Today is the anniversary of Wyoming becoming the first territory or state to grant women the right to vote on December 10, 1869. Not Massachusetts. Not Pennsylvania. Not New York. Wyoming. The reason for the decision is hotly debated and I would have preferred simply a frontier appreciation for freedom. However, one theory may be equally attractive: they wanted women to come to Wyoming.
At the time of the legislation, the state had roughly six men to every woman. The theory is that women would come to the state for the vote and stay for the families.
While that is not as redeeming as embracing suffrage as a basic right, there is something appealing in drawing citizens with the promise of empowerment and voting.
When I teach the writing of John Stuart Mill, I discuss his lifelong fight for women’s suffrage and rights. Just three years before Wyoming’s decision, Mill sought to correct the injustice of The Great Reform Act of 1832, an ironically named bill that expanded the right to vote but only to “male persons.” Mill presented a petition to the House of Commons for a Second Reform Bill to introduce equal voting rights for women. The Amendment was defeated by 194 votes to 73.
The home of Magna Carta and so many democratic values would overwhelmingly reject suffrage for women at roughly the same time that a territory in the Western United States would embrace it.
After Louisa Swain (right) and others voted for the first time, it was only a couple years later that women were serving on juries. The first female Justice of the Peace came in 1870. She was Esther Hobart Morris (left).
Even if it was motivated as much by loneliness as liberty, it recognized that women would demand full and equal rights to be part of this expanding nation.
So, well done Wyoming.
Huge mistake.
As a side issue we have moron squad member Ayanna Pressley calling for giving 16 year old kids the vote. The same liberals that say child criminals should be treated as having unformed brains also think they should vote?
Hey Squad moron, can they contract? Can they drink? Can they smoke? Can they buy a gun? No, no, no and no. But they can demand you cut off their genitals.
This is why Democrats don’t debate and why they won’t go near the Bret Baeir show.
“When I teach the writing of John Stuart Mill, I discuss his lifelong fight for women’s suffrage and rights. Just three years before Wyoming’s decision, Mill sought to correct the injustice of The Great Reform Act of 1832, an ironically named bill that expanded the right to vote but only to “male persons.” Mill presented a petition to the House of Commons for a Second Reform Bill to introduce equal voting rights for women. The Amendment was defeated by 194 votes to 73.
The home of Magna Carta and so many democratic values would overwhelmingly reject suffrage for women at roughly the same time that a territory in the Western United States would embrace it.”
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I really don’t understand the societal value of unthinking universal suffrage. Seems to me all you’re doing is letting folks with no stake in the game decide the outcome for those who do have such a stake. Oh, I wouldn’t dicriminate on such mundane, immutable things like color or gender just on productivity — past or present — and those with a committment to the geography. That’s why folks who run businesses, own real property, have demonstrated proficiencies in accomplishing things really ought to run things. I’d deny those on welfare, criminals, no accounts, folks with no visible means of support, frauds, transients and all those other societal “hangers on” the right to decide for the rest of us. With any freedom comes the responsibility to educate yourself and to responsibly exercise the right. In no just world should a bare majority or plurality of slackers have the right to vote a tax on the productive to ensure their lazy arse survival. I’m with Capt. John Smith’s adage adapted for modern times “they who do not work shall not eat or vote.” Of course, you provide welfare for those who can’t make out due to injury, disease or old age but folks who can work should work unless, of course, they’re Hunter Biden and live off Daddy via us.
Mespo, as for the voting rights of tax payers vis a vis non-tax payers I am afraid we have reached the point where we have a vote of 2 foxes and a chicken about what to eat for dinner.
HAUTE RATIONALE DU FEMME
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Free, Free, Free, Free, Free!!!
It’s somebody else’s, but I want it, so I should get it.
The theory is that women would come to the state for the vote and stay for the families. While that is not as redeeming as embracing suffrage as a basic right, there is something appealing in drawing citizens with the promise of empowerment and voting.
I have great admiration for Professor Turley, and that’s why I find it hard to believe he would actually write a passage as kooky and garbled as the above. As a consequence, I’m convinced he doesn’t actually write these editorials. At most he supervises from 10,000 feet but doesn’t review or edit the text in any detail.
Old Man, you raise a great point.
Turley suggests that women received the vote because the people of Wyoming valued women and wanted more of them to move there.
Their actions are a prime example of inspiring and affirming behavior.
I think he uses voice to text and doesn’t necessarily reread it until much later. This post seems like it was composed in some haste.
WYOMING WANTED WOMEN IN SO IT THREW OUT LIBERTY
Wyoming wanted women so it threw out liberty. Now that is some haute intelligence! The singular American failure is the Supreme Court. The futile, inane, and constitutionally subversive and deleterious act of conferring women’s suffrage by the Great State of Wyoming must have been struck down with haste and extreme prejudice. Most warfighters do not vote in the military. Most employees do not vote in a corporation. Many citizens deny themselves the vote in national elections. Turnout was 66% in 2020.
