Jeannette Rankin was an American politician and women’s rights advocate and the first woman to hold federal office in the United States. She was elected to the U.S House of Representatives by the state of Montana in 1916 and again in 1940.
She is to date the only woman elected to Congress from Montana. Each of Rankin’s Congressional terms coincided with initiation of U.S military intervention in each of the two world wars.
A lifelong pacifist and a supporter of non-interventionism, she was one of 50 House members (total of 56 in both chambers) who opposed the war declaration of 1917 and the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.