On January 10, 1918, the House of Representatives met to debate the merits of proposing the Nineteenth Amendment, which would give women the same voting rights as men. NAWSA had been pursuing a campaign designed to gain as many votes in favor of the amendment as possible. NAWSA’s Front Door Lobby, headed by Maud Wood Park, met with various congressmen to determine what level of support the amendment had. Her informal polls of the House of Representatives indicated that enough support existed to overcome the rather daunting two-thirds majority required to propose a constitutional amendment. However, there was no margin for error so the suffragists redoubled their efforts to avoid a costly setback by losing the vote by only a few votes. On the day of the vote, four of the members of the House who supported women’s suffrage were extremely ill, but they...