CATT, CARRIE CHAPMAN 1859-1947

Suffragist

Early Years

Carrie Chapman Catt, a leader during the 1910s of the movement for a women's suffrage amendment to the Constitution, was born on a family farm in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1859. In 1866 her family settled in Charles City, Iowa, where Carrie attended a one-room schoolhouse until entering high school. In March 1877 she entered the Iowa State Agricultural College, where she paid her tuition with the money she had earned while teaching at a country schoolhouse. She graduated in 1880, the only woman in her class of eighteen students, and began reading for the law. But she abandoned her legal education to accept a teaching job in Mason City, Iowa, and in her second year at the school she became its superintendent. In 1885 she married Leo Chapman, a suffragist and editor of the local weekly, Republican, and she began writing about women's issues for the paper. She also began attending women's suffrage meetings, traveling that year to Des Moines, Iowa, for a conference of the American Association of Women, chaired by suffragist Julia Ward Howe. In May 1886 Chapman arrived in San Francisco to find that her husband had died of typhoid fever while awaiting her arrival. She remained in the city for a year before returning to her family in Charles City.

Lecturer and Activist

While in the West Chapman began lecturing as a means of supporting herself. Many of her lectures focused on the dangers that immigrants posed to American society. She particularly disapproved of the fact that male immigrants were given the vote within six months of arriving in America, while women born and raised in the United States were denied the same right. She took a firm stance against Native Americans for the same reason—that Native American men could vote. In the 1900s and 1910s she recanted these positions and became a staunch supporter of racial and ethnic equality.

NAWSA

In 1890 the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) formed from two suffragist factions that had been divided for twenty years. Chapman, present at the first meeting, became within ten years president of the organization. Meanwhile, in June 1890, after formalizing a prenuptial agreement that allowed her to remain active in the suffrage movement, she married George Catt, who was a strong supporter of his wife's work until his death in 1905. Between 1890 and 1910 Carrie Chapman Catt was a leader of NAWSA and specialized in organization and coordination of the group's field work. She was president of NAWSA from 1900 to 1904, when she resigned to care for her dying husband.

National Figure

In October 1909 Catt and other activists launched the Woman Suffrage Party. She had mainly devoted the 1900s to two endeavors—campaigning for women's suffrage in New York State and helping organize the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. This alliance had formed in 1902 in Washington, D.C., and later held conferences in Berlin (1904), Copenhagen (1906), Amsterdam (1908), and London (1909). Though Catt remained an international figure, she devoted most of her energy in the 1910s to the cause of women's suffrage in the United States. After a world tour from 1911 to 1912, she returned to America in November 1912, arriving in San Francisco just as women in that city were voting for the first time in a national election. (California and nine other states had passed suffrage laws by 1912).

Success

In 1915 Catt again became president of NAWSA, at a time when the organization was deeply divided by Alice Paul's more radical Congressional Union (renamed the Woman's Party in 1916), which challenged NAWSA's methods. Catt's organizational skills helped bridge the gap between the group's two factions by combining NAWSA's emphasis on state suffrage rights with Paul's insistence on a federal amendment. Catt's program, named the "Winning Plan," won approval, and within two years of its adoption by NAWSA, President Woodrow Wilson, after years of reluctance, requested a suffrage bill from Congress. The bill passed the House on 10 January 1918 and the Senate on 4 June 1919. On 26 August 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified; it mandated that women could vote in every state and in every election.

War Years

In 1915, as the United States prepared for a possible entry into World War I, Catt helped found the Woman's Peace Party. This party called for opposition to militarism, a general disarmament, an international police force, and women's suffrage as a means of "feminizing" governments, a process which she believed would reduce the possibility of wars. Eventually, in a reversal, she threw the support of NAWSA behind the U.S. government's "preparedness" position—an act for which she was vilified by other pacifists; but her support of President Wilson later proved invaluable in the drive toward women's suffrage. Catt had offered NAWSA's support for the war effort despite the fact that she continued to believe, as she said, that "war is…barbarism, a relic of the stone age." While continuing her critically important work in the suffrage movement, she served on the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense.

Final Years

Carrie Chapman Catt's work did not end with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. At NAWSA's convention in 1919 she organized the National League of Women Voters, which became the logical successor to NAWSA. After the suffrage amendment passed, some twenty-seven million women were suddenly eligible to vote, but many of them were unfamiliar with the world of politics. Thus, the league's first function was to educate these new voters. Catt also continued her international peace work, calling on the women of the world to end the barbarism of war. In 1925, in Washington, D.C., she participated in the first "Conference on the Cause and Cure of War," which met annually until 1939, and for which she served as conference chairperson until 1937. In her later years she received numerous honorary degrees, and was given a citation of honor by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. In 1933 she won the American Hebrew Medal for her efforts on behalf of German-Jewish refugees. In 1947 Catt died of a heart attack in New Rochelle, New York, at the age of eighty-eight.

