Rebecca Latimer Felton
| Rebecca Latimer Felton | |
| |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office November 21, 1922 Serving with [[{{{alongside}}}]] | |
| Preceded by | Thomas E. Watson |
|---|---|
| Succeeded by | Walter F. George |
| Born | June 10 1835 Decatur, Georgia |
| Died | January 24 1930 (aged 94) Atlanta, Georgia |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | William H. Felton |
Rebecca Ann Latimer Felton (June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930) was an American writer, teacher, reformer, and briefly a politician who became the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, filling an appointment on November 21, 1922, and serving until the next day. Appointed by the governor as a Democrat to the United States Senate on October 3, 1922, Felton filled the vacancy caused by the death of Thomas E. Watson. She took the oath of office on November 21, 1922, and then served just 24 hours since a successor had been elected. She was not a candidate for election to fill the vacancy.
Felton was born near Decatur, De Kalb County, Georgia. She attended the common schools and graduated from the Madison Female College in 1852. She tnen moved to Bartow County, Georgia, in 1854. As a reformer, she had a special interest in agricultural and women’s issues. She also served as secretary to her husband while he was a Member of Congress 1875-1881.
At 87 years old, Felton was the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate. As of 2009, she was also the only woman to have served as a Senator from Georgia. She resided in Cartersville, Ga., until her death in Atlanta, Ga. She was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement in 1997.
Pre-political life
Rebecca Ann Latimer was born in Decatur, Georgia on June 10, 1835, the daughter of Charles Latimer, a DeKalb County merchant and planter, and his wife, Eleanor Swift Latimer. When the young Latimer graduated, at the top of her class, from Madison Female College in 1852, the commencement speaker was William H. Felton, a recently widowed state legislator, physician, Methodist minister, and planter in Bartow County. A year later the valedictorian and the speaker were married, and Rebecca Felton moved to her husband's farm, just north of Cartersville. Of the five children born to the couple, only one, Howard Erwin, survived childhood.
During the Civil War, the Feltons moved several times to get out of the way of Union General General William Tecumseh Sherman's army, which had a policy of not sparing the civilian population in its path. Deprivations suffered during the Civil War may have been responsible for the deaths of two of their children.
After the war, the Feltons returned to their razed farm, which they rebuilt. They also got involved in politics. In 1874, Dr. Felton ran for and won the Seventh Congressional District seat from Georgia while Mrs. Felton was his campaign manager and strategist, wroting his speaches and press releases. The Latimers were Whigs before the Civil War, and neither cared for the so-called Bourbon Democrats who had taken control of the state in the early 1870s. In 1874, William Felton ran for as an Independent Democrat, and won that election and then the next two, serving three terms (1875-81) in the U.S. Congress. After losing his seat in the U.S. Congress, Dr. Felton was elected to the Georgia legislature in 1884, and served another three terms in the state legislatur until 1890. Rebecca Felton continued writing his speaches and drafting legislation.
Rebecca Felton was also known for her conservative racial views. In an 1897 speech, she said that the biggest problem facing women on the farm was the danger of black rapists. "If it takes lynching to protect women's dearest possession from drunken, ravening beasts," she said, "then I say lynch a thousand a week." She condemned anyone who dared to question the South's racial policies. When Andrew Sledd, a professor at Emory College, did just that in an article published in 1902 in the Atlantic Monthly, she was instrumental in forcing his resignation from the school.
In addition, Felton was editor of the newspaper she and her husband owned. In 1899, Felton began writing for the semiweekly edition of the Atlanta Journal, an edition started by publisher Hoke Smith to appeal to the state's rural readers. "The Country Home" was a far-ranging column that included everything from homemaking advice to Felton's opinions on almost anything. One historian described it as "a cross between a modern-day 'Dear Abby' and 'Hints from Heloise.'" The column, which continued for more than two decades, provided the most direct link rural Georgians had with Felton.
She also gave lectures supporting education for women, women's suffrage (the right to vote), and prison reform. She opposed the practice of leasing convicts for work. Felton was also a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She was an outspoken critic of Catholics, Jews, Negroes, evolution, and child labor laws. Due to her activism, she became the most visible woman leader in her state, an even greater power than her husband, according to newspaper headlines.
