During 1917 suffrage work was displaced by war work, of which Kentucky
suffragists did a large share. They were asked to raise $500 for the
Women's Oversea Hospitals of the National Association and more than
doubled the quota by the able management of Mrs. Samuel Castleman of
Louisville. Under the direction of Mrs. E. L. Hutchinson of Lexington
a plan to raise money for an ambulance to be named in honor of Miss
Laura Clay, the pioneer suffragist, was successfully carried through.

In 1918 for the first time there was every reason to believe that a
resolution to submit a State amendment would pass the Legislature, but
a majority of the State suffrage board voted to conform to the desire
of the National Association to avoid State campaigns and concentrate
on the Federal Amendment and no resolution was presented.

At the State convention, held March 11, 1919, resolutions were adopted
calling upon all Kentucky members of Congress to vote for the Federal
Suffrage Amendment; calling on the Legislature to ratify this
amendment, when passed, at the first opportunity and asking it to
enact a law giving to women a vote for presidential electors. Miss
Clay, who for over thirty years had been the leader of the
suffragists, withdrew from the State association, which she had
founded, and formed a new organization to work for the vote by State
action alone, as she was strongly opposed to Federal action. It was
called the Citizens' Committee for a State Suffrage Amendment and
opened headquarters in Lexington. It issued an "open letter to the
public," an able argument for the State's control of its own suffrage
and an arraignment of interference by Congress, which it declared
would "become possessed of an autocratic power dangerous to free
institutions." It conducted a vigorous campaign against every move for
a Federal Amendment and met the representatives of the old association
at the Republican State convention in May to prevent their securing an
endorsement of it. In an eloquent speech before the platform committee
Miss Clay urged it to reaffirm the State's rights plank in the
National platform and pledge the party to secure the submission to the
voters of a State suffrage amendment and to support it at the polls.
The plank adopted was as follows: "We reaffirm our belief in the
justice and expediency of suffrage for women and call upon our
representatives in the Congress of the United States, in the
Legislature and in all executiv