Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/800

other. And in many respects their struggles and failures were similar. When seeking the advantages of collegiate education, the women of England were compelled to go to France, Austria and Switzerland for the opportunities they could not enjoy in their own country. The women of our Eastern States followed their example, or went to Western institutions for such privileges, granted by Oberlin and Antioch in Ohio, Ann Arbor in Michigan, Washington University in Missouri, and refused in all the colleges of the East. For long years, alike they endured ridicule and bitter persecution to secure a foothold in their universites at home.

Our battles in Parliament and in the Congress of the United States were simultaneous. While nine senators,^[1] staunch and true, voted in favor of woman suffrage in 1866, and women were rolling up their petitions for a constitutional amendment in '68 and '69, with Samuel C. Pomeroy in the Senate and George W. Julian in the House, the women of England, keeping step and time, found their champions in the House of Commons in John Stuart Mill and Jacob Bright in 1867-69, and no sooner were their mammoth petitions presented in parliament than ours were rolled into the halls of congress. At last we reached the goal, the women of England in 1869 and those of Wyoming in 1870. But what the former gained in time the latter far surpassed in privilege: While to the English woman only a limited suffrage was accorded, in the vast territory of Wyoming, larger than all Great Britain, all the rights of citizenship were fully and freely conferred by one act of the legislature —the right to vote at all elections on all questions and to hold any office in the gift of the people.

The successive steps by which this was accomplished are given us by Hon. J. W. Kingman, associate-justice in the territory for several years:

It is now sixteen years since the act was passed giving women the right to vote at all elections in this territory, including all the rights of an elector, with the right to hold office. The language of the statute is broad, and beyond the reach of evasion. It is as follows:

That every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in the territory, may, at every election to be holden under the laws thereof, cast her vote; and her rights to the elective franchise, and to hold office, shall be the same, under the election laws of the territory, as those of the electors.

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1. Messrs. Wade, Anthony, Gratz Brown, Buckalew, Cowan, Foster, Nesmith, Patterson, Riddle. See Vol. II., Chapter XVII.