Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/787

714 national congress, whose opinions upon territorial matters were allowed expression in that body, but who could no more enforce there his convictions upon important measures, by a vote, than could the most intelligent woman of this territory upon the question of his election to represent her interests.

In the Colorado papers of those days of territorial tutelage, there appeared repeatedly most impatient protests against these humiliating conditions of citizenship. With the attainment of statehood in 1876 there came to the men of Colorado a restoration of their full rights as citizens of the Republic. According to the proscriptive usage, the humiliating conditions of citizenship without the ballot, remained to the women of the Centennial State; and those of their reënfranchised brothers who had felt most keenly their own unaccustomed restrictions, were without doubt the foremost advocates of the movement to secure the full recognition of women's rights.

The majority of the territorial legislative assembly of 1870 was unexpectedly Democratic, and almost as unexpected was the favor promptly shown by the Democratic members to the passage of the bill proposing woman suffrage. The measure was indeed characterized by the opposing Republicans, as "the great Democratic reform," and for weeks seemed destined to triumph through Democratic votes, in spite of the frivolous and serious opposition of the Republican minority, and the few Democratic members who deserted what then seemed the party policy upon this question. The pleas urged in advocacy of the new movement, as well as the protests urged against it, were substantially the same as were used in the East at that stage of the question. Accompanying them were the extravagancies of hope and fear incident to the early consideration of every suggested change in a long-accepted social order. An impossible Utopia was promised on the one hand no less confidently than was predicted upon the other a dire iconoclasm of the sacred shrine of long adored ideals, as a consequence of simply granting to intelligent women a privilege justly their due. Both the derision and the adverse reasoning of the alarmists were well met by fearless friends, in Council and House. Bills looking to the removal of woman's disabilities were referred in each to a select committee for consideration, on January 19. The majority report to the House through the chairman of its special committee, M. DeFrance, was an able advocacy of the measure under consideration, while the adverse recommendation of the Council committee was accompanied by an excellent report by Hon. Amos Steck, setting forth clearly the reasons of the minority for their favorable views. After hearing the reports, both Houses went into committee of the whole for a free discussion upon the question.

"The criterion of civilization, physical force," "Strength as the measure of right,'"—as recent writers have defined the divine right of might— seemed the basis of reasoning with those who claimed that woman should not be given the ballot because she might not carry the sword. Dark pictures were drawn of possible women as electors plunging their country into wars, from whose consequences they would themselves suffer noth-