The Colorado victory gave us two full suffrage states, for in 1869 the Territory of Wyoming had en- f ranchised women under very interesting conditions, not now generally remembered. The achievement was due to the influence of one woman, Esther Morris, a pioneer who was as good a neighbor as she was a suffragist. In those early days, in homes far from physicians and surgeons, the women cared for one another in sickness, and Esther Morris, as it happened, once took full and skilful charge of a neighbor during the difficult birth of the latter's child. She had done the same thing for many other women, but this woman's husband was especially grateful. He was also a member of the Legislature, and he told Mrs. Morris that if there was any measure she wished put through for the women of the territory he would be glad to introduce it.
She immediately took him at his word by asking him to introduce a bill enfranchising women, and he promptly did so.
The Legislature was Democratic, and it pounced upon the measure as a huge joke. With the amiable purpose of embarrassing the Governor of the ter- r itory, who was a Republican and had been appointed by the President, the members passed the bill and put it up to him to veto. To their combined horror and amazement, the young Governor did nothing of the kind. He had come, as it happened, from Salem, Ohio, one of the first towns in the United States in which a suffrage convention was held.
There, as a boy, he had heard Susan B. Anthony make a speech, and he had carried into the years the impression it made upon him. He signed that bill; and, as the Legislature could not get a two- t hirds vote to kill it, the disgusted members had to make the best of the matter. The following year a Democrat introduced a bill to repeal the measure, but already public sentiment had changed and he was laughed down. After that no further effort was ever made to take the ballot away from the women of Wyoming.
When the territory applied for statehood, it was feared that the woman-suffrage clause in the con- s titution might injure its chance of admission, and the women sent this telegram to Joseph M. Carey:
``Drop us if you must. We can trust the men of Wyoming to enfranchise us after our territory be- c omes a state.''
Mr. Carey discussed this telegram with the other men who were urging upon Congress the admission of their territory, and the following reply went back:
``We may stay out of the Union a hundred years, but we will come in with our women.''
There is great inspiration in those two messages-- a nd a great lesson, as well.
In 1894 we conducted a campaign in New York, when an effort was made to secure a clause to en- f ranchise women in the new state constitution; and for the first time in the history of the woman-suf- f rage movement many of the influential women in the state and city of New York took an active part in the work. Miss Anthony was, as always, our leader and greatest inspiration. Mrs. John Brooks Greenleaf was state president, and Miss Mary Anthony was the most active worker in the Roches- t er headquarters. Mrs. Lily Devereaux Blake had charge of the campaign in New York City, and Mrs.
Marianna Chapman looked after the Brooklyn sec- t ion, while a most stimulating sign of the times was the organization of a committee of New York women of wealth and social influence, who estab- l ished their headquarters at Sherry's. Among these were Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mrs. Joseph H.
Choate, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Mrs. J. Warren Goddard, and Mrs. Robert Abbe. Miss Anthony, then in her seventy-fifth year, spoke in every county of the state sixty in all. I spoke in forty, and Mrs.
Catt, as always, made a superb record. Miss Har- r iet May Mills, a graduate of Cornell, and Miss Mary G. Hay, did admirable organization work in the dif- f erent counties. Our disappointment over the re- s ult was greatly soothed by the fact that only two years later both Idaho and Utah swung into line as full suffrage states, though California, in which we had labored with equal zeal, waited fifteen years longer.
Among these campaigns, and overlapping them, were our annual conventions--each of which I at- t ended from 1888 on--and the national and inter- n ational councils, to a number of which, also, I have given preliminary mention. When Susan B. An- t hony died in 1906, four American states had granted suffrage to woman. At the time I write--1914--the result of the American women's work for suffrage may be briefly tabulated thus:
First National Convention, Washington, D.C., 1887.
First International Council of Women, Washington, D.C., 1888.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1889.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1890.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1891.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1892.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1893.
International Council, Chicago, 1893.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1894.
National Suffrage Convention, Atlanta, Ga., 1895.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1896.
National Suffrage Convention, Des Moines, Iowa, 1897.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1898.
National Suffrage Convention, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1899.
International Council, London, England, 1899.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1900.
National Suffrage Convention, Minneapolis, Minn., 1901.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1902.
National Suffrage Convention, New Orleans, La., 1903.
National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C., 1904.
International Council of Women, Berlin, Germany, 1904.
Formation of Intern'l Suffrage Alliance, Berlin, Germany, 1904.
National Suffrage Convention, Portland, Oregon, 1905.
National Suffrage Convention, Baltimore, Md., 1906.
International Suffrage Alliance, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1906.
National Suffrage Convention, Chicago, III., 1907.
International Suffrage Alliance, Amsterdam, Holland, 1908.
