DOCUMENT BASED-QUESTION
Woman Suffrage In Colorado

Historical Context:

Prior to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), which gave women the right to vote throughout the United States, several western territories and states enacted legislation that allowed women to vote within their borders, including Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. In Colorado, the fight for woman suffrage was strongly contested. Both sides of the debate held strong opinions and beliefs and effectively used rhetoric to win supporters. Because the Colorado state constitution required a referendum for women to gain the right to vote, both sides used public debate to argue their points of view.

Part A:Short-Answer Questions

Directions: Analyze the documents and answer the short-answer questions that follow each document in the space provided.

Document 1

The question of whether to extend the right of suffrage to women arose at the Colorado Constitutional Convention, held in 1875-1876. A majority opposed votes for women, but two men were pro-suffrage: Henry P. H. Bromwell and Agapita Vigil. In their minority report, Bromwell and Vigil set forth their case for the enfranchisement of women.

Said provision is in the form of a limitation upon the right of Suffrage, confining that right to less than one half of the citizens of the State over the age of twenty-one years . . . On what principles is our Government founded? The principles following in the bill of rights, which are, among other things these: "That all government of right originates from the people."
But aside from the universally recognized principles of the Bill of Rights, what right has any one class of the citizens to sit in judgement on allowing to others the exercise of their rights? Nobody can, and we believe no one does, deny that one citizen has just as much right as another.
It may be stated as a rule applicable to every species of republic, that depriving any class of the right of Suffrage, invites contempt of that class, and in fact produces it. Secondly it is false that Woman is inferior [of lower rank] to Man . . .The truth is, we are a human race. Part ofusare men, part ofusare women; both equal, each superior, and each inferior; each is part and parcel of the same humanity.

--Excerpt from "Judge Bromwell's Minority Report on Suffrage: Read, Ordered Printed,
and Laid on the Table for Future Consideration," 8 February 1876

Document 2

Albina L. Washburn, a member of a farmers' organization called the Grange, expressed her anger and dismay at the Grange's failure to endorse a resolution in favor of woman suffrage in the following report:

For the principles of universal liberty and justice are rapidly supplanting in the minds of the people the selfishness and intolerance of past ages; and he who rides not triumphantly in the car of progress must stand aside, or be crushed by its steadily moving wheels.
They [woman suffrage opponents] have not the Constitution to uphold them--for not a word in that noble instrument can possibly be construed [interpreted] to mean that men alone shall rule. On the contrary there is evidently a most scrupulous avoidance of any such idea, the words "person" and "citizen" being used whenever practicable . . . Women are held responsible for all infringement [violation] of the laws which men make under this provision.
And, further, do not all departments of public business and of government suffer from the withholding of the voice and the conscience of Woman? Is not the tender heart of the wife, the long-suffering and wise patience of the mother accustomed to govern her diverse family, -- the loyal affection and patrotism of the daughter needed in the affairs of government to-day?

--Excerpt from A. L. Washburn, "Minority Report of Committee on
Woman Suffrage," 1 September 1877

Document 3

Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833-1926) published a women's rights newspaper namedThe Colorado Antelopeand laterThe Queen Bee.

If women cannot accomplish this [woman suffrage], then there is no hope for popular institutions. By the people for the people is once more a demonstrated failure, and the priest once more stands hand in hand with the moneyed powers of the earth to smother and destroy the aspirations of the masses that a few may live in luxury with women, song and wine, while the masses, are enslaved . . .Every woman in the land should be astir in preparation for the coming election. The emancipation of the women of the country simply means the dawn of a golden era. Better conditions for every man, woman and child. These things are not to be achieved without work, but this is our opportunity and we should be glad of health and strength with which to work in such a cause.

