Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage (review)

120 The Michigan Historical Review during the daylight hours. Federspiel also highlights some of the spectacular turn-of-the-century hotels with their casinos, billiard rooms, bowling alleys, and even orchestras. The photographs, as well as a number of quotes from personal letters and newspaper reviews, keep the account highly readable and personal, and the mixtures of old and new shots, in sepia tones and full color, truly capture the feel of early Petoskey. Harbor Springs, which unlike Petoskey has a natural harbor, truly benefited from the steamship trade as rail did not reach the area until the early 1880s. It had been an Ottawa settlement since 1800 but filled with white settlers after 1875 when treaty limitations on selling lands to non-Natives were lifted. Harbor Springs made an attractive stop on the 24 hour trip from Chicago to Mackinac Island. Some tourists ended up spending entire summers in the area, and Federspiel includes photographs of these communities with their architecturally magnificent cottages. By recounting the buildings and lifestyles of the times, Federspiel traces the importance of tourism to the area, and the book successfully captures both “the things that were and the things that are” (p. 257). A bibliography will help the curious to find out even more about these communities, and the maps, timetables, letters, and photos make it a pleasure to look at more than once. Though not a scholarly work, Little Traverse Bay offers a vivid historical introduction to the area and would make a great companion for anyone summering or visiting up North. Susan Paton Central Michigan University Trisha Franzen. Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Pp. 296. Index. Notes. Photographs. Paper, $30.00. The daughter of an impoverished Michigan pioneering family, Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919) went on to become a titan of reform and one of the most famous orators of her times, giving upwards of 15,000 speeches. But her legacy has been largely forgotten. Trisha Franzen has compiled two decade’s worth of research to restore Shaw to her proper place in history. Shaw was unusual enough for a woman in the late 1800s because she literally worked her way through Albion College and completed Book Reviews 121 advanced degree programs in theology and medicine. Although she overcame the boundaries of her early poverty, it left an indelible mark upon her, haunting her into middle age. But perhaps Shaw’s biggest contribution to American history was her stewardship of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in the early 1900s at its most fragile moment, a time in which the movement could disintegrate into polarized factions or bloom into a renaissance. Historians have mistakenly referred to this period as the “doldrums” of the movement. Contrary to this interpretation, Franzen demonstrates Shaw’s effective professionalization of the leadership of the NAWSA. As President, Shaw isolated state’s rights and more racist southern suffragists by working with more moderate ones and involving college, immigrant, and working-class women. She also cultivated a larger operating and publicity budget and steered state campaigns back towards the goal of a federal amendment for women’s enfranchisement. And she did this all as a cultural outsider compared to her well-heeled colleagues in reform. She built powerful networks that served her well. After she turned the reigns of the NAWSA over to Carrie Chapman Catt in 1915, Shaw was drafted by Woodrow Wilson to head the Woman’s Committee for the Council on National Defense during World War I. Her efforts earned her the Distinguished Service Medal from the US Government, and, more widely, Shaw’s and other women’s war work was the final push they needed to secure the national amendment giving women the right to vote in 1920. In Shaw’s last weeks of life, she spoke on behalf of the League of Nations and for the rights of Black Americans. Beyond Shaw’s public accomplishments, Franzen also focuses on her personal relationships, including her long romantic partnership with Susan B. Anthony’s niece, Lucy Anthony, whom Shaw called her “great passion” (p. 187). Shaw struggled with carving out a private life, often promising...