50,693 to 25,756—so the record gives it. But it must not be forgotten that many tickets were fraudulently printed, and that tickets which contained no mention of the amendment were counted against it, as also were tickets having any technical defect or omission; for instance, tickets having the abbreviated form, "For the Amendment," were counted against it. It will always remain an open question whether the amendment did not, after all, receive an actual majority of all votes cast upon that question. In this new State, burdened with the duties incident to the development of a new country, the women had done what women might do to secure their rights, but their hour had not yet struck.
On the following evening, the speakers of the National Association, who still remained in the State held a meeting[1] at the opera-house in Omaha, at which the addresses were in the main congratulatory for the large vote, making proportionally the largest ever cast for woman's ballot.
While history must perforce be silent concerning the efforts and sacrifices of the many, a word will be expected in regard to some of the principal actors. Looking back on these two eventful years, not a woman who took part in that struggle would wish to have been inactive in that heroic hour. It is an inspiration and an ennobling of all the faculties that they have once been lifted above all personal aims and transient interests; and for all who caught the true meaning of the moment, life can never again touch the low level of indifference. The officers of the State Association who were most active in the canvass are here mentioned with a word as to their subsequent efforts:
Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks, whose services have so often been referred to, after working in three States for the privileges of citizenship, is devoting herself to the congenial study of sociology, and her able pen still does service.
Ada M. Bittenbender was admitted to the bar May 17, 1882, and from that time until the election gave undivided attention to the duties of her office as president of the State Association. The campaign song-book, the supplement folded in the county papers, the columns of notes and news prepared for many journals in the State, the headquarters in Lincoln from which, with the assistance of E. M. Correll and Mrs. Russell, she sent forth documents, posters, blanks and other campaign accessories, sufficiently attest her energy and ability. She is now a practicing lawyer of Lincoln, and was successful during the session of the legislature of 1885 in securing the passage of a law making mothers joint and equal guardians of their children.
Mrs. Belle G. Bigelow of Geneva was an active and reliable officer during the canvass of 1882, and is now prominent in the temperance work of Nebraska.
Mrs. Lucinda Russell of Tecumseh, for two years the treasurer of the State Association, edited a department in the local paper in the interest of the amendment, was one of the campaign committee, and spared no effort to push the work in her own county. Her sister, Mrs. Jennie F. Holmes, was one of the most efficient members of the executive committee. She drove all over her own county, holding meetings in the school-houses. The efforts of these two women would have carried Johnson county for the amendment had not the election officials taken advantage of a technical defect in the tickets used in some of the precincts. Mrs. Holmes sustained the suffrage work in Nebraska through the two following years as chairman of the executive committee, was elected in 1884 to the office of president of the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and reëlected in 1885 to the same position.
- ↑ For further details of the closing scenes, see Vol. III. page 241.
