As the canvass progressed, it was comical to note how shy the politicians fought of the women to whom they had promised assistance. Judge O. P. Mason, who had agreed to give ten lectures for the amendment, and whose advocacy would have had immense weight, engaged to speak for the Republican party, and at every place but one, the managers stipulated that he should be silent on the amendment. Of the vast array of Republican speakers, had even those who had expressed themselves in favor of the amendment advocated it intelligently and earnestly, the result would have been different.
Due credit must be given to ex-United States Senator Tipton, Judge W. H. Morris, and a few others who lectured outside of their own counties, as well as at home, while David Butler, candidate for senator from Pawnee county, E. M. Correll of Hebron, C. C. Chapin of Riverton, Judge A. P. Yocum of Hastings, and doubtless a few others, regardless of their political prospects, advocated the cause of woman along with their own. The women of Nebraska will always cherish the memory of the enthusiastic young student from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who spent some months of the campaign in Nebraska, giving lavishly of his means and talents to aid the cause. Wilder M. Wooster was a bright, logical speaker, and his death, which occurred in 1885, cost the world a promising and conscientious journalist.
Towards the close of the campaign it became evident that the saloon element was determined to defeat the amendment. The organ of the Brewers' Association sent out its orders to every saloon, bills posted in conspicuous places by friends of the amendment mysteriously disappeared, or were covered by others of an opposite character, and the greatest pains was taken to excite the antagonism of foreigners by representing to them that woman suffrage meant prohibition. On the other hand, the temperance advocates were by no means a unit for its support.
The morning dawned bright and clear on November 5, 1882. The most casual observer would have seen that some unusual interest was commanding attention. Everything wore a holiday appearance. Polling places were gaily decorated; banners floated to the breeze, bearing suggestive mottoes: "Are Women Citizens?" "Taxation Without Representation is Tyranny!" "Governments Derive their Just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." "Equality before the Law," etc., etc. Under pavilions, or in adjoining rooms, or in the very shadow of the ballot-box, women presided at well-filled tables, serving refreshments to the voters, and handing to those who would take them, tickets bearing the words: "For Constitutional Amendment Relating to Right of Suffrage," while the national colors floated alike over governing and governed; alike over women working and pleading for their rights as citizens, and men who were selling woman's birth-right for a glass of beer or a vote. It looked like a holiday picnic—the well-dressed people, the flowers, the badges, and the flags; but the tragic events of that day would fill a volume.
The conservative joined hands with the vicious, the egotist with the ignorant, the demagogue with the venial, and when the sun set, Nebraska's opportunity to do the act of simple justice was gone—lost by a vote of
