n suffrage in Wyoming has not been marked by
agitation or strife, and for that reason there is no struggle to
record, as is the case in all other States. In its story Mrs. Esther
Morris must ever be considered the heroine. A native of New York, she
joined her husband and three sons in 1869 at South Pass, then the
chief town of Wyoming. She was a strong advocate of the
enfranchisement of women and succeeded in enlisting the co-operation
of Col. William H. Bright, president of the first Legislative Council
of the Territory, which that very year passed a bill conferring on
women the full elective franchise and the right to hold all offices.
Gov. John A. Campbell was in some doubt as to signing it, but a body
of women in Cheyenne, headed by Mrs. Amalia Post (wife of Morton E.
Post, delegate to Congress), went to his residence and announced their
intention of staying until he did so. A vacancy occurring soon
afterward in the office of Justice of the Peace at South Pass, the
Governor appointed Mrs. Morris on petition of the county attorney and
commissioners. She tried between thirty and forty cases and none was
appealed to a higher court.[472]

In 1871 a bill to repeal this woman suffrage law was passed by the
Legislature and vetoed by Governor Campbell. An attempt to pass it
over his veto failed. No proposition to abolish it ever was made in
the Legislature thereafter.

In 1884, fifteen years after women had first voted in Wyoming, U. S.
District Attorney Melville C. Brown, at the request of Miss Susan B.
Anthony, sent to the National Association an extended resume of the
status of women suffrage in the Territory, to which he himself had
been opposed in 1869. It expressed throughout the most emphatic
approval without any qualifications. Some of the statements were as
follows:

Women have exercised their elective franchise, at first not very
generally but of late with universality, and with such good
judgment and modesty as to commend it to the men of all parties
who hold the good of the Territory in high esteem.... It has been
stated that the best women do not avail themselves of the
privilege. This is maliciously false.... The foolish claim has
also been made that the influence of the ballot upon women is
bad. This is not true. It is impossible that a woman's character
can be contaminated in associating with men for a few minutes in
going to the polls any more than it wo