page_title: Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference
section_title: Tension and division
hierarchical_section_title: Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference / Tension and division
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: The lost cause Physical description: 1 print. Notes: Associated name on shelflist card: Keating.; This record contains unverified data from PGA shelflist card.
context_page_description: The Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference was a group dedicated to winning voting rights for white women. The group consisted mainly of highly educated, middle and upper class white women of prominent families. They were originally part of the larger National American Woman Suffrage Association, but broke off in 1906. Prominent leaders in the group included Laura Clay and Kate Gordon, who supported and focused on local and state reforms rather than a national amendment. The group applied tactics like the Lost Cause, the belief that the Confederate cause was moral and just, and the Southern strategy, which appealed to white voters by promoting racism.
context_section_description: Gordon and Clay’s group was increasingly at odds with NAWSA, and many Southern suffragists opposed Gordon’s state level approach. No policies in the SSWSA were established to govern relations with other suffragist groups. Gordon and her ideas were seen as extreme to most suffragists, even in the South, and was all but shunned by the federal level movement. However, the position was similar to that first claimed by the National Woman Suffrage Association and Elizabeth Cady Stanton: the 15th Amendment was an over-reach of federal intervention. Laura Clay, having studied the argument of Henry St. George Tucker presented in 1916 before the Law School of Yale University, emphasized in her own presentation in 1919 during a debate with Kentucky suffragist Madeline McDowell Breckinridge that the proposed new federal amendment would overturn the rights protected by the 10th Amendment. Clay argued:
  The ratification of the Anthony amendment is less a question of extending suffrage to women where the states have not done so than of conferring upon Congress certain autocratic powers over the votes for women however they may be gained. It is evident that it gives to states and sections having many Congressmen a great access of power to dictate public policies in states or sections which have a less numerous representation in Congress.
  Gordon’s unwavering opposition to federal suffrage drove some prominent SSWSA leaders out of the group. Many SWWSA members preferred state suffrage, but would accept federal change if it meant gaining suffrage. Laura Clay proposed a bill to bridge the two sides: a goal of national suffrage without infringing on state’s rights. She believed she could unite all suffrage groups (NAWSA, SWWSA) under this one bill. After receiving support from the two groups, she took the bill to Congress, but it never left committee. When the Nineteenth Amendment was written in 1919, Gordon opposed its ratification.
caption: A poster detailing the "Lost Cause". These beliefs were incorporated into the platform of the SSWSA.
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