The women’s suffrage movement was a long and arduous battle in which many women and even some men fought for nearly their entire adult lives. Luckily, at that time, the women of the Pacific Northwest resided in an area far more progressive than it was in other parts of the country, and therefore those who lived in Washington were granted the right to vote much earlier than women in the more easterly states. “The West and Northwest became identified as places where one could innovate more readily” (2). But reform was not so easily achieved. Many long hours were spent campaigning and petitioning by politically- minded individuals paid to achieve women’s suffrage and ordinary citizens alike. They handed out flyers, mailed pro-suffrage literature, made speeches, and held luncheons, rallies, meetings and parades. They posted signs, gathered signatures, and fund raised, all for a cause that they believed in with every fiber.
The people of the Pacific Northwest enjoyed many freedoms unlike those in the eastern states. Abigail Scott Dunaway, a pivotal figure in the movement who arrived to the area in the 1850’s, believed that “the Pacific Northwest was fertile ground for woman suffrage” (2). She claimed that “the West had given women more opportunities to prove themselves worthy of the vote and in laboring next to their husbands to tame the country, women had earned suffrage at work that was unavailable to eastern women” (2). The Pacific Northwest appeared to be more flexible in the way that it seemed to allow for its residents to be able to think for themselves, and perhaps discover even better approaches to sustaining its inhabitants than was ever possible in the east.
Washington nearly became the first state to enact women’s suffrage into law in 1854, but regrettably it was rejected by only a single vote. “In an attempt to crush the woman's suffrage movement, the Territorial Legislature soon after mandated that "no female shall have the right of ballot or...