It was the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and Americans were afraid. At around noon, people in 81 percent of American households huddled around their radios and heard President Franklin D. Roosevelt appeal to a joint session of Congress to send the U.S. to war with Japan.
With the country clearly headed into battle, Montana Rep. Jeannette Rankin was in a difficult position.
The progressive Republican, who had campaigned hard on a pacifist platform, had been elected in 1940. She wasn't new to pacifism, and she wasn't afraid to buck public opinion to vote her conscience: Not long after she became the first woman in Congress more than two decades earlier, she had voted against the U.S. entering World War I.
