaries. This was not the only time that she placed the Populist actions in the
chronology of U.S. history. In her speech to the WCTU in 1891, Lease said, “We seek to
bring the nation back to the constitutional liberties, guaranteed us by our forefathers. The
voice that is coming up today from the mystic chords of the American heart is the same
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
81
voice that Lincoln heard blending with the guns of Fort Sumter and the
Wilderness …”121 A return to the original intent of the Constitution seemed to be the
ultimate aim of the Populist cause.
Further, Populist goals could be linked to a more recent U.S. tradition by referring
to Abraham Lincoln. She used Lincoln’s words in ending her speech to the WCTU with
the phrase, “government of the people, by the people.”122 In addition, using the words,
“the mystic chords,” from Lincoln’s “First Inaugural Address” and phrases from “The
Gettysburg Address” connected Lease to history and linked the Populist cause to
Lincoln’s political ideas. In effect, the Populists were the true inheritors of Lincoln’s
politics, which legitimized their political role and minimized the importance of the
Republican Party. Lease interpreted these historical texts strategically, presenting herself
and the Populists as the torch bearers of “American” ideals.
Lease and the Populists attempted to show that their goals were an extension of
the nation’s fight for freedom. She proclaimed in 1893, “The Farmers in every conflict
that has swept this country from the battle of Lexington down to the great rebellion have
always come to the front and have solved the great questions involved successfully.”123
Significantly, just as the Populist Party would continue fighting for freedom, so should
women. Lease combined the two political projects in her 1896 Populist speech at Cooper
Union: “Once we made it our boast that this nation was not founded upon any class
distinction. But now we are not only buying diamonds for their wives and daughters and
selling our children to titled debauchees, but we are setting aside our Constitution....”124
Lease presented herself as an expert on Constitutional liberty, claiming not only that the
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
82
Populist Party could return the nation to its rightful state and that she was
leading that quest.
This was evident in her 1894 speech in Topeka: “But the self-evident proposition
of Jefferson, in regard to the source and application of governmental authority, has been
suffered to remain unheeded through a century of experience.”125 In addition to adhering
to the common Populist appeal of recognizing the nation’s agrarian roots, Lease spoke as
a guide for the nation’s future. That is, by claiming that this “self-evident proposition”
had been “unheeded” throughout the century, Lease spoke as one who could lead the
country toward its fulfillment. According to her, Lease and the Populist Party represented
equality, liberty, and true patriotism. Her presumed authority on the nation’s most
revered documents was evident later in that same speech when she said, “Men cannot
represent us at the polls…and to pretend to do so is a violation of constitutional
liberty…”126 This speech, which ostensibly was about woman’s rights, became a speech
about democratic principles.
Although speaking as a Populist, Lease established her knowledge of the
principles of the Constitution on the basis that women were the authentic voice of the
republic. Throughout the nineteenth century, many women participated in politics in their
capacity as “Republican Mothers,” which emphasized that women’s role in the politics of
the nation was indirect but expressed by raising patriotic children.127 Linda Kerber and
others claim that “Republican Motherhood” allowed women to play a political role while
in the confines of their homes. As was described by a male character in an 1851 short
essay written by essayist Susan Warner: “An American woman may best show her
patriotism, I should think, by bringing up her sons to be patriots.”128 Lease used the basic
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
83
justifications for Republican Motherhood as reasons for women’s public
involvement in politics.
Lease believed that women should participate directly in the public political
conversation because of their obligation to help shape the political minds of future
generations. Clarina Howard Nichols, who “recast motherhood as the basis of woman’s
economic rights and full citizenship”, first established this argument.129 According to
Blackwell and Oertel, “Nichols’ style of politics set a standard for other female activists
who pursued a similar strategy in the second half of the nineteenth century, especially in
Kansas, where they built upon her legacy.”130 Orr points out that Lease used Republican
Motherhood as justification for woman suffrage. Lease also used this position to justify
her role as a Populist leader.131 By emphasizing woman’s unique understanding of the
goals of a republic and by referring to the Populist political fight in phrases like the “great
struggle for our little ones,” she linked political purposes to her maternal instincts and
capabilities.132
Lease extended the claims of Republican Motherhood farther than most women of
the time. For Lease, it was not enough to argue that women deserved to vote because they
were responsible for raising patriotic sons. Lease believed that women were patriotic
authorities and guides. She frequently spoke as an expert on patriotism and the
overarching goals of the nation. This was evident in her 1890 Populist convention address
when she said, “Unite friends and brothers. When dissension comes into our ranks, let us
unite hearts and hands; the conflict is for liberty, life and lands and the flag of our union
forever.”133 This authoritative statement on the meaning of patriotism directly referenced
the Lockean and Jeffersonian principles of the value of life, liberty, and property. Her
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
84
usurpation of patriotic authority was also evident in her 1893 address to the
Columbian Exposition, when she said, “My God? How any patriotic man today can be a
Republican or a Democrat is past my comprehension.”134 Lease assumed patriotism for
the Populist Party, but did so as a woman who was schooled in the meaning of patriotism
itself.
Much of Lease’s patriotic rhetoric was overtly linked to her role as Republican
Mother. In her speech at Cooper Union, Lease observed, “The heart of the nation is
aroused, and Principle and not Pelf is the watchword. The great heart of the nation beats
response to patriotism, and the nation is safe.”135 “Principle and not Pelf” is most likely a
reference to the well-known expression of patriotism in the famous Sir Walter Scott
poem “My Native Land,” which was a part of the longer poem “The Lay of the Last
Minstrel.”136 Republican Mothers arguably were the members of society who felt and
directed the “heart” of the nation. This is perhaps best illustrated in the statement she
made in seconding Weaver’s nomination for President at the 1892 national Populist
convention: “Let me, in behalf of the women of the nation, who have by word or work
aided you so nobly in your grand struggle for liberty, and in behalf of the Sunflower state,
second the nomination of a true and tried friend of the people – the grand champion of
human liberty, that hero, of a hundred battles – brave, bold James B. Weaver.” 137 Besides
demonstrating how women contributed to the success of the party, Lease became the
spokesperson for those women. In addition, her persona as patriotic guide justified, and
perhaps necessitated, her important role in the Populist Party. She continued, “Give us
General Weaver, and not only the mothers, but the very children will do battle for
him.”138
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
85
A Natural Right to Political Citizenship
In an attempt to obtain Marshall’s “political citizenship,”139 women of the time
had to prove that sex was irrelevant to the needs of political participation. Some women
argued that it was “personhood” that should determine presence in the political world, not
sex. To justify her presence, Lease often attempted to prove her physical ability through
references to hands, connecting herself to the plight of woman as laborer. If women’s
physical presence in the political arena was questioned, Lease made an attempt to link
men’s and women’s physical experiences. If their experiences were parallel, there was no
justifiable reason to exclude women from public participation. As Nathan Stormer writes,
the body can “function as the limit and authorization of political power.”140 This was
done primarily through references to the experiences of men and women in agricultural
labor. In Topeka in 1894, she said, “While conceding that women, of right and necessity,
must enter the field of competition and join in the terrible hand-to-hand struggle for
existence,”141 emphasizing woman’s physical contribution to suggest that was reason
enough for political equality. Men and women both struggled to make a living, often
working side by side. In that vein, both should be able to fight for Populist ideals of
citizenship. When paired with the Populist sentiment in speaking on behalf of farmers
and laborers, Lease becomes a distinctive spokesperson. This type of appeal can be seen
again in Lease’s 1891 speech to the WCTU when she said, “Our loyal, white-ribbon
women should be heart and hand in this Farmers’ Alliance movement.”142 Their
commitment and hard work justified their presence in the Populist Party and Lease’s
place as a public, Populist orator.
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
86
As a party representative, Lease emphasized the need for progress,
regardless of sex. She reiterated that the Populist Party platform was about listening to
the issues that people cared about in order to pursue the fundamental goals of human life.
These appeals can be seen in her introduction of Susan B. Anthony in Wichita in October
of 1896. Lease used this opportunity to align the experience of the Populist Party and the
Woman’s Rights movement. She fused her authority as a politician and a woman’s rights
leader. She said, “For ages, the oppressed of all nations, the toiling millions of every land
have sent up a wailing protest against monied might, against gigantic monopoly, against
corporated capital. For ages the voice of their appeal has fallen upon hearts of stone and
ears of brass.”143 This statement linked the experience of women with the experience of
the Populists – both were struggling against those who refused to hear their pleas. Lease
pitted the woman’s rights activists and the Populists against the Democrats and the
Republicans. She continued, “In vain they looked to party to represent them. In vain they
sought party to redress their wrongs, till at last their pitiful wailing changed to muttered
discontent, their discontent to passionate utterances…”144 The people were the
momentum for change. They found a voice of their own. Like the woman’s rights
movement, the Populists gave a voice to those unrepresented by the current political
parties. Lease became the voice for both movements because of their parallel struggles
for political representation.
Language that suggested momentum for change was present in her speeches
delivered on the Populist lecture circuit. In an 1895 speech in Dallas, TX, Lease said of
the Populists, “The movement is spreading like wild fire, the people everywhere are
becoming thoroughly alive to the great issues that must be settled in a way that will
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
87
insure the greatest good to the greatest number, and the prospects for 1896 are
most favorable.”145 Use of the metaphor “spreading like wildfire” suggests uncontrollable
momentum. Coupled with her interest in all people expressed in the phrase, “greatest
good to the greatest number,” Lease reinforced her leadership and her forward thinking.
Her language became even more ambitious in a remark made in 1896 at Cooper Union:
"We stand to-day at the beginning of one of those revolutionary periods that mark an
advance of the race. We stand at a period that marks a reformation.”146 Once again
connecting the values of the Populist movement to revolutionary history, Lease stressed
that progress should be the most important political value. In addition, Lease attempted to
show that the so-called corruption and abuses of the Democrats and Republicans would
disappear in the face of the Populist movement. At the 1890 convention, she said,
“Tyranny, usury, autocracy, and plutocracy shall fade away like the mists of the
morning.”147 Moreover, the opposing politicians would become victims of natural
occurrences and fade away.
Natural progression was present in her woman’s rights speeches as well,
particularly through the use of light/dark metaphors. In her introduction of Susan B.
Anthony before a speech in Wichita in October of 1896. Lease claimed a parallel
between the experience of the Populist Party and the Woman’s Rights movement:
Until in one day we hear coming up from the people, and reverberating from state
to state, the calm, strong protest of resolute, faithful, organized men – men who
are in earnest, and what may we not hope for, what may we not look for from men
who are in earnest? The laboring masses of today are slipping off the bondage of
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
88
the past, and perusing in letters of fire by the vivifying light of inevitable
conquest, the magna charta of the liberties of man.148
It is obvious that this statement was an expression of Populist political principles. Its
place in a speech introducing a woman’s rights activist was an indicator that Lease
attempted to bring the two movements together through her language. She also suggested
that change was inevitable because of the honest and serious work of the working people
of the country. Note her use of “men” in this passage, another illustration of Lease’s
attempt to represent the Populist Party in her capacity as a woman. She encouraged
support and passion for the “organized men.” In addition, she used “fire” and “vivifying
light” to insinuate that the Populist movement was full of passion and promise.149 She
continued, “In behalf of this humanity a woman world known and world honored will set
forth her powers of eloquence tonight. The new dawning of a glad era is shining from the
hearts of men...”150 Lease is no longer referring to the Populist movement, but to Susan
B. Anthony and the woman’s movement. Language about the “dawning” of an era brings
hope for the future, perhaps suggesting that the woman’s movement would pursue
Populist goals even after the People’s Party disintegration in 1896. In statements like
these Lease overtly brought the issues of the two movements together and became the
ideal spokesperson for both as a person and a citizen.
Significantly, Lease represents a woman who demanded political personhood
through her womanhood. She utilized traditional female roles to encourage momentum
for change. Just as her 1894 speech in Topeka suggested that women’s presence in
politics was an extension of their rightful place in society, she emphasized the idea that
this position was natural. In the same speech, Lease said, “It has been said that woman
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
89
has a higher and holier sphere within the United States, but the government,
whose laws we must obey, whose laws we have no hand in making, comes unbidden into
every home and broods at every fireside.”151 In addition to being left out of the process,
Lease believed that current politicians were corrupt. She continued, “Masculine politics
have invaded and degraded the home.”152 Exclusion of women from their deserved
participation was, for Lease, the reason for the degradation of politics. In this way, Lease
connected the Populist cause and the woman’s rights movement. Both were working to
weed out the corruption of the current “masculine” political system. She claimed, “Our
entry as wives and mothers into the political and legislative fields is not the result of
individual tastes or morbid sympathies, but is a prime necessity, for the purification of
politics and the elevation of the race – a factor to remove political and legal disabilities,
weed out corrupt political tricksters and bestow a blessing on posterity.”153 For Lease,
participation in the political field was not just an option, but a necessity of social
existence for women and Populists alike.
Political citizenship, for Lease, meant fully participating in the public partisan
conversation in one’s own capacity and utilizing one’s own talents. Here Lease adopts a
persona for political personhood that embraces political womanhood. Her use of
religious, moral, and patriotic appeals take on new meaning in this context. Equality of
the sexes and unique gendered contributions to the political conversation were
fundamental to Lease’s existence and, according to Lease, to the political process itself.
In this way, all of her appeals are persuasive and powerful because of her ardent
dedication to motherhood.
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
90
Direct involvement in political parties was necessary because of the
power women had as mothers. Lease emphasized the importance of motherhood in the
search for moral and political guidance. As Orr observes, “Mary Lease in fact remained
firmly tied to the notion that women best served their nation and community through
motherhood, and she regarded motherhood as women’s central and most important social
role, despite her calls for women’s direct involvement in the political sphere.”154
Goldberg adds, “Although Lease chose to put forth, even exaggerate, a masculinist
persona, there was one boundary she dared not cross. Motherhood was still a sacred
subject.”155 Lease’s attempt to bring women directly into the political sphere was because
of their status as mothers and citizens. In her 1894 speech in Topeka, she said,
We carefully and tenderly guard our boys in infancy and childhood; we baptize
them with tears and sanctify them with a mother’s prayers. They go forth at the
dawn of manhood, from the shelter of the home roof. We may not follow them.
The wild beasts of lust and drunkenness beset their paths. Man-made laws
interfere, and they say to the mother: “Go back to your home; you cannot follow
your boys into the miasma of politics; you cannot go with him to the polls, to help
him close, by the mother’s voice and mother’s influence, the saloons and
gambling and brothel houses that are luring his soul to hell. You are women.”156
Maternal influence was the key to the success of the system. Further, it was Lease’s
ability to be a moral guide fighting against the “miasma,” or the corruptive atmosphere,
that demanded her participation in politics as a woman. Women could not function as
moral guides if excluded from the system.
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
91
It was not uncommon for Lease to utilize domestic virtue as a rhetorical
tool. Her conflation of her domestic obligations as a woman and the political goals of the
Populist Party is significant. Orr writes, “Lease and her supporters freely oscillated
between associating her political work with socially proscribed masculine, aggressive
behavior and with feminine domestic virtue, suggesting that gendered political discourse
was increasingly fluid as Gilded Age society broke down Victorian gender-role
hegemony.”157 This is obvious in an excerpt from her 1891 WCTU address:
We find at the present time upward of a half-million women in the Alliance, who,
because of their loyalty to home and loved ones and their intuitive and inherent
sense of justice, are investigating the great social economic and political
problems, fully realizing that the political arena is the only place where the
mighty problems of today and tomorrow can be satisfactorily fought and settled,
and simply qualified to go hand-in-hand with fathers, husbands, sons and brothers
to the polls and register their opinion against legalized robbery and corporate
wrong.158
Lease argued that women could not continue to fulfill their prescribed social function
without entering political space. I argue that, for Lease, woman’s qualification for
participation in the political world went beyond domestic virtue. By highlighting the
“intuitive and inherent sense of justice” of women in the Farmers Alliance, Lease
emphasized their natural right to be there. Significantly, this speech, seemingly about the
participation of women in politics, became a speech against “legalized robbery and
corporate wrong,” an ardently Populist political stance. Lease’s rhetorical maneuvering is
significant not only because she used accepted feminine social norms to justify
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
92
participation in “masculine” political space, but because she did so as a Populist
spokeswoman. In other words, Lease made the fight for woman’s rights and the fight for
the People’s Party one and the same, often using them to highlight one another. In so
doing, Lease presented a credible partisan voice and proved the need for women to have
political citizenship.
Conclusion
Lease made every attempt to increase her credibility as a woman participating in
the “male” world of politics. She entered space typically closed to women, and did so
while ardently defending the female social role. Lease made her political affiliation more
about issues than about partisanship. Perhaps the Populist Party was appealing to her
because of the ability of third parties to speak on issues that mainstream political parties
feared would alienate their base. On the other hand, perhaps she was an appealing
spokesperson for the Populists for a similar reason. The Populists took on moral issues,
prohibition, and woman suffrage in a period when the Democrats and Republicans
refused to do so. Lease was an ideal mouthpiece for the Populist platform because her sex
made her a powerful spokeswoman. That is, masculine and feminine norms of public
address came together in the style and substance of Lease’s rhetoric, which worked in
favor of the Populists. Lease enacted political womanhood through articulating a
feminine rhetoric that justified her role in masculine space.
After breaking with the Populists, Lease moved to New York to continue to
pursue her career. She joined the staff of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1897 as a
feature writer, and actively campaigned against William Jennings Bryan and the
Democrats in the election of 1900. According to Blumberg, “By 1900 she had completely
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
93
reversed herself politically, writing scorching articles against both Bryan and
the Populists, and campaigning statewide for McKinley and the Republicans in
Nebraska.”159After moving her family to New York, Lease divorced Charles Lease in
1902, claiming nonsupport. She made her living primarily as a paid lecturer, continuing
her involvement in politics for many years. She also worked as a lecturer in an evening
educational program for adults under the New York Board of Education.160 She was
active in the Republican Party during the first decade of the twentieth century, and joined
the campaign for Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party in 1912.161 Lease died in
Callicoon, New York, on October 29, 1933, at the age of 84.162
The coverage of Lease by the contemporary press reflects the tension that existed
at the time around social expectations of gender performance. Supporters of Lease
highlighted her femininity. The Kansas City Star described her as, “a tall woman – fully
five feet ten inches, and rather slender. Her face is strong, good, not pretty, and very
feminine.”163 In his profile in Metropolitan Magazine in 1894, Livermore wrote, “There
is something charmingly womanly and even appealing in the personality of Mrs. Lease
and this appeal of the woman united with a certain rugged logic born of earnest
conviction, is perhaps her greatest power upon the platform.”164 In addition to this praise
about her speaking ability and her “womanly” personality, Lease was often criticized by
reference to her more “masculine” qualities. For example, in a letter to the Editor in the
Grand Rapids Evening Press, a woman named Marie H. Davidis wrote: “There is nothing
refined and womanly in Mrs. Lease. She takes a very pessimistic view of life and the way
she portrayed men – the picture she made of certain women and their slave-like attitude
towards men as their superiors was to me perfectly disgusting.”165 The New York World
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
94
published the following when describing a speech Lease gave at Cooper Union:
“Striding to the edge of the platform, Mrs. Lease stretched out her hand, clenched the
fingers and then roared with masculine energy.”166
Issues of gender performance are a significant part of the impact that Lease had
on history and society. As Orr writes, “Mary Lease’s political career and the explicitly
gendered responses it inspired illustrated the ongoing significance of gender ideology in
American politics during the Gilded Age and foreshadowed the continued influence of
gender ideology in constructing political discourse as the twentieth century dawned.”167
Lease spent most of her career championing the struggle for equality for
underrepresented groups. She did so by strategically utilizing social norms and
expectations to her advantage, constructing a rhetoric that was ultimately about
progressing toward a new future. The Journal of the Knights of Labor introduced one of
her speeches this way: “And the cyclone…that overtook the enemies of the people’s
rights last November, proves what a mighty factor the women of the Alliance have been
in the political affairs of the nation.”168 The imagery of a cyclone, with its organized yet
chaotic rotating movement, is perhaps a perfect metaphor for Lease’s activities. She
gathered strength by gaining the respect of several groups, and propelled herself into
territory rarely traversed by women at the time.
Mary Elizabeth Lease created a new role for women in politics, enacting the idea
that women could simultaneously be party leaders and exemplars of feminine virtue. In
fact, it was their socialized role that made them essential leaders of third party
movements. Clinton ended her biographical account of Lease with the question: “When
death silenced the voice of this vibrant personality, what legacy did she leave - - a dream,
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
a protest, an ideal, or merely an epithet?”169 I argue that by acting as a religious,
95
moral, and domestic political guide, Lease acted as a powerful Populist spokesperson and
made room for party women in positions of leadership. Her ethos as a woman made her
apt for articulating typical Populist argument. Lease enacted an egalitarian partisan
political personhood that set the tone for future female political leaders.
Notes for Chapter Two
1
Kansas Commoner, January 22, 1892, quoted in Betty Lou Taylor, “Mary Elizabeth Lease: Kansas
Populist” (PhD Diss., The Municipal University of Wichita, 1951).
2
"Not Mary Yellin’: She’s Mary Elizabeth Lease and a Regular Curiousity,” Minneapolis Tribune, March
1, 1894, 1.
3
“Oh Woman! Meeting of the Wichita Woman’s Suffrage Association at Memorial Hall,” Wichita Daily
Beacon Dec 7, 1896.
4
Brooke Speer Orr, “Gendered Discourse and Populist Party Politics in Gilded Age America.” Kansas
History: A Journal of the Central Plains 29 (Winter 2006-2007): 249.
5
Burkholder, Thomas R. “Mary Clyens Lease,” in Women Public Speakers in the United States, 18001925, ed. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 111-124; Thomas R.
Burkholder, “Kansas Populism, Woman Suffrage, and the Agrarian Myth: A case Study in the Limits of
Mythic Transcendence,” Communication Studies 40 (1989): 292-307.
6
Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,” The
American Historical Review 89.3 (June, 1984): 627.
7
Michael McGerr, "Political Style and Women's Power, 1830-1930," Journal of American History 77
(December 1990): 866.
8
Dorothy Rose Blumberg, “Mary Elizabeth Lease, Populist Orator: A Profile.” Kansas History I (1978), 7.
9
Richard Stiller, Queen of the Populists: The Story of Mary Elizabeth Lease (New York, NY: T.Y. Crowell
Co.,1970). James Costigan, “An Analysis of Selected Speeches by Mrs. Mary E. Lease,” (Thesis for Master
of Science, Southern Illinois University, 1960); Betty Lou Taylor, “Mary Elizabeth Lease: Kansas
Populist,” (Master’s Thesis, The Municipal University of Wichita, 1951).
10
Orr, 248.
11
Blumberg, 15; Katherine B. Clinton, “What Did You Say, Mrs. Lease?” Kansas Quarterly I (1969), 52;
Burkholder, “Mary Clyens Lease,” 111.
12
Taylor, 1; “Mary Lease Dead: Long Dry Agitator,” New York Times, October 30, 1933, 7.
13
Orr, 249.
14
“Mary Lease Dead: Long Dry Agitator.”
15
This account was taken from a manuscript written in longhand by JAS Arnold, who might have been
Mary E. Lease, from the Kansas State Historical Society Manuscript Division, and was recounted in
Taylor, 1.
16
Burkholder, “Mary Clyens Lease,” 111; Blumberg, 26.
17
Harry Levinson, “Mary Elizabeth Lease: Prairie Radical,” Kansas Magazine (1948): 19; Clinton, 52.
18
Orr, 249-250.
19
Burkholder, “Mary Clyens Lease,” 111.
20
Blumberg, 3.
21
Qtd. In Blumberg, 4.
22
Mary E. Lease, “Are Women Inferior?” Kingman County Citizen, January 31, 1884, 9.
23
Blumberg, 4.
24
Taylor, 4.
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
25
96
Blumberg, 4-5.
Burkholder, “Mary Clyens Lease,” 112; Blumberg, 8-9; Taylor, 17.
27
“Fought for Forty Years: Susan B. Anthony The Champion of Woman’s Rights is Here,” Kansas City
Times, May 13, 1894, 2.
28
Raymond Miller, “The Background of Populism in Kansas,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review
XI (1925), 470.
29
Miller, 476.
30
Donald H. Ecroyd, “The Agrarian Protest,” America in Controversy: History of American Public
Address, ed. DeWitte Holland (Dubuque, Iowa: WM.C. Brown Co. Publishers, 1973): 171.
31
Jeffrey Ostler, “The Rhetoric of Conspiracy and the Formation of Kansas Populism,” Agricultural
History 69.1 (Winter, 1995), 4.
32
Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1978), 26; Ostler, 4.
33
Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the
Progressive Era (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 92-93.
34
Ecroyd, 173.
35
Blumberg, 5.
36
Edwards, 91.
37
Blumberg, 6.
38
Ecroyd, 173.
39
Orr, 250.
40
Burkholder, “Kansas Populism, Woman Suffrage, and the Agrarian Myth A case Study in the Limits of
Mythic Transcendence,” 292.
41
Edwards, 94.
42
Orr, 253.
43
Burkholder, “Kansas Populism, Woman Suffrage, and the Agrarian Myth:” 292.
44
Ecroyd, 176.
45
Ecroyd, 172; Blumberg, 5, 29.
46
Margaret Walsh, “State of the Art: Women’s Place on the American Frontier,” Journal of American
Studies 29 (August 1995): 248.
47
Ostler, 5.
48
Robert J. Dinkin, Before Equal Suffrage: Women in Partisan Politics from Colonial Times to 1920
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), 89.
49
Dinkin, 90.
50
“An Idol of the Pops,” Kansas City Times, June 14, 1894, 1.
51
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance,” Journal of the Knights of
Labor, April 2, 1891, 2. For more comments on Populism and gender issues, see Michael Lewis Goldberg,
An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1997).
52
Edwards, 101.
53
Edwards, 102.
54
Edwards, 103.
55
Edwards, 104.
56
Edwards, 114.
57
Dinkin, 91.
58
Edwards, 99-100.
59
Jo Freeman, A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics (New York, NY: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 36.
60
Levinson, 20; Taylor, 9.
61
Blumberg, 5.
62
O. Gene Clanton, Kansas Populism: Ideas and Men (Lawrence, KS: The University Press of Kansas,
1969), 74; John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party
(Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press, 1931), 160; "Not Mary Yellin’: She’s Mary
Elizabeth Lease and a Regular Curiousity.”
26
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
63
97
Ecroyd, 176; Edwards, 103; Blumberg, 6; Orr, 252.
Various historians cite her use of the phrase, but few cite a source. In addition, she denied saying it on
two different occasions. Blumberg, 3; Clinton, 56, 58; Levinson, 18.
65
Clanton, 73.
66
Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Populist Joan of Arc (Topeka, KS: Kansas Historical Society, 2009).
67
Blumberg, 6.
68
Qtd. in Costigan, 42.
69
Blumberg, 7.
70
Blumberg, 7.
71
Blumberg, 7.
72
Taylor, 15.
73
Orr, 258-260.
74
Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Populist Joan of Arc.
75
“Mrs Mary Lease.” Arkansas Gazette, August 30, 1891, 10.
76
Blumberg, 9.
77
Qtd. In Costigan, 36; Taylor, 27.
78
Taylor, 22.
79
Clanton, 76.
80
“Mary Lease Dead: Long Dry Agitator,” 7.
81
Clanton, 75.
82
Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Populist Joan of Arc.
83
Accounts of the scandal with Lewelling are reported in “Won Her Case: The Supreme Court of Kansas
Decides for Mrs. Lease,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 9, 1894, 7; Blumberg, 10; Costigan, 36-37,
Taylor, 46, 49-51; Kansas City Star, January 2, 1894.
84
Freeman, 36.
85
Young, 297-299.
86
Young, 300.
87
Edwards, 5.