--Excerpt from Caroline Nichols Churchill, "Woman's Suffrage,"
The Queen Bee, 26 April 1893

Document 4

The following cartoon appeared in a pro-suffrage leaflet published prior to the referendum on woman suffrage in 1893:


Caption: I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding women.
A. Lincoln

-- Colorado Equal Suffrage Association Leaflet 5, 1893

Document 5: The Right Reverend Joseph P. Machebeuf (1812-1889) was a Roman Catholic priest in Denver during the 1877 woman suffrage campaign:

Though strong-minded women who are not satisfied with the disposition of Providence and who wish to go beyond the condition of their sex, profess no doubt to be Christians, do they consult the Bible?--do they follow the Bible? I fear not. Had God intended to create a companion for man, capable of following the same pursuits, able to undertake the same labors, he would have created another man; but he created a woman, and she fell. . . .
The class of women wanting suffrage are battalions of old maids disappointed in love--women separated from their husbands or divorced by men from their sacred obligations--women who, though married, wish to hold the reins of the family government, for there never was a woman happy in her home who wished for female suffrage . . . Who will take charge of those young children (if they consent to have any) while mothers as surgeons are operating indiscriminately upon the victims of a terrible railway disaster? No kind husband will refuse to nurse the baby on Sunday (when every kind of business is stopped) in order to let his wife attend church; but even then, as it is not his natural duty, he will soon be tired of it and perhaps get impatient waiting for the mother, chiefly when the baby is crying.
-- Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, "Woman's Suffrage: A Lecture Delivered
in the Catholic Church of Denver, Colorado," 6 February 1877

Doc 6: Opponents of woman suffrage rejoiced in their victory on October 5, 1877:

To the thinking, conservative citizen, perhaps the most satisfactory feature of the late election is the overwhelming defeat of the efforts of certain windy fanatics to foist Woman Suffrage upon the people of Colorado.
[Colorado] was considered by the Woman Suffrage shriekers as an excellent place wherein to try experiments. They left their homes in New England to make a desperate effort to have their pet hobby inaugurated here, knowing that its evil effects would not be felt directly by themselves and utterly regardless of the injury which might be inflicted upon us .. .
Upon the opening of the late campaign the Suffrage party girded themselves for the conflict. The eastern States were scoured, and all of the crowing hens and clucking cocks in that region of advanced ideas were collected, brought west, and let loose like a flock of magpies upon the people of our State . . . The churches were prostituted for political meetings, the peace and silence of the Sabbath evenings were broken by their insane screechings, bare faced lies were telegraphed all over the country, and every trick known to the most unprincipled politician was brought into play to forward their ends. . . .
Suffrage is sufficiently extended already and Woman's true sphere is the center of the home circle and not at the polls or in the jury-box.
-- Excerpt from "Gone Up," Editorial inThe Pueblo Chieftain,
9 October 1877

Document 7: Anti-suffragists mobilized for a second statewide referendum in 1893:

History does not show a single instance in which woman suffrage has improved society or government; on the contrary, the municipal affairs of towns in Kansas where women have voted and were elected to office, are in worse shape than ever before.
After a trial of twenty-four years in Wyoming, it is conceded that it has failed to bring about reforms of any kind.
Utah furnishes us with the most striking example of whatwomen cannot do. There the right to vote was early conferred upon women by the territorial assembly and if there ever was a magnificent opportunity offered women to assert herself at the ballot--it was there. But instead of abolishing polygamy or lending her influence in that direction, she became a powerful agency in upholding that evil. . . .
The great cry of our female agitators, "Taxation without representation," may be a very good argument if rightly applied, but as the percentage of women paying taxes is much smaller than that of men, and as there are 100 women who pay no taxes where there is one woman who does, we utterly fail to see how equal suffrage will increase the representation of tax paying women.
-- "Anti-Woman Suffrage: Don't Fail to Read This," Leaflet, 1893

Document 8: Even after the 1893 referendum had been held and women were granted the vote in Colorado, local anti-suffragists continued to express their opposition:

-- "The Ideal--The Real,"Rocky Mountain News, 10 November 1893