Woman Suffrage in the West

Figure 1. On this scrapbook page, Carrie Chapman Catt commemorated Wyoming Territory’s passage of the first full woman suffrage law in the nation. William Bright was the legislator who proposed the bill, and women’s rights advocate Esther Morris became the first female justice of the peace.

Courtesy of Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections, Bryn Mawr, PA.

By Jennifer Helton

Women of the West were the first in the United States to enjoy full voting rights. As new territories and states organized, many considered, and most granted, women the right to vote. Decades before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, western women voted and served in public office. In the diverse West, woman suffragists campaigned across mountains, plains, and deserts, finding common cause with a variety of communities and other political movements. Though they experienced setbacks along with their early victories, their successes were crucial to the eventual passage of a federal suffrage amendment.

The first attempt to secure woman suffrage in the West took place in 1854, when the territorial legislature of Washington considered a suffrage measure, only to defeat it by a single vote.^[1] However, it wasn’t until the Reconstruction era, after the end of the Civil War that the suffrage movement in the West truly began. The abolition of slavery in 1865 prompted a national deliberation about citizenship and voting rights. During the debates on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, women’s rights advocates lobbied—unsuccessfully—to enshrine woman suffrage in the Constitution. As attention then turned to the states, many supporters saw the West, with its young governments, as fertile territory for experiments with political reforms.

In February 1868, suffragist Laura De Force Gordon created a sensation by lecturing about woman suffrage in San Francisco. Gordon followed up by giving several suffrage talks in Nevada before returning to California to organize suffrage societies. Perhaps inspired by Gordon, the 1869 Nevada legislature passed an amendment to eliminate the words “male” and “white” from the voting requirements in the state constitution. Nevada law required that constitutional changes be passed in two sessions of the legislature; suffrage advocates would have to wait until 1871 to see if the amendment would be confirmed.^[2]

So, it was the women of Wyoming Territory, on December 10, 1869, who were the first to gain the vote. (Figure 1) Several suffragist women in the territory, including Esther Morris and Amalia Post, likely lobbied behind the scenes for the law. But Reconstruction politics also played a role. Though Governor John Allen Campbell, Territorial Secretary Edward Lee, and other federally appointed Republican officials supported universal equal rights, it was Democrat William Bright who introduced the voting rights bill in the legislature. A southerner, Bright—whose wife, Julia, supported woman suffrage—opposed voting rights for African Americans and had vehemently spoken out against the Fourteenth Amendment, fearing it would enfranchise Black men. If Black men were to be given the vote, Bright believed, women—and particularly white women—should be as well. Once enfranchised, Wyoming women enthusiastically exercised their new rights. They voted, ran for office, and eventually served in elected positions. Esther Morris became the first woman in the United States to serve as a judge, and Amalia Post was one of the first to serve on a jury.^[3]

Figure 2. Women’s newspapers played a critical role in building a community of pro-suffrage women in the West. Founded and primarily authored by women, these papers articulated the arguments for suffrage and refuted arguments against it. They also shared news of female activism from around the world

Courtesy of L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

Utah’s predominantly Mormon territorial legislature enfranchised its women soon after, on February 12, 1870. Though Mormon women generally did not espouse radical views about female equality, they had long held the right to vote within church assemblies.^[4] In late 1869, Congress attempted to eliminate polygamy in Utah Territory by proposing the Collum Act, which proposed to deny suffrage to men who supported plural marriage. On January 13, 1870, three thousand Utah women gathered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle at a “Great Indignation Meeting” to protest the law. Fourteen women rose to speak in defense of polygamy and women’s rights, including several who called for the right to vote.^[5] After the legislature passed the woman suffrage bill, Utah women immediately began to exercise their rights—they voted in a Salt Lake City municipal election only two days after the bill passed.^[6] Eliza Snow, who had been the wife of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, deemed it “as necessary to vote as to pray.”^[7]

These early successes can be attributed partly to lack of organized opposition. In Wyoming, woman suffrage was supported by politicians from both parties, though for different reasons. In Utah, suffragists were supported by the Mormon Church. After these victories, many hoped that the 1871 Nevada legislature would reaffirm the suffrage act it had passed in 1869. But despite lobbying efforts by Laura De Force Gordon and Emily Pitts Stevens, also of California, the measure failed.^[8] Nevada’s women would wait until 1914 to vote. In the other states and territories of the West, too, suffragists would encounter active resistance.