88
Use of religious references was a common rhetorical tactic used by several woman’s rights activists
throughout history. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Willard, and Sarah and Angelina Grimké frequently
utilized biblical appeals to legitimize their arguments and their place in the public conversation. For
examples of these speeches, see Man Cannot Speak For Her Volume II: Key Texts of the Early Feminists,
ed. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell (New York, NY: Praeger Publishers, 1989). For an analysis of the power of
religion in feminist rhetoric, see Phyllis M. Japp, “Esther or Isaiah?: The Abolitionist-Feminist Rhetoric of
Angelina Grimké,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (1985): 335-348.
89
Amos Kiewe, “Theodore Herzl’s The Jewish State: Prophetic Rhetoric in the Service of Political
Objectives,” Journal of Communication & Religion 26 (2003): 210.
90
Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007). Postel describes
the Populist approach to religion as in harmony with the more modernized conception of the role of the
Church as it related to science and progress. He associates Populist thoughts with the more liberal sect of
Christianity, including Christian free-thinkers and even non-Christian schools of thought.
91
Orr, 252-253; Postel, Chapter 8; Edwards, 92.
92
Orr, 252.
93
Edwards, 94.
94
Blumberg, 3.
95
Orr, 252.
96
Kerith M. Woodyard, “’If by Martyrdom I Can Advance My Race One Step, I am Ready for It’:
Prophetic Ethos and the Reception of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible,” Journal of
Communication & Religion (2008): 280.
97
“Extols the Virtues of Kansas,” in Women at the Podium: Memorable Speeches in History, ed. S.
Michele Nix (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc., 2000), 82.
98
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance,” 2.
99
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance,” 2.
64
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
100
98
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance,”2. This reference to the
vine and fig tree is a direct reference to 1 Kings 4:25: “And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under
his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.” In addition, the fig
tree is a safe place for prayer and reflection in The Book of John 1:48.
101
Woodyard, 280.
102
Topeka Daily Capitol, August 14, 1890.
103
Edwards, 92.
104
Edwards, 96.
105
Topeka Daily Capitol, August 14, 1890.
106
Mary E. Lease. “The Legal Disabilities of Women.” Speech on Feb. 7, 1894 at Representative Hall in
Topeka, KS. Excerpt in Thomas R. Burkholder, “Mythic Conflict: A Critical Analysis of Kansas Populist
Speechmaking. 1890-1894, Volume Two” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1988), par. 15.
107
Mary E. Lease, “Speech Before the Labor Congress,” The Monitor (Abilene), September 7, 1893, 8, in
Thomas R. Burkholder, “Mythic Conflict: A Critical Analysis of Kansas Populist Speechmaking. 18901894, Volume Two” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1988), par. 4.
108
Topeka Daily Capitol, August 14, 1890.
109
Ostler, 2.
110
Ostler, 4.
111
Orr, 250.
112
Kansas Commoner, July 7, 1892, quoted in Taylor.
113
“Cheered Mary E. Lease,” New York World, August 11, 1896.
114
“Extols the Virtues of Kansas,” 82.
115
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance,” 2.
116
Burkholder, “Kansas Populism, Woman Suffrage, and the Agrarian Myth: A case Study in the Limits of
Mythic Transcendence,” 294.
117
Burkholder, “Kansas Populism, Woman Suffrage, and the Agrarian Myth: A case Study in the Limits of
Mythic Transcendence,” 294.
118
Ostler, 23.
119
Burkholder, “Kansas Populism, Woman Suffrage, and the Agrarian Myth: A case Study in the Limits of
Mythic Transcendence,” 298.
120
“Extols the Virtues of Kansas,” 81.
121
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance,” 2.
122
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance2.
123
Lease, “Speech Before the Labor Congress,” par. 1.
124
“Cheered Mary E. Lease,” New York World, August 11, 1896.
125
Lease, “The Legal Disabilities of Women,” par. 2.
126
Lease, “The Legal Disabilities of Women,” par. 28.
127
Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill,
NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 283.
128
Elizabeth Witherell, “How May an American Woman Best Show Her Patriotism,” Ladies Wreath 5
(1851): 313-27, reprinted in Sharon Estes, “Susan Warner’s ‘How May an American Woman Best Show
Her Patriotism,’” American Periodicals 19.2 (2009): 221.
129
Marilyn S. Blackwell and Kristen T. Oertel, Frontier Feminist: Clarina Howard Nichols and the
Politics of Motherhood (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 7.
130
Blackwell and Oertel, 5.
131
For more on Lease and woman suffrage, see Orr, 260.
132
Topeka Daily Capitol, August 14, 1890.
133
Topeka Daily Capitol, August 14, 1890.
134
Lease, “Speech Before the Labor Congress,” par. 3.
135
“Cheered Mary E. Lease,” New York World, August 11, 1896.
136
For full text of the poem, see Scottish Poems ed. Gerard Carruthers (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf,
2009), 42.
137
Kansas Commoner, July 7, 1892, quoted in Taylor.
138
Kansas Commoner, July 7, 1892, quoted in Taylor.
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Feminized Populist
139
99
T.H. Marshall defines this as “the right to participate in the exercise of political power, as a member of a
body invested with political authority or as an elector of the members of such a body” in Citizenship and
Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 5. This is explored in a more expanded way
in Chapter 1.
140
Nathan Stormer, “Embodied Humanism: Performative Argument for Natural Rights in “The Solitude of
Self,” Argumentation and Advocacy 36 (Fall 1999): 51.
141
Lease, “The Legal Disabilities of Women,” par. 5.
142
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance,”2.
143
“The Meeting: Memorial Hall Crowded to its Utmost Capacity to Hear Miss Susan.” Wichita Daily
Beacon, October 21, 1896.
144
“The Meeting: Memorial Hall Crowded to its Utmost Capacity to Hear Miss Susan.”
145
“Was Persuaded to Talk: Mrs. Mary Lease Tells the Texans What to Expect in Politics,” Kansas City
Times, August 26, 1895, 1.
146
“Cheered Mary E. Lease,” New York World, August 11, 1896.
147
Topeka Daily Capitol, August 14, 1890.
148
“The Meeting: Memorial Hall Crowded to its Utmost Capacity to Hear Miss Susan.”
149
This language is again present in her 1893 speech to the Columbian Exposition: “All the world shall
come up the path which we have blazed and bask in the light which we have kindled,” “Extols the Virtues
of Kansas,” 82.
150
“The Meeting: Memorial Hall Crowded to its Utmost Capacity to Hear Miss Susan.”
151
Lease, “The Legal Disabilities of Women,” par. 10.
152
Lease, “The Legal Disabilities of Women,” par. 12.
153
Lease, “The Legal Disabilities of Women,” par. 31.
154
Orr, 260.
155
Goldberg, 179.
156
Lease, “The Legal Disabilities of Women,” par. 12.
157
Orr, 248.
158
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance,” 2.
159
Blumberg, 12.
160
The Daily Picayune, April 4, 1907, 6.
161
Clinton, 54.
162
“Mary Lease Dead; Long Dry Agitator.”
163
Qtd in Clinton, 54, from a clipping from April 1, 1891 in “Kansas Biographical Scrapbook.”
164
A.L. Livermore, “Mary Elizabeth Lease: Foremost Woman Politician of the Times,” Metropolitan
Magazine (November, 1894): 266.
165
“Letter to the Editor,” The Evening Press (Grand Rapids), July 25, 1901.
166
“Cheered Mary E. Lease,” New York World, August 11, 1896.
167
Orr, 265.
168
“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Kansas Prophet of the Farmers’ Alliance,” 2.
169
Clinton, 59.
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
100
“Happy indeed are the women who have
not only the brain and the heart, but the power…”
~Judith Ellen Foster1
Chapter Three:
Frances Elizabeth Willard And Judith Ellen Foster, Principled
Partisans
“A Washington gathering called by the suffragists to commemorate the Seneca
Falls convention of 1848 and designed to unify the woman’s movement by drawing
together representatives of a wide variety of organizations”2 was held in 1888. At this
International Council of Women, several prominent woman’s rights activists spoke and
engaged in debates about the role of women, the struggle for equality, and potential
directions for the future. In addition to speeches by women like Susan B. Anthony, two
women addressed the Council on two different issues.
Anthony introduced WCTU President Frances E. Willard. She spoke about a bill
she had presented to Congress “to pass a law to raise the age of consent to eighteen years
in the District of Columbia and the Territories,” and she asked the women to sign a
petition in support. She said, “Out of the aggregation of men by themselves, always
comes harm; out of the coming of men and women into true, and noble, and high
conditions, side by side, always comes good.”3 Lawyer Judith Ellen Foster, also
introduced by Anthony, spoke on “Women in Politics.” In a reference to Anthony,
Willard, and their moral leadership, Foster proclaimed: “so I say to you tonight, dear
friends, that the lady who presides over this meeting, who has for so many years stood at
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
101
the head of this great movement, so I say to you that the lady who presides
over the great temperance movement of this country, I say that these two women are a
moral power in this nation, and are mightier than they would be if they led armies. Why?
Because it is moral power that counts.”4 Willard and Foster both praised morality in
politics, women’s leadership, and the need for women’s participation. In addition, Foster
gave high praise to Willard, even calling her a “peerless orator.”5 One would not guess
that, at this time, the two were in the midst of an intense public debate over partisanship.
Willard had worked hard throughout the 1880s to align the Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU) with the Prohibition Party, a third party that endorsed
prohibition and woman suffrage. Foster, who ardently protested against that alliance, left
the WCTU in 1889 to form the Non-Partisan Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
(NWCTU). Believing partisanship to be an individual choice that should be independent
of the reform movement, Foster sought to prevent an alliance with the Prohibition Party,
In addition, she was a long-standing member of the Republican Party. That these two
women bonded over moral leadership at the 1888 International Council of Women is
indicative of their attitudes toward women’s involvement in politics. Both women
belonged to different parties, but espoused the same values. Both women used moral
appeals to justify women’s participation in politics. The quintessential political event of a
national nominating convention and their speeches at such an event shows how women
combatted the constraints on their sex.
Significantly, both women became leaders of their respective parties. In a historic
moment, Willard addressed the Prohibition Party national nominating convention in
1888, delivering the “Decoration Day” address, a coveted and prominent speech at the
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
102
convention. A banner above the speaker’s platform said: “No North, No South,
No Distinction in Politics, No Sex in Citizenship.” 6 Foster actively campaigned for
Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888, who won the election. Four years later, during
the same summer that Mary Elizabeth Lease addressed the Populist Party convention
seconding the nomination of James Weaver for President, Foster gave an address at the
Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, MN as the head of the Woman’s
National Republican Association (WNRA). Foster was also the first woman ever to
address a Republican Party national convention. 7 The convention was held from June 710, 1892, and Foster spoke on the last day of the convention. To introduce her, a clerk
read aloud a letter from Foster to the New York delegation of the Republican National
Convention in which she described the work of “Republican women for the maintenance
of Republican principles and the election of Republican candidates.”8 She was then
introduced as the “Chairman of the Woman’s Republican Association of the United
States” and delivered an address on the role of women in the Republican Party.
Through an analysis of these two convention addresses, one can compare and
contrast the strategies used by women in such an unprecedented position.9 As the first
women to break a barrier by addressing party members in one of the most traditional
political spaces, these two women used similar rhetorical strategies, despite their
differing political affiliations and beliefs. Previous scholars confirm that both women
were “feminine” arguers. Their adherence to True Womanhood and moral citizenship
was an important part of their rhetorical personae, themes present in both addresses. How
they utilize these strategies toward rhetorically performing political womanhood,
however, shows the significance of their addresses. Willard enacted political womanhood
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
103
through rhetorically performing femininity as patriotic authority. Foster
asserted her femininity as a reason for her participation in the party, while asserting her
rights as a political citizen. Both women used femininity as a strategic tool to seamlessly
enter unchartered male political space.
As Campbell points out, “Willard’s rhetorical alchemy involved relabeling and
reframing proposals in ways that transformed them from demands for social change into
reaffirmations of traditional arrangements and values.”10 This strategy can be seen in both
Willard’s and Foster’s convention addresses. Specifically, both women tapped into the
iconic nature of the nominating convention and highlighted national and patriotic
memory to assert women’s rightful place within political parties. They strategically
structured their speeches so as to assert their place avoid threatening their audiences. By
examining Willard’s 1888 Prohibition Party convention address and Willard’s 1892
Republican Party convention address, one can identify the rhetorical strategies involved
in being a political party female participant. Willard was a more accepted speaker at her
convention, as she had been one of the founders and most influential voices in the party.
Foster had much less influence because she addressed an older and larger political party.
Both women, however, had to prove they were worth listening to in such an environment.
Their strategies demonstrate how they used their individual rhetorical styles in order to
gain ethos in this quintessential space of U.S. party politics.
Frances Willard: The “Partisan” Prohibitionist
Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was born to parents Josiah F. Willard and
Mary Thompson Hill Willard in Churchville, New York, on September 28, 1839.11 When
she was two, her family moved to Oberlin, Ohio. Her father then developed symptoms of
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
104
tuberculosis and, at the suggestion of his doctor, the family moved to
Janesville, Wisconsin Territory, to live “an outdoor life” in 1846.12 Life on their
extensive farm in Janesville was, at times, isolating. There were no schools, and the
Willards would live for most of the year without human interaction outside of the
family.13
Both of her parents were educated, having taken courses at Oberlin College
before the family moved to Wisconsin. Her father, however, believed women belonged in
the home, and so Frances and her sister, Mary, studied at home with their mother for
several years.14 In 1848, her father Josiah was elected to the Wisconsin legislature. While
he was away in Madison during the legislative session, her mother educated Frances and
Mary. When Frances was 17, her father agreed to let his two daughters attend Milwaukee
Female College, a school where their aunt was teaching. After one term, they transferred
to the new North Western Female College in Evanston, Illinois. After graduating in 1859,
Frances Willard spent sixteen years teaching, primarily at schools for girls in several
different locations.15 She even served as Preceptress at Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, the
college that Judith Ellen Foster and Belva Lockwood both attended over a decade
earlier.16
Early in her education, Willard became interested in the “Woman Question.”
Slagell points out that, “As early as 1860, at the age of 20, she copied long excerpts from
a Henry Ward Beecher pro-suffrage speech.”17 In the late 1860s, Willard traveled
throughout Europe and returned to the United States determined to improve the lives of
women, initially through higher education.18 She encouraged her students to become
interested in women’s issues, even assigning debate topics concerning temperance and
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
like issues to her classes.19 In 1871, Willard became the president of the newly
105
opened Evanston Ladies College and later the first Dean of Women at Northwestern
University.20 Two years later, when financial aid for the college diminished because of
the Chicago fire, the Ladies College was absorbed into Northwestern University. Because
of administrative differences, and what Mattingly called “demeaning treatment of her
ideas and unjustified challenges to her authority,” Willard resigned from her position and
entered the world of social and political reform.21
The temperance movement had been in existence since the beginning of the 19th
century. According to Slagell, “As early as 1809 groups were circulating pledges to
abstain from distilled spirits. But with the 1826 emergence of the American Temperance
Society (ATS) the movement hit its pre-Civil War stride.”22 Evangelical religious leaders
who “used moral suasion to encourage people to pledge total abstinence from distilled
spirits” led the organization.23 By the 1830s, temperance groups began to advocate total
abstinence from liquor, and in some states, passage of prohibition laws. Women had long
been involved with the movement, but in the 1850s, as the issue gained more national
attention, leaders became concerned about women’s public involvement. In 1852, the
New York Sons of Temperance denied the Daughters of Temperance equal participation
in their organization, leading women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
to form the Women’s New York State Temperance Society.24 Debates about slavery and
the Civil War stalled the movement’s growth, but women became active again in 1873.
Between December of 1873 and the fall of 1874, the “Women’s Crusade” swept
the nation.25 More than 57,000 women marched through the streets and prayed in front of
saloons.26 According to Slagell, “women who had never before spoken in public could be
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
106
heard singing and praying in the churches, outside saloons, and even inside
saloons when bartenders gave them leave. In some towns crusade fever spread beyond
street protests and into public demands for enforcement of policies such as Sunday
closing laws.”27 Women would even kneel in saloons and place Bibles on bars to try to
convince saloon owners to stop selling liquor.28 According to Dillon, “in about six
months some three thousand saloons are said to have been closed.”29 In several states,
those who participated in the Women’s Crusade began to organize into local Woman’s
Christian Temperance Unions, and in the fall of 1874, 16 states came together to form a
national organization. The national WCTU received support from Protestant churches
and “were part of a moral reformism based in values of sobriety, sexual morality, and
Protestant religious ethics.”30 As Slagell writes, “the WCTU quickly became the largest
organization of women in America and brought not only new people, but a new fervor,
and a broader perspective to the temperance movement, helping that movement play a
central role in the reform energies of the Gilded Age.”31 Although Willard was not
involved in the Women’s Crusades, she quickly identified the temperance movement as a
prime space for her leadership.
Involvement with the temperance movement was a “conscious and pragmatic
career choice.”32 Willard and her family had long been temperance advocates, and she
delivered her earliest temperance address before the Evanston Temperance Alliance in
the 1860s.33 According to Dow, Willard wanted to continue fighting for women’s issues,
and “her choice to identify herself with women’s temperance activities rather than with
woman’s rights reflects the strategic thinking she would demonstrate as the leader of the
WCTU.”34 Many viewed the woman suffrage movement as radical, whereas the growing
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
107
woman’s temperance movement “could achieve advances for women while
presenting itself in the guise of moral reform, a more respectable pursuit.”35 Immediately
upon her resignation, Willard became President of her local WCTU in Chicago, and a
few months later she became secretary of the WCTU in Illinois.36 In addition, she was
invited to help found the Association for the Advancement of Women at a meeting of the
Woman’s Congress at the Union League Club in New York City in October of 1873.
According to Dillon, she was chosen “to provide a voice for moderate feminism at a time
when the suffrage movement seemed marked by radicalism and eccentricity.”37 Bordin
describes this meeting as Willard’s “eastern debut.”38 In 1874, she was chosen as a
delegate to the Cleveland, Ohio, temperance convention at which the National WCTU
was formed, and was elected corresponding secretary.39 In the historical account of
women co-edited by Willard and Mary Livermore, Willard’s career choice was thus
described: “Her soul had been stirred by the reports of the temperance crusade in Ohio
during the preceding winter, and she heard the divine call to her life-work.”40
Willard served as President of the National WCTU from 1879 until her death in
1898.41 Under her leadership, the WCTU grew from 27,000 members to over 250,000
members nationwide.42 According to Dow, Willard’s “organizational genius and
rhetorical acumen were the primary reasons for the growth of the WCTU under her
leadership.”43 She set the agenda for the National WCTU for almost two decades,
enlarging its sphere and expanding its reform efforts. As Dillon writes, “Under her
leadership the Union quickly adopted new objectives and new methods. Hitherto a
praying society dedicated to temperance, it soon became a strong women’s movement,
solidly rooted in the Midwest, which promoted not only ‘temperance’ – total abstinence
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
and legal prohibition – but also a broad range of other causes.”44 This was
108
partly reflected in Willard’s so-called “Do Everything” policy, a broad reform program
tackling issues ranging from prison reform to kindergartens to health and hygiene.45 By
1890, the national WCTU had 39 departments organized into the three overarching areas
of temperance, labor, and woman.46 Significantly, Willard moved the relatively
conservative membership of the WCTU toward support of woman suffrage.47 Most
historians credit Willard with forming the WCTU into an attractive organization that,
according to Campbell, “met the needs of women who were frustrated in their attempts to
effect change by influencing men.”48
One of the WCTU’s main initiatives was the rhetorical education of women, a
program that undoubtedly stemmed from Willard’s earlier involvement with higher
education. Mattingly describes this program in detail in her study of temperance rhetoric,
describing the WCTU as a “tremendous network for providing leadership opportunities
for women: scores of offices and departments on the national level, and thousands on
state, district, county, and local levels, that would require workers to become publicly
active writers and speakers.”49 Because most women were not educated in the arts of
rhetoric or elocution, many women sought this education within movements like the
WCTU. According to Mattingly, the WCTU rhetorical education program was
“especially successful because new members learned public presentation from skillful
teachers who understood women’s particular needs.”50 Willard was a prime example of
such an educator, as she was someone who not only built her career around public
performance and argument, but also was skilled at the art of persuasion. In fact, as
Campbell writes, “Willard’s power came from her leadership ability which, in turn, was
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
directly related to her skill as a speaker.”51 The national WCTU created a
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department for “Training Schools,” which was later changed to “Schools of Methods and
Parliamentary Usage,” which taught women such topics as “the Best Methods of
Influencing Public Opinion,” engaging with the “Press,” and participating on the
“Platform.”52 In its instruction, the WCTU leaders taught women to combine “a modified
version of the classical ‘good’ speaker with patriotic and biblical allusions in order to
establish credibility and create authority for their public roles.”53 This was a style perhaps
best illustrated by Willard’s own rhetoric, as she frequently encouraged “womanliness
first.”54
Willard spent most of her career traveling the country and lecturing on a range of
issues. Significantly, she would speak to women “first through their interest in protecting
their homes and families as well as the homes of others in the community from the
ravages of alcohol, she encouraged these women to see themselves as serious participants
in the political community.”55 Throughout her speaking career she coined several
historical phrases associated with the WCTU, including their primary motto, “For God
and Home and Native Land.”56 Accompanied often by her mother, and almost always by
her close confidant and personal secretary, Anna Gordon, Willard had visited every state
and territory in the United States by 1883.57
In addition to her rhetorical leadership, Willard broadened the scope of the
WCTU through publishing. According to Dow, the Union Signal, the official journal of
the WCTU, “was the most popular women’s paper in the world, with a circulation of
almost 100,000.”58 She also founded the Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
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(WTPA), which published writings of the WCTU and several of Willard’s
personal writings, including four books, and several essays, pamphlets, and speeches.59
Willard is remembered by most for her unmatched leadership of the WCTU and
efforts for woman’s rights. She is one of the most well known women of her time,
partially because of the incredible archive of material that she left for scholars. In
addition to her reform work, Willard was one of the first women to hold a position of
leadership within a political party. The Prohibition Party was started in 1869 by a
religious group called the Good Templars in New York. The group accepted women into
their ranks from the beginning, seating thirty women as delegates at its founding
convention.60 As Prohibition interests expanded over the next decade, the Prohibition
Party grew in both membership and influence. Prohibition Party membership came
predominantly from the Midwest and the Northeast. Its primary stances included
asserting that both the Democratic and Republican parties were influenced and
manipulated by liquor interests, and that “the liquor traffic endangered democracy” by
preventing an individual from recognizing “his self-interest, a critical prerequisite for
working democracy.”61 As Edwards writes, “Prohibitionists accused men in both major
parties of the intemperance, violence, and sexual corruption that GOP leaders charged to
Democrats. In place of such debauched manhood, the third party presented men of pure
character and ‘manly tenderness’ and women of the ‘most exalted virtue.’”62 Prohibition
Party members were predominantly evangelical, and their religious messages were
evidenced in their party rituals. As Edwards writes, “Prohibitionists contrasted the virtues
of these faithful family men with the behavior of politicians in the major parties”63 It was
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111
the involvement of Willard and the WCTU, however, that enabled the party to
develop an influential national image.
The Prohibition Party was the party of the Gilded Age that most publicly and
prominently featured the value of its female membership. Because the main issue for the
party was promoting Prohibition, and because women had long been involved in the
temperance crusade, the fit seemed natural. Even in the 1870s, before the party formally
organized with the WCTU, women began to circulate petitions and canvass communities
in order to elect “dry” candidates to local or state positions.64 Women also served on
platform committees and represented their states at national meetings by 1875. At the
local level, “women’s participation was a constant feature of party life.”65
Andersen argues that the Prohibition Party embraced women’s involvement for
both practical and philosophical reasons. Practically, because partisan politics was “labor
intensive,” and because their membership was significantly smaller than the Republican
or Democratic parties, women could help spread the message through passing out
pamphlets, organizing rallies, getting people to the polls, and speaking to constituents.66
As Andersen writes, “Some Prohibitionists suggested that when women solicited
newspaper subscriptions, fundraised, or distributed campaign materials, the gendered
aspect of their canvassing made it more effective than when similar work was performed
by men.”67 At conventions, women spoke, wrote resolutions, participated in debates, and
voted on the platform.68 Philosophically, women members ideally could use their moral
authority to aid in combatting the corruption of the two major parties.69 Regardless of
why women participated, the Party remained supportive of woman’s rights for most of its
tenure, adopting a woman suffrage plank at its first national convention in 1872, which it
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
renewed at almost every convention thereafter.70 At the 1880 national
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convention, ten of 142 delegates were women.71
Willard might have had a penchant for third party politics, as her father was a
member of the Free Soil Party in the 1840s.72 Willard grew up fascinated by politics,
even claiming that she would listen to her mother and father talk about politics as a child
and that her mother was a ”tremendously potential politician”73 Her family had been
Republican since 1856, and most of the WCTU membership was Republican “in its
traditions.”74 She began to organize “Home Protection” clubs outside of the WCTU, most
of which were made up primarily of WCTU members. Bordin cites this as a smart choice
by Willard because it “developed organized support within the Union for Prohibition
Party affiliation, and it provided a strong constituency that Willard could use to bargain
for influence within the Prohibition Party at its next convention.”75 After supporting
Republican James Garfield in 1880 with the failed hope that he and the Republican Party
would endorse both suffrage and prohibition, Willard formed her own “Home Protection
Party” in 1881.76
Even before Willard, WCTU leaders were involved with the Prohibition Party.
Andersen cites Amanda Way, Eliza Stewart, Mattie McClellan Brown, and Harriet Goff
as WCTU leaders who also held party positions before Willard’s presidency. In fact,
“Connecticut’s women Prohibitionists suggested the alliance’s deep historical roots when
they founded a state WCTU in 1874 while attending a party convention.”77 In 1882, the
Prohibition Party merged with Willard’s Home Protection Party to create the Prohibition
Home Protection Party. It increased party membership by tens of thousands, and gave
women a significant role to play.78 As Willard wrote in her autobiography, “I there
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113
became officially related to a political party as a member of its central
committee and have been thus related almost ever since.”79 Willard was not only one of
the founders of the party, but also one of its most vocal leaders. She served as a member
of the executive committee of the Prohibition Party from 1882 until 1891. In fact, the
party had little success with their male candidates before the involvement of the women
of the WCTU.80
When the Democrats, Greenbackers, and Republicans all failed to endorse
prohibition in 1884, the Prohibition Party nominated John P. St. John for President of the
United States at its own nominating convention in Pittsburgh, PA. Willard gave a speech
seconding the nomination.81 John St. John was the former Republican governor of Kansas
who had passed the state’s prohibition amendment.82 Willard described the 1884
Prohibition Party convention in the following way: “It was a gathering never to be
forgotten!...Careful hands had decked the old hall with mottoes and flags, pictures and
banners, all symbolic of ‘Down with the saloon and up with the home.’ Mary A.
