Retropod is sponsored by Tito's handmade vodka. Drink responsibly.

Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

In the spring of 1917, Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress and to any legislature in the world, was under enormous pressure.

On her very first day at office, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany.

And the 36-year-old Republican from Montana faced an agonizing choice.

Should she, or should she not, vote for the United States to enter World War I?

The choice was hard for two reasons.

First, Rankin personally took a dim view of war and of the military,

in part because she thought women could bring a better sensibility to politics and to international relations.

She wasn't an isolationist, neither were the many women who held this position,

she thought America could do good in the world.

She didn't think sending the Marines was the best way to go about it.

And second, at a time when women in most states couldn't vote, Rankin also knew she had a duty to the cause of expanding voting rights.

In fact, the head of the most important suffragette organization told Rankin in no uncertain terms that she must support Wilson

if he took the country to war. Suffragettes had to appear patriotic. To oppose Wilson would

be to sabotage the suffragette cause that Rankin had worked so hard to be the elected voice for.

So there was her dilemma. One way or another, Rankin's vote would be seen as a vote on behalf of all women and set a precedent for those who would follow her.

The Senate passed a resolution for war on April 4th. The House took up the measure the next day.

Rankin stayed at her new apartment late into the afternoon, agonizing over the vote.

Alice Paul, head of the National Women's Party, sat with her. She told Rankin she had an obligation as the first woman in Congress to give voice to her woman's

conscience.

It would be a tragedy, Paul said, to vote for war.

...