By 1870, women who hoped to spread suffrage through the West began to organize. In some areas, suffragists formed chapters of the national suffrage organizations. In others, they worked through women’s clubs. Black clubwomen were particularly committed to the cause, organizing suffrage societies in Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Arizona, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.^[9] The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which had chapters across the West, also supported suffrage. The temperance movement inspired many women to agitate for the vote, but it also motivated well-funded opponents, in particular, the “liquor interests.”

Figure 3. Suffragist Elizabeth Ensley lived in Boston and Washington, DC, before moving to Denver with her husband in 1892. She worked on the successful 1893 Colorado suffrage campaign and founded the Colored Women’s Republican Club and the Association of Colored Women's Clubs.

Courtesy of the Western History Photographic Collections F45641, Denver Public Library.

In the 1870s and 1880s, women’s organizations fought many campaigns, but they had limited success. In 1870, the governor of Colorado Territory, Edward McCook, announced his support for woman suffrage, but after heated debate, the legislature rejected a suffrage measure.^[10] When Colorado became a state in 1876, activists’ efforts to include suffrage in the state constitution failed, as did a subsequent 1877 referendum.^[11] Two more unsuccessful legislative attempts followed in 1881 and 1891.^[12] Opposition of the liquor interests contributed to these defeats. Anti-Chinese racism was also a factor. One anti-suffrage argument warned: “the poor, degraded Chinese women who might reach our shores, would also be admitted to the voting list, and what then would become of our proud, Caucasian civilization?”^[13] Better not to enfranchise any women at all.

In California, too, suffragists regularly lobbied the legislature to approve women’s voting rights, but it steadfastly refused.^[14] As in Colorado, anti-Chinese racism was strong, even among suffragists. At the 1879 California constitutional convention, suffrage leaders embraced the anti-Chinese rhetoric of the Workingmen’s Party, hoping to gain its support. In the end, woman suffrage was not included in the new constitution, though anti-Chinese provisions were.^[15]

Further north, in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon activist Abigail Scott Duniway and national suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony embarked upon a two thousand–mile journey across Oregon and Washington in 1871, delivering lectures and organizing suffrage clubs as they went.^[16] Duniway and other suffragists succeeded in getting bills introduced in the Oregon legislature in 1871, 1873, 1875, and 1884, but the only success for Oregon women in this era was passage in 1877 of a school suffrage law.^[17]

For a time, the situation in Washington Territory looked brighter. Activist Mary Olney Brown attempted to vote in 1869, and in 1870 a few women successfully voted, arguing that as citizens it was their right under the Fourteenth Amendment. This prompted the legislature to pass a bill forbidding voting for women. Attempts to pass suffrage bills in 1878 and 1881 failed.^[18]

Nonetheless, suffragists pressed on, and in 1883 the Washington territorial legislature passed woman suffrage. For four years, women voted. Then, in 1887, Washington’s Supreme Court invalidated the suffrage law on a technicality. When the legislature responded by passing a new suffrage law, opponents, supported by the anti-temperance machine, fired back with a lawsuit. The Supreme Court again declared woman suffrage invalid, on the shakiest of grounds. In 1890, like Oregon women, Washington women were granted school suffrage in place of full voting rights.^[19]

Washington women were not alone in losing voting rights. Congress deprived Utah women of the right to vote with the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887. This law disenfranchised all Utah women, as well as men who practiced polygamy. Utah suffragist Charlotte Godbe and Belva Lockwood, one of the first female lawyers in the United States, tried unsuccessfully to lobby against this bill. When it passed, in the words of Utah suffragist Emmeline Wells, it “wrested from all the women, Gentile and Mormon alike, the suffrage which they had exercised for seventeen years.”^[20] In response, women founded the Woman Suffrage Association of Utah.