Woodbridge, of Ohio, was chosen one of the secretaries, and women were on every
committee.”83 Many historians claim that the party was responsible for Republican James
Blaine’s loss of the presidency in 1884.84 St. John won over 150,000 votes.85 Willard was
also invited to give a major address at the 1888 national convention. During the 1888
presidential election, Willard actively campaigned nationally for Clinton B. Fisk, the
Prohibition Party’s nominee. She and Helen Gougar were the two most active female
campaign speakers. Gougar even followed Anna Dickinson and Judith Ellen Foster on
the campaign trail, countering their Republican speeches with a speech for the
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
Prohibition Party.86 As Edwards claims, “Prohibitionist men offered women
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unprecedented power inside a party structure.”87
Judith Ellen Foster: The “Non-Partisan” Republican
Judith Ellen Horton was born the third daughter and youngest of ten children in
Lowell, MA, on November 3, 1840, to parents Jotham Warren Horton and Judith Delano
Horton.88 Her parents were both of Puritan ancestry and were devoutly religious.89
Jotham was a blacksmith who became a Methodist minister, but died when Foster was
12. Because her mother died when Foster was six, Foster then moved to Boston to live
with a married sister, where she attended school at Charlestown Female Seminary. From
1855-1856, she attended Genesee Wesleyan Seminary. Coincidentally, she seemingly
was a classmate of Belva Bennett Lockwood, who was also at Genesee Wesleyan in
1855.90 She was a teacher until she married Addison Avery in 1860. In December of
1860 she gave birth to a daughter, Mary Elizabeth, and in 1863, a son named William
Horton. Mary Elizabeth died at the age of five. The Averys moved to Montreal and then
to Chicago in 1865. According to Byrne, “their marriage was unhappy,” and they
divorced.91 Judith Avery met lawyer Elijah Caleb Foster while working at a Sunday
school in a poor Chicago neighborhood. They were married in July of 1869. Born in
Canada, Elijah Foster established his law practice in Clinton, Iowa. The Fosters had a
son, Emory Miller, in 1870, and a daughter, Ellen Orilla in 1871, who also died when she
was five years old.92
Under her husband’s guidance, she studied law while raising her children, and
began to practice law in the early 1870s. In 1872, Foster became the first woman in Iowa
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
115
to be admitted to the bar, and in 1875 became only the fourth woman to be
admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of Iowa.93 Foster and her husband shared the
law practice of “Foster and Foster,” and she practiced law for most of her life. In
addition, the Fosters continually engaged in missionary and charity work. Moreover, she
became increasingly involved with her local temperance organization. Her involvement
even caused some local tension, evidenced by an act of arson on the Fosters home in
1874, allegedly by one of the local saloon keepers.94 Supported by her husband, Foster
began to volunteer as a WCTU organizer.95 Like Willard, Foster was also a delegate to
the first WCTU convention in 1874. She became a national leader, and in 1880 became
the WCTU’s legal advisor and the Superintendent of Legislation and Petitions.96 She and
Willard met at the 1874 convention and “became great friends,” as “Miss Willard urged
Mrs. Foster to go on the platform and devote herself to the cause of prohibition.”97 As
Superintendent of Legislation and Petitions, “she made nationwide speaking tours
advocating prohibition and woman suffrage.”98
Apparently, Foster was a charismatic and successful public speaker. On June 5,
1874, the DeWitt Observer described her public speaking as follows: “One of the best
temperance lectures we ever listened to was delivered in the M.E. Church last Sabbath
evening by Mrs. Foster of Clinton. The house was filled to overflowing. The audience
was delighted with the lecture.” Again, on August 6, 1874, the Observer reprinted an
article from the Lyons Mirror that said: “We have an Elizabeth Cady Stanton in our
midst. Last Sabbath evening I went to Clinton to hear Mrs. Foster lecture on temperance.
The several congregations combined filled the church to its utmost capacity. She gave
one of the best addresses upon this subject I ever heard. It really appears to me she is
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
equal to any lady orator in the United States.”99 As Mott writes, “Thus it
116
appears Mrs. Foster had attained a local reputation as a very effective and eloquent
temperance orator, and was in demand in her section of the state.”100 In addition to her
speaking career, Foster published several pamphlets and articles, including one in 1882
titled The Constitutional Amendment Manual, which described organizational techniques
for pre-election canvases of voters.101 She also wrote a few articles on women’s
involvement in politics, and published a volume titled For God and home, and native
land. The truth in the case, concerning partisanship and non-partisanship in the WCTU,
in 1889. The volume was a direct refutation of a pamphlet written by “the General
Officers” of the national WCTU called “Facts in the Case” and the “Monthly Reading”
dispersed to WCTU members, and written by Frances Willard.
In addition to speaking on temperance, Foster was in demand as a speaker for the
Republican Party. She actively campaigned during the 1884, 1888, and 1892 elections.
As Mott states, “During the 1884 political campaign Mrs. Foster was in great demand as
a speaker, not only in Iowa, but made many addresses in other states, speaking under the
auspices of the Republican National Committee…For the next ten years she delivered
hundreds of addresses, speaking in all parts of the United States, frequently on politics,
but oftener on temperance, on which she spoke in many churches, as well as in public
halls.”102 Women had been involved with the Republican Party since its creation,
although in a much more limited capacity than the women of the Prohibition Party.
The visibility of women in the Republican Party came to the forefront during the
presidential election of 1860, when women sat in galleries at the Republican National
Convention, and one woman, Mary Livermore, gained access to the floor as a reporter.
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
117
Just like Whig women in the 1840s, Republican women hosted parties,
attended rallies, and marched in parades.103 This continued during the Civil War, when
women increasingly wrote pamphlets, tracts, and newspaper columns.104 Perhaps the
most famous Republican woman of the time was Anna E. Dickinson, who gave speeches
for the Republican Party from 1862 to the 1890s. As Freeman writes, her speeches “were
deemed so essential to its electoral success in New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York,
and Pennsylvania that she was invited to address Congress in January of 1864.”105 She
spent the rest of her career as a lecturer, often paid by candidates to speak for them on the
campaign trail. The Democrats were sufficiently intimidated by Dickinson’s success that
they employed their own women, New Orleans actress Emma Webb and Irish-American
Terese Esmond, to combat Dickinson’s lectures.106 Willard even named Dickinson as
“her primary role model for female public speakers.”107
Notably, after passage of the 15th Amendment, newly emancipated African
American women in the South began to participate in Republican campaigns. Although
the amendment only enfranchised Black men, the Southern Black population in the South
understood the need for racial solidarity. Whereas female involvement in the North was
still seen as distinct from the male right to the ballot, the southern African American
community viewed access to voting rights as a collective victory. That is, African
American men and women had a sense of the ballot as collectively owned, with both
sexes able to use their influence in order to better their position in society.108 The
Republican Party was the party that offered them the greatest chance. At the Republican
state constitutional convention in Richmond, VA, for example, thousands of African
American men, women, and children went to the convention site to participate in the
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118
proceedings, an activity they would continue to do throughout the 1860s. The
Reconstruction Act of 1867 required Confederate states to hold constitutional
conventions, and African American men and women intended to be more than mere
observers. There was robust activity from both men and women, as both sexes took part
in voting, gave speeches, and participated in committee discussions. This differed
significantly from southern white women, who sat silently in the gallery. 109
Brown argues that African American Richmonders developed an internal political
community that gave women significant agency, a practice that seemed to be common
among the growing African American communities in the South. Women voted in
meetings, participated in public debates, marched in parades, and attended
conventions.110 The Richmond evidence suggests that African American women also
organized their own political societies, like the Rising Daughters of Liberty. These
societies participated in political campaigns by educating people on the issues, raising
funds, and getting out the vote.111 Tera Hunter mentions a African American cook and
laundress named Hannah Flournoy, who ran a boarding house that was often a gathering
place and safe-haven for Southern Republicans.112 In Mississippi, women wore
Republican campaign buttons in 1868, and in South Carolina, Louisiana, and other
places, women were sent as representatives of their communities to political meetings.113
At these meetings, women were sometimes charged with protecting the proceedings by
guarding the door with guns.114 It was generally understood that African American
women had an invested interest in their husband’s vote. Some women were even
encouraged to call off engagements if their men voted Democratic, or to abstain from sex
with their husbands if they voted Democratic, and some even organized groups to enforce
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
these social expectations.115 A few even gave speeches at some campaign
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rallies.116 Freedwomen were fiercely partisan, often going so far as to expel Democrats
from their churches or refuse room and board to Democratic husbands or sons. In fact,
well-known African American writers Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Anna Julia
Cooper frequently claimed that Black women were the tried and true Republicans.117
Despite the high level of involvement that southern African American women
experienced during the beginning of Reconstruction, their involvement caused Democrats
to charge that the Republican Party was being influenced by “negro wenches.”118 The
role that African American women played in Southern politics declined in the late 1860s,
and women were formally excluded from Republican meetings by the end of the
decade.119 African American women’s experience just after the end of the Civil War in
the South, however, represents a key aspect of the development of women’s increased
political participation. As Brown writes, “unlike many northern white middle-class
women, southern African American women in the immediate post-Civil War era did not
base their political participation in justifications of superior female morality or public
motherhood. They did not need to; their own cultural, economic, and political traditions
provided rationale enough – ‘autonomy was not simply personal.’”120 African American
women’s public involvement in the politics of the South, however short-lived, illustrates
the development of political womanhood. Woman’s role in politics was considered
collective and communal -- a role that would be developed further later in the century.
After the height of the Reconstruction era had passed, the Republican Party
continued to utilize women’s activism. In addition, woman suffrage advocates continued
to foster a relationship with the Republican Party, believing it to be the only major party
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
120
with the potential to back suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony attended the Republican National Convention in 1868, and claim that after that
year, a woman attended every national convention of each major party.121 Despite a rift in
the suffrage movement, the American Woman Suffrage Association and the National
Women Suffrage Association both supported Republican Ulysses S. Grant in 1872,
putting aside their differences and working together to re-elect President Grant over antisuffrage Democrat Horace Greeley.122 Interestingly, formerly staunch Republican Anna
Dickinson campaigned for Greeley, thinking that Grant’s unproductive first
administration did not deserve support.123 The leaders of NWSA disagreed with
Dickinson, and they published a statement encouraging women to forget the unfulfilled
promises of the Republican Party and instead to campaign for Grant. Hoping to utilize the
influence of the woman’s rights leaders, the Republican National Committee published
and distributed the statement nationwide.124 Furthermore, Susan B. Anthony went to
Washington to consult with Republican National Committee about how best to assist the
campaign, and sent woman suffrage leaders with Republican candidates on speaking
tours and at campaign rallies.125 In fact, most suffrage leaders stumped for Grant in 1872,
including Stanton, Anthony, Stone, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Olympia Brown, Ida H. Harper,
and Abigail Scott Duniway.126
The allegiance between the Republican Party and woman suffrage organizations
began to unravel in the 1880s. By that time, both AWSA and NWSA members were
frustrated by the Republican Party’s failure to support woman suffrage, and often argued
that female partisan campaign work “distracted women from true advancement.”127
However, this frustration did not vitiate their Republican loyalties, and leaders like
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
121
Anthony, Stanton, and Blackwell, and publications like The Woman’s Journal,
frequently and enthusiastically endorsed Republican candidates.128 The advocacy for the
Republican Party did not last long after 1884; Anthony and Stanton split publicly in 1888
when Stanton supported the Prohibition Party and Anthony remained loyal to the
Republicans.129
Arguably the first significant Republican Party leader was Foster. Like Willard,
Foster delivered a message that women played a distinct role in politics, and that their
moral superiority could clean up corruption.130 Foster and her husband were ardent
Republicans, and this partisanship was obvious in many of Foster’s career choices. In
1884, Mott describes Foster as in great demand as a speaker, not only in Iowa, but in
many other states, speaking under the auspices of the Republican National
Committee.”131 After the Republican Party endorsed “equal pay for equal work” in their
1888 platform, Foster began to organize women.132 As Edwards writes, “Foster preferred
to cast her lot with the most palatable party in power and wait for it to take up the issue
closest to her heart.”133 She continued to argue for Prohibition by attending meetings of
“Anti-Saloon Republicans” during 1888 to encourage support for a temperance plank in
that year’s party platform.134
Foster also formed the new Women’s National Republican Association (WNRA)
in 1888 with the support of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Chairman of the
National League of Republican Clubs and member of the Republican National
Committee, James Clarkson, a Republican also from Iowa, approved the program. The
RNC believed that these women’s clubs could help to educate the population on
Republican policies and candidates. The WNRA was given an office adjoining the RNC
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
in New York City.135 The WNRA had significant financial backing from the
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likes of temperance advocate and Republican John D. Rockefeller. According to Byrne,
“in 1888 the Fosters moved to Washington, D.C., where Elijah Foster was given a minor
Justice Department appointment while his wife continued her party work, becoming a
familiar figure in state and national Republican conclaves."136 Edwards writes that by
1892, “the NWRA’s paid staff included Foster, a secretary, a publicity director, and 300
field workers. Republican leaders apparently covered all expenses, including travel
funds.”137 Foster continued to head the group until her death.
Edwards argues that much of the push for Republican support for women was
class based, as middle-class women attempted to connect to other women across class
lines in an age when women were increasingly wage earners and important participants in
the economy.138 The NWRA traveled nationally to rally women to support Republican
candidates and educate women on Republican issues. Edwards writes, “Rather than
promoting parades and fireworks, the National Women’s Republican Association copied
the educational campaign style pioneered by young men in the Northeast. From New
York City, Foster and her staff directed women to form local clubs that would ‘study,
discuss, and circulate party literature.’”139 Foster actively encouraged women’s
participation, even offering a prize for essays written by women about government.140
Foster’s program did not include advocacy for issues like temperance and woman
suffrage, as she spread the message that women should support Republican candidates,
“whomever they might be.”141 This demonstrates the vision that Foster had of party
politics, which stood in sharp contrast to Willard’s. This tension came to a head in 1889
at the WCTU national convention.
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A Definitional Debate: Partisanship and Political Exercise
As president of the WCTU, Willard spent the 1880s advocating for the WCTU’s
official endorsement of the Prohibition Party.142 Because the Prohibition Party shared
many of the same goals and espoused many of the same values, Willard believed that this
party could be the WCTU’s door to institutional political influence. As Edwards writes,
“Women as well as men justified Prohibitionism by reference to the sacred trusts of
family and faith, cloaking partisan and suffrage advocacy in the rhetoric of motherhood
and Christian obligation.”143 Willard capitalized on these strategies when trying to
convince the WCTU to formally endorse the party and its candidates. Her advocacy for
the Prohibition Party was not popular with all of the WCTU membership, particularly
Foster and her Iowa WCTU cohorts. They were not alone, as many of the Northern
members of the WCTU remained loyal Republicans throughout the 1880s and 1890s.144
As Edwards states, “Struggles in the 1880s left a legacy of division within the Union,
between those who endorsed partisan Prohibitionism and those who resented Willard’s
efforts to prod them along. For many if not most of these women, the problem was not
their commitment to nonpartisanship but the new party’s interference with loyalties they
already held.”145 The decade-long debate between Willard and Foster demonstrates the
tension that existed among reform women about the definition of partisanship and its role
with women.
The Iowa Republican Party had adopted planks in their platform supporting
prohibition, primarily because of the hard work of Foster. Willard’s biographer Bordin
writes that Foster “could not accept WCTU alignment with the Prohibition party, which
usually drew what votes it got at the expense of Republican strength, and if Willard was
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124
determined to have the WCTU firmly in the Prohibition party camp, she was
equally determined to prevent it.”146 This is a simplistic approach to the tension that
existed. After examining Willard and Foster’s statements on the matter, it is clear that the
two women had differing views on partisanship itself. Willard believed that the WCTU
should align itself with the party that would endorse its reform program. As she claimed
in her 1884 Annual Address to the WCTU titled “Gospel Politics,” “Party inclosures
must be broken down, that men who think and vote alike may clasp hands in a political
fraternity where the issue of to-day outranks that of yesterday or of to-morrow.”147 She
believed that the failure of Republicans and Democrats to endorse prohibition and woman
suffrage meant they were not supportive of the WCTU and its policies. She continued,
“Existing parties can not in the nature of the case, take up this question. Not to this end
were they born; not for this cause did they come into the world. Upon this issue the voters
who compose them are irrevocably divided.”148 For Willard, partisanship meant aligning
with the party of principle, regardless of electoral success.
In contrast, Foster held that: “The result of an election is an aggregate
result…Politics deal with the masses, reforms deal with the individuals. As a reformer I
am a Prohibitionist; but as a Republican I am the best I can get.”149 Foster’s protest
against joining forces with the Prohibition Party was more over political choice than
partisanship itself. Foster believed that involvement in reform movements was a choice
independent of partisanship. As Freeman points out, “Foster actively discouraged
Republican women from merging reform and partisanship. She felt that women could
participate in reform work, including the movement for woman suffrage, as individuals,
but that as Republicans they should support the party’s candidates.”150 In addition, Foster
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125
and her husband were ardent Republicans, and she did not want her
membership in the WCTU to hinder her support of the party. Foster claimed that
endorsement of the Prohibition Party was “wrong in principle. A moral reform
association, having as its test of membership a total abstinence pledge, ought not to ally
itself with any organization, political or otherwise, having no such test of membership”151
In addition, Foster believed partisanship to be a political right and should be an
individual choice, not one made by an organization. To that end, Foster articulated her
stance in 1887 in her protest to the WCTU: “We assert the right of each member of any
philanthropic society to their denominational and political preferences to be inalienable
and beyond the just power of any majority to transfer.”152 For Foster, in part because of
her strong Republican allegiances, participation in a political party was a matter of rights.
She described this in the formal protest issued to the WCTU in 1885: “In contravention
of this equality of rights…it uses the collective influence of the Union, and its moral
power, as an entirety, including that of the opponents of this policy, in the upbuilding and
advancement of a political party to which some of our members, as individuals, refuse
allegiance. It lends our influence and may appropriate our money to aid a political party
over which we have no control.”153 Foster advocated “non-partisanship” within the
WCTU, not because she was not a partisan herself, but because she believed that the
members of the WCTU should be able to make their own political party choices.
Beginning in 1882, Willard annually proposed a formal alliance between the
WCTU and the Prohibition Party, and at every convention until 1888, Foster presented
resolutions protesting the measure. At the 1884 convention in St. Louis, Willard fervently
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126
advocated an alliance with the Prohibition Party, which resulted in a lengthy
debate involving Willard, Foster, and other members.154 In 1886, the convention voted to
stop debating “resolutions dealing with political endorsements,” but Foster forced the
debate on the floor. In 1888, Willard led the WCTU to vote to “back any party that
endorsed prohibition and ‘Home Protection,” which was interpreted as complete
endorsement of the Prohibition Party. Foster attempted to protest yet again, but debate on
the issue was denied in the proceedings.155 Unable to protest during convention
proceedings, Gustafson reports that Foster and those who supported her position stopped
paying their dues, claiming that they would be used for the Prohibition Party campaign.
The WCTU then passed a resolution claiming “that anyone unfriendly to the Prohibition
Party ‘is hereby declared disloyal to our organization.’”156
The formerly close friends and colleagues began a significant public debate over
partisanship. From 1884 to the early 1890s, Willard and Foster publicly accused the other
of manipulation, selfishness, and misguided values.157 According to Bordin, “Personal
relationships eroded. Foster accused Willard of unethical tactics and violations of
parliamentary procedure, although they had appeared on the same platform at a large
temperance mass meeting in the spring.”158 Willard described Foster’s actions in this
way: “And now arose Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, of Iowa, until this time my warm and earnest
coadjutor in every measure that had come before our conventions, in so much that we two
were called ‘the wheel-horses of the W. C. T. U. wagon’… Twice in my life I have been
moved to bitter tears, by the contradictions of my public environment.”159 Finally, in
1889, Foster and Ellen J. Phinney of Ohio led the entire Iowa delegation and others out of
the WCTU convention and formed their own “Non-Partisan Woman’s Christian
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Temperance Union” (NWCTU). The NWCTU held a convention in 1890, with
Phinney presiding as President. The Non-Partisan National WCTU “achieved only a
limited following, though for a time, it had branches in seven states” – Iowa, Illinois,
Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, and Vermont.160 It also held at least four annual
conventions. All the while, Willard continued her active campaigning for the Prohibition
Party.
Rhetorical Partisan Parallels: “Conventional” Addresses
As two women who fundamentally disagreed on the partisan direction of the
WCTU and had differing partisan alliances, one might assume that their party rhetoric
would reflect these disparities. However, a rhetorical comparison of Willard’s and
Foster’s addresses at the Prohibition and Republican Party national conventions reflect
more similarities than differences. Both women were embarking on unchartered territory
in speaking at the main political event of each party. As women, they were confronted
with similar constraints based on their sex. Despite their different audiences, one can
trace similar rhetorical strategies.
No analysis of Foster’s writings or speeches has been conducted to this time,
probably owing lack of material. Although a few of her works have been published, and
her speeches are included in the minutes of the 1892 Republican Party convention, the
WCTU conventions, and the NWCTU conventions, most of Foster’s rhetorical activities
have been lost. The most significant biographical and philosophical study of Foster is
found in Melanie Gustafson’s chapter “Partisan and Nonpartisan: The Political Career of
Judith Ellen Foster, 1881-1910,” in a volume on women in political parties. Her work is
comprehensive and offers a historical analysis of Foster’s political philosophy. Jo
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Freeman examines the roots of women’s involvement in the Republican Party,
crediting Foster in the 1880s.161 David C. Mott wrote a biographical entry on Foster in
the Annals of Iowa: A Historical Quarterly, in 1933, arguing for her consideration as one
of the most influential Iowans. Finally, Frank Byrne wrote a biographical entry on Foster
in Notable American Women 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary, published in 1972.
In contrast, several historians and rhetoricians have studied Willard’s career and
her rhetorical strategies. Much of Willard’s personal story, as well as texts of her
speeches and writings, were published in Willard’s autobiography, Glimpses of Fifty
Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman, in 1889. 162 Mary Earhart wrote the
first full-length biography of Willard in 1944.163 Ruth Bordin has written perhaps the
most about Willard, having penned a significant biography, a book on women and the
temperance movement, as well as an article about Willard’s political influence. In her
study, Bordin examines how “Willard functioned as a political leader by examining a
critical phase of her political activity, a period when her social philosophy was mature,
and when she also was at the peak of her ability to use the political system effectively.”164
Several rhetoricians have also analyzed Willard’s woman’s rights and temperance
rhetoric. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell analyzes her speech, “A White Life For Two,” which
eventually was printed as a pamphlet, in Man Cannot Speak For Her: A Critical Study of
Early Feminists Rhetoric.165 Campbell writes of the discourse of “social feminism,”
claiming that, “Social feminists accepted traditional views of woman but argued that her
distinctive influence should be extended to areas outside the home.”166 In her analysis,
Campbell claims that “A White Life For Two,” “embodied the paradox of ‘feminine
feminism.’”167 Bonnie Dow continues this claim in her analysis of several of Willard’s
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speeches and writings. Dow writes, “Willard’s appeal for her conservative
audiences was her framing of all reforms within the boundaries of True Womanhood. Her
entire public philosophy radiated from the argument that reforms were necessary to
protect the home, woman’s traditional sphere.”168 Patricia Bizzell extends this argument
by describing Willard’s “womanly spiritual ethos” in her analysis of Willard and Phoebe
Palmer, Willard’s “contemporary role model,” and “the most famous Methodist woman
preacher of the nineteenth century.”169 Mary Williams attempts to understand Willard’s
“Theory of Rhetoric,” and identifies five distinct strategies through an analysis of
Willard’s publication How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle.170 Finally, Carol Mattingly’s
wide study of temperance rhetoric in the 19th century engages with Willard as well,
leading her to write, “Her unique brand of woman’s rights rhetoric and her work on
behalf of a wide range of innovative reforms make her one of the most creative and
strategic of nineteenth-century woman orators.”171
The most comprehensive rhetorical analyses of Willard’s rhetoric were written by
Amy Slagell and Richard Leeman. Slagell looked at over 100 of Willard’s speeches, her
journals, and materials from scrapbooks from the Illinois WCTU headquarters. In her
analysis, Slagell claims that, “Willard’s discourse on women’s rights transcended the
ballot and envisioned instead a transformed world.”172 Slagell expertly traces Willard’s
evolving persuasive campaign to compel the membership of the WCTU to support of
woman suffrage. She examines Willard’s rhetoric throughout the years to trace an
argumentative arc that began with arguing for the need for women’s political action
based on women’s duty to protect the home.173 Leeman claimed that several of Willard’s
speeches used a “masculine” style of rhetoric through use of deductive reasoning, logical
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argument, and aggressive criticism of her opponents, but that her “feminine”
values and ethos helped make her rhetoric successful on a large scale.174 In addition,
Maegan Parker examines a more controversial part of Willard’s rhetorical career through
an analysis of a controversy between Willard and the prominent African American
women’s leader, Ida B. Wells.175 According to Parker, “the Wells/Willard controversy
offers a synechdochical view of broader societal attempts to grapple with expanding
claims to citizenship.”176
All of the above scholars agree that Willard was a strategic thinker. Bordin
describes: “To the young drunkard she offered the sympathy of a mother, to the elderly
derelict she played angel of mercy.”177 Those who supported temperance were an
“essentially conservative group” who adhered to the, “pure, pious, domestic, and
submissive ideals of True Womanhood.”178 Willard was able to appeal to a large segment
of the population, including conservatives and reformers, men and women. As Dow
writes, “Willard’s genius as a rhetorical strategist is apparent in her ability to obtain
support for various controversial causes from the women who joined the WCTU and the
men who supported the organization financially and ideologically.”179
Her “Home Protection” claims embraced “careful nurturance, womanly virtue,
and love of family – all qualities the nineteenth century found admirable and worthy
when practiced by the female sex.”180 Further, Willard frequently argued for women’s
involvement in public policy because of their obligation to guard the “moral well-being
of the home.”181 Because women could protect the home, part of Willard’s strategy
involved convincing her audiences that “society, the larger ‘home,’ would benefit from
women’s influence.”182According to Campbell, she utilized this strategy of encouraging
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women to uphold their traditional role, while arguing for social reform.
Campbell writes, “Willard attempted to transmute apparently radical demands into minor
reforms by treating them as the means to reaffirm traditional values. She framed her
demands for change so that they appeared to reinforce traditional gender roles.”183 She
was thus able to identify with a diverse audience, acting and advocating for a traditionally
feminine role, while also arguing that change was needed. Bizzell described Willard’s
rhetoric as embracing “purity” and “motherly domesticity.”184
Willard enacted what she argued, dressing in a “ladylike and fashionable”
manner, yet embarking on a career in the public sphere arguably unparalleled at the
time.185 In an encomium of sorts in a book titled The Beautiful Life of Frances E. Willard,
A Memorial Volume, edited by Anna Gordon and Lady Henry Somerset, the Reverend
Frank W. Gunsaulus describes Willard’s femininity this way: “When she pleaded for
womanhood, the gentleness and quietness of her demeanor, the modesty of accent and
sweetness of tone, made woman’s cause not less womanly than woman herself at her
best.”186 He continued, “Miss Willard never needed to assume modesty – she was
modesty incarnate.”187 Embodying a “feminine feminism” created a unique persona
unlike other woman’s rights advocates at the time. Scholars point out that Willard
performed femininity as a way to address diverse audiences, making her more radical
claims seem non-threatening.
Both Willard and Foster embarked on rhetorical campaigns meant to rouse the
desire in women to participate in politics. As Slagell writes, “The first step in Willard’s
campaign was to awaken her audience to the need for political power to achieve its
goals.”188 Willard accomplished this through an emphasis on home protection, True
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Womanhood, motherhood, and duty. As Bordin writes, “She extolled its
celebration of women’s special virtues, and she added her own corollary, a corollary
shared by increasing numbers of women as the century moved into its final decades, that
women must use their special virtues to uplift the public sphere and imbue politics and
citizenship with the righteousness and purity so peculiarly their own.”189 Bordin points to
Willard’s use of the word “influence” as one way of accomplishing her goals. “Influence
was a womanly word … Almost any woman could accept the idea that she had influence.
