Women's suffrage in Wyoming

The push for suffrage in Wyoming began when Wyoming was still part of the Dakota Territory. South Pass City remained the seat for the county that would be renamed Sweetwater several months later. Since most of the early miners hoped to strike it rich and quickly leave, they had little interest in governance or community services such as street repairs, indigent care, or schools. Attempts to erect a jail in South Pass City were defeated twice in special elections. The arrival of businesses and the first families in 1868 brought some stability, for these residents wanted to transform the South Pass gold camps into permanent towns. Because Wyoming was a territory, all officials were appointed, including the governor, county commissioners, county attorneys, justices of the peace, and town constables. In Congress, a senator introduced a bill after the Civil War to give women in all the territories the right to vote. This failed, too, as did bills in 1868 that would have amended the U.S. Constitution to give all women in the United States and territories the right to vote. Those failures led many advocates to believe the first woman suffrage bill would probably be adopted in a territory. Even so, Wyoming's territorial legislature, made up entirely of men, had to be persuaded that votes for women were a good idea. In addition to men willing to consider allowing women to vote, local women activists worked on behalf of the issue. Two women had recently delivered speeches in Cheyenne in support of woman suffrage: Anna Dickinson at the courthouse in the fall, and Redelia Bates to new legislators in November. However, neither of the national woman suffrage organizations nor any grassroots movement in Wyoming lobbied for the passage of woman suffrage in the territory. == First legislature and the suffrage bill, 1869 ==

Before the Wyoming delegates assembled in Cheyenne in October 1869, woman suffrage bills in three Western legislatures had been narrowly defeated—Washington in 1854, Nebraska in 1856, and Dakota in 1869—and Utah and Colorado lawmakers would soon be considering the issue. In the years after the Civil War, the two major political parties had battled over expanding voting rights. A particularly fierce battle over suffrage for women and for Black men emerged in Kansas, where national suffrage organizations invested a lot of time and money. The effort failed in 1867 when the new state legislature, mostly Republican, voted down woman suffrage, but supported suffrage for black men. The Republican Party had made suffrage for black men the heart of its political activity, but not all voters supported their views. During the Civil War, northern Democrats were uncertain that the killing was worth the cost. Many would have preferred some kind of compromise with the South instead of the pursuit of the fight to the bloody end. After the war, Democrats continued to oppose some of the most important changes the war had brought about. In particular, they opposed full citizenship and voting rights for black people—both the recently freed slaves and northern blacks who had been more or less free already. was the first territorial governor to sign a woman's suffrage bill into law. He was appointed by General Ulysses Grant to serve in 1868. In the fall of 1868, the popular Union Army General, Ulysses S. Grant, a Republican, was elected president. Grant soon appointed many loyal Republicans to run the brand-new Wyoming Territory. His appointees included the governor, John A. Campbell, Secretary of State Edward M. Lee, and the Attorney General Joseph M. Carey, the top government lawyer in the state. They arrived in May 1869. Not long afterward, Carey issued an official legal opinion that no one in Wyoming could be denied the right to vote based on race. Positive news stories published throughout the nation, legislators thought, might also bring more women. Their decision was also about party politics. Democrats in the legislature hoped that once these women came to Wyoming, they would continue to vote for the party that had given them the vote in the first place. Democrats in the Legislature wanted to make John Campbell, the Republican governor, look bad. As a man who publicly supported rights for ex-slaves, they hoped to push him too far with a vote for women. If they passed the bill, many assumed, Campbell would veto it. The bill passed the Legislative Council six votes to two. In the House, lawmakers tried and failed to attach various amendments. Some potential amendments were attempts to make the bill so unattractive to other legislators that it would fail. One such amendment, which failed, would have extended the vote to “all colored women and squaws." By the end of the century, Wyoming was one of four U.S. states that fully enfranchised their women, among Colorado, Utah, and Idaho. == First women voters and officeholders, 1870 and 1871 ==

In September 1870, women throughout the Territory finally got the chance to vote in Wyoming's second election. As many as 1,000 women appear to have gone to the polls. African-American women in Cheyenne were also able to vote. To the disgust of the Democrats who had given them the vote, a great many voted Republican. A Republican was elected territorial representative to Congress. And the following year, 1871, a few Republicans were elected to the legislature. Wyoming did not stop there. Within a few months, the territory had sworn in the country's first female jurors and appointed three of the first female justices of the peace. The first female justice of the peace was Esther Hobart Morris. Morris, several times widowed and an activist for abolition, had experience in solving problems and serving her community. After some prodding, Morris subsequently completed an application for the post and submitted the required $500 bond. The Sweetwater County Board of Commissioners in a vote of two to one approved her application on 14 February 1870. Over the eight months, Morris adjudicated 70 cases and only two were overturned. There was pushback to women in such roles. The new legislature decided votes for women weren't such a good idea after all, however, and passed a bill to repeal the 1869 law. To his credit, Gov. Campbell vetoed the repeal. The House came up with the two-thirds vote necessary to override his veto, but the Council fell one vote short. That left the new law standing. However, female jury duty, which some people believed took women away from their families, exposed them to unseemly testimony and put them in close quarters with male jurors, was among the most controversial outcomes of Wyoming's new law. Although the Suffrage Act was initially interpreted to allow and even require that women serve on juries, women were barred from jury service in 1871, less than two years after the practice had begun. == National reactions, 1870-1889 ==

== Statehood and woman suffrage, 1890 ==

By the time Wyoming petitioned to become a state, its residents had gotten good press from their support of woman suffrage. Women had held office in a range of capacities. With a very close vote of 139 to 127, Wyoming Territory was granted admission as a state with suffrage for women. == See also ==