Frances Willard

American educator and social reformer

• Born: September 28, 1839
• Birthplace: Churchville, New York
• Died: February 18, 1898
• Place of death: New York, New York

Advocating a “do everything” policy for reformers during the late nineteenth century, Willard helped advance the causes of temperance and women’s rights as president and the most famous and symbolic leader of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

Early Life

Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was the fourth of five children, three of whom survived infancy. Her mother, Mary Thompson (Hill) Willard, traced her ancestry back to early New Englanders of English origin. Her father, Josiah Flint Willard, came from a long line of New England and New York farmers.

When Frances was two, her family moved to Ohio and then migrated to the Janesville, Wisconsin, area, where she grew up. Her mother provided her first schooling. A young tutor and a visiting aunt continued her schooling until Frances was fifteen. After attending a district school and a school for girls, she enrolled in the Milwaukee Female College and thereafter transferred to Northwestern Female College in Evanston, Illinois. Frances was graduated in 1859 with a laureate of science degree. She held a number of teaching positions in Illinois during the next few years and moved to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York, to hold a job as a preceptress during the 1866-1867 academic year. Frances returned to Evanston in the winter of 1867-1868 and nursed her father until he died in January, 1868.

Shortly after her father’s death, Willard departed for two years of travel throughout Europe, including Russia and Greece, and to Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey, with her friend Kate Jackson. Jackson’s wealthy father paid for the travel. Willard attended lectures and studied languages, art, and music in Berlin, Paris, and Rome, thus expanding her intellectual capacity and heightening her desire to achieve.

In 1871, Willard was appointed president of Evanston College for Ladies. In 1873, when Northwestern University totally absorbed Evanston College, she was made dean of women and professor of English and art at Northwestern. During that same year, Willard helped found the Association for the Advancement of Women. In 1874, after suffering academic frustration and experiencing personal difficulties with Charles Fowler, the president of Northwestern and her former fiancé, she resigned, never again to hold a formal academic position. Her stately physical presence, kindly face, and penetrating eyes belied the fact that this attractive and highly motivated thirty-five-year-old woman was unhappy and, at that point in her life, lacking clear direction.

Life’s Work

In the midst of rising temperance fervor and expanding antisaloon activity throughout the country, Willard was soon able to realize her ambitions. In October, 1874, she was chosen secretary of a newly formed women’s temperance organization in Chicago. The next month, she attended the organizing convention of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and was chosen national corresponding secretary. She immediately advocated that the WCTU should dedicate itself to numerous other reforms. Annie Wittenmyer, the first president of the WCTU, opposed broadening the organization’s perspective beyond temperance and was shocked by Willard’s 1876 national convention speech in support of a women’s suffrage resolution.

In early 1877, Willard resigned her Chicago WCTU position to become the director of women’s meetings for the evangelist Dwight L. Moody. Moody’s orthodoxy, however, was too restraining; hence, she resigned in September and returned to Evanston with Anna A. Gordon, whom she had met in the Boston Moody Crusade and who thereafter became her lifelong secretary, aide, and confidante. In 1877, when her relationship with Wittenmyer became even more strained, Willard resigned as WCTU national corresponding secretary and began lecturing nationwide on women’s rights and suffrage.

After being elected president of the Illinois WCTU in 1878, Willard campaigned vigorously for new temperance laws. She initiated and directed a petition campaign to induce state legislators to pass a law allowing women in Illinois to vote on the liquor question. Although the petition died in committee, its effect was evident in the state’s spring election as a majority of Illinois towns adopted local option. This petition campaign served as a model for subsequent and similar actions for the WCTU in other states.

Although the internal organizational fight over political activity continued, Willard steadily won new adherents. In 1879, she was elected president of the National WCTU and held that position for the remaining years of her life. Under her leadership, the WCTU expanded from a religious group primarily dedicated to temperance to a strong women’s organization. She effected many internal changes in the organization and molded the annual conventions into well-publicized, smooth-running, and inspiring affairs. She sought and acquired for the WCTU working relationships with other religious and reform groups.

As National WCTU president, Willard, already highly regarded, became a well-traveled and effective speaker who could and did move audiences. Her speaking fees were her only source of income until 1886, when the WCTU presented her with an annual salary of eighteen hundred dollars, later raised to twenty-four hundred dollars. Supporting herself, her mother, and Gordon, Willard remained in constant financial need throughout the 1880’s. The sales of her autobiography, Glimpses of Fifty Years: An Autobiography of an American Woman , published in 1889, provided sufficient additional income to allow her barely to meet her needs.

After becoming national president, Willard continued to speak out for woman suffrage. Responding to her urging, delegates to the national convention in 1880 endorsed the ballot for women; in 1882, a new WCTU department of franchise was established to distribute suffrage literature and to encourage members to work for the vote. A member of the American Woman Suffrage Association, Willard worked closely with numerous suffrage organizations and introduced leading suffrage leaders to WCTU national conventions.

Willard carefully led the WCTU and her followers into various other reform causes. She pinpointed her strategy well in her handbook Do Everything , published in 1895. She argued that almost all reforms had temperance aspects. By 1889, thirty-nine WCTU departments of work existed, each of which was designed to educate the public and be a group to bring pressure in order to secure reform legislation. The areas of reform, in addition to temperance, included prostitution, health and hygiene, city welfare, prison reform, labor reform, and rights for blacks. Attempting to do so much meant that at times the work was superficial. Many WCTU members, moreover, continued to concern themselves only with the liquor problem.

