In January of 1919, 80-year-old Mary Nolan stood before the Columbia County Court and asked to be thrown in jail for participating in “Watchfires of Freedom.”  The fires were protests by the National Woman’s Party, a political organization that advocated for women’s suffrage, of which Nolan was a proud member. The party placed speeches delivered by President Woodrow Wilson while he was in Europe into a flaming urn in front of the White House.   This was Nolan’s third time before the court for her actions, but previously the court had no charge with which to convict.   When Nolan addressed the court, she explained why she wanted to be arrested. After delivering her argument, thirteen women in the audience stood and applauded until they were jailed for contempt of court.  Nolan voiced the opinion of the National Woman’s Party, explaining that they used the urns to symbolically burn Wilson’s speeches as a protest for his failure to secure the Women’s Suffrage Amendment. She explained her belief that “the women of the world will know... that no confidence can be placed in [Wilson’s] hopes for the enfranchisement of women.”   Nolan had high hopes that their protests would reach people across the world, but her message and the message of the National Woman’s Party were overshadowed by the media. Media censorship hindered many aspects of the suffrage movement including the food strikes, where women in prison refused to eat, and the NWP’s anti-war propaganda. Studies on Wilson's media coverage do not discuss the media censorship of the Watchfires. Suppression by the government to quell the impact of the Watchfires. The Watchfires are minor event in the suffrage movement, despite their symbolic significance because Wilson’s administration manipulated the media through relations with prominent media figures and his refusal to openly address such issues in public speeches. The censorship of the “Watchfires of Freedom” shaped public perceptions by negatively portraying the actions of the women.

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The “Watchfires of Freedom” were protests of the National Woman’s Party (NWP), an organization dedicated to advocating for women’s suffrage and a national suffrage amendment from 1917-1920. The NWP was a direct extension of the militant citizenship belief of its president and founder, Alice Paul.   Paul’s strategy was to garner media attention through acts of militant protest that were controversial enough to gain prominent media attention, furthering awareness of the women’s suffrage movement and their struggle.   After the start of WWI and the failure of Woodrow Wilson to make good on his promise to get a national suffrage amendment, the NWP decided to protest by criticizing Wilson’s talks of democracy when he delivered Peace talks in Europe during the fires. The fire-wielding protesters officially started New Year’s Day 1919 and continued until Congress met in February.   They used an expensive urn and burned wood from Revolutionary War sites to create the fires to burn speeches as Wilson delivered them. Popular media and other public figures failed to reference the powerful symbols of their protest when they criticized their actions. Despite significant symbols of anti-Wilson, popular media and other public figures failed to reference the symbols when they criticized the NWP's action.   In addition to setting fires and burning Wilson’s speeches, they also held signs protesting Wilson with phrases like “Kaiser Wilson,” stood in front of the White House for days at a time, went on hunger strikes in prison, and ultimately burned an image of President Wilson in the same fires they burned his speeches.

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The effect of the fires and the other methods of Alice Paul and the NWPs were hindered by government censorship. After the establishment of wartime censorship measures like the Espionage and Sedition Acts in 1918 and Wilson’s creation of the Ministry of Information in 1917, Wilson used them to justify the suppression of newspapers that spoke against the war through intimidation.    While this was a primarily wartime censorship measure, he extended it to domestic dissent like the demonstrations. The Espionage Act was used to punish both men and women for anti-war protests, so the suffragists faced the threat of being prosecuted under the Espionage Act.    Wilson distanced himself from traditional methods for presidential press relations and instead used his influence during the war to get newspapers to downplay and ignore their actions.    In 1919, Wilson needed to be careful about his media presence because he was attempting to negotiate peace treaties in Europe, specifically Paris and the NWP’s claim that he was not a strong advocate for democracy because he failed to give the vote to women did not fit into the image of himself Wilson promoted. The NWP was particularly enraged at Wilson’s address to the women of France, who already received the right to vote. Wilson’s administration wrote to him with concerns of the protests and their effect on his public image,  but never directly cited the suffragists.    The suffragist actions also turned members of Wilson’s party against the suffrage amendment. The minority house representative, John Sharp Williams, explained he would not vote for the suffrage amendment so long as the women continued their “infantile and asinine” performance.   It was in the best interest of Wilson and his executive office to suppress the actions of the women to preserve the American democratic ideal and imagery in Europe and promote successful negotiations. Wilson boosted public support for his war measures and foreign policies by using wartime censorship to placate the dissent of his policies.

