Should a Woman Lead Washington Territory?
Following the Territorial Legislature's grant of suffrage, a public meeting has petitioned the President to appoint a woman as Governor.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A public meeting in Washington has asked the President to appoint a woman Governor of Washington Territory. Several newspapers are violent in opposing this proposition, but it is really a natural following of the act of the Territorial Legislature conferring upon woman the right of suffrage. If women have a right to vote, they have a right to hold office. It would be a strange state of things that would permit them to put men in office without having the privilege of doing the same thing for their own sex. And while the experiment of equal suffrage is being tried, why not have an experiment with regard to the inevitable consequences? Women have been found to make good school commissioners. Why should they not make good Governors as well?
“If women have a right to vote they have a right to hold office.”
This editorial reflects the intense, high-stakes civic debate surrounding women's suffrage in the Washington Territory in the early 1880s, shortly before the courts would strip women of their voting rights. It mirrors contemporary discussions about gender equity in political leadership and the struggle for full representation in government.
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