1879: Petitioning for the Temperance Ballot
Willard continued to build on the Home Protection platform, delivering speeches and writing articles for the growing WCTU audience. In 1879 she published a Home Protection Manual. With the subtitle “an argument for the Temperance Ballot for Women and how to obtain it….,” the manual offered valid reasons, and reassuring encouragement, for women to seek the vote at the local level.
Willard combined her Home Protection message with guidance in how to undertake a petition campaign to obtain community support. She showed how a petition drive could be the first step toward procuring the legal right to vote in municipal elections. Willard had learned the symbolic value of the petition when the Illinois WCTU, under her presidency, had mounted a petition campaign in 1877. The IWCTU obtained a respectable number of signatures on a document that was displayed on the floor of the Illinois legislature. Although the Illinois petition requesting that women be able to vote at the local level had not been successful, Willard continued to endorse this method for women who had no other way to make their voices heard in the political arena.