owed to vote upon whom the Territorial
Legislature might confer the elective franchise_.

By the organic act under which all the Territories were formed women
had been voting in Wyoming since 1869 and in Utah since 1870. The
arbitrary disfranchisement of the women of the latter by Congress in
1887 demonstrated that this body did have supreme control over
suffrage in the Territories, and therefore unimpeachable power to
authorize their Legislatures to confer it on women, as had been done
by that of Washington. There never was a more unconstitutional
decision than that of this Territorial Supreme Court. Congress should
have refused to admit the Territory until women had voted for
delegates to the constitutional convention and on the constitution
itself.[458]

Without doubt the Supreme Court of the United States would have
reversed the decision of the Territorial Court, but Mrs. Bloomer
refused to allow the case to be appealed, and no one else had
authority to do so.

As the women were thus illegally restrained from voting for delegates,
the opponents of their enfranchisement were enabled to elect a
convention with a majority sufficient to prevent a woman suffrage
clause in the constitution for Statehood.

Henry B. Blackwell, corresponding secretary of the American W. S. A.,
came from Massachusetts to assist in securing such a clause. After a
long discussion as to whether he should be permitted to address the
convention, both sides agreed that the delegates should be invited to
hear him in Tacoma Hall. His address was highly praised even by
newspapers and persons opposed to equal suffrage. Four days later,
with Judge Orange J. Jacobs and Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, he was
granted a hearing before the Suffrage Committee of the convention.

The question of incorporating woman suffrage in the new State
constitution was debated at intervals from Aug. 9 to 15, 1889. The
fight for the measure was led by Edward Eldridge and W. S. Bush. In a
long and able argument Mr. Eldridge reviewed the recent decision of
the Supreme Court and made an eloquent plea for justice to women.
Substitutes granting to women Municipal Suffrage, School Suffrage, the
right to hold office, the privilege of voting on the constitution, all
were defeated. Finally a compromise was forced by which it was agreed
to submit a separate amendment giving them Full Suffrage, to be voted
on at the same time as the rest of the constitution, women themselves
not be