to settle within its borders.

Nebraska became an organized territory by the Kansas-Nebraska
bill in 1854, including at first Dakota, Idaho and Colorado, from
which it was separated in 1863. The early settlers were
courageous, keeping heart amid attacks of savages, and
devastations of the fire-demon and the locust. Published history
is silent concerning the part that women took in this frontier
life, but the tales told by the fireside are full of the
endurance and heroism of wives whose very isolation kept them
hand to hand, shoulder to shoulder, and thought to thought with
their husbands. It is not strange then that the men of those
early days inclined readily to the idea of sharing the rights of
self-government with women who had with them left home and
kindred and the comforts of the older States. But it is
remarkable, and proof that the thought belongs to the age, that,
thirty years ago, when the discussion of woman's status was still
new in Massachusetts and New York, and only seven years after the
first woman-suffrage convention ever held, here--half way across
a continent, in a country almost unheard of, and with but scant
communication with the older parts of the Republic--this
instinctive justice should have crystalized into legislative
action.

In December, 1855, an invitation was extended by the territorial
legislature to Mrs. Amelia Bloomer of Council Bluffs, to deliver
an address on woman's rights, in the Hall of the House of
Representatives. This invitation was signed by twenty-five
members of the legislature and was accepted by Mrs. Bloomer for
January 8. The following pleasing account of this address and its
reception was written by an Omaha correspondent of the Council
Bluffs _Chronotype_ of that date:

Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, who had been formally invited by
members of the legislature and others, arrived at the door
of the state-house at 7 o'clock, P. M., and by the gallantry
of Gen. Larimer, a passage was made for her to the platform.
The house had been crowded for some time with eager
expectants to see the lady and listen to the arguments which
were to be adduced as the fruitage of female thought and
research. When all had been packed into the house who could
possibl