Despite these frustrations and defeats, in the 1870s and 1880s western activists laid the groundwork for later successes. An important step was their establishment of regional suffrage newspapers (Figure 2). Woman suffrage papers laid out the arguments for suffrage and helped to create a community of activists. They connected western women to the suffrage work that was happening around the world. Western women also wrote for national papers, keeping the women back East informed about progress in the West. In Colorado, for example, Elizabeth Ensley was a correspondent for the Woman’s Era, a nationwide African American women’s paper.^[21] Though the achievements of the 1870s and 1880s were limited, the struggles of this period gave activists the experience, networks, and knowledge they would need for later efforts.

Figure 4. This California Equal Suffrage Association flyer shows pro-suffrage arguments used in the early 1900s—traditional American rhetoric around equality before the law, no taxation without representation, and the dignity of labor—that allowed suffragists to build broad coalitions of supporters.

Courtesy of Women’s Suffrage and Equal Rights Collection, Ella Strong Denison Library, Scripps College, Claremont, CA.

By the 1890s, these factors, combined with new political alliances, contributed to new gains. Wyoming entered the Union as a state in 1890 with woman suffrage intact. It was the first state, as it had been the first territory, to guarantee its women the right to vote. The federal government became receptive to Utah’s application for statehood once the Mormon Church outlawed polygamy in 1890. At the Utah constitutional convention in 1895, Utah’s suffragists lobbied to ensure that women were included. When Utah became a state in 1896, Utah women regained the right to vote.^[22]

It was not until 1893, however, that the West saw its first successful statewide referendum campaign, in Colorado. There, local and national suffrage societies partnered with new labor and political organizations to win support. In the early 1890s, six Denver women, including African American activist Elizabeth P. Ensley, founded the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association (later known as the Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association). Ensley, who served as treasurer of the association during the 1893 campaign, ensured that African American activists were connected to the movement. (Figure 3) Suffragists also made common cause with the Knights of Labor and the Populist Party. These organizations had women leaders and members and were influential in farming and mining communities. The support of national suffrage leaders also contributed to the Colorado victory. Carrie Chapman Catt, who arrived in Colorado to organize on behalf of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), traveled over one thousand miles across the state, lecturing and founding suffrage clubs. Coalition politics proved successful; woman suffrage passed in Colorado with 55 percent of the vote. In Idaho, too, woman suffrage passed by referendum and depended on broad support. All three major parties in Idaho—Populists, Republicans, and Democrats—endorsed suffrage, and on election day in November 1896, support from Populists, the labor movement, and Mormons helped the referendum win by a two-to-one margin.^[23]

These successes, however, took place against a background of continued setbacks elsewhere. In 1896, a hard-fought referendum campaign in California failed, despite the organizing efforts of Anthony, Catt, and African American suffragist Naomi Anderson. Attempts to re-enfranchise Washington’s women were unsuccessful in 1889 and 1898. In Oregon, suffrage was on the ballot in 1900, 1904, 1906, 1908, and 1910 and lost each time.^[24] In other states, women continued to organize. The Montana Woman Suffrage Association, established in the 1890s, grew rapidly under the leadership of Populist Ella Knowles, Montana’s assistant attorney general. Arizona women founded the Arizona Woman’s Equal Rights Association in 1887. In Nevada, educator Eliza Clapp and others formed the Nevada Equal Suffrage Association (NESA) in 1895. In all these states, suffrage organizations lobbied their legislatures nearly every session, with few results.^[25]