Beginning in 1883, Willard led the WCTU into international work. She persuaded the WCTU to send temperance missionaries abroad to establish unions and to persuade women in other countries to oppose the traffic in alcohol and narcotic drugs. The World’s WCTU was established in 1891; Willard was elected president. By 1897, the World’s WCTU represented more than two million women.

In attempting to bring the WCTU into party politics, Willard encountered her greatest internal organizational difficulties. After endorsing James A. Garfield for the presidency in 1880 and then being disappointed by his repudiation of his pledge to support prohibition and woman suffrage, Willard established the Home Protection Party and attempted in 1882 to combine it with the Prohibition Party. Many members opposed involving their organization in party politics. During the early 1890’s, Willard tried to get prohibition and woman suffrage planks inserted into the 1892 Populist Party platform and attempted to bring the Prohibition Party into the Populist Party. She regarded her failure to accomplish these results as a personal defeat.

Affected by her political failure and by the death of her mother, Willard went to England in the summer of 1892 to rest and to spend time with a friend, Lady Henry Somerset. From then until the end of 1896, she stayed mostly in England, spending only sixteen months in the United States. During this time, she attempted with but little success to garner support from British women for her “do everything” policy. She also changed both her thinking and advocacy. She espoused socialism, argued that poverty was the major cause of intemperance, and spoke out on her belief that education rather than prohibition was the best way to solve the liquor problem.

Dissatisfaction with Willard among WCTU leaders grew between 1892 and 1896. Her unorthodox views, continued emphasis upon politics, extended absences, and lack of attention to developing organizational problems finally caused an eruption of opposition at the 1897 national convention. Her rank-and-file followers held the line, however, reelecting her by an overwhelming vote of 387 to 19. Chronic anemia took its toll the next year as Willard’s health declined dramatically. She died in New York City on February 18, 1898.

Significance

Although she did not wholly realize her dream of creating an all-inclusive women’s reform organization, Willard, stressing the familiar themes of home, family, and temperance, successfully persuaded many women, who had previously been indifferent to reforms, to broaden their perspective and to engage in numerous reform activities. During her twenty years as national WCTU president, she retained the backing of the great majority of WCTU members. After her death, the WCTU moved away from the “do everything” policy and emphasized the issues of prohibition and total abstinence. Willard nevertheless remained the most illustrious and idealized symbol of the WCTU woman.

In many ways, Willard’s story is the story of the WCTU, the largest organization of women in nineteenth century America. Led by Willard, the WCTU fought not only for temperance but also for woman suffrage, prison reform, facilities for dependent and neglected children, federal aid to education, and legislation to help laborers. During the Willard presidency, 1879 to 1898, the WCTU dominated the entire woman movement in the United States. In addition to molding the WCTU into the model for future women’s organizations, Willard, more than any of her contemporaries, instilled the vision of feminist goals in the consciousness of great numbers of American women.

Bibliography

Borden, Ruth. Women and Temperance. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981. The best book on the WCTU and one of the best analyses of Willard. A well-documented, well-written, and careful study that places both the WCTU and Willard in historical perspective.

Earhart, Mary. Frances Willard: From Prayers to Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1944. The best overall biography and one of the best analyses of Willard. Well documented and objective. Lists all of Willard’s writings.

Gordon, Anna A. The Beautiful Life of Frances Willard. Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association, 1898. Uncritical, but typifies those books that have produced an idealized myth of the life and work of Willard.

Gordon, Elizabeth Putnam. Women Torch Bearers: The Story of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Evanston, Ill.: National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Publishing House, 1924. Although mostly uncritical and apologetic, this history of the WCTU presents a unified sketch of activity influenced by Willard. Not nearly as good as, but should be compared to, Borden.

Gusfield, Joseph. Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963, 1986. A sociological study of what the author calls status politics and the American temperance movement. The book contains some insights into the leadership of Willard and data on the WCTU and the temperance movement.

Leeman, Richard W.“Do Everything” Reform: The Oratory of Frances E. Willard. Foreword by Bernard K. Duffy. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. An examination of Willard’s oratory, including a critical analysis of her speaking style and texts of her representative speeches. Also includes a chronology and bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

Willard, Frances. Glimpses of Fifty Years: An Autobiography of an American Woman. Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association, 1889. Reprint. New York: Source Book Press, 1970. Contains details about Willard and other WCTU leaders. Tends to be apologetic and spotty in coverage but does give a flavor of Willard.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Woman and Temperance: Or, The Work and Wonders of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Hartford, Conn.: Park, 1883. Contains “field notes” of Willard but is badly organized and apologetic. Has considerable information about some WCTU leaders and their activities. First biographical sketch, praiseworthy but uncritical, is of Willard and is written by Mary A. Lathbury.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Writing Out My Heart: Selections from the Journal of Frances E. Willard, 1855-96. Edited by Carolyn De Swarte Gifford. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. These selections from Willard’s journal trace the development of her religious and reform commitments and describe her struggle to reconcile the conflicting demands of family, society, and self.