In 1910, at age 74, she started writing a column for the Atlanta Journal which continued until her death 20 years later. In 1911, two years after her husband's death, she published My Memoirs of Georgia Politics, a long and tedious volume, written, according to the title page, by "Mrs. William H. Felton." The book details her husband's political battles, denouncing those who worked against him.
In 1912, she was a delegate to the newly formed Progressive Party's (the Bull Moose Party) national convention. The party nominated former president, Theodore Roosevelt, as its presidential candidate, but the election was won by Woodrow Wilson. Felton continued working to support election of friends who shared her isolationist and increasingly racist views.
Senator
In 1922, Governor Thomas W. Hardwick was a candidate for the next general election to the Senate, when Senator Thomas E. Watson died prematurely. Seeking an appointee who would not be a competitor in the coming special election to fill the vacant seat, and a way to secure the vote of the new women voters alienated by his opposition to the 19th Amendment, Hardwick chose Felton to serve as Senator on October 3, 1922.
Congress was not expected to reconvene until after the election, so the chances were slim that Felton would be formally sworn in as Senator. However, Walter F. George won the special election despite Hardwick's ploy. Rather than take his seat immediately when the Senate reconvened on November 21, 1922, George allowed Felton to be officially sworn in. Felton thus became the first woman seated in the Senate, and served until George took office on November 22, 1922, one day later. She was 87 years old.
Final years
Felton was engaged as a writer and lecturer and resided in Cartersville, Georgia, until her death in Atlanta, Georgia on January 24, 1930. She was interred in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Cartersville, Georgia. On the day after her death, the US Senate adjourned early to honor the memory of Felton, the only woman to that date to be a member of the Senate. (Hattie Caraway was appointed in December 1931.)
Legacy
Rebecca Ann Latimer Felton was an American writer, teacher, reformer, and briefly a politician who became the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, filling an appointment on November 21, 1922, and serving until the next day. At 87 years old, she was also the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate. As of 2007, she is also the only woman to have served as a Senator from Georgia; (June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930).
the first woman to occupy a seat in the United States Senate; the Senator who, having served one day, served the shortest term; and the oldest Senator, at age eighty-seven, at the time of first swearing-in.
Rebecca Felton was an interesting figure: in some ways she was very progressive, an exceptional Georgian; in other ways, she was very much a person of her time and place.
Although appointed not elected and a Senator for a very short time, she was the first woman and that there have only been 37 since 1789, currently still only 17 out of 100 although women are 51% of the population. No women served from 1922 to 1931, 1945 to 1947, and 1973 to 1978. Personally I find her views distasteful but she had nonetheless distinguished herself enough to be appointed. At the very least, the Governor took the courageous step of appointing a woman to a post never before held by a woman, even for such a short period. This suggests that a woman could be considered for high public office.
In 1997, Felton was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement.
Quotes
- "When the women of the country come in and sit with you, though there may be but very few in the next few years, I pledge you that you will get ability, you will get integrity of purpose, you will get exalted patriotism, and you will get unstinted usefulness." — Address to the Senate, November 21, 1922
- "When there is not enough religion in the pulpit to organize a crusade against sin; nor justice in the court house to promptly punish crime; nor manhood enough in the nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue----if it needs lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession from the ravening human beasts----then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary." August 11, 1897
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Felton, Rebecca Latimer. Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth. New York: Arno Press, 1980. ISBN 978-0405128394
- Hess, Mary A. "A Call to Honor: Rebecca Latimer Felton and White Supremacy." Dissertation: Thesis (M.A.). Michigan State University, 1999. OCLC 47774775
- Martin, Sarag Hines. More Than Petticoats: Remarkable Georgia Women. Guilford, Conn.: TwoDot, 2003. ISBN 978-0762712700
- Talmadge, John Erwin. Rebecca Latimer Felton: Nine Stormy Decades. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1960. OCLC 478711
- Whites, LeeAnn. Gender Matters: Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Making of the New South. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 978-1403963116
External links
- Rebecca Latimer Felton at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- U.S. Senate. First woman senator appointed. Retrieved March 1, 2005.
- [1]
- Felton's memoirs online
| United States Senate | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by: Thomas E. Watson |
United States Senator (Class 3) from Georgia 1922 |
Succeeded by: Walter F. George |
| Honorary Titles | ||
| Preceded by: Chauncey Depew |
Oldest living U.S. Senator April 5, 1928-January 24, 1930 |
Succeeded by: Adelbert Ames |
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