While the declared object of the League is 'to protect the Federal Constitution from further invasion' the only effort it has made is to defeat woman suffrage. The Hon. Charles S. Fairchild, Secretary of the Treasury under President Cleveland, is president; honorary vice-presidents, Dr. Lyman Abbott, Francis Lynde Stetson, Herbert L. Satterlee, George W. Wickersham, John C. Milburn, George W. Seligman, the Rev. Anson P. Atterbury and Dr. William P. Manning; Mr. Wheeler, chairman of the executive committee."
During the struggle to secure ratification of the Federal Suffrage Amendment from the Tennessee Legislature in August, 1920, Mr. Wheeler went to that State and a branch of the league—was formed there. The strongest possible fight against it was made. Chancellor Vertrees wrote articles and delivered speeches against it. Professor G. W. Dyer of Vanderbilt University; Frank P. Bond, a Nashville attorney, and others made a speaking tour of the State. When Governor Roberts sent the certificate—of ratification to Secretary of State Colby, Speaker of the House Seth M. Walker headed a delegation to Washington to protest against its being accepted. Failing in this they went on to Connecticut to try to prevent ratification by its Legislature.
In Maryland the Men's Anti-Suffrage Association took the name of League for State Defense. Having defeated ratification in the Legislature of that State a delegation went to the West Virginia Legislature in a vain effort to prevent it there. After Maryland women had voted in 1920, suit was brought in the Court of Common Pleas to invalidate the action in the name of Judge Oscar Leser and twenty members of the league's board of managers. Receiving an adverse decision they carried the case to the Court of Appeals, which sustained the decision. Mr. Wheeler and William L. Marbury, George Arnold Frick and Thomas F. Cadwalader of Baltimore represented the league. They carried the case to the U. S. Supreme Court, where it remains at present.[1]
- ↑ As this volume goes to press the U. S. Supreme Court on Feb. 27, 1922, rendered a unanimous adverse decision in both cases and declared that the Federal Amendment had been legally ratified.
