On Dec. 8, 1941, the day following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt asked for a congressional declaration of war against Japan and Congress passed the declaration that day. (So, that’s how they used to do it.) There was one dissenting vote, that of Jeanette Rankin, the first woman ever elected to Congress. A lifelong pacifist, Rankin had also voted against U.S. entry into the First World War 24 years earlier.
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