Document 15.15 Caroline Nichols Churchill, Fighting for Woman Suffrage in Colorado, 1909

Caroline Nichols Churchill | Fighting for Woman Suffrage in Colorado, 1909

Caroline Nichols Churchill emerged as the key leader of the women’s suffrage movement in Colorado. Like Duniway, Churchill published a newspaper, the Colorado Antelope. She fought for women’s suffrage as the state experienced incredible labor strife. In the following excerpt from her memoir, which she wrote in the third person, Churchill reveals her politics, her personality, and the rifts within the women’s suffrage movement.

Mrs. Churchill, with the help of some of the women from outside towns, called a convention. The city women, perhaps troubled because of their laurels, came in and were at once installed in the offices, thus giving experienced people a chance to at least make themselves useful as well as ornamental. Mrs. Churchill steadfastly refused office, as the conducting of a paper in the interests of the cause was enough for any one head.

The convention adjourned with the best of feeling. The men’s papers made all the capital they possibly could out of the fact that Mrs. Churchill was not given office, assuming that the honor of such a position would have been irresistible to any mortal woman with healthy ambition. Mrs. Churchill seems to have been created superior to such a thing as personal aggrandizement. What she wants is a civilization that will come somewhere near filling the wants of the great mass of the people. Federal control of schools; that general illiteracy from any cause may disappear from the world. The idea of holding children responsible for the bad management of those interested in ignorance and depravity, and those gone before, is repugnant to any fair-minded person. If women could be induced to perform their public duties, which would be to become a helpmeet for man in public affairs as in private matters, many things could be done that are now wholly neglected. The minds of such men as Chaucer and Ruskin have given this subject attention and have concluded that man will only cease being a marauder and a warrior when women do enough to teach them that there is nothing in the course usually pursued by the masculine portion of the human family. . . .

Mrs. Churchill was never popular with the W.C.T.U. [Woman’s Christian Temperance Union], because popularity was not what she was looking for. A better condition of things was her watchword. Her methods were her own. She never tried to persecute any organization, or belittle them, because their methods were different from her own. One of the Anthony family, living at Leavenworth, Kas., once wrote to have Mrs. Churchill get interested in his business. Mrs. Churchill was fairly harassed by these importunities from different sources, and answered these letters rather saucily sometimes. Susan B. Anthony perhaps realized that there was younger blood in the field and may have thought her laurels in danger. When the brother failed to interest the new woman in his schemes, she had no further use for Mrs. Churchill and would show her resentment as opportunity made it possible. Lucy Stone exchanged papers with Mrs. Churchill for fourteen years, but in all that time never had a good word for Mrs. Churchill or her work. Mrs. Churchill thought the question for which she was giving her life work of more importance than self-aggrandizement.

Source: Caroline Nichols Churchill, Active Footsteps (Colorado Springs: Mrs. C. N. Churchill, 1909), 211–14.