The Ember and the Inferno

There is a bumper-sticker that read as follows:

well-behaved women rarely make history

It's not just political and feminist. It's also right. It's right in both the intended specific sense and in a more general one. The latter, I find, is far more significant. To wit:

well-behaved people rarely change anything

To beat my own drum a bit, the Sons of Liberty didn't have the impact they did by being nice and politely asking the crown to fuck off. No, they did it by being utter bastards about what they wanted and how they meant to get it. The same goes for the whole of the American Revolution – the Declaration of Independence was hardly nice. Patrick Henry didn't move the Virginia House of Burgesses to war by being nice, polite, or courteous. He did it with passion, with rhetoric, and with a raging inferno in his belly when he spoke:

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

(source)

There are three slightly more modern movements deserving of examination here. Specifically, the abolition movement, the suffragettes, and the civil rights movement. All of them have engraved deeply their respective marks into the bedrock of American history. Moreover, none of them did it by being polite and well-behaved. To quote the legendary Mr. Henry once more, “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.“. To those ends, we look to our own past for guidance.

First, the abolitionists. The most obvious and one of the best known acts engaged in was the Underground Railroad. While not violent, the Underground Railroad was an act of active dissent against slavery. It got stuff done. It pissed people off. It certainly polarized opinions, and the knowledge that their neighbors were taking such risks in order to combat slavery likely had some impact on the general opinion towards the subject.

More to the point, abolitionists can and did take quite overt action against slavery. In the wake of the fugitive slave laws, some states passed legislation designed to actively hinder those very laws. Among them was Michigan, which did so by guaranteeing anyone claimed as a fugitive slave rights to a jury trial, writ of habeas corpus, appeal, and bail. Additionally, there were stiff penalties for falsely claiming a someone to be a slave, and purported fugitives could not be held in public jails or other public buildings. (source)

Abolitionists and their opponents were usually in geographically distinct areas, so more direct conflict was usually limited.

Except for Bleeding Kansas and John Brown at Harper's Ferry. I don't care to go into those, but they were far from polite.

Then there was Uncle Tom's Cabin, which had two principle effects. First and foremost, it converted people to the abolitionist cause in the North. It was an immensely popular work, and its core message of the immorality of slavery resonated strongly in a culture that already disapproved of the practice.

Second, it greatly incensed the South. For obvious reasons, the South didn't like Stowe's book. It was generally viewed and propaganda and simply wrong in its portrayal of slavery, nevermind the moral message. To be fair, Stowe was an abolitionist, and certainly had an agenda. This reaction would only lend its message weight in the North. After all, they wouldn't be so angry if it wasn't accurate, right?

Stowe wasn't nice, and she didn't pull her punches. She wasn't out to take a moderate position, and most certainly did not adopt one. Her position was plain: slavery was immoral. The implication was that it should be stopped immediately, and that was quite the extreme position.

Enough about the abolitionists. There's enough history there for me to go on for a very long time, but it isn't wise the keep the suffragettes waiting. They often did not take kindly to such.

In the colonial and immediately post-colonial periods of American history, the women's suffrage movement was a fairly small and insignificant thing. It wasn't until the Reconstruction period that the movement began to intensify, particularly in clashes over the Fifteenth Amendment. The suffragists wanted the amendment to protect the rights of women as well, and as originally written would have done so. It was subsequently changed to remove such provisions, becoming the abolitionist work we now know.

It is notable that several states granted women suffrage well before it was done nationally. Specifically, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Jersey. In Illinois, in 1913, the suffragists secured for women of that state the right to vote in Presidential election. They did so by directly pressuring the legislature, along with other fairly extreme acts such as fetching House members from their homes when their bill came up for voting.

The suffragists also staged a public protest on March 3, 1913. In Washinton D.C., several thousand suffragists lined up and marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, where a far greater number had lined up to watch. Predictably, the crowd reacted badly, eventually becoming violent. When the local police failed to control the crowd, the cavalry was called in. A number of women were hospitalized.

In the wake of such an event, some might conclude that the women's suffrage movement lacked the support it required to succeed. The suffragists appear to have concluded the opposite: the strong reaction meant that they did indeed have wide support.

Alice Paul lead the formation of the National Women's Party in 1916. They adopted strong and disruptive tactics, such as parades, pickets, demonstrations, and hunger strikes. In January of 1917, they did what no one before had dared: they picketed the White House itself. In July, many picketers were arrested on charges of obstructing traffic and incarcerated at a workhouse.

The promptly went on a hunger strike. They were force-fed with tubes. This news made its way to the media, where public sympathies shifted somewhat in favor of the women. This, combined with continuing demonstrations and the resulting press coverage, led President Wilson to announce support for women's suffrage in January of 1918.

After several failed attempts, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment on June 4, 1919. Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin all ratified it in six days, on the 10th, while Georgia and Alabama rushed to reject it. It would ratified by thirty-two more states between then and March 22, 1920, when Washington became the 35th state to ratify. It would take until August for Tennessee to follow suit, making the Nineteenth Amendment law.

A bit of an interesting story there, actually. Predictably, with the amendment one state away from ratification, forces for and against ratification rallied to Nashville. After all, it was either the final hurdle or a last stand, depending on ones position.

The first roll call on the subject came up as a 48-48 deadlock, with chaos breaking loose upon the floor when this was announced. Order was eventually restored, and the vote taken again. Once more, a deadlock of 48-48 was the result. Thus, a third vote was in order.

Somewhere along the line, the mother of Harry T. Burn, a young Representative who had been in the anti-suffragist camp, saw fit to send her son a letter. In short, she told him to vote for ratification. His mothers pleas won out over his constituency, and he voted for ratification. Shortly afterwards, two other Representative, one of them the Speaker, also changed their votes to 'aye', yielding ratification.

The women of America had gained the right to vote, even in the Southern states that had rejected the idea. They didn't gain it by being nice, quiet, or polite. They gained the right to vote via demonstration, protest, and eventually, by leveraging personal relationships. To be sure, they were not well-behaved women, and they did indeed make history.

For the sake of brevity (ha!), I'm going to skip the civil rights movement. This post is long enough as is. Before I close, however, some concluding remarks.

As romantic as it is to think that silent desire for some will sway a nation and its laws, both history and reality expose this as a sham. Neither the abolitionists nor the suffragists gained their eventual goals by sitting on their hands and wishing. They worked for what they wanted, knowing that change is only ever effected by those willing to work long, hard, and loudly for it. They knew that a smoldering ember gives little heat, little light, little smoke, and will escape the notice of most.

So they became the raging inferno, and illumined their world.