Note 176 — TENNESSEE. PART II[169]
Reading edition
Burn's vote so angered the opposition that they attempted to fasten a charge of bribery on him. On a point of personal privilege he made a statement to the House which was spread upon the Journal. After indignantly denying the charge he said: "I changed my vote in favor of ratification because I believe in full suffrage as a right; I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify; I know that a mother's advice is always safest for her boy to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification. I appreciated the fact that an opportunity such as seldom comes to mortal man—to free 17,000,000 women from political slavery—was mine. I desired that my party in both State and Nation might say it was a Republican from the mountains of East Tennessee, purest Anglo-Saxon section in the world, who made woman suffrage possible, not for any personal glory but for the glory of his party."
[Lack of space prevents giving the names of the immortal 49, which were sent with the chapter.]