 

Part of the censorship was suppressing the discussion about these women. Members of Wilson’s administration had close relations with newspapers and newspapermen. Wilson’s secretary, Joseph Tumulty communicated with the editor of the Washington Post about Alice Paul from 1918 through 1919 while Wilson’s cabinet closely watched and noted media attention.   Especially because of Wilson’s actions in Europe, his administration kept careful eyes on newspapers in Europe in addition to the newspapers of the United States.   In January 1919 while Wilson was in Europe, Wilson’s secretary, Joseph Tumulty, remarked that the newspapers treated Wilson in a “generous fashion” and Wilson’s “intimacy with them and their confidence in [him]” appeared in all of the stories, and then advised Wilson to continue to maintain a close relationship with newspapers.

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Wilson himself did not talk about the Watchfires. In countless letters and speeches, Wilson does not directly acknowledge any form of demonstration from the women; instead, he uses ambiguous phrases that do not directly relate to the event.    As a result of his lack of recognition of the events plus his influence over the newspapers, the consequences of the women’s actions were discussed more than the events that sent the women to prison. This contrast can be highlighted in the titles of the articles such as “Suffs on Hunger Strike” and “Six Women Arrested For WatchFires Begin Food Strike At Once.”     The newspapers focused on and highlighted things other than the burning of Wilson’s speeches. When newspapers did mention the fires, they aimed to negatively sway public opinion.

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The censorship of the “Watchfires of Freedom” shaped the newspaper argument that the Watchfires hindered the suffrage movement. Except for suffragist newspapers affiliated with the NWP and supporting Alice Paul’s methods, other newspapers depicted the fires as “ridiculous” and “inscrutable” to the suffrage movement and Congress.    A local newspaper, Tombstone Epitaph, discredits the protests by designating women with vulgar names like “Workhouse Sal, Broken Nose Nell and Cocaine Kate,” as participants in the Watchfires. The paper explained that the Watchfires achieved “all that can be done to defeat women suffrage.” This controversy extended to other women’s suffrage organizations. The Ohio branch of the National American Woman Suffrage concluded the picketing and bonfires of the NWP were more likely to lose Congressional support for the national suffrage amendment, rather than attain it.   Some newspapers went so far as to claim that the women were secretly doing the work of the anti-suffragists.    There was discussion that “many of the suffrage leaders believe that those women who made themselves and the cause ridiculous by burning Wilson’s speeches in front of the White House at a critical moment, were really in the pay of the anti-suffragists,” and “the ways of the militant suffragists” were “particularly inscrutable.”    In addition to creating suspicion behind their motives, newspapers direct the public opinion by asking leading questions such as “may [the Watchfires] not be rather a token of women’s folly?” and “but are not those zealous women misdirecting their ammunition and misapplying their bonfire?”    Newspapers created a distance from the real motives behind the actions of the suffragists and instead focused on the flaws with the plan and execution. Many local and state newspapers suggested that “it would be less incomprehensible if they were to burn the congression record or the Constitution.”    Through this misinformation and withholding of vital information, the newspaper coverage successfully influenced the opinion of the masses, and the public remained unaware of the true intentions and methods behind the actions of the militant suffragists.

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The government took action to attempt to quiet the suffragists so that their actions and the consequences would not be noteworthy enough to report on. Nolan’s case is just one example in which they chose not to give extreme sentences, even when the actions of the suffragists were nearly treason. Nolan received a mere 24 hours in prison, while some suffragists were sentenced to up to five days.    When these women were finally tried there was some discussion, not because of the arrests, but because the district court used an old law to try them.   Ultimately, the courts unearthed a law created a hundred years previously stating that bonfires could not be lit between sunrise and sunset in the district.   Even when the women burned an effigy of Woodrow Wilson in the flames, which in 1917, could be argued to be a direct violation of some of Wilson’s wartime protection measures the women were not seriously tried. Suffragist and member of the NWP, Doris Stevens explained that the reason for these reduced sentences was because the courts “learned its lesson about hunger strikes” so instead they want the “safety in lighter sentences.” Stevens recalled that one of the judges “plead[ed] almost piteously with them not to go to jail at all” offering probation if “they will promise to be good and not light any more fires in the District of Columbia.”    Therefore, the lighter sentence diminished the integrity of the movement. This did not stop the women from protesting, much like Nolan did. They went on hunger strikes, refused to tell their names to the court, and were otherwise disobedient. The suffragists persisted in their actions, which incited violence among their crowds and their arresting officers. The women were continually mauled, arrested, yelled at, and attacked throughout their protests.    Through these methods, the suffragists still got their media attention, which is why we know newspapers' opinions about the incident, but without hunger strikes, there would be much fewer noteworthy things for the articles to mention and the Watchfires may never have been covered at all.

