objections, with a confidence that was impregnable, and, thank heaven, one that was fully justified by the subsequent trial.
So determined became the opponents to impartial suffrage that, in 1871, an act was passed, and approved November 29, "in relation to woman suffrage" (the title), in which it was enacted that "No female shall have the right of ballot, or vote, at any poll or election precinct in the territory, until the congress of the United States of America shall, by direct legislation upon the same, declare the same to be the supreme law of the land." In looking at the law now, with all feeling aside, one cannot refrain from an expression of surprise that solons of the law-giving power should have attempted such a futile method of stemming the tide that would inevitably overwhelm them. Any subsequent legislature could, of course, repeal the act which so magnanimously accorded to congress the privilege of reversing their act. It was probably intended to be merely an expression of the assembled lawmakers, but it shows with what intensity it was held, and the wonderful change implied in passage of the measure a few years afterward.
It was at the legislative session of 1883 that an act amending Section 3050 of Chapter 238 of the Code of Washington Territory gave the ballot to women. It was simply an act to omit the word "male" in the amended section and provide for interpretation of the pronoun "his" and its variations, to be construed to mean "her" as the same might require. The act was approved by Governor W. A. Newell November 23, 1883. It passed the "council," as the upper branch of the legislature was then called, by a majority of one vote. It conferred absolute equality upon women as voters, jurors and officeholders. Under it the women voted in 1884 and 1886. Their influence at the ballot box contributed in no small degree to the success of Charles S. Voorhees as delegate to congress, representing as he did the interests of the people against the grasping demands of the railroads to augment their land grant.
On February 3, 1887, the Territorial Supreme Court, in a decision rendered in a "whisky case," entitled Harland v. Territory of Washington, by Judge George Turner, declared the act invalid, as the grand jury which had indicted him was partly composed of women. The concluding part of the decision, written by Turner and concurred in by Associate Justice Langford, Judge Greene dissenting, was as follows:
"If the law conferring the elective franchise on females was not a fruit of disobedience to the wise and salutary restraint of the organic act, as has been charged, and if there is a public sentiment in the territory which favors such a measure, the next legislature will probably re-enact it."
Even in this utterance of an austere man can be seen respect for power behind the ballot, when reference is made to the possibility that "popular sentiment" might finally repudiate the courtly edict. And be it noted that after the woman had finally lost the ballot, much of that chivalry which had been accorded them as voters was lost. Politicians who had lifted their hats to the fairer portion of humanity while the law was in effect passed