Finally, after a fourteen-year gap, a wave of enfranchisements took place the 1910s. The western suffrage campaigns of this era often rejected the involvement of NAWSA, whose methods had been unsuccessful in the 1890s and early 1900s. Instead, the new generation formed partnerships with the Progressive and socialist movements, and having learned the hard lessons of earlier failures, disassociated themselves from temperance.^[26]

Figure 5. This pamphlet, by the Los Angeles Political Equality League, makes the case for woman suffrage in Spanish. In the successful 1911 campaign, suffrage organizations, which were often led by and centered on the concerns of Anglo women, made efforts to gain the support of the Latinx community.

Courtesy of Women’s Suffrage and Equal Rights Collection, Ella Strong Denison Library, Scripps College, Claremont, CA.

The breakthrough came in 1910, when Washington became the fifth state to grant full suffrage. Led by Emma Smith DeVoe and May Arkwright Hutton, a new generation of suffragists took up the fight.^[27] Dr. Cora Smith Eaton led a group of suffragists up Mount Rainer, where they staked a green pennant proclaiming “VOTES FOR WOMEN” at the peak.^[28] Campaigners rented billboards, participated in parades, and even sponsored a whistle-stop train tour. Strong links with the labor movement, which was fighting for an eight-hour-day bill for women, were also critical. The campaigners were quick to connect woman suffrage to popular Progressive causes and steered clear of temperance. Finally, fifty-six years after the first attempt to enfranchise Washington women, the measure passed with nearly 64 percent of the vote.^[29]

In California, Progressive legislators placed a woman suffrage measure on the 1911 ballot. (Figure 4) The massive campaign that followed favored bold approaches: building suffrage parade floats, presenting stereopticon shows to amazed audiences, and plastering suffrage posters on every available surface. Clubwomen, Progressives, and Socialists all worked for the cause, and the College Equal Suffrage League and the Wage Earners Suffrage League played important roles. California’s diverse communities provided essential support. Suffrage articles appeared in Spanish, Chinese, German, Portuguese, and Italian. Maria de Lopez, a Los Angeles clubwoman, campaigned and translated at rallies in Southern California, where suffragists distributed tens of thousands of pamphlets in Spanish. (Figure 5) In Oakland, members of the Colored Women’s Suffrage League monitored polling stations to prevent fraud. And though hostility to Chinese Americans lingered among some white activists, others courted their support. A majority of Chinese voters supported suffrage on election day. Woman suffrage passed with a mere 50.7 percent of the vote.^[30] Once again, coalitions had worked.

Oregon finally enfranchised its women via referendum in 1912, after campaigners embraced parades, publicity, and coalitions. At least twenty-three suffrage clubs existed in Portland alone. Jewish women held key leadership roles on the Portland Central Campaign Committee. The Colored Women’s Equal Suffrage Association organized Black churchwomen. The Chinese American Suffrage Club mobilized Portland’s Chinese neighborhoods. Politicians and labor leaders dominated the Men’s Equal Suffrage Club. Portland suffragists also had a boys’ club, a Quaker club, and a stenographers’ club. Unions, farmers, Socialists, and the WCTU all endorsed voting rights for women. In the end, the measure squeaked through with 52 percent of the vote.^[31] As in California, diverse coalitions were essential to overcome the opposition of liquor interests and old guard machine politics.

Women in Arizona and the new territory of Alaska also won the right to vote in 1912. When Arizona became a state in 1912, its constitution did not guarantee woman suffrage. After an attempt to secure a referendum failed, the Arizona Equal Suffrage Association (AESA) gathered enough signatures on petitions to place an initiative on the ballot. The AESA secured the support of both the Republican and Democratic Parties and reached out to Progressives, socialists, and the labor movement. Some suffragists also used racist and nativist arguments, claiming that native-born American white women deserved the right to vote more than foreign-born immigrant men. At the same time, however, the AESA worked with Mexican American organizations, Spanish newspapers, and immigrant miners. The measure passed by a two-to-one margin. Support from Mormons and Progressives was key to its success.^[32] In Alaska, things were a bit easier. NAWSA sent literature to legislators of the new territory, who quickly proposed a bill. Woman suffrage was the first law signed by the governor.^[33]

Figure 6. A descendant of two of the oldest Spanish families in New Mexico, Adelina Otero-Warren led the New Mexico chapter of Alice Paul’s Congressional Union, organizing and lecturing in both Spanish and English.