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Nolan and other suffragists made enough of a spectacle to get their story told. When Wilson continued to ignore the Watchfires, the suffragists expanded their demonstrations into Boston and New York, and furthered their media outreach, outwitting Wilson’s censorship.    It was through the NWP’s efforts, the efforts of other suffrage organizations, and the endorsement from Wilson and members of Congress that the national suffrage amendment was finally enacted. The Watchfires and the consequences of the Watchfires are examples of the methods Alice Paul and the NWP strived to achieve. They desired to create enough uproar that their message could not be silenced despite the threat of the Espionage Acts. Wilson’s best efforts to censor the NWP’s acts of protest failed because the women’s actions grew extreme enough that the story waiting to be told was more important to newspapers than Wilson’s influence over the media. As the primary strategy of their organization, the Watchfires of Freedom highlights the battle between the suffrage movement and the United States government as well as the conflict between Alice Paul and Woodrow Wilson.

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1 “Aged Suffragist Says President Obstructs Vote,” Milwaukee Leader, January 28, 1919.
2 Mildred Morris, “The New Year Demonstration,” The Suffragist, January 11, 1919, 4
3“Aged Suffragist.”
4 Stevens, Doris, Jailed for Freedom (Boni and Liveright, 1920), 317.
5“Aged Suffragist.”

6 Stillion Southard, Belinda A., Militant Citizenship: Rhetorical Strategies of the National Woman’s Party, 1913-1920 (A&M University Press, 2012), 91.
7 Stillion Southard, Militant Citizenship, 91-93.; Sally Hunter Graham, “Woodrow Wilson, Alice Paul, and the Woman Suffrage Movement,” Political Science Quarterly 98, no. 4. (1982): 667. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2149723
8 Stevens, Doris, Jailed for Freedom, 305.; Stillion Southard, Militant Citizenship, 165.
9 Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 305.

10Graham, “Woodrow Wilson,” 667.; JSTOR; Stillion Southard, Militant Citizenship, 168.
11 Christopher B. Daly, “How Woodrow Wilson’s Propaganda Machine Changed American Journalism,” Smithsonian Magazine, April 28, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-180963082/.; Newton-Matza, Mitchell. The Espionage and Sedition Acts: World War I and the Image of Civil Liberties (Routledge 2017): 22.
12 Samuel Walker, Presidents and Civil Liberties From Wilson to Obama: A Story of Poor Custodians (Cambridge University Press, 2012): 40.
13 Graham, “Woodrow Wilson,” 669.
14 Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 305-309t

15 Nelson Page, January 7, 1919, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 5: Peace Conference Correspondence and Documents, -1921; Subseries B: Peace Conference Correspondence, 1918 to 1920; 1918, Dec. 31-1919, Jan. 8. 1918 - January 8, 1919, Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss4602900644/.
16 John Sharp Williams to Woodrow Wilson, January 15, 1919, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson: January 11- February 7, 1919, ed. Arthur S. Link (Princeton University Press, 1966), 90.
17 Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 5: Peace Conference Correspondence and Documents, -1921; Subseries B: Peace Conference Correspondence, 1918 to 1920; 1919, Jan. 9-14, 1919. Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss4602900645/.
18 Graham, “Woodrow Wilson,” 669.
19 Joseph Tumulty to Woodrow Wilson, January 3, 1919, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 5: Peace Conference Correspondence and Documents, -1921; Subseries B: Peace Conference Correspondence, 1918 to 1920; 1919, Jan. 9-14. 1919, Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss4602900645/.

20 Wilson, Woodrow. Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 5: Peace Conference Correspondence and Documents, -1921; Subseries B: Peace Conference Correspondence, 1918 to 1920; 1918, Dec. 31-1919, Jan. 8. - January 8, 1919, 1918. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss4602900644/.
21 Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 4: Executive Office File, -1921; 89, 1917, Apr.-1920, Oct, 1917, Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss4602900306/.
22 “Six Women Arrested For WatchFIres Begin Food Strike At Once,” Milwaukee Leader, January 7, 1919.; “Suffs on Hunger Strike,” The Daily Banner, January 8, 1919.
23 The Marietta Journal, February 21, 1919.; “Suffrage Bonfire,” Daily Rouge River Courier, December 23, 1918.
24 Tombstone Epitaph. 23 Feb. 1919. 2. 0420.pdf (loc.gov)

25 National American Woman Suffrage Association. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: Subject File, -1953; Ohio Suffrage Associations; 1 of 2. 1851-1953. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss3413201823/.
26 The Marietta Journal. February 21, 1919.
27 “Suffrage Bonfires,” The Casper Daily Tribune, 24 Dec. 1918.
28 “Suffrage Bonfire,” Daily Rogue River Courier. 23, Dec. 1918.
29 “Suffrage Bonfires,” The Casper Daily Tribune, 24 Dec. 1918.

30 “While Women Go to Jail,” The Suffragist, January 18, 1919.
31 Mildred Morris, “Guilty by the Almanac,” The Suffragist, January 18, 1919.
32 Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 309; Morris, “Guilty,” 1919.
33 Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 309-310.
34 Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 306-308.

35 Stillion Southard, Militant Citizenship, 167; Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 320