Not every member of the women’s suffrage movement signed on to the Winning Plan. The most notable breaks were made by Alice Paul and her National Woman’s Party (NWP). The NWP agreed that a constitutional amendment was the appropriate goal; however, it disagreed over the tactics that should be undertaken to achieve the outcome. Some of this was probably based on the fact that the NWP was founded by more militant members of the women’s suffrage movement who believed in direct confrontation strategies. In fact, the NWP had its origins in NAWSA’s Congressional Union, but Paul had soon grown frustrated with NAWSA’s conservative approach and forged her own organization.

Whereas NAWSA’s Winning Plan called for supporters of women’s suffrage to work with politicians in hopes of gaining their support, the NWP vowed to defeat politicians of any party that...