Women's Suffrage - "Let us face the issue like real men."

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, extending the right to women, was ratified through the vote of Tennessee 100 years ago this August. The fight in the Virginia General Assembly took place earlier in the year in February(so I am a little late). The fight came to a head as the Virginia Senate passed the Leedy Resolution rejecting the amendment, which was then taken up by the House of Delegates. Julien Gunn, New Kent's Senator (later a judge in Henrico), voted for the Resolution.

Sen. Robert Franklin Leedy of Luray

DELEGATES ADOPT LEEDY RESOLUTION  

Richmond Representatives Are Split, Haddon and Wilcox Opposing Measure.  

TRY TO STAVE OFF DEFEAT  

Norris Offers Measure Referring Question to People, Which Loses, 57 to 29. 

________________ 

Through its lower branch the General Assembly of Virginia yesterday rejected the Susan B. Anthony amendment to the Federal Constitution. By a vote of 62 to 22 the House of Delegates concurred in the Leedy resolution. calling for rejection of the amendment. which passed the Senate by a vote of 24 to 10.  

Richmond's delegation in the House was evenly divided in its vote, Delegates Boschen and Fuller voting for the Leedy resolution and Delegates Haddon and Wilcox casting their votes against it. Delegate Price was absent. Ten delegates were paired.  

Supporters of woman suffrage made desperate eleventh-hour attempt to stave off inevitable defeat when Delegate Robert O. Norris of Lancaster, offered a resolution to refer the question to the voter of the State for their determination. This resolution. which was similar to the one which the House adopted last week before the Senate had acted, was lost. 23 to 67.  

How the delegates Voted. The recorded vote on the Leedy resolution was as follows:

[there is then in the text of yeas and nays both for the Leedy resolution and the Rew resolution  ]

Debate Is Limited. 

Following a conference between Democratic Floor Leader Willis and Delegates Rew, Norris, Hunter and Ozlin, it was decided to allow one and one-half hours to each side and to vote at 2 o'clock.  

The resolution was set as a special continuing order for yesterday at [garbled] clock, and the gallery was crowded with visitors in expectation of flights oratory and spirited debate. In this they were disappointed. 

Those who spoke in behalf of the Anthony amendment- and they were few- apparently realized that their task was a hopeless one and that little they could say would chance minds that already had been made up. There was little that was convincing in their arguments, and their oratory lacked much of its wonted fire. 

Floor Leader Willis opened for the advocates of suffrage. He asked his colleagues in the House whether they were prepared to stand by their own action in adopting the Rew resolution granting a referendum on suffrage to the people, or if they would repudiate their own action by adopting the Senate rejection amendment. He said he expected the House to vote its convictions regardless of the action of the upper branch.  

"There are more brains on this side of the Capitol this session than on the other side." he asserted.  

The suffrage question, he said, will never be permanently settled until it is settled right, and that, he said. Is by giving woman the vote.  

"If only one woman in a thousand in Virginia wants the vote, you have no right to deprive her of that right." he said.

Attacks Newspaper Critics

He took a fling at newspaper critics, who he said, had charged the House with attempting to straddle the issue.  

Delegate Ozlin, patron of a previous resolution to reject the Federal suffrage amendment declared it as his belief that the temper of the house to adopt the Leedy resolution.  

"Let us face the issue like real men." he urged his hearers. Nothing was to be gained, he argued, by referring the question to the people, as, he asserted, sentiment is over overwhelmingly against the Anthony amendment. The house, he said should support the Senate and should recede from its position in adopting the Rew resolution.
He was confident, he said, that fellow-delegates would not vote for something they knew their constituents did not want. 

"I have heard members of the House say that, personally, they were in favor of woman suffrage, but would not vote for it because such a vote would not reflect the sentiment of those back home." 

The Delegate from Lunenburg said that, with the Anthony amendment out of the way, a suffrage amendment to the Constitution of Virginia might be introduced and passed. 

He was asked by Delegate Willis, if such a bill were introduced in the House if he would vote for it. Delegate Ozlin answered in the affirmative.

Question Most Serious

"The suffrage question is the most serious that ever has confronted the people of Virginia and the Democratic party since I have been a member of the House," Delegate Norris declared. "If we do not settle it for ourselves, it will soon be settled for us, and against our will," he added. 

He did not think referring the question to the people could be construed as straddling the issue. 

Delegate Norris said that, while he believed a large majority of his constituents were opposed to the Anthony amendment, he believed the question should be referred to the people. 

Delegate Parke P. Deans, of Isle of Wight, hoped he would not live to see the day when Virginia must look to the North and West for guidance as to what to do in enacting legislation. 

He referred to the patriotism of Patrick Henry, who, he said, was ever jealous of States' rights. He called on the House to support the Leedy resolution.

-Richmond Times-Dispatch, 13 February 1920

New Kent's Delegate at the Norvell Lightfoot Henley, a Williamsburg attorney, voted against the Leedy Resolution and thus for women's suffrage. The former Commonwealth's attorney of Williamsburg he represented Charles City, New Kent. James City, York and Warwick, and the City of Williamsburg in the House of Delegates from 1916 until his death in 1923.

N.L. Henley(1869-1923)