Legacy: "I Charge You Give Them Power"
Willard died on February 17, 1898, in the middle of her 18th term as WCTU President (she had been suffering from pernicious anemia, and succumbed to influenza in New York, en route to England). After Willard’s death, the WCTU continued to endorse woman suffrage as a Home Protection duty (even when the official women’s movement became worried that, without Willard’s unique contribution, the WCTU’s endorsement was counter-productive, tying woman’s vote too closely to temperance and risking loss of support—especially from men).
But Willard’s reputation remained strong as a significant figure in the national campaign for suffrage.
Her example and her words had empowered women inside and outside the WCTU, around the world, across the country, and in her own state of Illinois. Nearly ten years after her death, Willard was still so well known that State of Illinois commissioned a statue of her to be placed in Statuary Hall, in the US Capitol in Washington, DC—the only statue of a woman among the notables from every state commemorated in the space.
Ah! It is women who have given the costliest hostages to fortune. Out into the battle of life they have sent their best beloved, with fearful odds against them. Oh, by the dangers they have dared; by the hours of patient watching over beds where helpless children lay; by the incense of ten thousand prayers wafted from their gentle lips to heaven, I charge you give them power to protect along life’s treacherous highway those whom they have so loved.
Quote at the base of the statue, carved by Helen Farnsworth Mears; it was dedicated on February 17, 1905. Significantly, Mears depicted Willard standing at a lectern, modestly as always, a speech ready in her hand. Even more significantly, the lines chosen for the plaque at the base of the statue came from one of Willard’s earliest public speeches, the original Home Protection address she first gave in 1876, hoping for the day when women would be able to vote.