Source:

Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life (New York: Feminist Press, 1987).

Carrie Chapman Catt

The American reformer Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) designed the strategy for the final victory of the woman's-suffrage movement in 1920 and founded the League of Women Voters.

Carrie Lane was born in Ripon, Wis., on Jan. 9, 1859. She was raised in lowa and graduated from the state college. Her first husband died soon after their marriage, and 4 years later, in 1890, she married George Catt, a prosperous engineer. In 1895 she became chairman of the Organization Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and in 1900 she succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of NAWSA. Her husband's ill health forced Catt to resign in 1904, but after his death the next year she returned to active service as president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Later she assumed command of the New York woman's-suffrage movement, then struggling to win a statewide referendum authorizing the vote for women. Although the New York campaign was not completed until 1917, Catt's brilliant management of it made her the obvious choice to become president of NAWSA in 1915, when discontent with Dr. Anna Howard Shaw's faltering leadership forced her to step down.

Catt reorganized NAWSA, installed her own people in key positions, and in 1916 worked out a 6-year plan to secure a constitutional amendment that would enfranchise women. America's entry into World War I forced the issue. No doubt women would have gained the ballot some day, but they got it in 1920 mainly because of Catt. Under her direction the amendment was lobbied torturously through Congress and then, in the face of substantial opposition, through the state legislatures. The issue was in doubt until Tennessee, at the last minute, became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the 19th Amendment on Aug. 26, 1920.

Catt was notable for her intelligence, strength of character, and self-discipline. An effective speaker, a superb organizer, a diplomat and a politician, she converted NAWSA from a loose coalition of societies into a tightly knit political machine. She had pacifist inclinations and helped launch the Woman's Peace party, but she broke with it when American entry into World War I was imminent. By the same token, although she served on the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense during that war, she did only enough work to establish her credentials as a patriotic American. In both cases her first loyalty and best energies went to the suffrage movement.

In 1919 Catt founded the League of Women Voters as a vehicle for nonpartisan suffragists and as an instrument to advance those reforms for which women had sought the ballot. Later she fulfilled her early pacifist ambitions by establishing a Committee on the Cause and Cure of War, which was the largest of the women's peace groups during the 1920s. A lifelong internationalist, she supported both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Unlike many feminists, Catt was not discouraged by the modest gains women made after receiving the vote. She never thought that enfranchising women would revolutionize the human condition, and as long as her strength held out she continued to work for social justice and social welfare in a variety of fields. She died on March 9, 1947.

Further Reading

The only biography of Catt is Mary G. Peck, Carrie Chapman Catt (1944). The fact that the author was a friend and colleague of Catt for 40 years gives the book a special authority, but a full study of this important woman based on the extensive documentary material now available is needed. Carrie C. Catt and Nettie R. Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics (1923), is informative since it draws on some of Mrs. Catt's own experiences. Volumes 4 (1903), 5 (1922), and 6 (1922) of the History of Woman Suffrage, edited by Ida H. Harper, contain much useful material. □

Carry Amelia Moore Nation

The actions of Carry Amelia Moore Nation (1846-1911), American temperance reformer and moral agitator, helped bring on the prohibition era.

Carry Amelia Moore was born in Garrard County, Ky., on Nov. 25, 1846, into a well-to-do slave-holding household. She was raised in an intensely religious atmosphere. On her mother's side there was evidence of eccentricity and insanity, and Carry's youth mixed emotionalism with stern suppression. The Moores moved a number of times, and during the Civil War her father lost his fortune. In 1865 the family settled in Belton, Mo. Carry earned a teaching certificate at the state normal school.

In 1867 Carry married Dr. Charles Gloyd. He soon proved an irresponsible alcoholic, and though she loved him and was pregnant, she returned home. He died shortly after. Her child, born weak of mind, was an expense and trouble for years. After teaching school for a few years, Carry married David Nation, a lawyer, minister, and journalist, in 1877.

The Nations moved to Medicine Lodge, Kans. In 1889 a great fire stopped short of Nation's hotel, convincing her that she was divinely shielded. Her religious fervor increasingly took the form of hallucinations and public displays. She found an outlet in the work of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) throughout the 1890s. This group became very active because the Kansas law prohibiting the sale of liquor was not being enforced.

In 1899 and into 1900 Nation and other WCTU women developed a campaign of prayer and religious song outside local saloons. A tall, powerful, determined woman, Nation was first treated roughly and with contempt. She then began an offensive which made her internationally famous. She and her friends returned to the "joints" and in violent confrontations and challenges to the law, which she held remiss for not enforcing prohibition, they succeeded in closing the saloons.