Courtesy of Bergere Family Photograph Collection, Image #21702, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, Santa Fe, NM.

Two years later, Montana granted women the vote. Jeannette Rankin, a Montanan and NAWSA organizer who had worked on suffrage efforts across the country, led the campaign, sending speakers into nearly every mining community in the state. One of her organizers, Maggie Smith Hardaway, delivered fifty-five talks and traveled 2,375 miles over seven weeks. At the state fair in September, the Montana State Men’s League for Woman Suffrage marched in a suffrage parade; the WCTU was not allowed to make an appearance for fear of rousing the saloon lobby. The referendum squeaked by, with 52.2 percent of voters approving it.^[34]

The Nevada legislature finally passed successive woman suffrage referenda in 1911 and 1913, sending the measure to the voters for a final decision. Anne Martin of the Nevada Equal Suffrage Association (NESA) led the Nevada campaign. Martin, who had been involved with the radical suffrage movement in Britain, led the NESA in establishing new clubs, publicizing the cause in the press, and distributing suffrage literature across the state. Margaret Foley, a labor organizer from Boston, “talked in the depths of eight mines, attended fifty dances, made one thousand speeches, and [wore] out three pairs of shoes.” The Socialist, Democratic, and Progressive Parties endorsed woman suffrage at their conventions. These efforts paid off; the referendum passed by a wide margin, finally ending the struggle that had begun in 1869.^[35]

With Nevada’s vote, only New Mexico, of the continental western states, did not grant women full voting rights before the Nineteenth Amendment. Attempts to gain woman suffrage failed in 1871 and 1891, and the state constitution of 1910 granted only school suffrage. Hispano delegates to the 1910 constitutional convention secured stringent protections for Spanish American (male) voting rights. To protect themselves against any future attempts at Jim Crow–style disenfranchisement, Hispano delegates demanded measures that made voting provisions practically unamendable.^[36] These measures also made it impossible to enfranchise New Mexico’s women by referendum. A different strategy was needed.

The Congressional Union (CU), founded by radical suffragist Alice Paul, began organizing in New Mexico in the early 1910s. In 1917, the CU, by then renamed the National Woman’s Party (NWP), recruited Adelina Otero-Warren, a member of a prominent Republican Hispano family, to oversee its work in New Mexico. (Figure 6) Otero-Warren led the NWP’s New Mexico campaign for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Suffrage pamphlets were printed in Spanish, and Otero-Warren, along with Aurora Lucero and other local suffragists, promoted the cause.^[37] New Mexico ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in February 1920.

Not all western women, however, received the vote with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Many Native American women were not considered US citizens and thus were not able to vote. Nor did state suffrage laws enfranchise indigenous women, unless they had renounced their connection to their tribe. Suffragists only infrequently reached out to native communities; however, some indigenous leaders believed that voting rights could be a powerful tool for protecting native rights. In 1924 Zitkala-Sa, a Lakota writer and activist, lobbied Congress to secure suffrage for indigenous Americans. Partly as a result of her efforts, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, which defined Native Americans as US citizens. Even after passage of this law, however, many western states continued to disenfranchise indigenous people. Zitkala-Sa went on to cofound the National Council of American Indians, which focused on civil rights for native peoples.^[38]

