Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/799

CHAPTER LII.

WYOMING.

The Dawn of the New Day, December, 1869—The Goal Reached in England and America—Territory Organized, May, 1869—Legislative Action—Bill for Woman Suffrage—William H. Bright—Gov. Campbell Signs the Bill—Appoints Esther Morris, Justice of the Peace, March, 1870—Women on the Jury, Chief-Justice Howe, Presiding—J. W. Kingman, Associate-Justice, Addresses the Jury—Women Promptly take their Places—Sunday Laws Enforced—Comments of the Press—Judge Howe's Letter—Laramie Sentinel—J. H. Heyford—omen Voting, 1870—Grandma Swain the First to Cast her Ballot—Effort to Repeal the Law, 1871—Gov. Campbell's Veto—Mr. Corlett Rapid Growth of Public Opinion in Favor of Woman Suffrage.

After recording such a long succession of disappointments and humiliations for women in all the States in their worthy endeavors for higher education, for profitable employment in the trades and professions and for equal social, civil and political rights, it is with renewed self-respect and a stronger hope of better days to come that we turn to the magnificent territory of Wyoming, where the foundations of the first true republic were laid deep and strong in equal rights to all, and where for the first time in the history of the race woman has been recognized as a sovereign in her own right—an independent, responsible being—endowed with the capacity for self-government. This great event in the history of human progress transpired in 1869.

Neither the point nor the period for this experiment could have been more fitly chosen. Midway across this vast western continent, on the highest plane of land, rising from three to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, where gigantic mountain-peaks shooting still higher seem to touch the clouds, while at their feet flow the great rivers that traverse the State in all directions, emptying themselves after weary wanderings into the Pacific ocean at last; such was the grand point where woman was first crowned with the rights of citizenship. And the period was equally marked. To reach the goal of self-government the women of England and America seemed to be vicing with each other in the race, now one holding the advance position, now the