The whole doctrine of sphere revolved around woman’s influence in the home. Women
were expected to influence their husbands and sons through moral suasion.”190
Importantly, Willard emphasized the “ease with which change could be achieved” with
women’s involvement.191 Scholars point out that she did so through euphemism, words
associated with movement, religious discourse, battle imagery, and enactment.192
Foster explicitly encouraged women to enter politics throughout her career. She
wrote, “Out of the heart are the issues of life in politics as well as in religion. Women
have much heart. In politics heart is needed.”193 She often argued on behalf of women’s
participation because of what they could bring to the table. In addition, she often stressed
the desire women had to participate. She wrote, “It is impossible for women to carry
movements of social economies on their hearts and in their activities up to the point of
the relation of these questions to the government and then suddenly let go their hold, and
see these various objects of their solicitude lost in the whirlpool of political action where,
being disenfranchised, they have no recognized place.”194 Finally, like Willard, Foster
emphasized the unique position that women could bring to politics: “In social
educational, and industrial emancipation, woman’s present achievements have realized
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the largest expectations of enthusiasts. Her political enfranchisements shall
bring like realizations.”195 She further wrote definitively, “Woman is in politics, and the
only unanswered question is, what relation shall she hold to politics and what will be the
result of that relation with all it involves?”196
Frances Elizabeth Willard: Prohibition Party National Convention, 1888
Because Willard was delivering the “Decoration Day” address at the 1888
Prohibition Party convention, one could expect her to reference veterans. According to
Gifford and Slagell, her audience included 500 veterans of the Union Army and the
Confederacy, all of whom were pro-temperance.197 Willard skillfully capitalized on the
ethos of her audience in order to construct a partisan narrative that both characterized the
Prohibition Party as the party of unity and crafted a persona for herself as unifier. Willard
used the memory of the Civil War and her own female patriotic authority to dissolve
sectional division and unite the sexes for the common cause of Prohibition. This project
is one that she seemed to embark on throughout her career. According to her profile in
her own historical biographical reference book, “In 1881 Miss Willard made a tour of the
Southern States, which reconstructed her views of the situation and conquered
conservative prejudice and sectional opposition. Thus was given the initial impetus to the
foundation of the home protection party, which it was desired should unite all good men
and women in its ranks.”198 This initiative is prominently showcased through her 1888
convention address.
She began the speech this way: “Here side by side sit the Blue and the Gray. No
other than the Prohibition Party ever dared to be so great as to ordain a scene like this. I
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speak the words of truth – and soberness.”199 Launching the address with a
134
reference to the unified veterans in the audience accomplished a few things. First, Willard
noted the historical strife between the North and the South, while claiming that it was the
Prohibition Party that could unify these two former enemies in the name of an important
issue. Second, Willard acted as witness to this scene, thus honoring the strength of the
veterans and the party, rather than herself. Campbell points out that this was an aspect of
Willard’s style: “Willard addressed her audiences not as her peers but as her superiors,
inviting approval rather than participation.”200 In this instance, Willard framed the speech
as if in deference to the authority of the party membership, and, specifically, the veterans
of the “Army of the Blue and the Gray.” By implementing such a structure, Willard
entered the conventional political space as a guest and a witness, but not necessarily a
significant participant. Thus, she was non-threatening and inviting. In this structure,
Willard could claim for both herself and the Prohibition Party these “words of truth.”
That is, through these words she framed her “true” legacy and goal for politics in the
United States: unity, for the North and the South and for men and women. Just as the
Prohibition Party could bring together formerly warring men, so could it bring together
the sexes.
Willard continued this theme by crediting the soldiers with teaching women how
to unify, This made her a patriotic authority as a woman, but because of the actions of her
male audience. She said, “The soldiers learned this first, brave and chivalric fellows, and
they helped to teach us stay-at-homes the gracious lesson of fraternity. How often was the
rude wreath of leaves placed on the grave of a Confederate by the Union soldier who had
killed and yet had wept over him!”201 Her audience’s past experiences gave Willard the
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ability to speak about unity in the present. Moreover, it was the veterans in the
audience who were teaching women a “gracious lesson.” It was widely accepted that
women predominately acted as the moral authorities in society. As is cited throughout
this chapter, Willard frequently made use of this as a rhetorical strategy. As Bordin
writes, “American society embraced with conviction the idea of the moral superiority of
women, and as women moved into the public sphere they carried with them that aura of
uncorrupted righteousness bestowed on them…“202 Here, though, it seems as if she is
deferring to the veterans’ moral authority. Through this unique rhetorical move, Willard
ascribed her moral authority to the lessons she learned from the men present, another
non-threatening form of discourse. Additionally, this deference to the moral authority of
men not only legitimized the Prohibition Party as the moral voice in politics, but
suggested that the combined moral forces of men and women could benefit society. From
the memory of the grief and disunity of the Civil War battlefield, experienced by men and
learned by women, came the moral sense to lead the nation through the Prohibition Party.
Unity and moral rightness were further explicated through co-opting yet another
Civil War memory. Willard framed the Prohibition Party as the legacy of Abraham
Lincoln, in contrast to the Republican Party. According to John Bodnar, it was around
this time when nineteenth century that “Abraham Lincoln slowly emerged as a major
historical symbol.”203 Willard first claimed that the Republican Party no longer resembled
its original form when she referred to it as “the party that was great when great Lincoln
was its chief.”204 She then claimed the legacy of Lincoln for the Prohibitionists:
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That is the rallying call of North and South, Protestant and Catholic, of
white and black, of men and women equally. Bourbon Democrat and Radical
Republican will seek in vain to stifle this swift-swelling chorus, that ‘Chorus of
the Union,’ for which great Lincoln vainly prayed in his first inaugural. Do you
not recall his marvelous concluding sentence (I quote from memory): ‘The mystic
chords of memory, stretching from many a sacred hearth and patriot’s grave all
over this broad land, shall once more swell the chorus of the Union when again
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angel of our nature.’ That angel is the
temperance reform, and the fulfillment of that prophecy we have lived to see.205
Unity, patriotism, and growing momentum were not the only themes that emerged in this
passage. By co-opting not only Lincoln’s vision for the United States, but the words of
his First Inaugural Address, Willard set the stage for demonstrating her own political
knowledge. Further, she claimed the hope for a “better angel of our nature” for the
Prohibition Party and for the women now involved. By naming the “better angel” as
temperance reform in general, Willard directly referenced the efforts of the Prohibition
Party and the WCTU. Seen in this way, the Prohibition Party was not only continuing the
patriotic legacy of unity for which Lincoln “prayed,” but also was doing so by involving
all those who were moral and pure. Willard thus utilized traditional feminine appeals to
illustrate how and why women should be involved in future political decisions. They
were, in several senses, the patriotic vision for the future. According to Rosemarie
Zagarri, it was accepted in the nineteenth century that female patriotism was “purer and
nobler than men’s, untainted by self interest or the pursuit of personal gain”206 These
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values of morality, patriotism, unity, and orientation toward the future were
perhaps best demonstrated in the following quotation from Willard’s speech: “The
greatest party stands for nationalism against sectionalism…it stands for the future in
politics as against the past.”207
An important part of building her ethos as an authority on the desired political
direction for the nation was proving knowledge of the past. In addition to citing Lincoln,
Willard said:
When I think of Lexington and Paul Revere; when I think of Bunker Hill and the
dark redoubt where General Warren died; when I think of Washington, that
greatest of Southerners, upon his knees in prayer at Valley Forge; when I think of
Stonewall Jackson praying before he fought; of Robert E. Lee and Sidney
Johnston’s stainless shields; when I remember Sheridan’s ride…and Sherman’s
march to the sea with the boys in blue behind him, and Grant fighting the battle
out and on to the glorious triumph of our Northern arms, then my heart prophesies
with all a patriot’s gratitude, America will win as against the awful tyranny of
King Alcohol and King Gambrinus, and proud am I to have a part in it, for thank
God I – I, too, am an American.”208
Note, first, that all of these historical references were related to past wars, in keeping with
the theme of the address. As a woman, Willard needed to prove that she not only
understood “American” values but also “American” battles. This was a continuation of
arguments previously noted in this chapter. Second, Willard adhered to the needs of her
united audience by referencing Northern and Southern triumphs and military leaders, an
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important rhetorical move in order to identify with everyone listening to her.
Third, by calling herself a patriot with “gratitude,” she again showed deference to the
heroic and meaningful acts of the men in her audience.
Finally, and of most significance, she rhetorically paralleled finding faith and
pride in fighting a battle with finding faith in this political party. The Prohibition Party
claimed to be the party of patriotism since its inception with its slogan of pairing
“prohibition and democracy”, and stating as the first plank in its 1872 platform:
That while we acknowledge the pure patriotism and profound statesmanship of
those patriots who laid the foundations of this Government, securing at once the
rights of the States severally, and their inseparable union by the Federal
Constitution, we would not merely garnish the sepulchers of our republican
fathers, but we do hereby renew our solemn pledges of fealty to the imperishable
principles of civil and religious liberty embodied in the Declaration of American
Independence and our Federal Constitution.”209
In an address at the 1872 Prohibition Party convention in Columbus, Ohio, Charles
Denison claimed that the primary credentials for a Prohibition Party candidate was
“patriotic devotion to welfare of our country.”210 In a way, then, by adding herself to the
list of great “Americans” and because women were understood to be authorities on
patriotism, Willard hinted at the notion that the involvement of women made the
Prohibitionists the true inheritors of patriotism, a position at the heart of their philosophy.
Finally, in promoting herself and the Prohibition Party as ultimate patriotic
authority, Willard added her name to the “army” of Prohibitionists. Just as other female
political leaders like Mary Elizabeth Lease capitalized on her patriotic authority as an
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extension of Republican Motherhood, as argued in Chapter Two, Willard took
her patriotic authority to the next level. Not only was Willard someone who could speak
about “American” legacy and patriotism, but she was also a member of a group that could
act. Rhetorically, she not only carved a space for women to participate in party politics,
but put them there. She enacted this role in the following way: “Fellow soldiers in the
fight for a clear brain, I am proud to belong to an army which makes kindred of those
who once stood in arms against each other.”211
Her rhetoric continued to stress that women not only could help, but also would
be important influences into the future. For this progressive statement, Willard used one
of her most common strategies. She suggested that women belonged as participants
through the “feminine” argument of the Bible. She said,
Let us cherish North Carolina’s motto from Isaiah’s words: ‘Fear not, I am with
thee; I will bring thy seed from the east and gather them from the west; I will say
to the north give up, and to the south keep not back, bring my sons from afar, and
my daughters from the ends of the earth.’ I am glad of these good times, and I
think we women are in them, equal members of the greatest party, as we have
been since the day of its birth.212
This quotation demonstrates Willard’s knowledge of religious values, state values, and
feminine guidance. Willard had strong ties to the Methodist church and they informed her
actions throughout her life. Christianity was also at the heart of the mission of the
WCTU. By using a strong religious and emotional appeal, Willard enacted political
womanhood through the personae of moral guide, religious authority, and patriot. In this
way, Willard was simultaneously a “feminine” participant and a political citizen.
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Speaking as a woman at a nominating convention was virtually
unheard of in 1888. In Willard’s instance, she highlighted the similarities that men and
women shared through collective patriotism. She then manipulated this to transcend
sectionalism, co-opt “American” political memory, and write women into its history. This
was then framed as the vision for the future that the Prohibition Party could carry out. All
the while, Willard maintained her “feminine feminism,” often speaking in deference to
her male veteran audience and seamlessly adding her name to the “American” political
story in a non-threatening way. Because she was able to frame the party’s agenda and
membership in an honorable, authoritative, and credible way, Willard became the party’s
patriotic authority.
Judith Ellen Foster: Republican Party National Convention, 1892
As has been described, Foster’s main political focus was temperance, and in this
way she argued for many of the same values and policy initiatives as did Willard for the
Prohibition Party during her 1892 Republican Party convention address. Because there
was no difference in the issues for which they argued, one can compare Willard’s and
Foster’s rhetorical strategies in light of their different audiences. Foster was a trailblazer
for women within one of the two major parties during the Gilded Age. She garnered
respect from other Republican leaders and led thousands of women in support of
Republican candidates. Her first major rhetorical move, then, was to assert women’s
presence within the party. She proclaimed, “It is no mean honor which is given to me as a
representative of many thousand Republican women to stand in this magnificent
presence.”213 Like Willard, Foster spoke of being honored to speak at the convention in
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front of such a group of men. By beginning her speech this way, she framed
her address as humble and nonthreatening, the same way that Willard structured her
convention address. She made it clear that she recognized her limited position as a
woman, while asserting her presence as the representative of a large coalition of active
female Republican Party members. She was both a humble participant and strong
representative.
Foster then stressed the importance of her moment as a female speaker. She
continued, “The tests of civilization which are its changed ideals, are recognized by our
recognition here.”214 Here, Foster immediately structured her address as recognition of
the past while looking toward the future, which paralleled Willard’s strategy four years
earlier. Unlike Willard, though, who rhetorically enacted her womanhood, Foster stated
clearly the role that women could play in the party. The “changing ideals” of
“civilization” suggested that the party was progressive and welcoming to woman’s
rightful place as participants in political society.
She then stated plainly and famously, “Gentleman and Ladies, the Woman’s
Republican Association has prepared plans of work, with suggestions of detail which will
be presented to every delegate and alternate in this convention. We are here to help you.
And we have come to stay.”215 Foster’s insertion of women into the rank and file of the
Republican Party was outright and definitive. At the same time, though, she strategically
chose language that claimed her place as a party woman while not usurping the space of
men. Like Willard, Foster framed women’s role as one that would unite, not divide. Take,
for example, her use of the word “help.” She does not use words like “lead” or “create,”
but shrouds her position in the role of assistance. This was, undoubtedly, in order to
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appeal to her audience. As the first woman to address a national Republican
Party convention, she could not march in forcefully, but instead had to ease her audience
into accepting her potential contribution. She emphasized preparation, plans, and
organization so as to give Republican women credibility, and suggest that the party
needed them. She made women merely assistants, while framing them as invaluable.
Here began one part of Foster’s address that differed significantly from Willard’s
in 1888. Whereas Willard was addressing a party that was created based on moral reform,
Foster was addressing a much more diverse and widespread political audience. Willard
spoke at length on prohibition and raising moral standards. Foster did not speak about the
same moral issues. In fact, Foster worked to distance herself from such issues as
prohibition when she said, “We do not seek recognition in the party in the interest of any
one of the various reforms, in which, as individuals, we are interested.”216 This statement
reflects an attempt by Foster to separate her from the traditional view of political women.
It seems that Foster wanted the convention to recognize her as an active participant both
because of and in spite of her sex. Republican women had a lot to offer the party in terms
of their presence and effort. At the same time, Foster stayed true to her proclaimed belief
that moral reform should be a non-partisan political activity when she said, “We believe
the moral reforms should be conducted outside of party lines, in the broad field of
humanitarian, philanthropic, and Christian effort.”217 For Foster, Republican women were
not involved because of women’s issues or women’s morality, but instead because of
party loyalty. Willard certainly espoused party loyalty as well, but in the name of
prohibition, which was appropriate for her particular audience. Foster asserted her
presence as a woman because women deserved to be there as political citizens.
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While seemingly wanting to distance herself from women’s issues, the
rest of Foster’s speech rhetorically constructed the contribution that women could make
as women. Like Willard, who claimed a space in the Prohibition Party for women as
moral leaders, Foster became a moral leader. She said, “A man who fails to vote or who
ignores the present harm which his vote may do can find no warrant for his course in
reason or in morals.”218 She continued, “He who does not stand for the greatest present
attainable good is a helper of the bad.”219 Women should help guide men to the polls
because it was their moral duty to vote. Furthermore, women should be political
participants because of their ability to help men find the good. Later she said,
“Righteousness in government comes by evolution oftener than by revolution.”220 With
this statement one can see the whole of Foster’s argument. Not only should women
contribute as moral guides, but they should do so because of the evolution in the political
civilization that she mentioned at the beginning of the address. That is, she referenced
past government and its lack of acceptance, claiming that “righteousness” could and
would evolve. Read between the lines, Foster seems to be suggesting that women’s
involvement in the Republican Party is not a radical act (like a revolution), but simply an
evolution in thought. The past, in essence, could evolve into a “righteous” future.
Foster also utilized national history to justify her presence at a political
convention. In particular, she referenced the history of the Civil War and the unifying
tendencies of the Republican Party. Republican politicians frequently associated
patriotism with Republicanism, particularly through the “memories of shared hardships
and a common sense of national purpose” shared among veterans of the Civil War.221 In
this vein Foster said, “Gentlemen, in our service of Republicanism we know no personal
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preferences or factional strife; we wear upon our breasts the name of none of
the honorable men who may be your choice; but on our hearts are carried and from
prayerful lips will soon be uttered the names of your nominees.”222 This passage is key to
understanding Foster’s strategy for several reasons. First, her use of the words “in our
service,” references both militancy and unity. Second, she justified the presence of
women by asserting their loyalty. She essentially claimed that Republican women all
across the country would campaign for the nominee. Third, and most important, she used
language associated with femininity to chart new territory for women’s involvement. The
words “on our hearts” and “prayerful lips” reminded her audience that she understood
woman’s sphere, while emerging from that sphere in a new and useful way.
She then praised her birthplace of Massachusetts and her home state of Iowa. The
significance of these passages lies in what she referenced. She first described
Massachusetts as said “a great State; from the sand and rocks of her Atlantic coast
consecrated by Plymouth’s pilgrim band…” Having come from a state with ingrained
“American” history, Foster further legitimized her presence as a citizen and political
voice. Similarly, she praised Iowa when she claimed, “Iowa was quick to respond to the
nation’s call in time of civil strife; she was first to respond to the cry of starving Russia;
the sight of her corn made glad the hearts of dying men and women and little children;
she even sent seven of her good women along to set the table.”223 Associating herself
with an accomplished and generous state like Iowa added to her credibility. Because she
came from two such historical and honored states, it was hard to reject her credentials.
Foster worked hard to associate herself with Republican Party history and its
connection to patriotism. A history of the Republican Party written in 1884 claimed:
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
145
The Republican Party has been the most powerful champion of
freedom and equal rights in the world….Under various names, led by a purer
patriotism far in advance of the different political organizations to which they had
belonged, they continued to grow in numbers and influence, until, composing a
majority of their respective communities in this Republic, they were, in response
to an inexorable law, drawn into one great spirited army, with a common purpose
– equal and perpetual freedom for all – and a common name, Republican.”224
Foster’s words placed women in the service of that “spirited army.” Female patriotism
was seen as “purer and nobler than men’s, untainted by self interest or the pursuit of
personal gain”.225 Frame in this way, Foster’s leadership in the Republican Party could
prove useful because of her strength as an ideal patriot.
This rich history of which Foster was part moved her to talk about the future
potential of the Republican Party and of Republican women. She said, “Gentlemen, the
Republican party is nothing if not aggressive. It is a party of action; its breath is progress;
its speech is the language of the world; its dialect is the rhetoric of the home, the farm,
the shop.” She continued, “Its shibboleths might be written on the white walls of any
church. It holds within its ranks the armies of all reform; its constituencies are the living,
moving, vital elements of American life.”226 Just as Willard asserted that the Prohibition
Party could unite and lead the nation into the future, Foster claims that role for the
Republicans. Also like Willard, she does so moving from past to present. She first
reminded the party of the history of the nation and then proclaimed it as the vision of the
future. Further, she spoke as patriotic authority through that action and progress toward
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
146
the future. If the Republican Party was the “language of the world,” it should
set an example for society. That example, Foster insinuated, was allowing women to
participate.
Foster proclaimed, “Therefore let women weave their laurels and sing their
glorias to the robust political action of the Republican party, which accepts the present as
it is found, but out of it builds great boulevards of human progress.”227 Here, too, was
Foster asking her audience to be let in, but also showing her audience what the future
should look like. She framed women’s involvement as an evolution; it was about
changing with the times and keeping up with human progress. The Republican Party
could be the one to lead into the future. Foster concluded, “Why should not women rally
to the support of such a party? Gentlemen, we have come; we are for service. May God
keep us all wise, and true, and strong, and brave.”228
Conclusion
By 1892, 120 women were delegates and alternates to the Prohibition Party
national convention.229 An article in The Woman’s Journal in October 1892 said, “As
might be expected of the party which incorporated a woman suffrage plank in its first
national platform and has kept it there ever since, the Prohibition party has taken the lead
during the present political campaign in recognizing the rights of women.”230 The
Woman’s Journal went on to name the Rev. Henrietta G. Moore of Ohio, Mrs. Clara
Hoffman of Missouri, Mrs. Mary T. Burt of New York, among others, as heavily
involved in party activities. It also cited Miss Isabel G. Shortridge and Mrs. A.M. Holvey,
both from Pennsylvania, as addressing campaign gatherings.231 Despite this sustained
involvement, the Prohibition Party began to lose its appeal to many women. Andersen
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
147
discusses possible reasons for the declining participation by women in the
party, attributing the phenomenon to election laws that required a certain number of votes
from the previous election in order to appear on the ballot and changing campaign
strategies. This, in many instances, marginalized female participation.
In addition, during the early twentieth century, election legislation changed the
nomination process. Almost every state adopted the direct primary as a means to
nominate candidates, rather than the traditional nominating conventions. These new
election regulations that made it more difficult for third party candidates to appear on
ballots.232 The Prohibition Party began to lose its political power due to economic and
social unrest in the late 1880s. Because of the increasing influence of the Populists,
particularly in the South and the West, Willard “attempted to unite the new Populist
movement with the Prohibition party, the labor movement, and the Nationalists, and in
the process she used techniques she had perfected in her previous political campaigns and
in her political struggles within her own organization.”233 In 1890, Willard was a member
of the Prohibition Party, Edward Bellamy’s Nationalists, and was affiliated with the
Knights of Labor.234
In 1892, Willard organized an informal conference of Prohibition and Populist
leaders. Bordin asserts that the caliber of political leaders that responded to her call and
attended her meeting was “a measure of the seriousness with which she was taken as a
major force in American reform politics.”235 Hoping to create a united front heading into
the St. Louis Industrial Conference in February, Willard failed to combine the two
parties, as the Populists would “accept only limited municipal suffrage for women” and
“not a word about prohibition.”236 Willard did not participate in campaign activities of the
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
Prohibition Party in 1892.237 The Party is still in existence, and continues to
148
nominate a candidate for president during each election cycle, but has little to no
influence in national politics.
Women also continued to be involved with the Republican Party. Helen Varick
Boswell, a leader of Republican women’s clubs in New York, was the only woman
invited to the National League of Republican Clubs convention in 1895.238 She took over
as head of the NWRA upon Foster’s death. In addition, Adele Hazlett of Michigan, Nellie
Holbrook Blinn, Clara Shortridge Foltz spoke often on behalf of Republicans throughout
the 1880s.239 In fact, the Republican Party in New York, Massachusetts, the Midwest, and
the far West frequently utilized female campaign speakers by the 1880s.240
Willard’s health began to fail in 1890s because of “recurring attacks of
anemia,”241 and during the last five years of her life, her physical strength diminished
greatly. The following was printed after her own biographical entry in the historical
compilation of American women that she edited:
She fell an easy prey to la grippe, during a visit she made to New York City in the
latter part of January, 1898. This was only a few days after the publication of
‘American Women,’ a work which will doubtless remain one of the most
enduring monuments of her literary labors. At midnight of February 17, after a
few days of severe illness, her spirit took its flight, to enter upon the eternal
rewards. Her last words testified to the consecration of her life. ‘How beautiful it
is to be with God!’ was her last uttered thought.242
Flags were lowered the day of Willard’s funeral, and services were held in New York
City, Churchville, New York, and Evanston, IL. Her coffin was placed on a podium in
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
149
Chicago’s “Temple” office building prior to her burial. According to Bordin,
“Throngs of silent Chicagoans, thirty thousand in one day, filed by the bier for a parting
look at their city’s most famous citizen. Crowds stood for hours on the wet, windy
pavement outside Willard hall waiting in fallen snow for their turn to pay homage to this
slight, middle-aged woman.” Willard was one of the most well-known women of her day.
Upon her death, the New York Independent wrote, “No woman’s name is better known in
the English speaking world than that of Miss Willard, save that of England’s great
queen…it is the simple truth to say that in the death of Miss Willard, the foremost woman
in the public life of this country has been removed.”243
As Gustafson writes, “Foster’s fame as a Republican organizer grew during the
campaigns of 1892, 1894, and 1896, as she successfully organized African American and
White women all over the Northeast and in the West.”244 Her political career continued
into the twentieth century. Interestingly, Foster proved to be a shrewd politician,
frequently asking for appointments from Republican presidents. She won an appointment
to the Industrial Commission and was charged with inspecting mobilization stations
during the Spanish-American war by President McKinley, was appointed to examine the
status of women in the Philippines and appointed as a U.S. representative to the
International Red Cross Conference by President Theodore Roosevelt, and was appointed
to be a special agent to the Department of Justice to study the prison system by President
Taft.245 Foster died on August 11, 1910.246 The Register and Leader wrote upon her
death, “She came in for much unkind criticism because she was a new woman in oldfashioned times, but posterity must be kinder to her than her own generation, because she
deserves it.”247
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
150
Bordin writes, “Frances Willard is a prime example of women’s
practice of political influence…She developed flexible manipulative skills that made her
highly effective at operating within the system,” while embracing “an ideology that
demanded basic change in the social and economic fabric of American society.”248 This
chapter argues that both Willard and Foster expanded the role of women in politics in a
significant way. Despite their differences, both women tackled institutional political
space, and crafted rhetorical personae and strategies that women would emulate in the
future. For them, partisanship was about participation, and both succeeded in breaking
unprecedented barriers. Willard and Foster set an example for how women could utilize
their distinctive position, their past, and their present in order to propel into the future.
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
151
Notes for Chapter Three
1
Judith Ellen Foster, “Address,” Rock Springs Miner, Nov 2, 1896.
Mary Earhart Dillon. “Willard, Frances Elizabeth.” Notable American Women 1607-1950: A Biographical
Dictionary, ed. Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, vol. III (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1972), 617.
3
Frances E. Willard, “Statement on Petition to Congress,” Report on the International Council of Women,
March 25 to April 1, 1888 (Washington, D.C.: National Woman Suffrage Association, Rufus H. Darby
Printer, 1888), 286.
4
Judith Ellen Foster, “Women in Politics,” Report on the International Council of Women, March 25 to
April 1, 1888, (Washington, D.C.: National Woman Suffrage Association, Rufus H. Darby Printer, 1888),
306.
5
Foster, “Women in Politics,” 305.
6
“Decoration Day” today is known as “Memorial Day.” There was a crowd of over 5,000 at the speech,
which was considered the “centerpiece of the convention,” Carolyn De Swarte Gifford and Amy R. Slagell,
Let Something Good Be Said: Speeches and Writings of Frances E. Willard (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 2007), 117.
7
The first woman to speak at a Republican National Convention was Sara Andrews Spencer in 1876, but
she addressed a committee on woman suffrage, and not the convention as a whole. For the first time, two
women from Wyoming were also sent as alternate delegates to the Republican National Convention in
1892. According to the website of the National Federation of Republican Women, Therese A. Jenkins and
Cora G. Carleton were the first women seated at a Republican national convention. “Woman Suffrage,”
National Federation of Republican Women, accessed June 5, 2012,
http://www.nfrw.org/republicans/women/suffrage.htm
8
Judith Ellen Foster, “Letter to the Hon. Warner Miller,” in The Republican Party: A History of its Fifty
Years’ Existence and a Record of its Measures and Leaders, Volume II (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1904), 251.
9
Willard’s convention address is reprinted in her autobiography, Frances E. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty
Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman (Chicago: H. J. Smith & Co, 1889), 447-452. It also can
be found in Our Day 1 (June 1888): 505-510. The text is printed in Gifford and Slagell, 117-124. This
chapter will use the text from Gifford and Slagell. Foster’s Address is found in the report on the 1892
Republican National Convention in Francis Curtis, The Republican Party: A History of its Fifty Years’
Existence and a Record of its Measures and Leaders, 1854-1904, Volume II (New York, NY: The
Knickerbocker Press, 1904), 251-253.
10
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her Vol. I: A Critical Study of Early Feminist Rhetoric
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989), 126.
11
“Willard, Miss Frances Elizabeth,” in American Women: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of the Lives
and Achievements of American Women During the Nineteenth Century, ed. Frances E. Willard and Mary A
Livermore (New York, NY: Mast, Crowell & Kirkpatrick, 1897), 777-778.
12
Dillon, 613; “Willard, Miss Frances Elizabeth,” 778.
13
Dillon, 613.
14
Ruth Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press),
20.
15
Dillon, 614; Amy R. Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman
Suffrage, 1876-1896,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4.1 (2001): 6.
16
“Willard, Miss Frances Elizabeth,” 778.
17
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 6.
18
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 6; “Willard,
Miss Frances Elizabeth,” 780.
19
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 6.
20
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 55; Dillon, 614.
