suit against them. The case was rushed through, and on August 14 the Supreme Court decided that the Act of January 18 was invalid, as a Territorial Legislature had no right to enfranchise women, and that in consequence the Equal Suffrage Law was void. The Judges responsible for this decision were Associate Justices George Turner and William G. Langford. The very Act of Congress which organized the Territory of Washington stated explicitly that, at elections subsequent to the first, all persons should be allowed to vote upon whom the Territorial Legislature might confer the elective franchise.
By the organic act under which all the Territories were formed women had been voting in Wyoming since 1869 and in Utah since 1870. The arbitrary disfranchisement of the women of the latter by Congress in 1887 demonstrated that this body did have supreme control over suffrage in the Territories, and therefore unimpeachable power to authorize their Legislatures to confer it on women, as had been done by that of Washington. There never was a more unconstitutional decision than that of this Territorial Supreme Court. Congress should have refused to admit the Territory until women had voted for delegates to the constitutional convention and on the constitution itself.[1]
Without doubt the Supreme Court of the United States would have reversed the decision of the Territorial Court, but Mrs. Bloomer refused to allow the case to be appealed, and no one else had authority to do so.
As the women were thus illegally restrained from voting for delegates, the opponents of their enfranchisement were enabled to elect a convention with a majority sufficient to prevent a woman suffrage clause in the constitution for Statehood.
Henry B. Blackwell, corresponding secretary of the American W. S. A., came from Massachusetts to assist in securing such a clause. After a long discussion as to whether he should be permitted to address the convention, both sides agreed that the delegates should be invited to hear him in Tacoma Hall. His address was highly praised even by newspapers and persons opposed to equal suffrage. Four days later, with Judge Orange
- ↑ For further information see Appendix for Washington.