The Territory of Hawai’i also exemplified the challenges faced by indigenous women. After the last indigenous ruler of Hawai’i, Queen Lili’uokalani, was deposed by the United States in 1893, local WCTU activists lobbied for the inclusion of women in the territorial government. When the Territory of Hawai’i was created in 1898, however, woman suffrage was specifically excluded, partly because indigenous women significantly outnumbered white women in the territory.^[39]

For women who were able to vote, enfranchisement paved the way for their entry into politics. Across the West, women won election to office, most often for school boards or as county superintendent of schools. In the 1890s, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah all elected women to their state legislatures.^[40] The West produced the first woman governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming, who later served as director of the US Mint. It also sent the first woman to Congress, Jeanette Rankin of Montana.

The enfranchisement of women in the United States began in the West. Early successes there were connected to the complex politics of Reconstruction and polygamy. Later victories stemmed from suffragists’ ability to build partnerships with other movements that shared their desire for reform and increased democratization of politics. Over time, suffragists discovered that campaigns were most likely to succeed when they had the support of broad coalitions and diverse groups of voters. Through decades of campaigning, debating, and lobbying, western women won the right to vote, and they used their experience and knowledge to support the expansion of women’s rights across the country.

Jennifer Helton is assistant professor of history at Ohlone College in Fremont, California. Her research focuses on the history of woman suffrage in Wyoming. She is contributing a chapter on Wyoming to the forthcoming Equality at the Ballot Box, to be published by the South Dakota Historical Society Press in 2019.

Notes:

