The Home Defense: War Messages to The American People

The Home Defense: War Messages to The American People

This booklet by Carrie Chapman Catt likens suffrage to patriotism. According to Catt, the United States "is engaged in two wars, one with an enemy in Europe and one with an enemy at home. Many an American family is left behind without a voter to represent it. Many a voter will never return and will leave no one behind to protect that which was his at the polls...The remedy and the defense is the immediate enfranchisement of women by the shortest process."

"Women of American birth and spirit have been humiliated and distressed as few men understand by the fact that men of American birth and understanding have not arisen in their might to protest against such foreign invasion of American politics and the consequent hindrance of the normal progress of representative government - the ideal to which our country is dedicated above all others!"

Catt, Carrie Chapman

M 9 Box 48, Adèle Goodman Clark papers, 1849-1978, James Branch Cabell Library, VCU Libraries

National Woman Suffrage Publishing Co.

Special Collections and Archives, James Branch Cabell Library, VCU Libraries

This item is in the public domain. Acknowledgement of the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries as a source is requested.

Learn more: 
National Woman Suffrage Association, Social Welfare History Project
Women's Suffrage: The Movement, Social Welfare History Project