Anna Howard Shaw by Trisha Franzen

Author:Trisha Franzen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

CHAPTER 7

Unanticipated Challenges

NAWSA PRESIDENCY, PART III (1913–1915)

I have but one thought and one desire, and that is to win the vote, and whatever I do, I do with that one thing in view, and am as utterly indifferent to the effect of what I do, upon myself personally, as if I did not exist. In fact I do not exist apart from woman suffrage. With it I want to go up or down, and for it, every bit of strength, every bit of ability, every bit of loyalty in my nature is given, and will be given until the last of my life, as it has been in the last forty years, regardless of any criticism or of any antagonism which may be leveled against me.

By 1913 Anna Howard Shaw could see the end of the struggle. The movement to extend that basic right of equal citizenship—full suffrage—to all women now had sufficient momentum to see it through to the final victory.1 After years of slow progress and the efforts of generations of women, Shaw was leading “the cause” with new leaders and organizations, extensive financial resources, regular attention from the media and politicians, and finally new suffrage gains in major western states. Within the expanding NAWSA office, Shaw had a team of innovative and efficient administrators building an increasingly powerful political organization. After the 1912 electoral gains, this vigorous campaigner, now sixty-five and in her tenth year at the head of the NAWSA, shared with most suffragists a sense of optimism about the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Yet political roads and pioneering paths are seldom smooth or predictable. Though she believed the success was inevitable and near, the final years of her presidency threw up hurdles that complicated Shaw's leadership and administrative efforts. This period, during a tremendous period of suffrage activism, Shaw confronted new difficulties and made occasional, but significant, missteps in her efforts to close the final chapter of the suffrage struggle.2

A core belief among Shaw and most suffrage leaders was that a victory in any one of the large eastern states would provide the tipping point that would put woman suffrage on the fast track for congressional action. Now rid of the southern leaders who opposed the federal amendment, the NAWSA could prepare for that shift from the states to federal level work. Shaw had consistently pushed the NAWSA to put more if its focus on and devote more resources to federal work since 1908. Sustained by an almost religious belief in the cause that had occupied her life for thirty years, Shaw continued her personal involvements in international, federal, and state work with a schedule that would have challenged the stamina of many younger women.3

On January 1, 1913, Shaw prayed for her usual blessings for the future, for herself and for the cause, but one issue from the previous, generally triumphant year, hung on her heart. Though she would have to be “out in the wide world for the rest of the winter,” she first went

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