Women's suffrage in Wyoming
[4] In 1867, completion of the Union Pacific Railroad and the South Pass gold rush resulted in thousands of settlers pouring into western Dakota Territory.
The new Territory included South Pass, the slow up and downhill rise where people crossed the continental divide for thousands of years along the Sweetwater River.
These new mining towns grew quickly and were along the path of the Union Pacific Railroad that used South Pass but was still being built.
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.
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.
[7] Wyoming legislators were aware of the discussion over woman suffrage, for many of them had moved from Midwestern states where the reform had been debated for several years.
[9] 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.
[11] Even so, Wyoming's territorial legislature, made up entirely of men, had to be persuaded that votes for women were a good idea.
[12] 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.
[11] 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.
[8] The Republican Party had made suffrage for black men the heart of its political activity, but not all voters supported their views.
Not long afterward, Carey issued an official legal opinion that no one in Wyoming could be denied the right to vote based on race.
[11] The federal law that eventually created the territory in 1868 banned voting and officeholding discrimination on the basis of race.
[2] Many Democrats saw Carey's opinion as a move to make sure Wyoming's black people voted Republican and the issue continued to be controversial.
[16][3] These legislators, all white and male, had a number of reasons for supporting women's suffrage when they met for the first time in October 1869.
[22] Morris, several times widowed and an activist for abolition, had experience in solving problems and serving her community.
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.
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.
[2] In 1880, Susan Johnson was appointed postmaster in Cheyenne and Mary Bellamy became the first woman to serve in a state legislature.
The Wyoming delegation present in D.C. telegraphed the territorial legislature that woman suffrage had become an obstacle delaying their statehood application.
The legislature, via a telegram from Joseph M. Carey (who later became governor of Wyoming), replied, "We will stay out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without our women.
Several western states quickly followed Wyoming's lead, but some legislators worried about the consequences that promoting women's suffrage would have on their bids for statehood.