^[1] Rebecca J. Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914 (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 45.
^[2] Jean Ford and James W. Hulse, “The First Battle for Woman Suffrage in Nevada: 1869–1871—Correcting and Expanding the Record,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 38, no. 3 (September 1995): 174–188.
^[3] Jennifer Helton, “So Great an Innovation,” in Equality at the Ballot Box, ed. Lori Lahlum and Molly Rozum (Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, forthcoming).
^[4] Jill Mulvay Derr, “Eliza R. Snow and the Woman Question,” in Battle for the Ballot: Essays on Woman Suffrage in Utah, 1870–1896, ed. Carol Cornwall Madsen (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1997), 76–87.
^[5] Lola Van Wagenen, “In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise,” in Madsen, Battle for the Ballot, 68.
^[6] Thomas G. Alexander, “An Experiment in Progressive Legislation: The Granting of Woman Suffrage in Utah in 1870,” in Madsen, Battle for the Ballot, 111.
^[7] Eliza Snow quoted in Derr, “Eliza R. Snow,” 61.
^[8] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 158–59; Ford and Hulse, “First Battle for Woman Suffrage in Nevada,” 174–188.
^[9] Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 87–88; Lynda F. Dickson, “Lifting as We Climb: African American Women’s Clubs of Denver, 1880–1925,” in Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women’s West, ed. Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 374.
^[10] Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al., eds., The History of Woman Suffrage, 6 vols. (Rochester, NY: S. B. Anthony; New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1881–1922), 3:713–715.
^[11] Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, 3:716–725.
^[12] Corrine M. McConnaughy, The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 53.
^[13] Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, 3:715.
^[14] Donald G. Cooper, “The California Suffrage Campaign of 1896: Its Origin, Strategies, Defeat,” Southern California Quarterly 71, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 311–325.
^[15] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 39–42.
^[16] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 27.
^[17] School suffrage was the right to vote in elections related to schools, typically school board or county superintendent of schools. Jennifer M. Ross-Nazzal, Winning the West for Women: The Life of Suffragist Emma Smith DeVoe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), 115; Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 46.
^[18] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 46.
^[19] Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, 3:663, 666, 675, 4:967, 978; Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 48–49.
^[20] Emmeline Wells, “The History of Woman Suffrage in Utah,” reprinted in Madsen, Battle for the Ballot, 33; Beverly Beeton, “‘I Am an American Woman’: Charlotte Ives Cobb Godbe Kirby,” Journal of the West 27, no. 2 (April 1988): 16.
^[21] Woman’s Era, November 1894, December 1894. Available at the Emory Women Writers Resource Project.
^[22] Jean Bickmore White, “Woman’s Place Is in the Constitution: The Struggle for Equal Rights in Utah in 1895,” in Madsen, Battle for the Ballot, 222–224, 239–240.
^[23] Dickson, “Lifting as We Climb,” 374; Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 60–69, 93–94; McConnaughy, Woman Suffrage Movement in America, 69–71.
^[24] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 50, 89, 91–95, 98, 100–101, 105; Donald G. Cooper, “The California Suffrage Campaign of 1896: Its Origin, Strategies, Defeat,” Southern California Quarterly 71, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 317; Ross-Nazzal, Winning the West for Women, 114–115; Kimberly Jensen, “‘Neither Head nor Tail to the Campaign’: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and the Oregon Woman Suffrage Victory of 1912,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 350–383.
^[25]There were a few small successes. In the 1880s, Montana and Arizona passed school and taxpayer suffrage for women (though Arizona’s female taxpayer law was later overturned by the territory’s Supreme Court). Richard B. Roeder, “Crossing the Gender Line: Ella L. Knowles, Montana’s First Woman Lawyer,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 32, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 64–75; Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 152–155, 159–169; Amy de Haan, “Arizona Women Argue for the Vote: The 1912 Initiative Campaign for Women’s Suffrage,” Journal of Arizona History 45, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 378; Ross-Nazzal, Winning the West for Women, 99–100; Kathryn Dunn Totton, “Hannah Keziah Clapp: The Life and Career of a Pioneer Nevada Educator, 1824–1908,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 20, no. 3 (Fall 1977): 180.
^[26] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 94–98.
^[27] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 108–117; Ross- Nazzal, Winning the West for Women, 123–124.
^[28] Tiffany Lewis, “The Mountaineering and Wilderness Rhetorics of Washington Woman Suffragists,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 21, no. 2 (Summer 2018): 279–315.
^[29] Ross-Nazzal, Winning the West for Women, 115, 130; Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 113, 116.
^[30] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 123, 131, 133–138, 141, 147; Eileen V. Wallis, “‘Keeping Alive the Old Tradition’: Spanish-Mexican Club Women in Southern California, 1880–1940,” Southern California Quarterly 91, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 133–154.
^[31] Jensen, “‘Neither Head nor Tail to the Campaign,’” 361–370.
^[32] de Haan, “Arizona Women Argue for the Vote,” 381, 388–389; David R. Berman, “Male Support for Woman Suffrage: An Analysis of Voting Patterns in the Mountain West,” Social Science History 11, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 281–294.
^[33] Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, 4:713–714.
^[34] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 154–158; Ronald Schaffer, “The Montana Woman Suffrage Campaign, 1911–14,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55, no. 1 (January 1964): 9–15.
^[35] Mead, How the Vote Was Won, 160–169, quote 163
^[36] McConnaughy, Woman Suffrage Movement in America, 197; Robert W. Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 1846–1912 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013), 279.
^[37] Ann M. Massmann, “Adelina ‘Nina’ Otero-Warren: A Spanish-American Cultural Broker,” Journal of the Southwest 42, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 877–896; Sarah Deutsch, No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880–1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 118.
^[38] P. Jane Hafen, “‘Help Indians Help Themselves’: Gertrude Bonnin, the SAI, and the NCAI,” American Indian Quarterly 37, no. 3 (July 2013): 205; Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 252–255.
^[39] Patricia Grimshaw, “Settler Anxieties, Indigenous Peoples, and Women’s Suffrage in the Colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai’i, 1888 to 1902,” Pacific Historical Review 69, no. 4 (2000): 568–571.
^[40] Elizabeth M. Cox, Women, State, and Territorial Legislators, 1895–1995: A State-by-State Analysis, with Rosters of 6,000 Women (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1996), 66–72, 103–8, 276–228.

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