21
Carol Mattingly, Well-Tempered Women: Nineteenth-Century Temperance Rhetoric (Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1998), 58; “Willard, Miss Frances Elizabeth,” 778-779.
22
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 5.
2
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
23
152
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 5.
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 5.
25
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 66.
26
Bonnie J. Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1800-1925: A BioCritical Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993). 477; Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance:
The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), Chapter 2.
27
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 5-6.
28
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 67.
29
Dillon, 615.
30
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 481.
31
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 5-6.
32
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 477.
33
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 6.
34
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 477.
35
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 477.
36
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 7.
37
Dillon, 615.
38
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 71.
39
Dillon, 615.
40
“Willard, Miss Frances Elizabeth,” 779.
41
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 8.
42
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 112; Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her Vol. I, 122.
43
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 478.
44
Dillon, 616.
45
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 480.
46
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 479.
47
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 1; Dow,
“Frances E. Willard,” 476.
48
Campbell, 122.
49
Mattingly, 60.
50
Mattingly, 60.
51
Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her Vol. I, 122.
52
Mattingly, 63.
53
Mattingly, 65.
54
Mattingly, 651.
55
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 2.
56
Willard first used the phrase when leader of the Chicago union. It became the motto of the national
WCTU in 1876, and used at the 1891 meeting of the world WCTU in Boston, MA. “Willard, Miss Frances
Elizabeth,” 779.
57
“Willard, Miss Frances Elizabeth,” 779; Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her Vol. I, 122.
58
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 479. The WCTU newspapers Our Union of New York and the Signal of
Illinois merged to become the national paper, the Union Signal, in 1882, “Willard, Miss Frances
Elizabeth,” 779.
59
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 479; Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 116.
60
Robert J. Dinkin, Before Equal Suffrage: Women in Partisan Politics from Colonial Times to 1920
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), 85; Lisa Andersen, “Give the Ladies a Chance: Gender and
Partisanship in the Prohibition Party, 1869-1912, Journal of Women’s History 23.2 (2011): 137.
61
Andersen, 138.
62
Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the
Progressive Era (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 41.
63
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 44.
64
Dinkin, 84.
65
Andersen, 144.
66
Andersen, 141.
24
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
67
153
Andersen, 141.
Andersen, 137.
69
Andersen, 137.
70
Andersen, 147.
71
Andersen, 147.
72
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 15.
73
Quoted in Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 42.
74
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 135.
75
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 136; Bordin, 124.
76
Jo Freeman, A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics (New York, NY: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 34.
77
Andersen, 144.
78
Andersen, 147.; Dinkin, 86.
79
Willard, Glimpses, 382.
80
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 41.
81
“Willard, Miss Frances Elizabeth,” 780; Earhart, 215.
82
Andersen, 148.
83
Willard, Glimpses, 396-397.
84
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 41.
85
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 46.
86
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 35; Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 137.
87
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 41.
88
Frank L. Byrne, “Foster, Judith Ellen Horton” in Notable American Women 1607-1950: A Biographical
Dictionary, Volume I, ed. Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1972), 651; Freeman, We Will Be Heard, 21.
89
David C. Mott, “Judith Ellen Foster,” Annals of Iowa: A Historical Quarterly 19.3 (1933): 127; Byrne,
651.
90
Byrne, 651.
91
Byrne, 651.
92
Byrne, 651.
93
Byrne, 651; Mott, 128.
94
Mott, 132.
95
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 49.
96
Byrne, 651.
97
Mott, 132.
98
Byrne, 651.
99
Qtd. in Mott, 131.
100
Mott, 132.
101
Byrne, 651.
102
Mott, 136.
103
Dinkin, 51.
104
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 34.
105
Freeman, 34; Dinkin, 58.
106
Dinkin, 58.
107
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 478.
108
Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life
in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994): 135.
109
Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom,” 129.
110
Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom,” 129.
111
Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom,” 133.
112
Tera Hunter, "Reconstruction and the Meanings of Freedom," in Women's America: Refocusing the
Past, ed. Linda Kerber and Jane Sherron de Hart, 240 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004).
113
Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom,” 134.
114
Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom,” 134.
68
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
115
154
Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom,” 135.
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 35.
117
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 36.
118
Edwards, 36.
119
Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom,” 134.
120
Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom,” 137.
121
Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, The History of Woman Suffrage, ed. Susan B. Anthony and
Ida Husted Harper, Vol. IV, VI vols. (Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony, 1902), 435.
122
Dinkin, 68.
123
Dinkin, 69.
124
Dinkin, 68.
125
Dinkin, 68-69.
126
Dinkin, 69.
127
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 52.
128
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 52.
129
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 55.
130
Dinkin, 96; Melanie Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan: The Political Career of Judith Ellen Foster,”
in We Have Come to Stay: American Women and Political Parties 1880-1960 (Albuquerque, NM:
University of New Mexico Press, 1999), 5
131
Mott, 136.
132
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 87.
133
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 85.
134
Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 5.
135
Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 6.
136
Byrne, 652.
137
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 83-84.
138
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 88.
139
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 86.
140
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 86.
141
Freeman, We Will Be Heard, 22.
142
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 42.
143
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 44.
144
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 47.
145
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 50.
146
Bordin, Woman and Temperance, 125.
147
Frances E. Willard, “Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Convention Annual Address, 1884,” in
Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman (Chicago, IL: H. J. Smith & Co.,
1889), 404.
148
Willard, “Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Convention Annual Address, 1884,” 404.
149
Qtd. in Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 84.
150
Freeman, We Will Be Heard, 22.
151
Judith Ellen Foster, “The Non-Partisan Minority in the National Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union,” in For God and home, and native land. The Truth in the case concerning partisanship and nonpartisanship in the W.C.T.U., ed. Judith Ellen Foster (Iowa: J.E. Foster, 1889), 58-61.
152
Cited in Foster, “The Non-Partisan Minority in the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,”
60.
153
Cited in Foster, “The Non-Partisan Minority in the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,”
59.
154
Bordin, 126.
155
Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 4.
156
Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 4.
157
Edwards, Angels in the Machinery, 49.
158
Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1981), 127.
159
Willard, Glimpses, 388-389.
116
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
160
155
Byrne, 652.
Jo Freeman, We Will Be Heard, Chapter 1.
162
Willard, Glimpses.
163
Mary Earhart, Frances Willard: From Prayer to Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1944).
164
Bordin, “Frances Willard and the Practice of Political Influence,” 19.
165
Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her Vol. I, 122.
166
Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her Vol. I, 121.
167
Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her Vol. I, 123.
168
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 481. See also Bonnie J. Dow, “The ‘Womanhood” Rationale in the Woman
Suffrag Rhetoric of Frances E. Willard,” Southern Communication Journal 56 (1991): 298-307.
169
Patricia Bizzell, “Frances Willard, Phoebe Palmer, and the Ethos of the Methodist Woman Preacher,”
Rhetoric Society Quarterly 36:378.
170
Mary Rose Williams, “Riding Under the Influence: Frances Willard’s Theory of Rhetoric,” Journal of
the Northwest Communication Association. 30 (Spring 2001) 73-93.
171
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 476.
172
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 2.
173
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 10.
174
Richard W. Leeman, “Do Everything” Reform: The Oratory of Frances E. Willard (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1992).
175
Maegan Parker, “Desiring Citizenship: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Wells/Willard Controversy,”
Women’s Studies in Communication. 31.1 (Spring 2008) 56-78.
176
Parker, 57.
177
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 76.
178
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 480.
179
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 480.
180
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 100.
181
Williams, 85; Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 481.
182
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 481.
183
Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her Vol. I, 123; Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 486; Bordin, Frances
Willard: A Biography, 10.
184
Bizzell, 378.
185
Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her Vol. I, 121. 130.
186
Rev. Frank W. Gunsaulus, “Frances E. Willard as an Orator,” The Beautiful Life of Frances E. Willard,
A Memorial Volume, ed. Anna A. Gordon. Lady Henry Somerset, et al. (Chicago: Woman’s Temperance
Publishing Association, 1898), 350.
187
Gunsaulus, 351.
188
Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 5.
189
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 8.
190
Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 134.
191
Williams, 77.
192
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 481; Williams, 81; Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her, 123; Bizzell,
390; Slagell, “The Rhetorical Structure of Frances E. Willard’s Campaign for Woman Suffrage,” 12; Dow,
“Frances E. Willard,” 483.
193
Judith Ellen Foster, “The Influence of Women in American Politics,” in The National Exposition
Souvenir: What America Owes to Women, ed. Lydia Hoyt Farmer (Chicago, IL: Charles Wells Moulton,
1893), 323.
194
Foster, “The Influence of Women in American Politics,” 319.
195
Foster, “Women in Politics,” 305.
196
Foster, “Women in Politics,” 304.
197
Gifford and Slagell, 117.
198
“Willard, Miss Frances Elizabeth,” 779.
199
Frances E. Willard, “The Greatest Party,” in Gifford and Slagell, 118.
200
Campbell, Man Cannot Speak For Her, 129.
161
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
201
156
Willard, “The Greatest Party,” 120.
Bordin, “Frances Willard and the Practice of Political Influence,” 26.
203
Bodnar, 35.
204
Willard, “The Greatest Party,” 119.
205
Willard, “The Greatest Party,” 122.
206
Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic
(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 86.
207
Willard, “The Greatest Party,” 122.
208
Willard, “The Greatest Party,” 122; King Gambrinus was the “king of Beer,” and is considered the
“inventor of Beer” in Germany, according to Daniel Dorchester, The Liquor Problem of All Ages (New
York, NY: Phillips & Hunt, 1884), 154. .
209
“1872 Prohibition Party Platform,” The Prohibition Party, accessed October 17, 2012,
http://www.prohibitionists.org/Background/Party_Platform/Platform1872.htm
210
Charles Wheeler Denison, Address to the American People (Washington, D.C.: Henry Polkinhorn & Co.
Printers, 1872), 3.
211
Willard, “The Greatest Party,” 123.
212
Willard, “The Greatest Party,” 123.
213
Judith Ellen Foster, “Convention Address,” in The Republican Party: A History of its Fifty Years’
Existence and a Record of its Measures and Leaders, Volume II (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1904), 251-252.
214
Foster, “Convention Address,” 252.
215
Foster, “Convention Address,” 252.
216
Foster, “Convention Address,” 252.
217
Foster, “Convention Address,” 252.
218
Foster, “Convention Address,” 252.
219
Foster, “Convention Address,” 252.
220
Foster, “Convention Address,” 252.
221
A. James Reichley, The Life of the Parties: A History o f American Political Parties (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992), 124-125.
222
Foster, “Convention Address,” 252.
223
Foster, “Convention Address,” 253.
224
Frank Abial Flower, History of the Republican Party: Embracing Its Origin, Growth, and Mission
(Grand Rapids, MI: Union Book Co., 1884), 9.
225
Zagarri, 86.
226
Foster, “Convention Address,” 253.
227
Foster, “Convention Address,” 252.
228
Foster, “Convention Address,” 253.
229
“Women and Woman Suffrage in the Prohibition Campaign,” The Woman’s Journal, October 29, 1892,
350.
230
“Women and Woman Suffrage in the Prohibition Campaign,” 350.
231
“Women and Woman Suffrage in the Prohibition Campaign,” 350.
232
Andersen, 139.
233
Ruth Bordin, “Frances Willard and the Practice of Political Influence,” Hayes Historical Journal 5.1,
1985: 19.
234
Bordin, “Frances Willard and the Practice of Political Influence,” 19.
235
28 people came to the conference in Chicago, IL, including General James Weaver, who was the first
Populist candidate for President, Annie Diggs, the famed Populist female orator, and Samuel Dickie, the
Prohibition Party chairman, Bordin, “Frances Willard and the Practice of Political Influence,” 20.
236
Bordin, “Frances Willard and the Practice of Political Influence,” 21.
237
Bordin, “Frances Willard and the Practice of Political Influence,” 24.
238
Freeman, A Room at a Time, 40.
239
Dinkin, 78.
240
Dinkin, 78.
241
Dow, “Frances E. Willard,” 477.
202
Frances Elizabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster, Principle Partisans
242
“Willard, Miss Frances Elizabeth,” 781.
Qtd. in Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography, 5.
244
Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 8.
245
Gustafson, “Partisan and Nonpartisan,” 7.
246
Byrne, 651.
247
Qtd. in Mott, 138.
248
Bordin, “Frances Willard and the Practice of Political Influence,” 18.
243
157
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
158
“It is quite time that we had our own party; our own platform, and our own
nominee.”
~Belva Bennett Lockwood1
Chapter 4: Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
The year 1884 was a watershed moment for women’s involvement in party
politics. The Equal Rights Party nominated not one, but two female candidates for
national office. Belva Bennett Lockwood was nominated for President of the United
States, and the head of the Equal Rights Party, Marietta Stow, was nominated as her
running mate.2 Both were politically minded women who played significant roles in
Gilded Age politics.3 Lockwood ran for the presidency on the Equal Rights Party ticket
again in 1888. She was a force for women in politics in the late nineteenth century, as she
ardently advocated for a woman’s right to pursue a law career, form a political party, and
run for political office. Through an emphasis on women’s abilities and strengths, she
presented a model of rhetorical discourse based on women’s exceptional qualifications
for political leadership.
Lockwood crafted a persona that embodied her vision of political womanhood
that can offer scholars some insight into the origins of the nature of a female presidential
candidacy in the United States. This persona emerged out of her past, as she used her
career and experience as evidence of her leadership potential in the future. In her
presidential campaign speeches and essays, Lockwood used corroborated evidence,
language associated with physicality, phrases drawn from nature, and narratives of the
power of female collective action to assert her leadership capabilities. She redefined
womanhood in her terms, claiming that political women should demonstrate their mental
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
159
and physical capabilities, claim their natural role as political participants, and
unite in their quest for equality. Lockwood enacted her belief in women’s political rights
by embarking on a candidacy for the presidency built on using the past to encourage
movement toward the future.
Lockwood’s rhetoric had a purpose beyond electoral success. Her past became
usable as a way to justify her candidacy in a male-dominated electoral field. Barbie
Zelizer claims that the past is most useful for “the ways in which it helps us to make
connections – to each other over time and space, and to ourselves.”4 The past is
collectively experienced, and as such, its strategic use provides an opportunity for the
creation of community, identification, and acceptance.5 Barry Schwartz reaffirms this
when he writes, “To remember is to place a part of the past in the service of conceptions
and needs of the present.”6 The essays and speeches analyzed here are examples of the
ways in which the past can be usable as a persuasive tool as they are re-told. On one
level, Lockwood’s narratives gave meaning to her career and paid homage to her hard
work. On another level, though, Lockwood’s use of the past reflects a greater overall
purpose. That is, Lockwood’s rhetoric did more than just recount history, it presented a
usable past. Maurice Halbwachs’ foundational notion that the past can be strategically
reproduced to influence present social conditions demonstrates the role the past can play
in rhetorical argument.7 The past can be used “to mediate competing interpretations and
privilege some explanations over others.”8 Because the past can influence the way people
view the world, rhetors can purposefully tailor its memory to influence audiences based
on the rhetorical needs of a situation. Her rhetoric had multiple purposes, textually
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
160
promoting the leadership, activity, and momentum that women needed to grasp
political leadership.
Lockwood’s presidential campaigns were strategic, purposeful, and symbolic in
nature. As Lockwood biographer Jill Norgren points out, Lockwood had, “no illusion that
a woman could be elected.”9 Lockwood did, however, run a tactical campaign designed
to bring attention to issues and the role of women in politics. Further, Lockwood’s
rhetoric displayed a tendency to utilize language and memory in such a way that she
guided her audiences toward particular understandings of larger trends and contexts.
Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood
Belva Ann Bennett was born October 24, 1830, to Hannah and Lewis Bennett.10
Her interest in women’s education and public participation began early. Widowed when
young in 1853, Belva McNall left her three-year-old daughter, Lura, with her parents so
that she could pursue an education. She enrolled at Genessee Wesleyan Seminary for
Ladies, and then Genessee College, which later became Syracuse University. Her interest
in woman’s rights began early, and it has been documented that, on at least one occasion,
she left campus to hear Susan B. Anthony lecture.11 After receiving her Bachelor’s
degree, she became the principal at Lockport Union Academy, where she introduced a
required course in public speaking for girls.12
Fascinated by politics, she moved with her daughter to Washington D.C. in 1866,
during the height of Reconstruction. She often sat in the recently opened “Ladies
Gallery” in the Senate and observed the Reconstruction Debates.13 This experience
helped her to understand the world of politics, which would prove useful in her later
lobbying efforts.14 For example, she worked with Representative Samuel M. Arnell to
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
161
write H.R. 1571 (which he introduced to Congress), a bill that helped establish
equal pay for equal work for federal employees.15 In 1867 she married Ezekial
Lockwood, who supported her activist efforts. After becoming involved in the
temperance and suffrage movements,16 Lockwood founded the Universal Franchise
Association (UFA) with Josephine Griffing and Julia Archibald Holmes in 1867. She
served as President of the UFA in 1870,17 and also became a member of the National
Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony. The organization was dedicated to passing a federal suffrage amendment.18
Lockwood would continue this fight later in life as a member of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but she would split with Stanton and Anthony
on desired movement tactics.
Lockwood made her living as an attorney, arguing on behalf of women and men.
Her efforts to become a lawyer were trying and difficult. After being denied admission to
both Georgetown and Howard University Law Schools, she began to take classes at the
new National University Law School. After years of struggle to receive her diploma and
be admitted to the Bar Association,19 Lockwood eventually received her law degree and
became the first woman to be admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court
and the U.S. Court of Claims in 1879.20 It took an Act of Congress, for which Lockwood
lobbied, to effect her admission to practice. President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the
“Lockwood Bill” into law on February 15, 1879,21 giving women the right to practice law
in federal courts. She often fought on behalf of poor women, although she “could not
afford to make sexual bias the sole focus of her work.”22
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
162
The first time she participated in oral arguments before the Supreme Court of
the United States was in the case of Kaiser v. Stickney in 1880.
In law, as in politics, Lockwood understood the importance of public attention. As
Norgren explains, “As an engineer of reform, she understood the importance of political
theater and willingly participated in noteworthy and attention-getting occasions.”23 One
of these instances was proposing Samuel R. Lowery as the first African American
attorney to practice before the Bar of the Supreme Court.24 Perhaps her most famous case
was securing a victory for the Cherokee Nation in a claims suit against the United States
government.25 In a 1902 publication about the contributions of women, she was described
this way: “Mrs. Lockwood is one of America’s most remarkable women, and has
achieved marked success in her chosen profession, that of law. In this she is the pioneer
of our country.”26
In addition to arguing in the courtroom, much of her life was spent on the lecture
circuit. Lockwood was also the first woman to run a campaign for the U.S. Presidency.27
In 1884, California woman’s rights activists Marietta Stow and Clara Foltz nominated
Lockwood for President on the Equal Rights Party ticket. This was part of a political
strategy to show that women could create their “own terms of engagement in American
party politics.”28 Lockwood had attended the Republican Party Convention that year and
was rebuffed when she asked if they would draft a resolution to support woman suffrage.
Lockwood wrote a letter to Stow’s Woman’s Herald of Industry expressing her concern
over the current state of political affairs and the need for a female candidate. In her letter
she wrote: “If women in the states are not permitted to vote, there is no law against their
being voted for,” and encouraged people, saying that, “it is quite time that we had our
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
own party; our own platform, and our own nominee.”29 The Equal Rights Party
163
then nominated her for the presidency.30
She set up campaign headquarters in Washington D.C., and her daughter Lura
was her campaign manager. Having campaign experience from traveling with Horace
Greeley as a newspaper columnist a decade earlier, Lockwood ran a strategic campaign.
She wrote essays for a few literary magazines, distributed pamphlets and the Equal
Rights Party platform, and had an official campaign portrait circulated.31 Her political
savvy was apparent when she traveled nationally delivering campaign speeches, as she
often procured speaker’s fees for her appearances in order to fund her campaign. She
even boasted to reporters after the 1884 campaign that she had been able to cover her
expenses and come out $125 ahead.32 She also invited her fellow candidates to a debate,
but received no reply.33
The leaders of the suffrage movement at the time did not support her candidacy.
In particular, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony disapproved. Upon hearing
her speak in 1884, Anthony wrote to Stanton that Lockwood’s speech was “too much like
a re-hash of the men’s speeches,”34 and not enough about suffrage. Stanton and Anthony
believed that women should stand together in support of the Republican Party, and that
Lockwood’s candidacy diverted resources from the woman suffrage fight.35 This seemed
to be a common viewpoint among suffrage leaders. The Equal Rights Party initially
nominated Abigail Scott Duniway for president in 1884. The prominent suffrage leader
turned down the nomination claiming that a female candidate would weaken the
movement itself. 36
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
164
The 1884 campaign received a lot of press coverage, both positive and
negative. The Evening Star published a few accounts of her campaign events, and Frank
Leslie’s Illustrated published a full-page article featuring Lockwood and highlighting
“women’s contribution to the political life of the country.”37 There were a few articles
published in the New York Times about the campaign. One was a lengthy biography, in
which Lockwood was mostly described as caring and pure. The other was an article titled
“The Divided Skirt Question,” which coupled her candidacy with a discussion of whether
or not women should wear culottes. There were articles that claimed that her back hair
was not her original hair, her underpants were “cardinal red,” and all mentioned her
attire.38 The Boston Globe even published an article called “Belva in the White House: A
Cabinet Meeting of the Period When Women Shall Steer the Ship of State,” which was a
satire of a cabinet meeting run by Lockwood. In it, she was described as being late for the
meeting because she could not choose what to wear, being unable to pay attention, and as
incompetent at running a meeting.39 A popular aspect of the campaign in the press was
coverage of the so-called “Mother Hubbard” or “Belva Lockwood Clubs.” Men would
parade the streets wearing “Mother Hubbard” dresses to mock Lockwood’s candidacy.40
Democrat Grover Cleveland won the 1884 presidential election with 219 electoral
votes, compared to Republican James Blaine’s 182.41 In the end, Lockwood received
4,149 of the tabulated votes from 6 states.42 According to a petition included in her essay,
Lockwood and Stow received votes in New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Illinois,
Maryland, California, Indiana, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. Lockwood claimed that the
votes received in Pennsylvania were “not counted, simply dumped into the waste basket
as false votes.”43
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
165
Lockwood ran for president again in 1888 on the Equal Rights Party
ticket. In 1888, The Woman’s Journal published a report that Lockwood had been
nominated again for the presidency, but published the following statement by Henry
Browne Blackwell:
In view of the announcement made in this morning’s paper that a national
convention of woman suffragists has nominated a presidential ticket, it is proper
to state that this action does not represent any of the large organizations of woman
suffragists in this country, either State or national. Of course any individual has a
right to nominate, or be nominated for, the presidency. But when this is done in
the name of a great body of intelligent and earnest persons engaged in a serious
movement, it should be distinctly understood that such a nomination is wholly
unauthorized and in no sense representative of the plans or purposes of the
suffragists of the United States. Since the women who wish to vote are not yet
able to do so, it seems premature, to say the least, for them to nominate an
independent presidential ticket.44
When asked if her candidacy would receive the support of woman suffragists by an
Evening Star reporter, Lockwood replied, “Certainly not…the women are divided up into
as many factions and parties as the men.”45 Lockwood firmly believed that “women who
believed in women’s rights and temperance ought not to hang on to the skirts of the
republican party any longer…this nomination is the result of the expression of those
sentiments.”46
The 1888 campaign was less of a novelty and more explicitly about strategy.
Lockwood claimed that the only way to political equality for women was “to gain
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
166
strength and to get organization…put nominees in the field at once and to keep
them there.”47 Her involvement with the Universal Peace Union served her well, as the
group publicized her campaign events.48 Lockwood delivered speeches and gave
interviews all over the country to bolster her campaign. Although she attracted supportive
audiences, her campaign failed to garner much popularity. According to Norgren, “Four
years earlier her political bravado had expressed the optimism of the movement; by 1888,
with the woman suffrage movement all but stalled, the campaign drew attention to its
failure.”49 Although President Cleveland won the popular vote, Republican Benjamin
Harrison won the electoral college vote and emerged victorious. No votes for Lockwood
were recorded.50
Lockwood was not alone in her attempt to run for political office in the late
nineteenth century. Notably, Elizabeth Cady Stanton ran for U.S. Congress in 1866 in the
8th Congressional District of NY as an Independent. In addition to Lockwood, the Equal
Rights Party also nominated Linda Gilbert for Governor in 1888.51 It was more common
for women to run for state or local office. A law that allowed women to vote in municipal
elections in Kansas in 1887 also allowed them to run for municipal office, which led
many women to run for city councils and for mayor. In fact, the first woman to be elected
mayor was Susanna Madera Salter from the town of Argonia, Kansas, in 1887.52 In
addition, an all-female city council was elected in Syracuse, Kansas, in 1887, and
Okaloosa, Kansas, elected a female mayor and all-female city council in 1888. By 1900,
15 women had been elected mayors in Kansas.53 Laura J. Eisenhuth was elected as State
Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Dakota in 1892, and several other women
in the North and the West were elected to schoolboards, city councils, and city
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
commissions.54 Although rare, there is evidence that women in the South also
167
ran for office. Eliza Garner of South Carolina ran for county commissioner in 1888. Most
women ran for school board or school commissioner, partly because women were seen as
appropriate for those positions and partly because some states had passed limited suffrage
for women for local positions.55 Sarah Christie Stevens also ran for superintendent in
1890 and had to emphasize amid criticism that “someone of her sex could perform in a
public position without losing her womanly graces”56
A rhetorical study of Lockwood falls prey to the all too common problem
associated with many early woman’s rights activists – a lack of primary materials.
Lockwood’s papers are primarily housed at the New York State Library and the Peace
Collection at Swarthmore College. Although a few original letters and writings are in
these collections, most of the primary material available can be found in publications
from the time.57 This study focuses on the most complete pieces of communication
available from Lockwood’s 1884 and 1888 campaigns. The New York Times printed
excerpts from an 1884 campaign speech delivered at the New York Academy of Music.58
Another campaign speech was printed in the Louisville Courier Journal in October of
1884.59 Her essay "My Efforts to Become a Lawyer" ran in Lippincott's Monthly
Magazine in February of 1888.60 Although Lockwood was not officially nominated as a
candidate for President until May of 1888, this article, published less than two months
earlier, can be considered a preliminary piece of campaign rhetoric. It expresses
sentiments similar to the rhetoric of her 1884 campaign and was an opportunity for her to
gain national readership. She also wrote an essay published in the March-October 1888
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
168
edition of The Cosmopolitan titled, “The Present Phase of the Woman
Question.”61 In addition, a campaign address was published in the Boonville Herald of
Boonville, NY, in September of 1888.62 Finally, Lockwood published the essay “How I
Ran for the Presidency” in the March 1903 issue of the National Magazine.63 In this
essay, she interlaced the narrative of her 1884 campaign with copies of a letter to the
editor that she wrote, her letters of nomination and acceptance, the platform for the
campaign, and a petition she sent to Congress after Election Day in 1884.
A Corroborated Past
Lockwood was neither the most famous nor the most popular woman’s rights
activist during the Gilded Age, yet she actively pursued national recognition as a leader.
As the first woman to run a campaign for the U.S. presidency, Lockwood needed to prove
to her critics and the public that she had the credentials. Construction of her political
persona involved providing corroborated proof of her ability to participate in the “male”
world of political candidacy, and she did so by recounting her past experiences. Using
verifiable evidence from her past and specifically memories of her pursuit of an
education and career, helped Lockwood to demonstrate her ability to be independent,
hard-working, and self-sufficient, all qualities integral to the traditional “ideal” citizen.
This portion of her rhetoric was necessary because it built her credibility. Lockwood gave
a history of her activism and work as a lawyer as proof of her ability to function and
persevere in the public sphere, characteristics necessary in a presidential candidate.
This was, seemingly, a continuation of common nineteenth century woman’s
rights rhetoric about the ability of women to be independent.64 “American” values
inherent to “ideal” citizenship were built around the idea that independence and self-
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
169
sufficiency were virtuous. “Good” citizens were unselfish, independent, and
committed to the public. Paula Baker claims these qualities of citizenship led to the
exclusion of women in the Constitution. She writes that good citizens were, “self-reliant,
given to simple needs and tastes, decisive, and committed first to the public interest.
