First in the Heart's of Women

While western states led the nation in women's suffrage, Wyoming was the very first to grant that right.  The reason however is not simply because women deserved the right to vote.  In is true that some men recognized a woman's importance on the frontier settlement, others simply supported the idea in order to bolster the strength of conservative voting blocks.

In Wyoming, men were motivated by sheer loneliness.  In 1869 the territory have over 6000 adult males and only 1000 adult females.  Men hoped that women would be more likely to settle in the rugged and isolated country if they were granted the right to vote.

William Bright was a territorial legislator who had a persuasive young wife who convinced him that denying women the right to vote was a gross injustice.  So he, of course, supported the movement.  Edward Lee, the territorial secretary, had supported the idea for years and argued that it was unfair for his mother to be denied a privilege granted to most African American males.

Most Wyoming legislators supports the bill because they thought it would win the territory free national publicity and might attract more single marriageable women to the region.  Governor of the territory, John Campbell, appreciated the publicity and power of the policy, so he signed the bill into law in 1869, making Wyoming the first territory state in the history of the nation to grant women this fundamental right of citizenship.