ABSTRACT
During the early 20th century, one small suffrage group in England—the Women’s Social and Political Union—had an outsize influence on the American suffrage movement. Alice Paul submitted a proposal to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) offering to organize an intensified campaign for the federal amendment. In September, 1916, while Carrie Chapman Catt was inspiring NAWSA members with her Winning Plan, Alice Paul was presiding over the Congressional Union’s second national campaign to persuade female voters in the suffrage states to vote against the Democrats. The women’s protest did, of course, arouse some criticism, but on the whole, it seemed that the Congressional Union had struck a perfect balance between gentility and aggressiveness—a style they called “mild militancy.” To build up the Congressional Committee’s membership, Lucy Burns began holding daily suffrage meetings in parlors and on street corners around Washington.