To wit,
“The elections of 2018, 2020 and 2022 were three of the highest-turnout U.S. elections of their respective types in decades. About two-thirds (66%) of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election – the highest rate for any national election since 1900. The 2018 election (49% turnout) had the highest rate for a midterm since 1914. Even the 2022 election’s turnout, with a slightly lower rate of 46%, exceeded that of all midterm elections since 1970.”
– Pew
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The vote is actually moot. Voting rights arguments based on gender are red herrings. The issue is not gender. The issue is freedom for all citizens, including both genders, through constitutional rights. The vote was restricted to vested, worthy citizens simply to protect and perpetuate the Constitution. Per Article 1, Section 8, voters cannot vote for individual favor and charity. Per the 5th Amendment, voters cannot vote for dominion over private property. Voters can only vote for capable representatives who preserve and uphold the freedoms of the Constitution. The entire American welfare state is unconstitutional and a product of the concept of broadened suffrage.
Why do more and more people want the vote? They want to vote for wholly unconstitutional benefits and entitlements. The American Founders and Framers established no benefits and entitlements. The American Founders and Framers abrogated monarchy. The American Founders and Framers established liberty and freedom. The American Founders and Framers established security and infrastructure, that is, common defense, a safe environment in which to “pursue happiness,” and general Welfare (all well proceed), such as roads, water, post office, etc.
The American Founders established a restricted-vote republic, not a one-man, one-vote democracy. States establish the right to vote per the Constitution. Turnout was 11.6% by design in 1788. The American Founders generally required voters to be male, European, 21 with 50 lbs. Sterling or 50 acres. The American Founders also required citizens to be “…free white person(s)…,” a de facto vote restriction.
American representatives are elected by citizens to support and perpetuate the rights, freedoms, privileges, and immunities provided by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Americans were never intended to vote for every whim, fancy, and desire; for financial assistance, and favor. One-man, one-vote democracy was insidiously adopted to nullify the Constitution and to impose communism under Karl Marx’s motto: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” One-man, one-vote democracy was adopted to impose the communist American welfare state. It did.
The singular American failure is the Supreme Court, which must have struck down vacuous vote expansion and the entire communist American welfare state at every stage of its gestation.
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“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
“The average age of the world’ greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
– The Cult of Competency, 1943, Henning Webb Prentis Jr.
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“the people are nothing but a great beast…
I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.”
– Alexander Hamilton
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“The true reason (says Blackstone) of requiring any qualification, with regard to property in voters, is to exclude such persons, as are in so mean a situation, that they are esteemed to have no will of their own.”
“If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote… But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775
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“[We gave you] a [restricted-vote] republic, if you can keep it.”
– Ben Franklin, 1787
Maybe electoral politics? What better way to significantly increase the size of a state’s electorate than to spontaneously certify all the women as legal voters?
Women were never denied suffrage under the national constitution. Where was there affirmative action to deny women the right to vote?
How long before George shows up to decry that women have the right to vote, like he often does?
Professor Turley posted this article late. Please enjoy my response above.
A great example for a federal republic and the states being the percolators of change and sometimes advancement. Now if the federal government can just swallow and pass constitutional amendments with term limits, balanced budgets, and reasonable limits on money in politics.
Money should be used to develop industry and services and explore new avenues of economy , be invested to grow the economy by others with new and different visions of wealth creation , or be donated to those less fortunate than ourselves. Using money to buy politicians fails on all those accounts.
We need politicians who lead by the example of their integrity, their legitimate accomplishments and their commitment to our nation. We don’t need prepackaged sound bites and people held up in their basements. Even a campaign conducted from a porch, at least, sees the light of day.
I would, of course, after the passage of the balanced budget amendment and the terms limits amendment, set up age requirements for the presidents, cognitive assessments for those over 70, a requirement that the president conduct a 2 hour press conference at least once per month, in person, with questions drawn from a hat and not just selected media. The White House press should be a rotation of newsmen and women with 1 month on the active roster of those who can submit questions and then 1 month on the inactive roster where they can just report and not question. Newsmen and women should come from every state in the union and some foreign correspondents should also be invited. We need to blow up the D.C. Bubble.
“While that is not as redeeming as embracing suffrage as a basic right…”
Why was a “redemption” necessary as womens’ suffrage and the rights of women to do many things, even own property, where unknown anywhere. Later the US Congress demanded that Wyoming recind women’s sufferage as a condition for statehood. Didn’t happen.
It isn’t so simple. In New Jersey the right to vote for women existed in its Constitution though limitations existed, most important the ownership of property. Democrats haven’t been inclusive except where they see an advantage for themselves. Then they discriminate.
“In 1807, the state legislature restricted suffrage (voting rights) to tax-paying, white male citizens. This was done to give the Democratic-Republican Party an advantage in the 1808 presidential election. Women often voted for the opposing Federalist Party, so taking away women’s voting rights helped the Democratic-Republicans. This law also took voting rights away from African Americans.
I’m not sure the motivation wasn’t to convince women to STAY in Wyoming. Those winters are brutal.
“I would have preferred simply a frontier appreciation for freedom”.
Our gracious host missed the glaring exercise of freedom.
The most important part about people expanding voting to women, is the fact, no self identified oracle in a robe, used his power to force his opinion on an entire population.
Freedom of the people to self govern. Something we should try to return to.