1876: "Home Protection" and Speaking Out for Suffrage

The WCTU’s original mission did not include a campaign for woman suffrage. As Willard’s involvement grew, however, she came to see a common thread linking the causes of temperance and woman’s rights. 

Willard gave what she considered to be her first suffrage speech--endorsing "women's duty to vote" —on August 20, 1876, at a Temperance Camp Meeting at Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Her speech was reported (favorably) in the Zion's Herald newspaper (August 24, 1876).

Susan B. Anthony herself sent Willard a warm letter of congratulations in September, 1876, after she “saw by the newspapers, a few days since, that you have spoken out for suffrage as power to help on your hearts’ hope and work for Temperance—and thought to drop a note of cheer to you…” The four-page letter ends with Anthony wishing “I could see you & make you feel my gladness, not only for your sake, personally, but for the cause sake – for Temperance & Virtue’s sake – for Woman’s sake”.

Willard realized that women’s ability to vote (on the local level, if nothing else) would make the WCTU’s goals achievable, but knew that many, if not most, women would not seek the right to vote. Then, later in 1876, as she recalled,

“It came to me in its entirety, as to the name and the argument, while alone on my knees on the Sabbath…as I lifted my heart to God, crying ‘What would thou have me do?’”

The name of Willard’s approach was “Home Protection”—a phrase that would open the doors of women’s minds to their DUTY to vote. It was woman’s duty to protect her home, her children, her family—the heritage and future of the country. As the guardian of the home, woman would have to take responsibility for ensuring that saloons would not open in her town, liquor would not be sold to her husband or children. Voting was not just a right—it was a solemn duty to be added to the roster of woman’s work.

“Home Protection” would become a WCTU battle cry for women’s need to vote at the local level. Willard had found a way to make the idea of voting palatable for the WCTU women who would never consider themselves suffragists.

Willard’s speech also made it clear to women who were devoted to woman’s rights that the WCTU was opening itself to a broader message, and also confirmed that Willard was definitely a suffrage woman. As suffragist Lucy Stone wrote to Willard, “I agree with you that temperance is a good common school for first lessons in the great book whose later pages are all equal rights.”