A Century Before Hillary

Early May and the lilacs are in bloom, the forsythias just past their prime, as Colonel E. Jacob Crull, of Roundup, Montana, climbs the front steps of a funeral establishment in Elkhart, Indiana. He carries a bottle of muriatic acid and the refrain “beaten by a woman,” a taunt he has hoped to escape by visiting his sister in their home town. But the national newspapers are filled with accounts of the arrival, in Washington, of Jeannette Rankin as a Republican representative to the House—the first woman to serve in Congress. Crull, the fifty-eight-year-old unmarried lawyer and former member of the Montana legislature whom she defeated in the primaries, believed that a spot on the 1916 Republican ticket would make the beginning of a brilliant political career in Washington. Defeat at the hands of a woman has crushed his ambition and will to live. Two boys will find him later that day, “huddled on the steps”; he is taken to a local hospital—his last words, “I’m heartbroken.”