These were all ‘masculine’ qualities; indeed, ‘feminine’ attributes – attraction to luxury,
self-indulgence, timidity, dependence, passion – were linked to corruption and posed a
threat to republicanism.”65 The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution with this ideal of
independence in mind.
Scholars have debated the reasons that women are not mentioned in the
Constitution. Some claim that the Founders purposefully made the document genderneutral so that it might include women in the future. Others argue that it was simply a
reflection of the “patriarchal assumptions of the Founders and their belief that women
had no role to play in government.”66 Liberal representatives to the Constitutional
Convention like James Madison believed that every free person in the nation should be
considered a citizen and deserved protection from the federal government.67 Throughout
this argument is the implication, then, that women were citizens but were not capable of
representing themselves. This idea “became the touchstone of the modern, liberal state.
By construing women as interested citizens incapable of representing themselves,
liberalism provided a justification for the state: protecting those who could not protect
themselves.”68 The lack of citizenship rights for women thus was institutionalized in the
state. As Baker writes that in the nineteenth-century, “Politicians embodied ideal
masculine traits: loyalty, strength, fortitude, boldness, industry, and honesty.”69 Through
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
170
proving her independence and concern for the public, Lockwood was
portraying the persona of this “ideal” citizen who could and should play a role in
government.
Her 1888 essay “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer” is made up almost entirely of
verifiable evidence of her “independent” career. This is not surprising given her training
as an attorney. Throughout the essay, she included the texts of her letters appealing for
entry to educational institutions, her initial letter of rejection from law school,70 the text
of a letter to President Grant about admission to the Bar of the District of Columbia,71
and the text of the Bill for which she lobbied that allowed women to be admitted to the
Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.72 Perhaps most telling is her description
of her attempt to be admitted to the Bar of the United States Court of Claims, in which
she included exact quotations from the Chief Justice.73 She recalled the Chief Justice as
saying, “Mistress Lockwood, you are a woman”, and followed the quote with the
reflection, “For the first time in my life I began to realize that it was a crime to be a
woman.”74 Lockwood’s precise narration of the event and her subsequent reflection
legitimized her presence in the courtroom itself. Her use of evidence to substantiate her
memory of these events was proof of her struggle and legitimation of her career as a
lawyer and as presidential candidate.
Lockwood spent part of the 1903 essay “How I Ran for the Presidency”
describing her past accomplishments. She introduced her work as a lawyer and woman’s
rights activist by reflecting on the state of her career in 1884: “I had now been ten years
in the practice of law before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and four
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
171
years before the United States Supreme Court of Claims, all of which courts I
had opened to women by hand to hand work and dogged persistence, in the last two
instances drafting the bill and lobbying it through congress in 1879.”75 In addition to
proof of her work as a lawyer, this was testimony to her diligence and determination. The
opening of the courts was described as difficult, requiring conviction and personal
attentiveness. She wrote of women’s battle to enter the legal profession in her 1888 essay,
“The Present Phase of the Woman Question”: “only in recent years, and by the most
indefatigable zeal, has she been enabled to work her way into the profession of law.”76
Although she wrote of women in general terms, this is obviously a nod to her personal
accomplishments and an expression of the type of courage that women needed to succeed
in male-dominated fields. This was common in her campaign rhetoric, as the New York
Times reported that she “told an interesting story of her struggles for admission to the
bar” at a campaign event on August 5, 1888.77 She further described her
accomplishments in “How I Ran for the Presidency,” which included securing equal pay
for female government employees through passage of an act in 1872, the appointment of
a matron in a district jail, and an extensive amount of legal work.78 Her testimony was
proof of her accomplishments as well as recognition of her limitations. For example, she
wrote, “my hands were full of legal work, often two or three cases a day, and my
patronage, for a woman, was really marvelous.”79 While demonstrating her diligence, she
recognized the limitations placed on her sex.
Perhaps the most obvious way that Lockwood used her past as proof of her ability
to be a candidate was through corroborating her political campaign experience and
expertise. She first recounted her experience with political campaigns when she wrote,
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
172
“Desperate enough for any adventure, I now, at the request of Theodore Tilton,
went on a canvassing and campaigning tour through the Southern States in the interest of
the New York Tribune and Golden Age, and of Horace Greeley, whom the Liberal
Republicans had nominated for the Presidency in July, 1872.”80 She again referenced her
work with Greeley in an 1888 campaign speech in Louisville: ““I now remember that I
have been in your beautiful city once before. Then as now, we were on the eve of a great
Presidential election. I bore aloft the standard and flung to the breeze the flag of…Horace
Greeley.”81 These statements reflected her sense of “adventure,” and her work as a
campaigner, both of which were proof of her ability and drive to run for the presidency.
Lockwood offered evidence supporting her candidacy through the texts of letters
as well. In “How I Ran for the Presidency,” she wrote that writings circulated by Stanton
and Anthony prompted her to write a letter to Stow’s Woman’s Herald of Industry, the
text of which she included in the essay. The letter claimed that although women cannot
vote, “there is no law against their being voted for,” and encouraged women to consider
nominating a woman as a candidate for President.82 This letter was an important part of
the essay. First, it illustrates the tension between her and the other woman’s rights
leaders, a tension that arises again later in the narrative. Although the “conditions” she
was writing about refer to 1884, the statements worked politically in 1903, when the
essay was written. By painting Stanton and Anthony as leaders who were out of touch
with current developments, Lockwood implied that she could be a leader who was
attuned to present conditions. Lockwood recalled this tension, but in a way to suggest that
her leadership was headed in the right direction. The circulation of material by other
leaders, her presence and knowledge of the conventions and issues, and the action she
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
173
took, all contributed to building the narrative of her life, her credibility, and
her leadership potential. Second, Lockwood’s call for a female candidate caused Stow
and others to nominate Lockwood herself for the presidency. Whereas the conventions
and the circular represented an issue (the lack of a candidate for women to support),
Lockwood’s letter to the Woman’s Herald presented a solution. As a result, it was the
catalyst, at least as framed by Lockwood, for her nomination.
Lockwood also legitimated her campaign through recounting exact conversations
that she had with reporters during her 1884 campaign. After accepting the nomination,
Lockwood detailed the dialogue between her and reporters. Four conversations were
recounted in “How I Ran for the Presidency.” One example is of a reporter appearing at
her office and saying “Mrs. Lockwood, we hear you have a nomination for the presidency
and have accepted it. The Evening Star must have a copy, of course.”83 Other reporters
were also directly quoted in the narrative. Lockwood seemingly included these dialogues
with reporters as a way to establish her legitimacy. Direct quotation verified the events.
In addition, her interaction with reporters was proof of the importance of her campaign.
Once reported, the campaign became institutionalized. Further, these conversations
demonstrated her political savvy by illustrating her ability to gain press coverage.
An important part of corroborating of her experiences, in addition to providing
proof of her career, was placing them in the course of history. Her essays and speeches
used historical events and figures both to verify her career and legitimize her actions.
During an 1888 campaign speech, Lockwood portrayed her candidacy as a new and
welcome addition to the field by describing the political conversation between “two rival
political parties now in the field who have been shaping and controlling the legislation of
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
the country for the last 20 years.”84 She continued to describe the political
174
conversation as being stalled over the question of tariffs, upon which, in her view, “more
ink and brains have been wasted than would suffice to run the Government for the next
four years, without either of the parties having enlightened or attempted to enlighten their
respective constituencies as to what their true interests are...”85 In addition to describing
the major parties’ debates as tired, Lockwood positioned herself as the candidate who
could bring a fresh perspective. Significantly, she did this through temporally locating the
argument, suggesting that it had been 20 years since new issues had surfaced. She, then,
was the candidate who would revitalize to the political field.
She continued to use historical time to bring significance to her campaign through
her discussion of monopolies in this speech:
Our platform, when it comes to the anti-monopoly plank – its first and strongest
foothold
– declares that ‘monopoly is not authorized by the Constitution.’ If this be
so – and I
reassert it – then for 100 years and more, my brothers, you have been
running the
Government of the United States on a policy diametrically opposed to the
Constitution, for in all of those years a grand aristocracy known as the men of the
country have insisted on and have succeeded in distributing all of the public money.86
Aside from demonstrating a deeper understanding of the Constitution than her male
counterparts, which in itself was an important part of establishing her credibility,
Lockwood described past and present political leadership as misinterpreting the
Constitution. That is, the male political leaders in control of the nation since its inception
had been, in her words, governing with unchanging and unconstitutional policies. As a
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175
female addition to the field, Lockwood could bring about a necessary change.
Proof of her ability existed in the placement of her candidacy as an essential need to help
change an illegitimate tradition.
In “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” each leg of Lockwood’s journey was
placed in a specific historical time. Although her story began before the Civil War, her
narrative recognized that event as a turning point for progressive thinkers. She wrote,
“But the war closed. The arm of the strongest prevailed. The slave went free. It was a
grand step onward in the liberties of the world…”87 As the essay continues, Lockwood
structured the essay around social movements of the time. The next section began: “The
next great contest that is about to sweep over the country and break up the old party lines
(bloodless, I hope, for rum has already had her share of blood) is prohibition. The earthrents made by the recent earthquake-shocks will be nothing compared to the rents made
in party by the great tidal wave of prohibition that is about to sweep over the land.”88
Although her political viewpoint was clearly presented, it is significant that the
development of what was then in her political platform was anchored in the events of the
time. She then continued to legitimize her opinion through reference to the nation’s
political past. She wrote that the political party that rejects prohibition as an issue will
“die as the old Whig party died in 1860.”89 The narrative is further driven by current
conditions through reference to the third parties present in the political climate.
Lockwood wrote, “The Labor party, the Prohibition party, and the woman, are looming
up on the horizon in a magnitude not to be undervalued by one who chooses to read the
signs of the times.”90 Her career, and her political stances, were presented as consistent
with historical trends which situated her narrative in historical time.
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176
A similar effort was made in “How I Ran for the Presidency,” although
the time span that she was writing about was much shorter. Lockwood opened the
narrative by placing it in historical time. She began, “It was in the regular course of
presidential elections in 1884 that I received a nomination to the office.”91 Lockwood
described the scene, the election year of 1884. She confirmed with a reference to the
main event of the narrative – her nomination to the presidency. Then, Lockwood placed
herself in the normal “course” of events. Her campaign was not exceptional or
unexpected, but a natural part of political history. After setting the scene, Lockwood
turned to the first major campaign event of the political season: the political conventions:
“The national conventions had been assembled, and had made their nominations early.”92
She wrote of her involvement in the conventions. She attended the Republican Party’s
Convention, where she “had besought the resolutions committee in vain to adopt a plank
in their platform giving some recognition to women.”93 Her political efforts, while
unsuccessful, introduced her political activism and concern for women’s political
participation, a key characteristic in her journey toward becoming a presidential
candidate.
By providing the year and emphasizing continuity, the essay had historical
specificity and temporality. This sort of rhetorical maneuvering was also present in her
discussion of fellow woman suffrage advocates. The use of Susan B. Anthony and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton had two distinct purposes in the essays. On the one hand, a
relationship with these women gave Lockwood legitimacy. As Lowenthal writes,
“Identification with a national past often serves as an assurance of worth against
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
subjugation.”94 Anthony and others were a few of the names most commonly
177
associated with the woman’s rights movement at the time. Lockwood’s identification
with Anthony in “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer” helped to make Lockwood credible.
In 1888, Anthony was still revered as a woman’s rights leader, and a connection with the
movement’s leadership could legitimate Lockwood’s campaign. Lockwood placed
herself in the progressive history of the nation through reference to her attendance at
political meetings. She wrote, “It was at one of the meetings of the State Association that
I first met Susan B. Anthony, who, like myself, was in early life a teacher in the public
schools of the State of New York. It is true that while in college I had slipped away one
evening, without the knowledge of the faculty, to hear Susan deliver one of her
progressive lectures on the ‘wrongs of woman.’”95 Lockwood not only compared herself
to Anthony in this passage, but she also supported Anthony’s message. This suggested to
her readers that she could act as a similar sort of leader. This linkage expanded when
Lockwood wrote of Anthony, “I met her repeatedly after this at meetings of the School
Association, her spirit of aggressiveness always carrying her so far ahead of any of her
competitors as to make her a marked figure.”96 Lockwood framed herself as having the
same fighting spirit. Lockwood’s link to Anthony’s legacy implied that Lockwood, as
candidate for President, could carry the torch.
As noted, the relationship between Anthony and Lockwood was not always so
congenial. “How I Ran for the Presidency” was a statement of Lockwood’s leadership
abilities in the context of 1903, the year of its publication. In reference to the Democratic
and Republican political conventions in 1884, Lockwood wrote, “Progressive and
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178
thinking women from all parties had attended in greater or less numbers all of
these conventions, and were pressing forward for recognition. About this time Mrs.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mrs. Susan B. Anthony came out with a circular, directed to
the leading women of the country, urging them to use their influence for the republican
party.”97 Lockwood emphasized the forward thinking women of that time, associating
herself with them. The movement forward was possible, in part, because of her actions
and viewpoints. She attempted to establish legitimacy of character, almost as if to assert
her authority as a woman’s rights leader. However, once she introduced Stanton,
Anthony and others, she painted them as out of touch with current conditions. Lockwood
wrote: “The circular of these distinguished ladies appeared to me to be so out of harmony
with real conditions, that I at once made the following reply…”98 This statement gave
Lockwood legitimacy as an important woman’s rights advocate, but in opposition to
Stanton and Anthony.
Finally, Lockwood frequently highlighted her work as an activist with specific
details. When describing her experience as a teacher who received a lower salary than the
men in an equivalent position, in “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer” she wrote: “It was an
indignity not to be tamely borne by one with so little discrimination of the merits and
demerits of sex, and of course, impolitic as it might seem, I at once began to agitate this
question, arguing that pay should be for work, and commensurate to it, and not be based
on sex. To-day this custom is changed.”99 Through personal experience, Lockwood had
questioned and rejected a common cultural practice through “agitation.” As a woman
running for president, this was one of the qualities Lockwood needed to demonstrate. Her
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179
past work was proof of her fearlessness in confronting social expectations and
her ability to produce a change. These qualities were reflected in other statements
throughout the essay in phrases such as, “I was not to be squelched so easily,”100 and
“When I arose to explain my position, the court grew white at my audacity and
imperturbability, and positively declined to hear me.”101 This bold spirit was reflected in
her career. For example, she wrote of her attempt to obtain a consulship at Ghent:
“Conceiving that I could fill this position, I had the audacity to make application for
it.”102 Her impudence was proof of her resolve. As Lockwood wrote, “Defeats are always
advantageous, if they only bend the spirit and do not break it.”103
Physical Memory
In addition to providing proof of events in her campaign and her abilities,
Lockwood used physical ability as justification for her candidacy. First, she used
language directly linked to physical action in order to describe her journey to become a
lawyer and her presidential campaign. In her rhetoric, physical effort was proof of her
professional commitment. Lockwood used language about labor and hard work to
demonstrate her dedication. This pride in individual work and possession of a strong
work ethic were a dominant part of the “American” psyche and probably recognizable to
her contemporary readership. Furthermore, many of the arguments against women’s
rights were based on physical differences between men and women. Many men believed
that a woman’s physical “feebleness” and “meekness” were justification for her inability
to participate in the world of public affairs.104 Lockwood’s use of language that focused
on her physical ability that directly refuted this argument.
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In “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” Lockwood more overtly referred
to her laborious efforts. She began this piece of 1888 campaign literature with her
education and work history. When writing about her first job as a teacher, she wrote
phrases such as, “My first term was devoted entirely and zealously to the routine-work of
the school.”105 Language like “entirely” and “zealously” reaffirmed her determination.
Later in the section, Lockwood referred to her teaching load as “four years of unremitting
toil, of earnest work.”106 The work was framed as hard, honorable, and proof of her work
ethic. This dedication was reaffirmed later in the essay when she wrote, “In my efforts to
discover new avenues of labor I met with some ludicrous and some serious
experiences.”107 Lockwood carefully crafted her persona as a determined, ambitious
laborer. Her belief in dedicated work and attentiveness was illustrated further in an 1888
campaign speech in Louisville when Lockwood said, “The price of liberty and the
prosperity of a republic is eternal vigilance.” Using this phrase also identifies her with
former political and activist leaders, giving her additional credibility. The phrase because
repeats the words of famous abolitionist Wendell Phillips and former U.S. President
Andrew Jackson.108
Her characterization of her work was often linked specifically to manual labor. In
fact, she began her speech in Boonville, NY, by telling her audience how happy she was
to be at a county fair where she could see the “skilled work of your hands.”109 In “How I
Ran for the Presidency,” she wrote that she “opened” the courts to women by “hand to
hand work.”110 The image of her physically opening doors with her bare hands was not a
literal interpretation of her legal career, but was indicative of her dedication and
determined attitude. Lockwood struggled for years against barriers that prevented her
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181
from being admitted to Bar Associations. Thus her “hand to hand” work was a
metaphor that linked individual labor to her actual struggles. She went on to write that her
“hands were full”111 of legal cases, again suggesting that it was individual work that
made her successful. The importance of this vocabulary exists in its relation to the
cultural concept of privileging individual labor as part of the path to success. Further, she
linked her actions to her physical body, arguably insinuating that women could work just
as hard as men and deserved the benefits they reaped. This was present even in her
description of her reaction to the letter of nomination, when she wrote that she kept the
answer in her “pocket.”112 Although she literally carried her letter of acceptance in her
pocket, she linked it to her physical body, suggesting that the nomination was a part of
her very being.
Lockwood further linked language related to manual labor with the act of
building. Lockwood’s physical struggles in “How I Ran for the Presidency” were
metaphorically related to the act of building a platform, an act in which Lockwood,
through the Equal Rights Party, was actively engaged. The word “platform” to refer to a
political party’s policies on issues is an example of the basic construction of the
metaphor. One must build a platform, usually by nailing together pieces of material so
that it becomes a flat surface on which someone or something might be supported.
Lockwood takes the metaphor further when she wrote about political platforms. For
example, she referred to her failed attempt to add a “plank” to the Republican Party
platform in recognition of woman’s rights.113 For Lockwood, the issue was not one on
which the Republicans were willing to build their “platform.” The protections the Equal
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182
Rights Party platform afforded would be “exerted” to defend the rights of
every citizen.114
She used this construction language in an 1884 campaign speech when, in
reference to her political opponents, she said, “I have been perplexed to discover just
what their platform means, and on which end of the great political level they intend to
adjust themselves. It is possible for very good material to be put to very bad uses.”115 In
antithesis, the policies of the Equal Rights Party could be seen as metaphorically sturdy
and concrete. She continued, “I am an unswerving friend of the laboring man, but I want
a platform broad enough for the wives and daughters of the manufacturers, broad enough
to take in every adult woman in the land, a platform on which the rights of the woman
will be respected as well as the rights of the man, a platform on which justice as well as
courtesy will not only be expected but exacted.”116 The notion of building a platform
through reference to its physical make up and the effort needed to build one in a physical
sense was an important component of her language because it allowed Lockwood the
ability to frame, through literal language, a political platform that legitimized her
candidacy. Further, Lockwood frequently linked this notion of physical building to her
right to political candidacy. In that same 1884 campaign speech, she declared, “There are
those who will tell you that a woman cannot be elected President of the Republic under
the Constitution, but I quote from that immortal document to show to you that the brain
that conceived and the hand that planned it builded better than he knew…There is
nothing in the Constitution or in its several amendments that tends to render a woman
citizen of the Republic ineligible to the Presidency.”117 By framing the Constitution itself
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183
as being hand-built, Lockwood rhetorically paralleled her experience and
provided legitimacy for her actions.
Discussion of manual labor worked in conjunction with language proving
Lockwood’s physical capabilities. Lockwood’s texts suggest that physical activity, or
how the body remembers action, was integral to her identity. As Henri Bergson contends,
the past survives in part through “motor mechanisms,” or the automatic action of memory
as it is located in the body. That is, people often locate the past in actions that are
remembered physically.118 The location of her memories of her experiences in her
physical body was important for crafting her political persona. This is an example of
Mattingly’s claim that “since gender so clearly shaped nineteenth century culture,
references to the body legitimized existing perceptions of gender or worked to change
them.”119 For example, Lockwood’s ability to work as a lawyer was linked to her bodily
make-up when discussing her admittance to a university in “My Efforts to Become a
Lawyer.” She reflects that the President of the school, “evidently did not fully
comprehend, good man as he was, the nature of the timber of which the young woman
who then confronted him was made.”120 The word “timber” is key here. Timber refers to
the wood of a tree – strong, firm, natural, and ever-lasting. Timber grows with the right
cultivation, and is used as the foundation for the buildings of society. Lockwood’s use of
the word to describe her own stature not only reaffirms her strength and determination,
but it rhetorically makes her career objectives possible as a woman.
She writes in “How I Ran for the Presidency” that she “sped away” on her bicycle
to the post office in order to mail her letter of acceptance of the nomination. Although the
action described was literal behavior, the language was simultaneously metaphorical.
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First, riding a bicycle is an example of indirect memory; its action, once
learned, is natural and repeatable. Lockwood’s use of her activity of riding a bicycle
located her memories in physical activity and in a natural expression of action. Second,
throughout the essay Lockwood describes the nature of her nomination as a surprise, and
her campaign as a whirlwind of coordinated effort and exciting events. The notion that
she “sped away” is not just an homage to her bicycle riding, for which she was frequently
ridiculed.121 The notion seemed to be a description of the campaign. It was fast,
unexpected, and full of direction, purpose, and swiftness. Her physical health was also
mentioned in “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer.” Lockwood wrote that during her
teaching career, “I had regularly exercised the young ladies in the gymnasium… I believe
that to this exercise, at least in part, I owe my robust health and a certain suppleness of
limb that I have never since lost.”122 Her past experiences molded her into the woman she
was in 1888, a woman both mentally and physically able to run for the presidency.
The bodily focus of her memories worked in conjunction with the naturalization
of her actions. By using logical conclusions and natural elements to describe her past
experiences, Lockwood’s rhetoric moved toward a more equal future. She reflected in
“My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” that her mind had always been one of “extreme
practicality.”123 She then stated outright that the prejudices against women “have had no
foundation in reason, in nature, or in nature's laws.”124 She reflected:
My only thought was to do those things which in the nature of human affairs
seemed the things to be done, and to do them in the best and most expeditious
manner. Hence I was not careful as to the nature of my work, so that it was means
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185
to an end, and never for a moment stopped to consider whether the
labor was such as women were accustomed to do, but only whether I had the
ability to perform it.125
Lockwood’s belief in natural performance transcended her belief in social norms.
By linking her actions to what she considered to be ordinary, she rhetorically questioned
and ignored societal gender expectations. As she stated in her 1888 essay, “The Present
Phase of the Woman Question,” “A few years hence the world will wonder why women
have not always voted, why they have not always possessed property rights, why they
were so long held as subjects and inferiors, instead of partners and equals. There is no
reason in nature. There should be none in law.”126 Remembering her past in natural
terminology not only prevented her audience from discrediting her career based on
gender norms, but simultaneously put those norms in combat with natural human
existence. For Lockwood, practicality, expediency, and capability outweighed expected
female behavior.
Language referring to natural elements helped Lockwood portray a sequence of
events. Her career was constructed as ordinary, therefore, not odd for her sex. When
describing significant events, Lockwood used several metaphors to facilitate movement
in the text and assert female agency. She wrote of her nomination in “How I Ran for the
Presidency,” by referencing natural phenomenon. She wrote, “suddenly, like a clap of
thunder from a clear sky, came a nomination to me for the presidency from the women of
California.”127 Lockwood carefully illustrated her nomination as a welcome disruption to
her normal routine. In addition, this description suggested that humans could not control
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events. “Like a clap of thunder” referred to a natural, yet unexpected
occurrence. She made it seem as if her nomination was something that she could neither
control nor prevent. The imagery gave the reader the ability to experience the same sense
of surprise that Lockwood did upon receiving the nomination. Thus, Lockwood’s
nomination is part of a natural evolution of events. Yet a tension exists in this statement,
because although the language suggested that Lockwood’s campaign was a natural
occurrence in her career, the women of the Equal Rights Party in California controlled
the power to nominate her. Lockwood’s statement made her nomination occur naturally,
but also as a result of the work of women. Such action was, then, both natural and
potentially powerful.
The power of women was frequently discussed with this natural terminology.
Lockwood used a light-dark metaphor when she referred to women at her political rally
as “bright” women.128 The word “bright” is often used to suggest that someone is smart
or savvy, and also to suggest that someone is happy or cheerful. The word is also a
physical reminder of the sun, or vivid amounts of color and light. Lockwood also wrote
that she was “fired” by the situation, which connotes a sense of heat (or passion) and flare
(or excitedness). The word is a synecdoche for feelings felt and actions taken. Taken as a
whole, Lockwood’s use of the word stands in for the idea that these women embodied
these characteristics; they were smart, capable, happy, and could lead the people toward
the future. This was a key part of Lockwood’s essay: women political leaders were the
wave of the future. The use of language linked to natural elements like weather, fire, and
light made it all the more possible for Lockwood’s campaign to take its place in the
natural progression of time, as a natural progression toward the future.
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187
This sort of progression is best seen in Lockwood’s attempt to build
momentum throughout much of her rhetoric. In “How I Ran for the Presidency,” the
campaign itself was portrayed as if it were uncontrollably propelled forward. She wrote,
“the campaign having been uncorked, it seemed disposed to run itself.”129 A campaign
“uncorked” suggests an explosion or uncontrollable release. Once the press began to
cover the campaign, Lockwood wrote that her efforts were unstoppable.
This sort of rhetorical maneuvering was also present in her discussion of fellow
woman suffrage advocates. In reference to the Democratic and Republican political
conventions that year, Lockwood wrote, “Progressive and thinking women from all
parties had attended in greater or less numbers all of these conventions, and were
pressing forward for recognition. About this time Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mrs.
[sic] Susan B. Anthony came out with a circular, directed to the leading women of the
country, urging them to use their influence for the republican party.”130 She introduced
well-known, integral woman’s rights advocates by their relation to the party convention
activities, exhibiting her belief in the power of party politics. In addition, the phrase
“pressing forward” suggests forward thinking and progressive action. Similarly, she later
referred to the appointment of Phoebe Couzins as assistant marshal of St. Louis as a “step
in the right direction.”131 Women were progressing toward something greater. A similar
sentiment is reflected in the use of the word “movement” to describe the fight for
woman’s rights in which Lockwood fought.
In an 1888 essay “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” Lockwood
mentioned changes in society that “have quickened into life the reasoning forces of the
mass of American women.”132 As a piece of campaign literature, Lockwood’s language
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188
suggested excited movement and momentum. She went on to describe the
advent of the mass media in the form of “metropolitan journals…ready for delivery at the
homes of nearly every remote town, by ten o’clock in the morning…” as further proof of
women’s participation in public conversation.133 Here, again, she used time and
availability to suggest the force of the growing community of informed women who
desired to participate in public conversation. The forces at work described through these
phrases illustrated the ever-growing presence of politically minded females. As she said
in 1888 in Louisville: “We are a progressive people, an educated people, a thinking
people, whose life and vitality, whose freedom and prosperity, are in the onward march
of free thought, and in the dissemination of the views of true republicanism. Our life is, in
[a] word, due to progression and to activity. To stand still is to retrograde.”134
To further suggest movement forward, in her essay recounting her 1884
campaign, Lockwood legitimized her own candidacy by mentioning her rival candidates
and fellow woman’s rights leaders. As she did, she used words associated with direction
and physicality. She wrote, “James G. Blaine, then in the zenith of his popularity and one
of the leading statesmen of the nation, had been nominated by the Republican Party, and
Grover Cleveland, then a new possibility, and comparatively unknown, was nominated
by the Democratic Party…”135 (728). The word “zenith” refers to a high point and its use
suggested that support for Blaine might have reached its peak. Despite ardent
campaigning by suffrage leaders, the Republican Party did not recognize woman suffrage
in their platform throughout the Gilded Age. As she reiterated later in the essay,
Lockwood believed that because of the continued lack of support, continued effort with
the party was fruitless. Taken further then, Blaine’s peaked popularity could have been a
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189
metaphor for the idea that women had nowhere else to go within the
Republican Party, and needed to look elsewhere. Or it might suggest that men had
reached the peak of their power, and thus offering a fluid opening for a female candidate
to step in. In addition, the subtext of battle seeped into her essay, as “zenith” is the high
point of a hill – those who control the high ground in battle typically maintain power.
