A “Disloyal” and “Immoral” Woman “In Such a Responsible Place”: M. Louise Hunt's Refusal to Purchase a Liberty Bond, Civil Liberties, and Female Citizenship in the First World War

Socialist and pacifist Portland, Oregon librarian Louise M. Hunt refused to purchase a Liberty Bond to support U.S. participation in the First World War in April 1918. The powerful public assaults against her, which led to her resignation and more, characterized the intense “patriotic scrutiny” of dissenters during the conflict. As an Oregon woman, Hunt had been a voting citizen since 1912. Her understanding of female citizenship comprised the American tradition of dissent in the new context of women's progressive activism in the early twentieth century. The striking reactions to her decision provide a strong opportunity to analyze three major parts of the practice of female citizenship and civil liberties during the conflict: “patriotic womanhood” as the approved civic role for women in the crisis, women's economic citizenship, and the question of whether women could be conscientious objectors in wartime even though not subject to the draft. This analysis demonstrates that the wartime imperative of the practice of female citizenship only as “patriotic womanhood,” and the machinery put in place to enforce it, transformed Hunt into an “immoral” and “disloyal” woman in “such a responsible place” who had to be removed, even deported, to make Portland and the nation safe again. Hunt persisted in her professional life after the incident and continued her anti‐war activism into the Cold War before her death in 1960.[Note 1. This article is based on a presentation at the ...]