out Representation is Tyranny!" "Governments Derive
their Just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." "Equality
before the Law," etc., etc. Under pavilions, or in adjoining
rooms, or in the very shadow of the ballot-box, women presided at
well-filled tables, serving refreshments to the voters, and
handing to those who would take them, tickets bearing the words:
"For Constitutional Amendment Relating to Right of Suffrage,"
while the national colors floated alike over governing and
governed; alike over women working and pleading for their rights
as citizens, and men who were selling woman's birth-right for a
glass of beer or a vote. It looked like a holiday picnic--the
well-dressed people, the flowers, the badges, and the flags; but
the tragic events of that day would fill a volume.

The conservative joined hands with the vicious, the egotist with
the ignorant, the demagogue with the venial, and when the sun
set, Nebraska's opportunity to do the act of simple justice was
gone--lost by a vote of 50,693 to 25,756--so the record gives
it. But it must not be forgotten that many tickets were
fraudulently printed, and that tickets which contained no mention
of the amendment were counted against it, as also were tickets
having any technical defect or omission; for instance, tickets
having the abbreviated form, "For the Amendment," were counted
against it. It will always remain an open question whether the
amendment did not, after all, receive an actual majority of all
votes cast upon that question. In this new State, burdened with
the duties incident to the development of a new country, the
women had done what women might do to secure their rights, but
their hour had not yet struck.

On the following evening, the speakers of the National
Association, who still remained in the State held a meeting[473]
at the opera-house in Omaha, at which the addresses were in the
main congratulatory for the large vote, making proportionally the
largest ever cast for woman's ballot.

While history must perforce be silent concerning the efforts and
sacrifices of the many, a word will be expected in regard to some
of the principal actors. Looking back on these two eventful
years, not a woman who took part in that struggle would wish to
have been inactive in th