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SECTION 1. That hereafter no female shall have the right of
ballot, or vote at any poll or election precinct in this
territory until the Congress of the United States of America
shall, by direct legislation, declare the same to be the
supreme law of the land.

SEC. 2. This act to take effect from and after its passage.

Approved November 29, 1871. EDWARD S. SOLOMON, _Governor_.

When the proclamation to hold a convention to form a constitution
preparatory to our admission into the Union as a State, was
issued, I recommended to the Territorial Woman Suffrage
Association that we make every effort to secure to the convention
as many delegates as possible in favor of woman suffrage, and
then that we circulate petitions asking them to leave out the
word "male" from the constitution. Failing to get the society to
take any associated action, I went to work individually, wrote
and sent out petitions into every town and country place where
there was a post-office, asking that the word "male" be left out
of the constitution. With each petition I sent a letter to the
person whose name I had procured from the postmaster of the
place, stating the object, urging a thorough circulation, and
directing its return at a given date to Mary Olney Brown,
President of the Washington Territorial Woman Suffrage
Association; thus giving the credit of the work to the Society.

I could not get a member of our Association to circulate the
petition in Olympia, so every day that I could get away from home
I took my petition in hand and canvassed for signatures. If I
went shopping or on an errand I took it with me, and in that way
I procured over 300 names. My experience had taught me that the
principal opposition to woman's voting came from ignorance as to
her true position under the government. She had come to be looked
upon almost as a foreign element in our nation, having no lot nor
part with the male citizen, and I felt that it was necessary to
disabuse the minds of the people generally, and the delegates to
the convention particularly, of this notion. I therefore wrote
five articles on the "Equality of Citizenship," which Mrs.
Duniway kindly published in the _New Northwest_. The Olympia
_Courier_ also printed them, and