CHAPTER LXXII.
WYOMING.[1]
It is said that a contented people or a happy life is one without a history. The cause of woman suffrage in Wyoming has not been marked by agitation or strife, and for that reason there is no struggle to record, as is the case in all other States. In its story Mrs. Esther Morris must ever be considered the heroine. A native of New York, she joined her husband and three sons in 1869 at South Pass, then the chief town of Wyoming. She was a strong advocate of the enfranchisement of women and succeeded in enlisting the co-operation of Col. William H. Bright, president of the first Legislative Council of the Territory, which that very year passed a bill conferring on women the full elective franchise and the right to hold all offices. Gov. John A. Campbell was in some doubt as to signing it, but a body of women in Cheyenne, headed by Mrs. Amalia Post (wife of Morton E. Post, delegate to Congress), went to his residence and announced their intention of, staying until he did so. A vacancy occurring soon afterward in the office of Justice of the Peace at South Pass, the Governor appointed Mrs. Morris on petition of the county attorney and commissioners. She tried between thirty and forty cases and none was appealed to a higher court.[2]
In 1871 a bill to repeal this woman suffrage law was passed by the Legislature and vetoed by Governor Campbell. An attempt to pass it over his veto failed. No proposition to abolish it ever was made in the Legislature thereafter.
In 1884, fifteen years after women had first voted in Wyoming, U. S. District Attorney Melville C. Brown, at the request of
- ↑ The History is indebted to the Hon. Robert C. Morris of Cheyenne, clerk of the Supreme Court of Wyoming, for much of the information contained in this chapter.
- ↑ Mrs. Morris is the mother of Robert C. Morris, and this paragraph is inserted by the editors. A full account of this first experiment in woman suffrage will be found in Vol. III. Chap. LII.
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