Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/756

HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE cratic women and on May 30 sent out the following Call : "This committee calls upon the Legislatures of the various States for special sessions, if necessary, to ratify woman suffrage when the Constitutional Amendment is passed by Congress, in order to enable women to vote at the Presidential election in 1920." On June 26, after the amendment had been submitted by Congress, the committee again gave its aid by sending the following message to Governor Roberts of Tennessee : We most earnestly emphasize the extreme importance and ur- gency of an immediate meeting of your State Legislature for the purpose of ratifying the proposed iQth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. We trust that for the present all other legislative matters may, if necessary, be held in abeyance and that you will call an extra session for such brief duration as may be required to act favorably on the amendment. Tennessee occupies a position of peculiar and pivotal importance and one that enables her to render a service of incalculable value to the women of America. We confidently expect, therefore, that under your leadership and through the action of the Legislature of your State, the women of the nation may be given the privilege of voting in the coming Presidential election. The National American Woman Suffrage Association ap- pointed Mrs. Guilford Dudley, one of its vice-presidents, who was a delegate-at-large from Tennessee to the convention and a member of the Credentials Committee, to present the following plank to the Resolutions Committee: 'The Federal Suffrage Amendment, whose passage in Congress was greatly furthered by the efforts of a Democratic President, is one State short of the number required to make its ratification effective. In two Repub- lican States, Vermont and Connecticut, where ratification could be at once achieved, Republican Governors are refusing to call special sessions. In simple justice to women, we, Democrats in national convention assembled, urge the cooperation of Demo- cratic Governors and legislators in North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and other Democratic States that have not ratified, in a united effort to complete ratification by the addition of the 36th State in time for the women of America to participate in the approaching elections." The National Woman's Party through Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, its publicity chairman, presented a plank through U. S. Senator