Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/90

76 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE woman suffrage and anxious for the ending of the long struggle, which had been formed with Colonel Isaac M. Ullman chairman. No effect was produced by this petition nor by an interview with John Henry Roraback, the State chairman, by Miss Ludington, in which he was urged to put Connecticut among the 36 States necessary for ratification, in order that the women might be able to feel that suffrage had been granted them by their own State. By March 35 Legislatures had ratified and only a group of three or four States held out any hope of the 36th and final ratification, of which Connecticut was one. Leading Repub- licans in and out of Congress tried to impress upon those in Connecticut that this was no longer a State but a national issue. At their State convention in March the Resolutions Committee gave a hearing to the suffragists and reported a resolution in favor of a special session, which was passed by the convention and presented to the Governor. It then returned to power the very men who would prevent it. The Governor remained ob- durate. To the first petition he had replied that the desire of a few women did not create an emergency. Then he had argued that suffrage was not an issue when the Legislature was elected and therefore the legislators were not authorized by the voters to act upon it. A little later he gave it as his opinion that per- sistent appeals do not constitute an emergency. Finally on April 10, in reply to a letter fom Colonel Ullman, he stated that he was ready to receive proof of the existence of an emergency. The Connecticut women decided to give him the proof and the National Suffrage Association offered its cooperation by send- ing women from all over the country to Connecticut to join in a great protest against the blocking of woman suffrage for the whole nation. May 3-7, 1920, was declared "emergency week" and a Suffrage Emergency Corps was organized of 46 eminent women from as many States. They assembled in New York the evening of Sunday, May 2, as dinner guests of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the national president, and received their "march- ing orders and field instructions" from her and Miss Ludington. The Emergency Corps arrived in Hartford Monday morning and were guests at a luncheon given in their honor at the Golf Club, whose rooms were crowded with men and women to meet