ory of the State these women came off
victors, and the good-natured public, through the press, offered
them congratulations. But the defendants would not yield without
a stubborn resistance and carried their cause on appeal to the
Supreme Court; hence many months elapsed before the final
struggle came, but victory again rewarded the petitioners, the
Supreme Court deciding that women _should_ be admitted to the law
department of the State University. Although excluded from the
benefit of the lectures in the college, Mesdames Gordon and Foltz
had improved their time in study, and in December, 1879, both
were admitted to the Supreme Court of the State, after a thorough
examination.

Prior to this legal contest, in the summer of 1878, when
delegates to the constitutional convention were to be elected,
Mrs. Gordon, urged by her friends in San Joaquin county, became
an independent candidate only a week or two before the election.
With Mrs. Foltz she made a very brief though brilliant canvass,
attracting larger and more enthusiastic audiences than any other
speaker. Mrs. Gordon received several hundred votes for the
office, and felt compensated for the time and money spent by the
great interest awakened in the subject of woman suffrage.

As soon as the constitutional convention assembled in September,
Mrs. Gordon, although still pursuing her legal studies, was able
as a newspaper correspondent to closely watch the deliberations
of that body and urge the insertion of a woman suffrage clause in
the new organic law. The State Society delegated Mrs. Knox
Goodrich, Mrs. Sarah Wallis and Mrs. Watkins to join Mrs. Gordon
in pressing the claims of woman, but the opposition was too
strong and the suffrage clause remained declaring male citizens
entitled to vote, though a section in the bill of rights,
together with other provisions in the new constitution, renders
it quite probable that the legislature has the right to
enfranchise women without having to amend the organic law. At all
events the new instrument is far more favorable to women than the
old, as will now be shown. The agitation of the question of the
admission of women to the Law College, which began during the
session of the convention, led that body to incorporate the
following provision i