Woodrow Wilson and Woman Suffrage: A New Look
"Barring the chilled, scandalized feeling that always overcomes me when I see and hear women speak in public," young Woodrow Wilson once wrote in 1884, describing a Woman's Congress meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Women in Baltimore, "I derived a good deal of whimsical delight ... from the proceedings." The future president's amusement, however, could not overcome his antipathy for feminine orators. Commenting on one speaker, "a severely dressed person from Boston, an old maid from the straitest sect of old maid," Wilson observed that she was "a living example-and lively commentary-of what might be done by giving men's places and duties to women."91 Surely the man who dismissed the participation of women in public affairs would have recoiled at the suggestion that one day he would write about the woman suffrage amendment: "I deem it one of the greatest honors of my life that this great event, so stoutly fought for, for so many years, should have occurred during the period of my administration."2 His own testimony demonstrates Wilson's political evolution concerning women. But it does not measure his contribution to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, a contribution which has not been accorded careful attention by historians of either the Progressive era or the woman suffrage movement.3 Few presidents have been persuaded to exercise the full power of their