On December 10, 1869, Wyoming Governor John Campbell signed the "Female Suffrage Act", and for the first time anywhere on earth, women had won the legal right to vote.

"According to a prominent Wyoming male citizen, the most amazed inhabitants of the territory were the women themselves. 'If a troop of angels had come down with flaming swords for their vindication,' he recalled, 'they would not have been much more astounded than they were when that bill became a law.' "

Not that it didn't cause some problems. It did, and they tried to repeal it in 1871. And, in 1889, when Wyoming applied for statehood, the U.S. House of Representatives opposed them because of the suffrage article in the territory's constitution.

"A group of Cheyenne women telegraphed Carey: DROP US IF YOU MUST. WE CAN TRUST THE MEN OF WYOMING TO ENFRANCHISE US AFTER OUR TERRITORY BECOMES A STATE. But the legislature meanwhile had also sent out a telegram to the Washington delegate: WE MAY STAY OUT OF THE UNION A HUNDRED YEARS, BUT WE WILL COME IN WITH OUR WOMEN."

Dee Brown, The Gentle Tamers, (New York, 1958)

 

Cool.