Catt vs. Paul
“I will fight you to the last ditch!”
The two parties of the women’s suffrage movement could not have been more different in their tactics, and although each respective leader had dedicated her life to gaining the vote for women, they were polar opposites in how to achieve that goal.
The first clash between the leaders, Alice Paul, the young 28 yo leader of the militant National Woman’s Party and Carrie Chapman Catt, 52, of the traditional National American Woman’s Association, was in April 1913 at the NAWSA meeting in DC. Alice Paul gave her report on the overwhelming press they received from the 8,000 woman march held before President Wilson’s inauguration (March 1913), which was the first-ever organized march held in DC.
The suffragists at the DC march were attacked by angry mobs while police watched; hundreds of women were hospitalized and within a month a Congressional inquiry was held about the police inaction and mob violence.
Also within a month the languishing suffrage movement was re-energized and the Susan B. Anthony amendment was re-introduced in both houses of Congress.
But back to the clash, during Paul’s report, Catt interrupted her and accused Paul of trying to steal power from NAWSA.
After the meeting, NAWSA president Anna Howard Shaw wrote Lucy Burns, the parade’s co-organizer, and criticized her and Paul:
"You may think we are all a set of old fogies and perhaps we are, but I, for one, thank heaven that I am as much of an old fogy as I am…It requires a good deal more courage to work steadily and steadfastly for 40 or 50 years to gain an end than it does to do an impulsively rash thing and lose it.”
Paul did not to speak publicly about Catt, but instead persuaded Catt’s members and donors to join her new suffrage organization, the National Woman’s Party. The two leaders would attempt to mend their differences, but that effort eventually ended with Catt storming out of a meeting and Paul calling out: “I will fight you to the last ditch!”
During World War I, Paul’s acts of civil disobedience led to angry mobs and the arrests and imprisonment of hundreds of suffragists. National news reflected poorly on President Wilson, as the Silent Sentinels held quiet vigils at the White House gates six days a week holding banners mocking his hypocrisy.
Catt's approach was to support President Wilson and the US involvement in WWI, which won her political favor and her being credited in the press when the 19th Amendment was finally ratified in August 1920.
Politicians would say that Paul and NWP’s demonstrations had no bearing on their vote for the 19th Amendment but we know that President Wilson endorsement did not come until he grew uncomfortable with the repeated abuse and imprisonment of the suffragists and concern about his legacy.
After the 19th Amendment became law, Catt founded the League of Women Voters (along with Texas suffragist Minnie Fisher Cunningham).
Paul continued her activism and introduced and lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment.
Which Catt opposed.