The tumult Nation had stirred up inspired her to broaden her campaign. In Wichita and Topeka, Kans., and other cities, wearing her famous black dress and bonnet and carrying a Bible and an iron rod, she roused citizens and officials. On Jan. 21, 1901, at Wichita, she first used the hatchet that became her trademark.

Strongly convinced of divine guidance—she thought her name (Carry A. Nation) had been predestined—Nation extended her activities, though on occasion she stood trial and served time in jail. The WCTU was not in wholehearted support of her. Her husband divorced her on grounds of desertion. Her lectures and publications (The Smasher's Mail, The Hatchet) earned money that she spent freely on such reforms as a home for wives of alcoholics in Kansas City, Kans.

A trip to New York City was picturesque but ineffective, and increasingly, during raids in major cities from San Francisco, Calif., to Washington, D.C., Nation became a symbol of aggression rather than of temperance reform. Her distaste for tobacco and contemporary women's clothes accentuated her conservative character. By the time of her death in Leavenworth, Kans., on June 2, 1911, it was clear that she had outlived her time.

Further Reading

Carry Nation's autobiography, The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation (1904), is vivid and informative. Her major biographers have been remarkably judicious and understanding, though philosophically opposed to her on most counts. See Herbert Asbury, Carry Nation (1929); Carleton Beals, Cyclone Carry: The Story of Carry Nation (1962); and Robert Lewis Taylor, Vessel of Wrath: The Life and Times of Carry Nation (1966).

Additional Sources

Madison, Arnold., Carry Nation, Nashville: T. Nelson, 1977. □

Catt, Carrie Chapman (1859–1947), woman suffrage leader.Born in Wisconsin and reared mostly in Iowa, Catt by the early 1880s was already a widely traveled suffragist. By the late 1880s, recognized as a tireless campaigner, keen strategist, and skilled political tactician, she was a major figure in the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Succeeding Susan B. Anthony as head of NAWSA, she served from 1900 to 1904 and again in 1915–1920, a period that brought victory in New York state in 1917 and final ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (granting woman suffrage) in 1920. A single‐minded, disciplined leader who considered herself a political realist, Catt employed whatever strategies she believed necessary, including placating white racists in the South. While supporting U.S. involvement in World War I, she always kept the suffrage goal paramount.

In 1919–1920, Catt helped launch the League of Women Voters, to enable newly enfranchised women to exert real political influence. She envisioned the league as a nonpartisan organization that would promote a different politics from the partisan struggle she had come to detest. Catt became active in the international peace movement before and after World War I, but world peace proved a more elusive goal than woman suffrage.

Catt was twice widowed; the 1905 death of her second husband, a successful civil engineer, left her financially independent. In her later years she cultivated close personal relationships with many women. Childless, she nurtured friendships as she had earlier honed her skills at devising the political strategies that made woman suffrage a reality.
See also Peace Movements; Woman Suffrage Movement.

Bibliography

Robert Booth Fowler , Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician, 1988.

Robert Booth Fowler

Catt, Carrie Chapman (b. 9 Jan. 1859, d. 9 Mar. 1947). US suffragist Born at Ripon, Wisconsin, she was present at the founding of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890. As its president 1900–4 and 1915–20, she saw the fulfilment of women's suffrage in the US with the passing of the Nineteenth Constitutional Amendment in 1920. In response, in that year she co-founded the League of Women Voters. Catt was also associated with the American pacifist movement and an isolationist. In 1915, she founded the Woman's Peace Party (together with Jane Addams), and chaired the Commission on the Cause and Cure of War between 1925 and 1932. In contrast to Addams, however, after the war she partly turned her attention away from the issue of international peace, putting her efforts into the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (later the International Alliance of Women), which she had co-founded in 1904 and which she continued to lead with energy until 1925. Opposition to Fascism and the Nazis caused her to abandon her pacifism in the 1930s.

Carrie Chapman Catt 1859–1947, American suffragist and peace advocate, b. Carrie Lane, Ripon, Wis., grad. Iowa State College (now Iowa State Univ.), 1880. She was superintendent of schools (1883–84) in Mason City, Iowa. In 1885 she married Lee Chapman, a journalist (d. 1886), and in 1890, George Catt, an engineer (d. 1905). From 1890 to 1900 an organizer for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she became its president in 1900. She led the campaign to win suffrage through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), she organized the League of Women Voters for the political education of women. At the Berlin convocation of the International Council of Women she helped organize the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, of which she was president from 1904 to 1923. After 1923 she devoted her efforts chiefly to the peace movement. With Nettie R. Shuler she wrote Woman Suffrage and Politics (1923).

Bibliography: See study by R. B. Fowler (1986).