Lockwood might have been suggesting that although Blaine maintained control of the
high ground of politics, she was willing to fight for control.
Enacting Political Womanhood
Using her past experiences to describe women as independent, physically able,
and naturally progressing in society is perhaps most significant for its ability to
demonstrate the communal power and strength of women in politics. She spent much of
her time justifying her presence in the political arena by providing testimony and
emphasizing her physical and mental capabilities. Much of this was seemingly an attempt
to separate her sex from her abilities. Political rights, in Lockwood’s view, should be
accessible to everyone. At the same time, Lockwood’s career could be seen as evidence
of women’s distinctive and exceptional contributions to the political arena. She enacted
the very roles for which she sought access. This tension between asserting personhood
and emphasizing the strength of women is perhaps best illustrated with a passage from
her campaign speech in Louisville in 1888. Lockwood spent a large section of the speech
reciting the entire first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. She then said:
We declare that the government as at present administered is not by the consent of
the governed. That the tax paying women of the country outnumber the men (socalled) by one million and a half (1,500,000), the ranks of the male voters having
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190
been largely decimated by the late civil war – a war brought about by
the tenacity and pugnacity of the male politician. We state also that in many
instances the Constitution of the United States has been violated by Congressional
legislation; that its provisions have not been preserved intact: that the government
that the women of the country have so long tacitly permitted the men of the
country to usurp has not been sacredly preserved; and that now, in accordance
with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, ratified by the Bills of
Rights of the several States, it has become the privilege of the women of this
country and the noble men who are standing shoulder to shoulder with them,
either to alter or abolish the Constitution of the United States, or to make a bold
and persistent demand for equal political privileges under it.136
As a candidate for President, Lockwood enacted her view that it was time for women to
take part in political leadership. In this passage, it seems as if Lockwood was asserting
her right to political participation as a candidate based on the founding documents, based
on her rights of personhood, regardless of sex. She then stated:
Like a child who has outgrown its swaddling clothes, the United States of
America has outgrown the civilization of the past…the woman of today is bearing
her responsibilities, fulfilling her mission and doing her share of the physical and
mental work of the republic…and developed so much of individuality, so much of
brain power, so much of possibility, that it is now too late to relegate her back to
the cradle and the kitchen…the full fledged American woman stands before you
today ready for the workshop, the pulpit, the forum or the political arena,
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191
demanding equal political rights under the Constitution, and equal civil
rights before the law.137
Her physical substantiation of her abilities regardless of her sex was paired with the
distinctive power of her generation of women. A statement from a New York campaign
speech reiterates this sentiment when Lockwood proclaimed, “Only a grand, free woman,
with the fresh blood of inspiration flowing through her veins and proud of her
motherhood can bear a child fit to govern a republic.”138 Here Lockwood presented the
unique ability of women to have children as yet another indication that they should play
important roles in the political arena. Lockwood thus believed in her right to political
office both in spite of and because of her sex.
As described earlier, although her essays and speeches were often narratives
depicting her past experiences, the language used by Lockwood oriented her rhetoric
toward the future. As she described each event in her life, there was an awareness of its
importance for the on-going fight for women’s participation in institutional politics. As
she wrote in her letter of acceptance of the nomination, “now, without stopping to look
back, let us see what a few earnest, capable women can do.”139 She articulated this more
clearly in her 1888 Boonville address when she said, “We are coming up out of the old
heathen civilization which formerly denied to woman a soul, into the broad light of a
Christian civilization in which brain force and moral force, not tyranny and brute force
shall be uppermost.”140 Just like Lease, Willard, and Foster, Lockwood used religious and
moral leadership to claim future political action for women. The power of women’s
collective action was further illustrated in Lockwood’s description of a political rally for
her candidacy. She described the women and men at a rally in Maryland as participating
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192
together, acting together in a group, and identifying with one another. Her
female supporters had the “audacity” to hold a political convention.141 She even wrote of
the presence of journalists and that the next morning “both Baltimore and Washington
had the report of the meeting, with embellishments.”142 The community of support and
political action that Lockwood described was indicative of the sort of thing that can
happen when women come together. This recognition of the strengths of women was also
articulated in Lockwood’s description of the attendees: the bright women of Washington
and the sturdy old farmers of Maryland, who were almost amazed at the audacity of
women holding a political convention, made the welkin ring.”143 Women were “bright,”
or related to light and direction. Men were “sturdy” and “old.” This language suggests
that while the men involved could be strong and powerful, they were simultaneously
outdated and weakened. Her campaign was driven by support from a community of hardworking, self-determined women.
Lockwood placed the power to determine presidential candidates in the hands of
women. As she stated in “How I Ran for the Presidency,” her nomination was decided
upon and executed by a group of politically active women, without approval or support
from the political establishment or the dominant woman suffrage associations. In her
letter to the Woman’s Herald of Industry Lockwood first suggested a female candidate
for President. Here again was an example of radical action. The mere suggestion of a
female president, considering women could not vote and no woman had run a full
campaign, was radical. In fact, the one woman who had attempted a run was socially
ostracized.144 Lockwood wrote in the letter, “Two of the present political parties who
have candidates in the field believe in woman suffrage. It would have been well had some
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
193
of the candidates been women. There is no use in attempting to avoid the
inevitable” (729). Lockwood’s statement was strong and determined, asserting in no
uncertain terms that the nation would be unable to avoid a female political leader in the
future. In addition, she questioned the political machinery not only by asserting woman’s
right to suffrage, but by suggesting that women should be involved in the actual political
process as decision makers. This sort of autonomous decision-making, or decisions made
by women without the influence of men, was simultaneously personal and political. As a
woman, Lockwood asserted her firm belief in the power of every woman, while
encouraging that power to be used in a larger social framework. She continued, “it is
quite time that we had our own party; our own platform, and our own nominees.”145 Her
strong message was that women were capable of political policymaking and needed to
take matters into their own hands. As she said in Boonville in 1888, “Woman therefore is
obliged to enter the political arena, not from choice but from a sense of duty.”146
Just as her description of her struggle to advance in the legal profession was
described as “hand to hand work”147 earlier, this language evokes the imagery of hand to
hand combat, an appropriate signifier for the nature of her career. Lockwood’s legal
battles and attempts to enter politics represented a constant struggle between expected
norms of gender behavior and her efforts to contribute to society. This sort of imagery
was also present in her 1888 campaign rhetoric, when she praised the Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU) as “almost in one solid phalanx demanding that badge of
American citizenship – the ballot.”148 By describing the WCTU as a phalanx, or a wellarmed and organized militant group,149 Lockwood asserted that women had both the
capability and the drive to fight the battle for advancement. She spoke of the Equal
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
194
Rights Party in the same way in Louisville in 1888 when she said, “The grand
and new Equal Rights Party, whom I am proud to represent, have girded on their armor,
and …will sweep over the country awakening our people to new and living issues…”150
This language was also present in Lockwood’s description of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
her “coadjutors”: “A large majority of those who early espoused the cause beat a hasty
retreat from the field. But the specter would not down. Some of the women braved the
tempest and died at their posts. Some still survive, and have added thousands of converts
to the idea of woman’s equality before the law.”151
Her 1888 campaign literature continued to emphasize the power of political
women as a welcome and expected outcome of their efforts. She wrote, “It is more
formative than formidable; and yet there is such a general uprising all along the line, as to
indicate that a social revolution is impending.”152 The inevitable appearance of women in
positions of institutional leadership was emphasized in strong and confident terms. She
went on to describe that more women were being admitted into educational institutions in
the same sort of language: “the gradual opening up to [women] of the older institutions of
learning, formerly devoted to masculine genius only, are all beginning to bear legitimate
fruit.”153 Lockwood was forceful in her assertion that schools should only be considered
valid when educating women as well as men. Just as with the political institution, the
educational institution needed to accept women into its ranks in order to be legitimate.
She also went on to blame past subjugation of women for its continuation: “But at the
present time it is largely caused by that might force, public opinion – old time custom, the
fear of being laughed at if she has her own ideas.” 154 In her view, outdated viewpoints
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
195
were to blame for expected social behavior. This was a phenomenon that
women could overcome through asserting the power of their sex.
A Usable Past
Understanding the historical context of 1884, 1888, and 1903 is important for
interpreting Lockwood’s essays and speeches. First, Lockwood’s rhetoric illustrates
attempts made by a woman who took unprecedented steps to insert herself into the
political institutions of the time. Lockwood represents the most complete picture we have
of one of the first female political party candidates. Her language helps us to understand
the rhetorical constraints on a female candidacy, and her efforts to confront these social
biases. Second, her references to her capability and historical significance illustrates a
potential desire to bolster her place in the history of the woman’s rights movement. This
leads to an interesting negotiation between history and memory, or grounded historical
time and timeless public memory. This can be seen in Lockwood’s constant linguistic
orientation from the past to the future. Not only did her rhetoric present a documented
past, but it attempted to create a usable past for Lockwood’s present.
Woman’s rights activists throughout the nineteenth century often enacted their
rights through physically performing their citizenship.155 The act of voting by women
across the country is an example of this sort of enacted citizenship. As Angela Ray
writes, the “ritual” performance of voting highlights “social anxiety about the parameters
of the mythically universal category of the citizen.”156 Lockwood legitimized her
candidacy in a similar way by enacting her right to run for her office. She provided proof
of her career, emphasized her physical abilities, and proclaimed her hopeful outlook for a
more progressive future, all while running for President of the United States. Her need to
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
196
document her career, her physical make up, her ability to reason, and the
positive power of female collective action all help to highlight the constraints faced by a
female candidate for political office during the Gilded Age.
Lockwood’s essays and speeches are also significant because of their use of
memory as a rhetorical tool. First, Lockwood used her memories to make sense of the
present. Lockwood was explicitly trying to shape the collective memory of her own life
by documenting her career. Pennebaker and Banasik write that, “Significant historical
events form stronger collective memories, and present circumstances affect what events
are remembered as significant.”157 It is clear that Lockwood was attempting to control
remembrance by documenting those events that she deemed most important. This task is
reflected in Pierre Nora’s statement that, “The task of remembering makes everyone his
own historian.”158 Lockwood not only grounded her career in a corroborated past, but
also interpreted her own past to shape public memory. By materially grounding both her
legal career and her campaign for the presidency, Lockwood attempted to solidify herself
in the nation’s historical narrative and legitimize herself as a woman’s rights leader.
The past can be appropriated and used in ways that reinforce or question social
norms. The construction of the past can be a basis for interpreting contemporary social
practices, and thus is rhetorical in nature.159 In this light, Lockwood’s essays became
useful for her present. As hinted at throughout this essay, whether in 1884, 1888, or 1903,
her rhetoric potentially served a more general purpose. Lockwood’s memories both
solidified the past in a particular narrative of history and also provided an interpretive
context for present situations. Lockwood’s memories said as much about the past as they
did about a potential future. In the essays and speeches analyzed here from 1884 and
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
197
1888, Lockwood’s attempt to prove both the strength of her character and the
success of her career was rhetorically useful for proving herself a good candidate for
President. The physical strength, sense of movement, corroborated career, and rhetorical
energy created by her language work as autobiography and campaign literature.
Further, Lockwood’s essay from 1903 recounting her 1884 presidential campaign
was just as much about historical documentation as it was a rallying cry for women to
become politically active. Through words associated with the physical and natural world,
Lockwood propelled the reader toward a conclusion. On the surface, the essay was a
retelling of the events of her campaign, with written documentation of many important
occurrences. On a meta-level, however, the essay seemed to reflect a desire to continue
moving forward. The woman suffrage “movement” itself is a metaphor that is reflected in
Lockwood’s tone and language. Lockwood presented herself as an able leader, offered
her campaign as evidence of action and momentum, and encouraged similar behavior in
the future. The example of her campaign and its constant movement forward is reflective
of the need for the same sort of driving force, an energetic rebirth, from the women
involved in the movement in 1888 and in 1903.
The woman suffrage movement became increasingly “conservative and
conventional” in the late nineteenth century, mostly in reaction to the hysteria caused by
radical labor agitation, including the growing antagonism toward anarchists and
Chicago’s Haymarket riot of 1886.160 As Flexner and Fitzpatrick write, “Susan Anthony
herself would have thought twice about flouting Federal election laws and going to jail in
an era which witnessed Haymarket hysteria.”161 In part, this lack of radical activism was
related to suffrage victories in the West. Although considered “victories,” woman
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
198
suffrage opponents began to link the movement to political sentiments.
Colorado, which supported women suffrage, was a hotbed of Populism. Populists “cast
themselves as outsiders and mistrusted the eastern political establishment.” 162 In
addition, suffrage was granted in Utah, linking it with Mormonism. As Edwards writes,
“Between 1871 and 1890, the suffrage movement had suffered from the stigma of
Mormon polygamy; in the years between 1897 and 1910, the stigma of radicalism was
even worse…In retrospect, the victories in Utah, Colorado, and Idaho seemed to have
hampered the cause of suffrage in other states.”163
Further, the woman suffrage movement was stalled in 1903. Although the 1890
merger of the two prominent woman suffrage organizations into the National American
Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)164 contributed to the unification of suffrage
efforts, the movement had yet to find a new charismatic leader. Major leaders had died or
were fading into the background, membership and momentum had declined, and many of
the newly established local suffrage groups were unstable, “often lapsing into inactivity
or quietly folding as soon as the charismatic NAWSA organizers left the area.”165
NAWSA suffered from “financial woes, public indifference, and lack of national
recognition.”166 Although there were a series of suffrage victories in the 1890s, the period
between 1896 and 1910 is referred to by historians as the “doldrums” – a time when no
states adopted woman suffrage amendments.167 It was in this environment that Lockwood
published “Presidency.”
On the surface, Lockwood’s rhetoric was a retelling of the events of her career,
with written documentation of many important occurrences. Her rhetoric also reflected a
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
199
desire to continue moving forward during the height of the woman suffrage
movement. Her past provided key evidence of women’s strength, endurance, and
determination. Lockwood presented herself as an able leader, presented her career as
evidence of action and momentum, and encouraged similar behavior in the future. Her
strength and determination was useful both as a presidential candidate and a woman’s
rights leader. The rhetorical movement forward was reflective of the need for the same
sort of driving force, an energetic rebirth, from the women involved in the movement in
1888 and 1903.
In her 1884 nomination acceptance letter, Lockwood wrote that her campaign
would “pass into the history of 1884, and become the entering wedge – the first practical
movement in the history of Woman Suffrage, and will be the beginning of the end.”168
Two key metaphors here illustrate the overall purpose of the campaign narrative. That the
campaign would “pass” into history contributed to the overall sense of direction that
Lockwood’s writing suggested. Metaphorically, it physically moved into the annals of
history. Lockwood’s essay could be described as an attempt to solidify the campaign’s
existence in the national memory. Further, her use of the word “will” suggested that the
campaign would be the first of many, or perhaps the removal of the political barrier for
the women of the country. Similarly, she wrote, “It will open a door to be shut no more
forever, and four years from now will sweep the country.”169 She spoke of her
nomination and its importance to history. The nomination itself was the important aspect
of the action. Lockwood wrote of the barrier that prevented women from seeking office
as a personally experienced aspect of society. The phrase “to be shut no more forever” is
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
200
further indication of movement from past to future. “To be shut” is active and
suggests future action, and “no more” refers to actions of the past that would be halted.
By placing “forever” at the end of the phrase, Lockwood inferred that this action would
be timeless and continual.
Yet her use of the word “wedge” encompassed the text’s purpose more fully.
Lockwood seemingly used the term to suggest that her campaign could be that needed
piece of history for woman’s rights. Her campaign could be evidence of women’s hard
work and determination, the sort of action that was needed in 1903. Further, a “wedge”
brings to light images of a solid section that might be immovable once it is put in place.
The progress that her campaign made, Lockwood suggested, was important for the
movement’s history and its future. Finally, the verb “to wedge” often means to force, to
hold, to separate, or to fix in place. In Lockwood’s view, her campaign made woman’s
political place distinctive and permanent in history. She ended her essay in a similar way:
“thus ended a presidential campaign that has gone down in history, but which awakened
the women of the country.”170 The campaign moved down and up at the same time. It had
passed into history, but also aroused sentiments. The metaphors of physical movement
propelled the narrative and suggested a need to propel the movement forward. Her
narrative recounted that exact “awakening,” perhaps with the rhetorical purpose of
inspiring women to experience a similar feeling in the future.
Lockwood’s career was prolific. She assisted in passing much legislation,
including a Married Women’s Property Act. By the late 1880s, she became heavily
involved in the Universal Peace Union.171 She continued to be involved in the suffrage
movement, lobbying Congress when state referenda were passed.172 She also wrote
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
201
essays on the state of women in The American Journal of Politics II,
frequently contributed to Marietta Stow’s Woman’s Herald of Industry, and wrote for The
Peacemaker, a journal that she also co-edited.173 Her rift with Stanton and Anthony
played out further when she joined the National Legislative League Federal Suffrage
Association, which was established in 1892 and renamed the Federal Women’s Equality
League in 1902. According to Norgren, “The group was born out of frustration with
NAWSA’s emphasis on state suffrage campaigns.” 174 They believed that an Act of
Congress was needed in order to override any state laws barring women from the ballot.
The group advocated in particular for an Act that would at least allow women to vote for
the U.S. House of Representatives. Lockwood died on May 19, 1917, three years before
the passage of the 19th Amendment.
Notes for Chapter Four
1
Belva A. Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," National Magazine, March 1903: 729.
Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for President in 1876, also as a candidate for the Equal
Rights Party. Woodhull was a controversial figure for the woman’s movement, as her radical views on free
love and financial woes brought notoriety to her public persona. In addition, the legality of her candidacy is
question by many historians. She was not the constitutionally mandated age of 35 when she ran for office,
her name was not printed on the ballot, and she was in custody for violating the Comstock Act on election
day in 1876. Jill Norgren, “Lockwood in ’84,” Wilson Quarterly 26, no. 4 (Autumn 2002); Jill Norgren,
Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would be President (New York, NY: New York University Press,
2007), 125. For more information on Woodhull, see Lois Beachy Underhill, The Woman Who Ran for
President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1996); Mary Gabriel,
Notorious Victoria (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1998).
3
In addition to running on the ticket with Lockwood, Stow also ran for Governor of California in 1882 and
edited the Woman’s Herald of Industry and Social Science Cooperator, an important progressive magazine
for women. Woman’s Herald of Industry, July and September, 1882.
4
Barbie Zelizer, “Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies,” Critical Studies in
Mass Communication 12 (June 1995): 226. See also Edward Casey, “Public Memory in Place and Time,
“Framing Public Memory ed. Kendall Phillips (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004): 17-44.
5
Douglas Walton, “Enthymemes, Common Knowledge, and Plausible Inference,” Philosophy and Rhetoric
34.2 (2001): 96.
2
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
6
202
Barry Schwartz, “The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory” Social Forces
61.2 (1982): 347.
7
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory Ed. Lewis Coser (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1992) 49.
8
John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth
Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 14.
9
Jill Norgren, “Lockwood in ’84,” Wilson Quarterly 26 (2002): 12.
10
Warren L. Lashley, "Belva Bennett McNall Lockwood," in Women Public Speakers in the United States,
1800-1925: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, 39-48 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 39.
11
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 6-7. At the time, Anthony was a
prominent woman’s rights advocate and abolitionist, frequently touring the country giving lectures on a
variety of issues.
12
Lashley, 40.
13
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 14-16.
14
Lockwood lobbied Congress for many reforms, including pensions, mining rights, Indian affairs, foreign
policy, and woman’s rights. Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, Chapter 9.
15
Lashley, 40.
16
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 23-26.
17
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 19.
18
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 31.
19
Lockwood faced intense gender discrimination in receiving her diploma. She completed her coursework,
but it took several years for the school to award her a diploma so she could apply for membership in the
Bar Association.
20
Lashley, 39.
21
Lashley, 41.
22
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 98.
23
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 107.
24
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 107.
25
For details about the case, see Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 204211; United States v. Cherokee Nation, 202 U.S. 101 (1906).
26
Woman: Her Position, Influence, and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World (Springfield, MA:
The King-Richardson Co., 1902).
27
In 1872, Victoria Claflin Woodhull ran for President, but was arrested and was in jail during election
week. Woodhull was arrested under the Comstock Law, which made it illegal to send “obscene” material
through the mail. Woodhull had exposed in print the sexual infidelities of Henry Ward Beecher, a harsh
critic of her candidacy.
28
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 124.
29
Belva A. Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," National Magazine, March 1903: 729.
30
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 728-733.
31
“A Women’s Candidate for President,” The Evening Star, September 4, 1884: 1.
32
“Mrs. Lockwood’s Campaign Closed,” Evening Star, September 29, 1884; Norgren, Belva Lockwood:
The Woman Who Would Be President, 135.
33
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 135-136.
34
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 137.
35
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, Chapter 10.
36
Woman’s Herald of Industry, July, 1884, 1; Woman’s Herald of Industry, September, 1884, 1;Norgren,
128.
37
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 134; “Woman in Politics,” Frank
Leslie’s Illustrated, September 20, 1884: 72-75.
38
“Another Scandal,” New York Times, October 12, 1884: 8;
39
Erika Falk, Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press, 2008), 39.
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
40
203
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 139; Mother Hubbard dresses were
new pieces of female clothing that allowed for freer movement that was considered inappropriate to be
worn outdoors; “Fun of the Campaign,” New York Times, Nov. 4, 1884: 1.
41
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 140.
42
Lashley, 42.
43
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 733.
44
“Belva Lockwood’s Nomination,” The Woman’s Journal, May, 1888: 5.
45
“A Women’s Candidate for President,” 1.
46
“A Women’s Candidate for President,” 1.
47
Qtd. In Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 163.
48
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 165.
49
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 167.
50
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 167.
51
Robert J. Dinkin, Before Equal Suffrage: Women in Partisan Politics from Colonial Times to 1920
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), 73.
52
Dinkin, 104.
53
Dinkin, 105.
54
For a list of women who ran for and were elected to state and local offices, see Her Hat was in the Ring!:
U.S. Women Who Ran for Political Office Before 1920, 2010,
http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/wchmiel1/women%20in%20politics/Party%20Affiiliation.htm
(accessed March 1, 2010).
55
Dinkin, 74.
56
Dinkin, 75.
57
Julia Hill Winner has compiled a series of writings in a volume with the Niagara County Historical
Society in 1969. The Belva A. Lockwood Papers in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection includes
letters, pamphlets, and newspaper clippings. The Belva Lockwood Papers in the Ormes-Winner Collection
at the New York State Historical Association includes handwritten manuscripts.
58
“A Woman Can Be President: Belva Lockwood Defines the Position of the Equal Righters.” New York
Times, October 20,1884, 1.
59
“Mrs. Lockwood’s Speech,” Louisville Courier Journal, October 14, 1884.
60
Belva Lockwood, "My Efforts to Become a Lawyer," Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, February 1888:
215-229.
61
Belva Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” The Cosmopolitan V, March-October,
1888: 467-470.
62
“Belva Lockwood’s Address,” Boonville Herald, September 20, 1888.
63
The journal was titled The Bostonian, and was established in 1894. After four volumes, the name
changed to The National Magazine, and was published until 1933 by the Bostonian Publishing Company.
The magazine was illustrated, and usually included short stories, poems, humorous articles, and editorials.
It also focused on Washington political affairs. According to Frank Mott, the magazine “specialized in
small-city circulation throughout the country, but never reached more than about three hundred thousand.”
Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741-1930, Vol. 4 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 1958-1968), 80-81.
64
Ellen Carol DuBois, "Outgrowing the Compact of the Fathers: Equal Rights, Woman Suffrage, and the
United States Constitution, 1820-1878," The Journal of American History 74, no. 3 (1987): 842.
65
Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,"
American Historical Review 89 (June 1984): 624
66
Jan Lewis, "'Of Every Age, Sex, & Condition': The Representation of Women in the Constitution,"
Journal of the Early Republic 15, no. 3 (1995): 359.
67
Lewis, 669.
68
Lewis, 369.
69
Paula Baker, The Moral Frameworks of Public Life: Gender, Politics, and the State in Rural New York,
1870-1930 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991), xiii.
70
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 222.
71
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 224.
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
72
204
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 228.
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 225.
74
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 225.
75
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 729.
76
Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” 470.
77
“Hopeful Mrs. Lockwood” New York Times, August 6, 1888: 5.
78
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 729.
79
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 729.
80
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 223.
81
“Mrs. Lockwood’s Speech.”
82
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 729.
83
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 730.
84
“A Woman Can Be President: Belva Lockwood Defines the Position of the Equal Righters,” 1.
85
“A Woman Can Be President: Belva Lockwood Defines the Position of the Equal Righters,” 1.
86
“A Woman Can Be President: Belva Lockwood Defines the Position of the Equal Righters,” 1.
87
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 220.
88
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 220.
89
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 220.
90
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 220.
91
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 728.
92
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 728.
93
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 729.
94
David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1985),
44.
95
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 218.
96
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 218.
97
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 728-729.
98
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency, 729.
99
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 216.
100
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 223.
101
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 226.
102
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 221.
103
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 217.
104
See Barbara Young Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long Nineteenth Century United
States (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 8; Baker, 629.
105
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 217.
106
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 218.
107
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 221.
108
“Mrs. Lockwood’s Speech.” The phrase “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” repeats words from
President Andrew Jackson’s “Farewell Address” on March 4, 1837 and abolitionist Wendell Phillips
Address to the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852. See “Andrew Jackson Farewell Address,” The
American Presidency Project, accessed July 19, 2012, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=67087 and
Wendell Phillips, Speeches Before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society January 1852 (Boston, MA:
Robert F. Wallcut, 1852), 13.
109
“Belva Lockwood’s Address,” 1.
110
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 729.
111
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 729.
112
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 729.
113
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 729.
114
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 731.
115
“A Woman Can Be President: Belva Lockwood Defines the Position of the Equal Righters,” 1.
116
“A Woman Can Be President: Belva Lockwood Defines the Position of the Equal Righters,” 1.
117
“A Woman Can Be President: Belva Lockwood Defines the Position of the Equal Righters,” 1.
73
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
118
205
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, 1910, trans. N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer (New York, NY: Cosimo
Classics, 2007), 87.
119
Carol Mattingly, “Telling Evidence: Rethinking What Counts in Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly
32.1 (2002): 106.
120
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 218.
121
Lockwood rode her bicycle almost everywhere in Washington D.C., and was frequently ridiculed for it
in the press. The bicycle she rode was actually an adult’s tricycle. Riding a bicycle was a controversial act
for women of the time, and was further proof for many of her contemporaries of her radical ways. Norgren,
Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 94-95.
122
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 219.
123
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 215.
124
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 215.
125
Lockwood, “My Efforts to Become a Lawyer,” 215.
126
Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” 470.
127
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 729.
128
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 732.
129
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 732.
130
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 728-729.
131
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 729.
132
Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” 467.
133
Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” 467.
134
“Mrs. Lockwood’s Speech.”
135
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 728
136
“Mrs. Lockwood’s Speech.”
137
“Mrs. Lockwood’s Speech.”
138
“A Woman Can Be President: Belva Lockwood Defines the Position of the Equal Righters,” 1.
139
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 730.
140
“Belva Lockwood’s Address.”
141
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 732.
142
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 732.
143
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 732.
144
Victoria Woodhull was ridiculed heavily in the press, and branded a social radical during and after her
campaign in 1872; see Falk, 33, 101-105.
145
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 730.
