Henry B. Payne of Ohio said that he was not in favor of woman suffrage, and that no woman in England ever had been permitted to exercise the elective franchise. (Women then had been voting in England for twenty-one years, the same length of time as in Wyoming.) He asked, however, if these little technical objections would not be more than overcome by the moral influence that a woman Representative might exert in the committee rooms and on the floor of the House.
Mr. Morgan at once launched forth into a panegyric on the moral influence of woman which certainly demonstrated that if sentimentalism were a bar to voting, as Senators Vest and Reagan had insisted it should be, the senator from Alabama would have to be disfranchised. Part of it ran as follows:
It is not the moral influence of woman upon the ballot that I am objecting to, and it is not to get rid of that or to silence or destroy such influence that I oppose it, but it is the immoral influence of the ballot upon woman that I deprecate and would avoid. I do not want to see her drawn into contact with the rude things of this world, where the delicacy of her senses and sensibilities would be constantly wounded by the attrition with bad and desperate and foul politicians and men. Such is not her function and is not her office; and if we degrade her from the high station that God has placed her in to put her at the ballot-box, at political or other elections, we unman ourselves and refuse to do the duties that God has assigned to us.
I can say for myself and for those who are dearest to me of all the objects in this life, that I would leave a country where it was necessary that my wife and daughters should go to the polls to protect my liberties. I would just as soon see them shoulder their guns and go like Amazons into the field and fight beneath the flag for my liberties, as to see them muster on election day for any such purpose.[478]
James K. Jones of Arkansas based his argument on the estimate of an equal number of men and women in Wyoming, and assumed that all the women had voted in favor of the suffrage clause and that therefore it did not represent the wishes of men, thus denying wholly the right of women to a voice in a matter which so vitally concerned themselves. In reality women formed considerably less than one-third of the adult population, while the constitution was adopted by more than a three-fourths vote.
William M. Stewart of Nevada and Algernon S. Paddock of Nebraska defended the right of the Territory to decide this question for itself.
George Gray of Delaware declared his belief that "woman suffrage is inimical to the best interests of society." John C. Spooner of Wisconsin disapproved the enfranchisement of women, but believed Wyoming had a right to place it in its constitution.
Orville H. Platt of Connecticut in urging the acceptance of the report said:
I never have been an advocate of woman suffrage. I never believed, as some senators do, that it was wise. But with all that, I would not keep a Territory out of the Union as a State because its constitution did allow women to vote, nor would I force upon a Territory any restriction or qualification as to what its vote should be in that respect. When Washington Territory came here and asked for admission and the bill was passed, it had had woman suffrage, and I was appealed to by a great many citizens all over the United States to keep it out of the Union, so far as my action could do so, until it restored the right of women to vote which had been taken away under a decision of its own courts—taken away, as I thought, unjustly; for I did not consider that decision good law. The senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Hoar, interrogated me when I was advocating the admission of Washington as to why we did not incorporate into that enabling act some language that should undo the wrong which had been done by the Supreme Court of the Territory and restore to women the right of voting. I said then, as I say now, that I think this is a matter which belongs to the Territory; and I am surprised that gentlemen who are so devoted to home rule as a sacred right which should never be interfered with in this republic, should not be willing to allow to a Territory, when it asks for admission, the right to determine whether women should or should not be permitted to vote by the constitution of the proposed State.... Why should we, the Congress of the United States, stand here and say to that Territory, where women have enjoyed the right of voting for twenty years, and nobody arises to gainsay it or to intimate that they have not exercised the right wisely, why should we stand here and say: "Keep out of the Union; we will let no community, no Territory, in here which does not deprive its women of the right they have enjoyed while in a Territorial condition"?
After every possible device to strike out the obnoxious clause had been exhausted, the bill to admit Wyoming as a State was passed on June 27, 1890, by 29 ayes, 18 noes, 37 absent.[479] Although Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire and Henry M. Teller of Colorado interposed remarks showing a thorough belief in the enfranchisement of women, there was no formal argument in its behalf, it being generally understood that all Republicans would vote for the bill in order to admit a Republican State, and a number did so who were not in favor of woman suffrage.
When the people of Wyoming met at Cheyenne, July 23, to celebrate their Statehood, by Gov. Francis E. Warren sat Mrs. Amalia Post, president of the Woman Suffrage Association. The first and principal oration of the day was made by Mrs. Theresa A. Jenkins, of which the History of Wyoming says: