Susan Brownell Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was a prominent American civil rights leader and feminist who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President. She also co-founded the women's rights journal, The Revolution. She traveled the United States and Europe, and averaged 75 to 100 speeches per year.She was one of the important advocates in leading the way for women's rights to be acknowledged and instituted in the American government.Her birthday on February 15, is commemorated as Susan B. Anthony Day in the U.S. states of Florida and Wisconsin.
American Equal Rights Association
Founded on May 10, 1866, during the Eleventh National Woman’s Rights Convention, the AERA met its first test in 1867. In that year Kansas, a Republican state, voted down two separate referenda granting suffrage to black people and women, respectively. During the Kansas campaign, organization founders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had accepted the help of a known racist, alienating abolitionist members as well as AERA president Lucretia Mott.
In 1869, long-time friends Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony found themselves, for the first time, on opposing sides of a debate. The American Equal Rights Association (AERA), which had originally fought for both blacks’ and women’s right to suffrage, voted to support the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, granting suffrage to black men, but not women. Anthony questioned why women should support this amendment when black men were not continuing to show support for women’s voting rights. Partially as a result of the decision by the AERA, Anthony soon thereafter devoted herself almost exclusively to the agitation for women's rights.
United States v. Susan B. Anthony
On November 18, 1872, Anthony was arrested by a U.S. Deputy Marshal for voting on November 5 in the 1872 Presidential Election two weeks earlier. She had written to Stanton on the night of the election that she had "positively voted the Republican ticket—straight...". She was tried and convicted seven months later, despite the stirring and eloquent presentation of her arguments based on the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The privileges of citizenship, which contained no gender qualification, gave women the constitutional right to vote in federal elections. Her trial took place at the Ontario County courthouse in Canandaigua, New York, before Supreme Court Associate Justice Ward Hunt. Justice Hunt refused to allow Anthony to testify on her own behalf, allowed statements given by her at the time of her arrest to be allowed as "testimony," explicitly ordered the jury to return a guilty verdict, refused to poll the jury afterwards, and read an opinion he had written before the trial even started. In response to the unfairness of the "trial", Anthony repeatedly ignored the judge's admonishments to stop talking at the delivery of the verdict, finally stating: "May it please your honour, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a debt of $10,000, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, which tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while denying them the right of representation in the government; and I will work on with might and mine to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." The sentence was a $100 fine, but not imprisonment; true to her word in court ("I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty"), she never paid the fine for the rest of her life, and an embarrassed U.S. Government took no collection action against her. After her trial Anthony petitioned the United States Congress to remove the fine in January 1874.
The trial gave Anthony the opportunity to spread her arguments to a wider audience than ever before, because after her arrest and before her trial Anthony undertook an exhaustive speaking tour of all 29 of the towns and villages of Monroe county where her trial was to be held. In her speeches she addressed the question "Is it a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" and quoted the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the New York Constitution, James Madison, Thomas Paine, the Supreme Court, and several of the leading Radical Republican senators of the day to support her case that women as citizens have a right to vote. The district attorney obtained a change of venue because he determined that a fair trial could not take place in Monroe County. The trial was moved to Ontario County, and Anthony spoke to more than 20 Ontario audiences before the trial. Anthony argued that women, traditionally in servitude to man, should be included in the emancipation amendment granting voting privileges to former slaves. She asked her fellow citizens "how can the 'consent of the governed' be given if the right to vote be denied?"
Anthony toured Europe in 1883 and visited many charitable organizations. She wrote of a poor mother she saw in Killarney who had "six ragged, dirty children" to say that "the evidences were that 'God' was about to add a No. 7 to her flock. What a dreadful creature their God must be to keep sending hungry mouths while he withholds the bread to fill them!"
In 1893, she joined with Helen Barrett Montgomery in forming a chapter of the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU) in Rochester.
American Equal Rights Association
Founded on May 10, 1866, during the Eleventh National Woman’s Rights Convention, the AERA met its first test in 1867. In that year Kansas, a Republican state, voted down two separate referenda granting suffrage to black people and women, respectively. During the Kansas campaign, organization founders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had accepted the help of a known racist, alienating abolitionist members as well as AERA president Lucretia Mott.
In 1869, long-time friends Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony found themselves, for the first time, on opposing sides of a debate. The American Equal Rights Association (AERA), which had originally fought for both blacks’ and women’s right to suffrage, voted to support the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, granting suffrage to black men, but not women. Anthony questioned why women should support this amendment when black men were not continuing to show support for women’s voting rights. Partially as a result of the decision by the AERA, Anthony soon thereafter devoted herself almost exclusively to the agitation for women's rights.
United States v. Susan B. Anthony
On November 18, 1872, Anthony was arrested by a U.S. Deputy Marshal for voting on November 5 in the 1872 Presidential Election two weeks earlier. She had written to Stanton on the night of the election that she had "positively voted the Republican ticket—straight...". She was tried and convicted seven months later, despite the stirring and eloquent presentation of her arguments based on the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The privileges of citizenship, which contained no gender qualification, gave women the constitutional right to vote in federal elections. Her trial took place at the Ontario County courthouse in Canandaigua, New York, before Supreme Court Associate Justice Ward Hunt. Justice Hunt refused to allow Anthony to testify on her own behalf, allowed statements given by her at the time of her arrest to be allowed as "testimony," explicitly ordered the jury to return a guilty verdict, refused to poll the jury afterwards, and read an opinion he had written before the trial even started. In response to the unfairness of the "trial", Anthony repeatedly ignored the judge's admonishments to stop talking at the delivery of the verdict, finally stating: "May it please your honour, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a debt of $10,000, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, which tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while denying them the right of representation in the government; and I will work on with might and mine to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." The sentence was a $100 fine, but not imprisonment; true to her word in court ("I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty"), she never paid the fine for the rest of her life, and an embarrassed U.S. Government took no collection action against her. After her trial Anthony petitioned the United States Congress to remove the fine in January 1874.
The trial gave Anthony the opportunity to spread her arguments to a wider audience than ever before, because after her arrest and before her trial Anthony undertook an exhaustive speaking tour of all 29 of the towns and villages of Monroe county where her trial was to be held. In her speeches she addressed the question "Is it a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" and quoted the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the New York Constitution, James Madison, Thomas Paine, the Supreme Court, and several of the leading Radical Republican senators of the day to support her case that women as citizens have a right to vote. The district attorney obtained a change of venue because he determined that a fair trial could not take place in Monroe County. The trial was moved to Ontario County, and Anthony spoke to more than 20 Ontario audiences before the trial. Anthony argued that women, traditionally in servitude to man, should be included in the emancipation amendment granting voting privileges to former slaves. She asked her fellow citizens "how can the 'consent of the governed' be given if the right to vote be denied?"
Anthony toured Europe in 1883 and visited many charitable organizations. She wrote of a poor mother she saw in Killarney who had "six ragged, dirty children" to say that "the evidences were that 'God' was about to add a No. 7 to her flock. What a dreadful creature their God must be to keep sending hungry mouths while he withholds the bread to fill them!"
In 1893, she joined with Helen Barrett Montgomery in forming a chapter of the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU) in Rochester.