146
“Belva Lockwood’s Address.”
147
Lockwood, “How I Ran for the Presidency,” 729.
148
Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” 470.
149
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “phalanx” as: “a body of heavily armed infantry in ancient Greece
formed in close deep ranks and files.”
150
“Mrs. Lockwood’s Speech.”
151
Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” 470.
152
Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” 467.
153
Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” 467.
154
Lockwood, “The Present Phase of the Woman Question,” 470.
155
Angela Ray, "The Rhetorical Ritual of Citizenship: Women's Voting as Public Performance, 18681875," Quarterly Journal of Speech 93, no. 1 (February 2007): 1-26.
156
Ray, 8.
157
James W Pennebaker and Becky L. Banasik, "On the Creation and Maintenance of Collective
Memories: History as Social Psychology," in Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological
Perspectives, ed. James Pennebaker, Dario Paez and Bernard Rime (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Publishers, 1997), 6.
158
Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire," Representations 26 (Spring
1989): 15. David Lowenthal writes of a similar task when he says, “The remembered past requires us all to
behave, however unwittingly, as historians” (39).
Belva Bennett Lockwood, Confident Candidate
159
206
Halbwachs, 188.
Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the
United States, Enlarged Edition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 209.
161
Flexner and Fitzpatrick, 209.
162
Rebecca Edwards, "Pioneers at the Polls: Woman Suffrage in the West," in Votes for Women: The
Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, ed. Jean H. Baker, 90-101 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 95.
163
Edwards, 98.
164
Flexner Fitzpatrick, 209.
165
Frances E.Willard, a national leader in the suffrage and temperance movements, died in 1898, and her
organization, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union backed away from her original commitment to
woman suffrage. In addition, Lucy Stone died in 1893, Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1902, and Susan B.
Anthony in 1906. Ross Evans Paulson, Liberty, Equality, and Justice: Civil Rights, Women's Rights, and
the Regulation of Business 1865-1932 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 119; Sara Hunter
Graham, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 8.
166
Graham, 10.
167
Graham, 148.
168
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 730.
169
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 730.
170
Lockwood, "How I Ran for the Presidency," 733.
171
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, Chapters 12 and 16.
172
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 214-215.
173
Belva Lockwood, "The Present Phase of the Woman Question"; Belva Lockwood, "Women in Politics,"
The American Journal of Politics, II, 1893: 385-387.
174
Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President, 215.
160
Precedents and Directions
207
“The glory of each generation is to make its own precedents…”
~Belva Bennett Lockwood1
Chapter Five: Precedents and Directions
In August of 1893, the law department of the Queen Isabella Association held the
first international convention for female attorneys in Chicago, IL.2 Mary Elizabeth Lease,
Judith Ellen Foster, and Belva Bennett Lockwood were all in attendance.3 The event
demonstrated the growing presence of women in law and the importance of female unity.
As a collective, those in attendance came together as women to celebrate agency and
power. With varied backgrounds and viewpoints, Lease, Foster, and Lockwood came
together as female attorneys and pioneers in party politics. Along with Frances Elizabeth
Willard, each had the education and experience to gain power within the political system
because of their careers in law. In addition, each faced constraints on participation in a
world dominated by men and “male” interests. The rhetorical tactics of women like
Lease, Willard, Foster, and Lockwood help tell the story of the development of political
womanhood. Their activities were integral to the success, growth, and presence of
women in positions of leadership in party politics. In addition, their experiences broaden
our understanding of female rhetorical strategies and their potential influence on party
rhetoric. By claiming political leadership through their distinctive contributions as
women, they forged a path for female political participation in the future. All of them
argued for political citizenship because of their womanhood. This final chapter will
explore the importance of expanding the archive of women’s rhetoric to include women
Precedents and Directions
208
like those studied here. It will also argue that these case studies nuance
historical and rhetorical understandings of the Gilded Age. Finally, it will explain why
understanding the roots of political womanhood influences pedagogy and social
understanding today.
Rhetorical History and the Expanding Archive
Rhetorical histories are unique avenues for interdisciplinary examinations of
historical moments. Historians participate in similar acts of recovery, sociologists
examine patterns of social identity formation, and scholars across disciplines find
evidence from primary texts. However, an explicitly rhetorical approach, particularly
through case studies, can highlight aspects of the past and present that other disciplines
do not necessarily find. David Zarefsky put it best when he wrote that rhetorical studies:
help to articulate the rhetorical climate of an age: how people defined the
situation, what led them to seek to justify themselves or to persuade others, what
storehouse of social knowledge they drew upon for their premises, what themes
and styles they produced in their messages, how their processes of identification
and confrontation succeeded or failed. It is precisely the commitment and training
in rhetoric that sensitizes one to these dimensions of the rhetorical experience.”4
The women studied in this project help us accomplish this task. Each defined female
political activity and leadership in a different way, focusing on the potential of women as
political actors. They drew from cultural understandings of gender performance and
identity in order to identify with their audiences in a non-threatening way. These
rhetorical “dimensions” of the origins of the female political party experience help
scholars deepen the rhetorical, historical, and cultural narrative.
Precedents and Directions
209
Rhetoricians are historians of public discourse, as opposed to those who
use public discourse to recreate historical culture. The recreation of history is an integral
project, and one without which most rhetorical historians could not begin to appreciate
the texts themselves. However, rhetoricians’ primary contribution is to enhance the
history of discourse and situate it’s meaning in cultural understanding. In other words,
“rhetorical discourse could be studied as a force in history…less because it produces
tangible effects than because it alters an ongoing social conversation.”5 The work of the
rhetorical historian contributes to scholarship through the recovery of public texts. Those
texts can increase understanding about specific historical moments and cultures. Projects
like this are important for historic preservation. One of the primary functions of this
project has been to trace the rhetorical activities of lesser-known women and lessexamined public activities. Although there has been some historical work done on these
women, as explicated in Chapter One, an examination of their rhetorical activities is just
as important for historical recovery.
When women are added to the rhetorical archive it both embraces and challenges
disciplinary norms. On one hand, claiming that certain texts are worthy of preservation
necessitates utilizing and examining available norms of inclusion. On the other hand,
disciplinary history is fundamentally challenged because women have historically not
been included. In his 1967 essay “Women Orators: More Research?” Robert Brake did a
survey of academics of public oratory to assess their knowledge of the history of women
speaking. The answers he received from scholars from across the country were telling
examples of the bias in the discipline. Most argued that they did not know of many
Precedents and Directions
210
women speakers because most women chose other forms of communication.
Others simply could not name any significant female rhetoricians.
It is in this academic environment that Karlyn Kohrs Campbell began her archival
project. Campbell looked at forty-five volumes of published speeches that were published
between 1896 and 1981, and found only fifty-two speeches or speech excerpts by
women.6 As part of an extensive archival project, Campbell published Man Cannot Speak
For Her Volumes I and II in 1989, which chronicled and analyzed the oratorical efforts
of women during the first wave of feminism. In addition to Doris Yoakam’s 1937 essay
on pioneer women orators, Campbell’s publication remains one of the first and most
complete chronicling of women’s 19th century speaking attempts.7
Recent studies that have been cited throughout this project demonstrate the
growing amount of scholarship on historical women. The importance of having primary
texts for performing acts of rhetorical history and criticism cannot be overstated. Primary
texts allow scholars to analyze historical rhetorical acts without secondary interpretations.
It is at that point, Moya Ball argues, that true analysis can begin.8 Doing feminist
rhetorical history requires a rich archive of texts for analysis. When it comes to female
rhetorical action as party leaders during the late 19th century, this is no small task. Access
is limited, for the most part, to newspaper accounts (which are uncommon and limited),
published writings, and personal archives of the women themselves. Increasing
awareness of and access to the texts examined in projects like this one expand the archive
in important ways.
Chapter Two adds analysis of the speeches and writings of Mary Elizabeth Lease,
a powerful orator and Populist Party leader. Chapter Three brings attention to the party
Precedents and Directions
211
rhetoric of Frances Elizabeth Willard, a well-known woman’s rights leader,
and Judith Ellen Foster, a lesser known but equally as powerful orator. While many
scholars have analyzed Willard’s activist rhetoric, fewer have looked at her Prohibition
Party rhetoric. Chapter Four highlights the speeches and writings of Belva Bennett
Lockwood, a formidable force for women and a figure who has been overlooked by
historians and rhetoricians alike. These rhetorical activities develop the expanding
archive of woman suffrage and reform movement rhetoric. In addition, their speeches and
writings provide a necessary addition to the history of the political parties that they
represented. As was described in Chapter One, women have been largely left out of
scholarly work on political change. Women’s discourse necessarily changes the way that
history should be studied and understood.
The act of recovering texts is a key component to understanding historic context.
Many rhetorical scholars advance the notion that analyses of texts can tell us just as much
about the context in which the texts existed as they can about the texts themselves. This is
most institutionalized in the common practice of situating a text within its contextual
moment. As Ernest Wrage writes, “A speech is an agency of its time, one whose
surviving record provides a repository of themes and their elaborations from which we
may gain insight into the life of an era as well as into the mind of a man.”9 Despite
Wrage’s obvious gendered and speech-centered notion of rhetorical texts, Wrage’s
insight is useful. Thinking of past moments of rhetorical discourse as “repositories” of
social values, hierarchies, principles, and institutions highlights one of the most
fundamental reasons for doing rhetorical history. Our rhetorical past offers a unique and
complex vision of historical contexts. The study of women’s voices enhances our
Precedents and Directions
212
understanding of cultural norms, expectations, and hierarchies. By examining
the growth in female partisan activity and leadership during the Gilded Age, one can see
the evolution of an identity. This project finds women debating partisanship and
negotiating political womanhood in new and important ways, creating a role for women
in political discourse.
Rhetorical history contributes to understanding messages and their context.10 As
Ball reiterates, “a rhetorical perspective prods us to ask what persuasive discourse means
within its historical context.”11 James Jasinski offers one of the best descriptions of the
relationship between discourse and context:
In addition to self-constitution and the formation of subjectivity or subject
positions, discourse functions to organize and structure an individual’s or a
culture’s experience of time and space, the norms of political culture and the
experience of communal existence (including collective identity), and the
linguistic resources of the culture (including, in particular, the stock of
fundamental political concepts that shape the culture’s understanding of political
existence).12
Research that has been done on women rhetors, strategies, and specific “exigencies” of
the first wave of feminism has contributed to an understanding of the origins of social
movements in which women played a role, in addition to understanding the more
immediate “ideological development and key leaders of these movements.”13 Michele
Ramsey writes that studying women’s rhetorical history “recognizes the predominant
social forces in operation during a time period and thus acknowledges that a variety of
contextual phenomena influence a rhetorical act regardless of whether all of the aspects
Precedents and Directions
of that context are consciously addressed in the act itself.”14 The patterns,
213
trials, tribulations, setbacks, and successes that women experienced as they made their
way into the male partisan political world tell a story that intersects with and deepens
already established women’s and political history.
The rhetorical history explored in this project highlights a debate that took place
during the Gilded Age about the role of women in party politics, the appropriate space for
female civic engagement, and the benefits and drawbacks of female partisanship. As
Melanie Gustafson writes, “women’s struggle for inclusion in political parties raised
serious questions about the meaning of partisanship as a political identity for women, and
in turn, influenced decisions regarding political arguments, tactics, and goals.”15 This
debate is key to understanding the subject positions of political women in the late
nineteenth century. Partisanship itself became a contested term, leading female political
leaders to question in what way women should or should not use party politics for their
causes. Some, like Lease, believed already established political parties were important
spaces for increasing female political influence. Some, like Willard and Foster, believed
women’s strength lay in their ability to maintain their “moral” influence over the political
environment as experts on the nation’s past. Others, like Lockwood, believed that women
had unique contributions to make because of their exceptional qualities.
The case studies presented here give us an appreciation for the rhetorical abilities
of women and also nuance our understanding of a larger socio-political context. As a
collective, the women studied here present us with a range of experiences and viewpoints
that help craft a narrative. The rhetorical historian views “history as a series of rhetorical
problems, situations that call for public persuasion to advance a cause or overcome an
Precedents and Directions
214
impasse. The focus of the study would be on how, and how well, people
invented and deployed messages in response to the situation,”16 Defined and constrained
by their gendered role, these women utilized specific rhetorical techniques in order to
penetrate a restricted system. As such, their rhetorical strategies are distinctive rhetorical
acts. Cheree Carlson calls for scholars to take a “step back from our modern definitional
desires and gain perspective on what constituted a feminist act for a woman given her
own time and cultural roots.”17 As women working within cultural constraints, the actions
of female party leaders constitute just this type of feminist act.
Chapter Two demonstrates how Lease worked within cultural expectations of
female behavior to gain agency within the Populist Party. Specifically, she adopted
personae consistent with her prescribed female role, but that proved useful for the
Populist Party. The Populists attempted to prove they were the party of moral, religious,
and patriotic leadership. Through her rhetoric, Lease proved that as a woman, she could
be the voice of those claims, making her a useful and powerful Populist representative. It
was indeed her womanhood that gave her the power to enact such leadership. Similarly,
Willard and Foster demonstrated that women could be a continuation of political
principle and patriotism by linking the actions of women to the visions of the Prohibition
and Republican parties respectively. Finally, Lockwood showed how women had
exceptional qualities that would make them great leaders, demonstrating that examples
independence, ability, and accomplishment could be proof of a woman’s ability to lead in
the political arena. These women were constrained by cultural expectations like True
Womanhood and Republican Motherhood. In addition, all were inhibited by a lack of
access to educational, vocational, and rhetorical opportunities. Despite this, each found
Precedents and Directions
215
agency within cultural limitations to find a space in the political institution. All
of the women studied showed that they could be significant and powerful voices for
political parties as women.
The actions of party women also enhance our understanding of the larger political
culture of the day. Ramsey calls for scholars of “historical women’s public address” to
recognize “broader aspects of context” and their impact on rhetorical history.18 Party
structures and the overarching political system were fundamentally changed because
women became important players. As was illustrated in Chapter One, the Gilded Age was
a period of social, cultural, and political transformation. As political parties battled for
votes, third parties emerged on the scene to address concerns about specific issues. The
case studies presented here demonstrate that women were integral to this project. Turner
claims that “the melding of historical and rhetorical methodologies can contribute to an
understanding of the complex latitudinal and longitudinal processes of social
influence.”19 Party women and their rhetorical techniques became important influences
for the parties in which they gained control. Lease became an ideal Populist Party
spokesperson because as a woman, she embodied the very religious, moral, and civic
leadership of which the Populists hoped to gain control. Similarly, during a time when
parties fought for the right to claim the nation’s history as their torch, Willard and Foster
were critical players in their rhetorical efforts of patriotic leadership. Finally, as more
women became part of the workforce and began to claim political citizenship for
themselves, Lockwood helped to create a party and a platform that emphasized equal
opportunity. Through influencing party message and organization, these women
Precedents and Directions
216
transformed Gilded Age political culture itself. Rhetorical analyses shed light
on the ways in which they exerted this influence.
“A New Woman in Old-Fashioned Times”: Rhetorical History and Models of
Discourse
Analyses of female orators and their rhetorical techniques forces the academy to
re-examine what constitutes rhetorical excellence. Scholars like Campbell, Bonnie Dow,
Elizabeth Varon, and Susan Zaeske have spent much of their careers doing criticism of
female rhetorical texts to recover little known rhetorical objects, discover historical and
cultural identities, and present rhetorical case studies.20 Understanding rhetorical texts by
women helps to create a rhetorical theory that moves beyond “great men” giving “great
speeches” to appreciate a wider form of rhetorical technique. Instances of discourse can
highlight the realities of a time past, the symbols of past societies, and the construction of
publics.
The activities of Lease, Willard, Foster, and Lockwood help paint a more vivid
picture of a particular historical period and its gendered expectations. Examining
individual female rhetorical agents also helps us to understand the cultural identity of
nineteenth century women. Looking at the texts created by such women allows us to
begin to craft a narrative of experience. As Campbell points out, female rhetorical
participation is automatically unique because a woman participating in a public
communicative act challenges the contextual reality. In other words, examining female
communication is distinct because the mere act of participating was questioning the status
quo. As Jo Freeman states, “Knowing history shapes our sense of the possible. Leaving
Precedents and Directions
217
women out of political science and political history lets students falsely believe
that political women did not exist, that politics was something properly reserved to men,
and that women who tried to participate were ‘idiosyncratic individuals’ rather than
engaged and effective political actors who faced a lot of resistance.”21 This project has
attempted to understand how rhetorical strategies could both represent a political party
and a female space in a typically male arena.
During a time when female participation in political parties was not typical nor
accepted, women like Lease, Willard, Foster, and Lockwood paved the way for future
women. Each demonstrated a rhetorical technique that granted them access to a party
system closed to women. Each found rhetorical agency through her education,
experience, beliefs, and goals. Even more significant, though, each found agency within a
constraining cultural context. To work within the system, they used rhetorical strategies
that fostered identification with their audience. Lease used socially acceptable female
personae to justify her leadership and expertise. Willard and Foster framed women as
experts on patriotism and civic duty, a new and important political role. Lockwood
emphasized women’s physical and mental abilities as justification for her necessary
involvement in the political system. These rhetorical techniques presented political
women in the future with a model of discourse that justified political action and
encouraged political leadership. The recovery of instances of historic discourse is vital
not only for preserving a society’s past, but also understanding its future. That is,
analyses of historic discourse can highlight key aspects of an historic context, a society’s
identity, and our understanding of historic moments. In other words, rhetorical history
helps make sense of the present through actions of the past.
Precedents and Directions
218
There are several directions that future research might take. The
archive can continue to be widened through the discovery and analysis of texts by other
female political party leaders, including women like Abigail Scott Duniway and Marietta
Stow of the Equal Rights Party, Helen Gougar of the Prohibition Party, Johanna Greie
and Martha Moore Avery of the Socialist Party, and others. Continued examination of the
rhetorical activities of female political party leaders not only can lead to the discovery of
rhetorical patterns, but also will broaden our understanding of this particular “serial
collective.” In addition, more work can be done on the resistive forces at work that these
women combatted, their male counterparts, and the media representations of their work.
Finally, it is important to continue putting the activities of some of the first female
political party leaders in conversation with those of publicly involved women today.
Political Womanhood: 2012
“We’re walking along with the camera. She looks at the carpet. It has lint on it,
little scraps of paper. She can’t stand it. She gets down and cleans the carpet so that we
could walk. And she looks up at me and said, ‘It’s just a bonus of having a female
Speaker of the House.’”22 During an interview in January 2007 with Diane Sawyer, just a
few weeks after officially becoming the first female Speaker of the House, Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) physically cleaned the floor of the House chamber in front of a
national audience in an act of stereotypical domesticity. Six years later, the 2012 Green
Party candidate for President of the United States is Dr. Jill Stein. Born in Chicago, Dr.
Stein attended Harvard College and then Harvard Medical School. She has worked as a
physician, testified before legislative panels on health and the environment, led
campaigns to protect women and children from mercury contamination, and run for
Precedents and Directions
219
Governor, State Representative, and Secretary of State of Massachusetts. Yet
the top of her Biography page of her presidential campaign website reads: “Dr. Jill Stein
is a mother, housewife, physician, longtime teacher of internal medicine, and pioneering
environmental-health advocate.” In addition, she said in her presidential campaign
announcement: “I’d like to say a few words as a mother…” She continued, “People ask
me why I keep fighting political battles in a rigged system. The answer is simple. I keep
fighting because when it comes to our children, mothers don’t give up.”23
I began this project with a reflection on experiences in the classroom. I end with a
reflection on the implications of the lack of knowledge and understanding of our history.
The idea that women should play multiple roles still exists. Women have more access to
education and professions, but they are still expected to perform their gendered role as
mother and housewife. Knowledge of the cultural expectations of the past, and even more
importantly, the use of those expectations for political advancement, is necessary in order
to comment on, comprehend, and contextualize conversations in the present. Even the
conversations in the media today about women “having it all” still acknowledge the need
for women to perform their prescribed gender roles. This was manifested in a statement
made by 2012 Republican Presidential candidate and former Governor of Massachusetts
Mitt Romney in a debate against Democratic candidate and incumbent President Barack
Obama. When asked what he would do “rectify inequalities” for women in the
workplace, Romney replied that “if you're going to have women in the workforce then
sometimes you need to be more flexible… My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids
that were still in school. She said, I can't be here until 7 or 8 o'clock at night. I need to be
able to get home at 5 o'clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids…”24
Precedents and Directions
220
Questions arise that are difficult to answer. Why is there still a social
expectation that women are the primary caretakers of the home and family? Why would
Speaker Pelosi choose to immediately bring attention to a stereotype of her gender during
her first nationally televised interview as the first female Speaker of the House? Why
would the female presidential candidate for one of the most progressive political parties
and accomplished politician and physician choose to begin her campaign biographical
statement with “mother” and “housewife”? As of 2012, 17 women were serving as
United States Senators, 76 women were serving as members of the House of
Representatives, 6 women were Governors of U.S. states, and 4 women were appointed
Cabinet Secretaries. In addition, for 12 of the past 16 years, a woman has served as the
Secretary of State. In 2006, Nancy Pelosi was the first woman to be elected Speaker of
the House. Only two women have been Vice Presidential candidates on a Democratic or
Republican ticket, and no woman has been elected Vice President, let alone President of
the United States.
I propose that some of these expectations come from past behavior. The women in
this study used, confronted, and shaped social expectations to develop a political
womanhood that led to leadership. By creating models of discourse, party women from
the Gilded Age not only made room for women in political parties, but climbed to the top
of party structures. Understood in the context of the Gilded Age, their activities
demonstrate a new political agency. At the beginning of this project I defined agency as
“the complex process by which a communicative act materializes out of a combination of
individual will and social circumstances.”25 The rhetorical activities of party women can
now be understood in these terms. The women studied had the education, resources, and
Precedents and Directions
221
support systems to enter a world that had been closed to them. They then
exhibited an understanding of cultural expectations, creating models of discourse that
both remained constituent with and confronted social thought. At that time, their
activities were bold. By the end of the Gilded Age, women were participating and leading
political parties in record numbers, perhaps due to the paths forged by women like Lease,
Willard, Foster, and Lockwood.
The rhetorical history presented here provides a backdrop for understanding
ongoing social expectations for women in politics today. The women in this project
certainly set a precedent for women in the future. However, we must continue to ask
ourselves if the conversation about women’s role in politics today should be consistent
with the conversation at the end of the nineteenth century. What has changed? How has it
changed? How can we continue to facilitate change? As Zarefsky notes, “historical study
aides in understanding the present by placing it in the context of the past.”26 No society or
nation can be productive without the inclusion of diverse viewpoints. For the majority of
our history, women’s voices have been marginalized and silenced in the political world.
This is especially true when it comes to setting policy and determining political agendas.
Even today, when diverse viewpoints are slowly finding some sort of voice in the
national discourse, they are shrouded by cultural assumptions that control the force,
power, and agency of those voices. Clark Culpepper and Raymie McKerrow write, “the
purpose of history is to explain the present by connecting it to the past...history is
inescapably a rhetorical re-construction of the self or a community.”27 Understanding
why we continue to view women in positions of leadership as fulfilling a domestic role
comes from a rich history of their marginalization. Women have to behave rhetorically in
Precedents and Directions
222
certain ways today to be allowed a voice in political discourse. This project
develops a rhetorical history that is key to placing twenty-first century party women
today in the context of an ongoing historical narrative.
One of the most important aims of this project is pedagogical. Scholars need to
think not only about how to teach women’s history and rhetoric, but how to understand
women’s involvement in politics. Political rhetoric should exist “not at a sacred distance
or in an absolute past but rather within a zone of direct and even crude contact with all
other discourses, past and present.”28 Conversations surrounding female political
candidacies, representation, and involvement should only happen in context with what
came before. Courses on women in politics should ask questions like: what has changed
since the Gilded Age? Are women still fighting to carve a space for themselves in a
“male” world? Are political women now, unknowingly, enacting the same sort of
political womanhood as their sisters did during their first forays into party politics more
than a century ago? David Lowenthal writes, “The past is most characteristically invoked
for the lessons it teaches.”29 More than 125 years after Mary Elizabeth Lease toured the
country as a party spokesperson, Frances Eilzabeth Willard and Judith Ellen Foster
addressed national party conventions, and Belva Bennett Lockwood ran for President,
women are still navigating space in party politics not because of their credentials, but
because of their gender.
Rhetorical history can facilitate both an understanding of the past and a
framework for the present. As Bruce Gronbeck writes, “The past thus can guide the
present…past and present live in constant dialogue, even in a hermeneutic circle where
neither can be comprehended without the other.” When women look to the past for
Precedents and Directions
223
inspiration and highlight prior values, are they also highlighting past standards
that halt their quest for equality? When Pelosi and Stein frequently refer to their
motherhood as their primary credential for involvement in politics, is this a constraining
expectation or a strategic use of framing? And if it is strategic, why is it that in 2012, U.S.
society has still not moved beyond expecting women to engage in traditional gendered
behavior. This project asks scholars, the media, and U.S. citizens to acknowledge the
practices of political women of the past and put those practices in conversation with those
of political women today. Belva Lockwood once said, “The glory of each generation is to
set its own precedent.” The women in this project set precedents and directions for future
women. Let us hope that this tradition continues.
Notes for Chapter Five
1
Quoted in Jill Norgren, Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President (New York, NY: New
York University Press, 2007), 74.
2
Mary Jane Mossman, “’Le Feminisme’ and professionalism in law: Reflections on the History of Women
Lawyers,” Transcending the Boundaries of Law: Generations of Feminism and Legal Theory, ed. Martha
Albertson Fineman (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011), 22.
3
“Queen Isabella Association,” Chicago Legal News, August 5, 1893 cited in Jill Norgren, Belva
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4
David Zarefsky, "Four Senses of Rhetorical History," in Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases,
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5
Zarefsky, 29.
6
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “The Communication Classroom: A Chilly Climate for Women?” Association
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7
Doris G. Yoakam, "Pioneer Women Orators of America." Quarterly Journal of Speech 23, no. 2 (April
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Moya Ann Ball, “Theoretical Implications of Doing Rhetorical History: Groupthink, Foreign Policy
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9
Ernest J. Wrage, "Public Address: A Study of Social and Intellectual History," in Readings in Rhetorical
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Kathleen Turner, "Rhetorical History as Social Construction: The Challenge and the Promise," in Doing
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Precedents and Directions
11
224
Ball, 63.
James Jasinski, "A Constitutive Framework for Rhetorical Historiography: Toward an Understanding of
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Michele Ramsey, “Addressing Issues of Context in Historical Women’s Public Address,” Women’s
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354.
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Ramsey, 354.
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Melanie Gustafson, "Partisan Women in the Progressive Era: The Struggle for Inclusion in American
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Zarefsky, 30.
17
Cheree A. Carlson, "Defining Womanhood: Lucretia Coffin Mott and the Transformation of Femininity,"
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Ramsey, 353.
19
Turner, 4.
20
For examples see Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, "The Discursive Performance of Femininity: Hating Hillary,"
Rhetoric & Public Affairs 1, no. 1 (1998): 1-19; Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, "The Rhetoric of Women's
Liberation: An Oxymoron," Communication Studies 50 (1999): 125-137; Bonnie J. Dow, "Performance of
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Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel
Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Susan Zaeske, "Signatures of Citizenship: The
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Freeman, We Will Be Heard, 15.
22
“The Most Powerful Woman in America; Pelosi: Mother and Speaker,” interview by Diane Sawyer,
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All biographical information and quotes from Stein’s campaign announcement address were taken from
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“Second Presidential Debate Full Transcript,” last modified October 17, 2012, ABC News,
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John Logie qtd. in Cheryl Geisler, “How Ought We to Understand the Concept of Rhetorical Agency?
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Zarefsky, 31.
27
Clark E. Culpepper and Raymie E. McKerrow, “The Rhetorical Construction of History,” Doing
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28
(Cherny 1997) (Kleppner 1879) (Mattingly 2002) (Stormer 1999) (DuBois 1987)
29
David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
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