Statehood and Early Organizing

In 1867, when Congress conferred statehood on Nebraska, discussion began in earnest on the role of women in Nebraska’s politics and society. Many women in Nebraska were interested in participating in the great nineteenth-century project of reform and the fluidity of institutions in a new state gave them hope that substantive change was within their reach. Local school suffrage, a fluid constitutional situation, and support from reformist politicians encouraged such sentiments. Additionally, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and other notable suffrage speakers repeatedly toured the state during the 1870s, as Nebraskans attempted to hammer out a constitution and establish the property and voting rights of women.

Stanton, Anthony, and their cohorts toured the West during the late 19th Century because the political situation in many areas was in flux. For supporters of women’s rights, the West seemed to be a place where local and state governments would expand women’s civil rights, as territories and states were defining the boundaries of “citizen” with each constitutional convention or legislative session. Suffrage in Wyoming and Utah encouraged the sense that the West would be a new area of opportunity for women.

Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, suffrage supporters in Nebraska submitted legislative proposals and petitions to the state legislature and were repeatedly rebuffed. Local interest kept suffrage activists motivated in the face of such rejection – letters to newspaper editors, local meetings and debates, and visits by national notables motivated supporters.

Although voters and legislators rejected suffrage at pivotal junctures, supporters remained active and Stanton, Anthony, Bloomer, and other suffrage speakers continued to visit the state. Suffragists made further efforts to organize in the state, with short-lived suffrage groups formed in Fairbury and Alexandria. Both organizations folded quickly because most of the members lived in the country and found it difficult to attend meetings due to weather and difficulties traveling in winter. In 1879, while lecturing in Hebron, Stanton helped found the Thayer County Suffrage Association, with Erasmus M. Correll among its early and, as editor of the Hebron Journal, most visible supporters. Other lecturers before the organization included Phoebe Couzins and Mrs. H.T. Wilcox, who gave a lecture explicitly linking temperance and the ballot box. The Thayer County association's efforts went beyond listening to speakers and they fought for the election of two pro-suffrage state representatives, Correll and Charles B. Coon. In December 1879, members sent a petition with 294 names to the United States Congress, asking for a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution.

By this time, several state papers in addition to the Hebron Journal, most notably the Omaha Weekly Republican, were owned and/or edited by persons sympathetic to the suffrage cause. The Republican, under the direction of Datus C. Brooks, supported suffrage columns edited by Brooks' wife, Harriet. Other papers in the state that featured women's columns included the Beatrice Express, with a “Woman's Work” column edited by Clara Bewick Colby, and the Osceola Recorder, partially owned and edited H.C. Bittenbender, with Ada Bittenbender co-editing the paper and its woman's column. Brooks, Colby, and Bittenbender were among leaders of the suffrage movement in the state and their newspapers reflected their sympathies.