amendments, and the reports of the
committee thereupon--one in favor and one opposed, but both
agreeing that women are citizens. Then he showed what rights
they were entitled to as citizens, quoting the Federal
Constitution, Bouvier's Institutes and Law Dictionary, James
Madison, Paine's Dissertation on the Principles of
Government, Otis' Rights of the Colonies, Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin, and others. Commenting upon these, he set
forth that women vote in corporations, administer estates,
manage hospitals and rule empires without harm to themselves
and with benefit to everybody else. He made a special
argument to the Democrats, reviewing the position of some of
their leading men, and closed with saying, "This is the most
important measure yet considered, because it contains a
fundamental principle."

General Strickland then introduced a resolution that an
article for woman suffrage should be submitted to the
people, that the women should vote separately, and that if a
majority of both men and women should be in favor, it should
become a law. The member did not move this because he
favored the principle, but because he felt sure the women
would not vote for it. He could not understand what a woman
could possibly want more than she had, having the privileges
while man has the drudgery. He closed with the prophecy that
in two years not a woman would vote in Wyoming.

General Charles F. Manderson followed. Taking the ground
that the members were not in convention to look after the
rights of the males only, he said: "Did we recognize the
right of all the people to be represented, we should have
to-day on this floor some persons sent here to represent the
women of our State. Men do not represent women because they
are not and cannot be held responsible by them. We have no
more right to represent the women here than a man in Iowa
has to go to congress and presume to represent Nebraska
there." To illustrate the principle General Manderson
instanced that in the New York Constitutional Conventions of
1801 and 1821, persons voted for delegates who had not the