NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1914.

The Forty-sixth annual convention of the National American Woman
Suffrage Association had the honor and privilege of holding its
sessions in Representatives' Hall at the State Capitol in Nashville,
Tenn., Nov. 12-17, 1914.[82] Dr. Anna Howard Shaw was in the chair and
it was officially and cordially welcomed in the name of the city by
Mayor Hilary Howse; of the State Suffrage Association by its
president, Mrs. L. Crozier-French, and of the Nashville Equal Suffrage
League by the president, Mrs. Guilford Dudley. As Dr. Shaw rose to
respond she was presented by Miss Louise Lindsey, vice-regent of the
Ladies' Hermitage Association, with a gavel made from the wood of a
hickory tree planted by General Jackson at the Hermitage, his home.
She spoke of memories which made Nashville dear to the whole country;
referred to the merry barbecue which had been held for their
entertainment the preceding day "at the old mansion of that great
Democrat, Andrew Jackson," and continued:

When his Honor the Mayor spoke of the hope that if women entered
into the political life of our country conditions would be made
better, I forgot the North and turned back in memory to the great
South, where no stronger argument in favor of our cause can be
found than the women themselves. It is not the men who have made
this nation what it is, it is the men and the women, and in no
part of it have women contributed more than in the South. When we
look back over its past history; when we see the land barren, the
desolation everywhere; when we see the homes left destitute and
the women prostrate by the graves of their dead; when we realize
that the men were nearly all swept away--we know that the power
which kept the South steadfast, which held the homes together,
which cherished the traditions, which made the South what it is
today was the loyalty, the patriotism, the unconquerable courage
and the devotion of Southern women in that hour of darkness and
despair. Had it not been for the new spirit of action born of the
necessity of the times in the character of Southern women to
inspire Southern men with hope and courage, desolation would
still be over the South. They evolved from within themselves a
power which no one knows that women possess until some hour of
extreme trial calls it forth. Never has there been a