CHEYENNE - Wyoming's suffrage act, the source of the "Equality State" motto on the new state quarter, almost didn't stick.

University of Wyoming history professor Phil Roberts said historians write about how the first Territorial Legislature in 1869 enthusiastically embraced women's suffrage and gave women the right to vote for the first time anywhere in America.

What happened two years later doesn't get the same level of attention.

The Legislature had a big turnover in seats in 1870, and only one incumbent who voted for suffrage returned in 1871

A bill repealing the law got through, but Gov. John A. Campbell vetoed it.

The lawmakers fell one vote short of getting the two-thirds vote needed to override the veto.

It was that close.

"Without Gov. Campbell and that one … vote, Wyoming, like New Jersey, could have been a footnote in the story of women's rights rather than the 'Equality State,' the pioneering government favoring equal rights for women," Roberts said.

He believes the law passed in 1869 because the legislators were rookies and didn't have entrenched interests or any precedence, given it was the first session.

According to Roberts' detailed account of the history of the suffrage bill, Democrats held every seat in both the House of Representatives and the Council, predecessor to the Senate, in 1869. By the next session, however, Democrats had just four of the nine Council seats, Republicans gained three, while one was won by a People's Party member and another by an independent.

In the 13-member House, four were Republicans, nine were Democrats.

William Bright, the South Pass City Democrat who introduced the bill in 1869, had chosen not to seek re-election to the Council. In fact, only one incumbent House member returned - Ben Sheeks who, unlike his South Pass City colleague, had opposed the suffrage act. In the Council, not one incumbent returned in 1871.

Uinta County House member C. E. Castle gave notice immediately on arriving in Cheyenne that he intended to seek repeal of the suffrage law but didn't say why.

Gov. Campbell, the man who made history on Dec. 10, 1869, by signing the act into law, urged legislators not to repeal the law.

"… women have voted in the territory, served on juries, and held office," Campbell pointed out. "It is simple justice to say that the women entering, for the first time in the history of the country, upon these new and untried duties, have conducted themselves in every respect with as much tact, sound judgment, and good sense, as men."

After the bill passed the House, the editor of the Cheyenne Leader made his own position clear, Roberts wrote.

"We trust the subject of woman suffrage may be calmly and dispassionately debated before a final vote in the Council," the editor wrote. "We have, for ourself, ever felt that female suffrage was repugnant to the wishes of a majority of refined and intelligent women of the land, and her direct participation in political affairs, as unchaste and subversive of the natural order of things."

After Campbell's veto of the repealer was upheld, no serious effort was mounted again to repeal the suffrage law.

In the early 1900s, the Legislature designated the state officials as "the Equality State," Roberts wrote.

"In a way," he said recently in an interview, "it's unfortunate the motto is tied so closely to women's suffrage."

"By just defining it as gender equality, there are aspects of equality as a concept that you lose," he added. "There's race and ethnicity and other kinds of ways that might be useful for inspiring the population."

Capital bureau reporter Joan Barron can be reached at (307) 632-1244 or at joan.barron@casperstartribune.net.

To view a slideshow of all the state quarters, please <<A rel="external" href="http://casperstartribune.net/shared-content/story_tools/slideshow/?type=newsmaker&id">http://casperstartribune.net/shared-content/story_tools/slideshow/?type=newsmaker&id=24> ">click here. To view a timeline of the events leading up to the minting of the quarter, please <<A rel="external" href="http://casperstartribune.net/shared-content/story_tools/timeline/?id=9">http://casperstartribune.net/shared-content/story_tools/timeline/?id=9> ">click here.