United States v. Susan B. Anthony was the criminal trial of Susan B. Anthony in a U.S. federal court in 1873. The defendant was a leader of the women's suffrage movement who was arrested for voting in Rochester, New York in the 1872 elections in violation of state laws that allowed only men to vote. Anthony argued that she had the right to vote because of the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, part of which reads, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
The judge, Ward Hunt, was a recently appointed U.S. Supreme Court Justice who had responsibility for the federal circuit court in which the trial was held. He did not allow the jurors to discuss this case but instead directed them to find Anthony guilty. On the final day of the trial, Hunt asked Anthony if she had anything to say. Anthony, who had not previously been permitted to speak, responded with what one historian of the women's movement has called "the most famous speech in the history of the agitation for woman suffrage",Gordon (2005), pp. 7 and the American Bar Association as one of the historic spoken allocutions.
Repeatedly ignoring the judge's order to stop talking and sit down, she protested what she called "this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights".Gordon (2005), p. 46–47 She likewise protested the injustice of denying women the right to vote. When Justice Hunt sentenced Anthony to pay a fine of $100, she defiantly said that she would never do so. Hunt then announced that Anthony would not be jailed for failure to pay the fine, a move that prevented her from taking her case to the Supreme Court.
Fourteen other Rochester women who lived in Anthony's ward also voted in that election and were arrested, but the government never took them to trial. The election inspectors who allowed the women to vote were arrested, tried and found guilty. They were pardoned by President Ulysses S. Grant after being jailed for refusing to pay the fines imposed by the court.
The trial, which was closely followed by the national press, helped make women's suffrage a national issue. It was a major step in the transition of the women's rights movement from one that encompassed a number of issues into one that focused primarily on women's suffrage. Judge Hunt's directed verdict created a controversy within the legal community that lasted for years. In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal judge could not direct a jury to return a guilty verdict in a criminal trial.
Background Early demands for women's suffrage The demand for women's suffrage grew out of the broader movement for women's rights, which began to emerge in the U.S. in the early 1800s. There was little demand for the right to vote in the movement's early days, when the focus was on such issues as the right of women to speak in public settings and on property rights for married women. At the first women's rights convention, the Seneca Falls Convention held in western New York in 1848, the only resolution that did not pass unanimously was the one that called for women's suffrage. Originated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was just beginning her career as a suffrage leader, the resolution was adopted only after Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist leader and a former slave, gave it his strong support.Wellman (2004), pp. 193, 195, 203 That convention helped to popularize the idea of women suffrage, and by the time of the first National Women's Rights Convention in 1850, suffrage was becoming a generally accepted part of the movement's goals.DuBois (1978) p. 41
Women began to attempt to vote. In Vineland, New Jersey, a center for radical spiritualists, nearly 200 women placed their ballots into a separate box and attempted to have them counted during the 1868 elections, but without success. Lucy Stone, a leader of the women's rights movement who lived nearby, attempted to vote soon afterwards, also without success.DuBois (1998), pp. 119–120. It had not always been illegal for women to vote in New Jersey, whose 1776 constitution enfranchised all adult inhabitants, male or female, who owned a specified amount of property. New Jersey women were disenfranchised by a law passed in 1807. See Wellman (2004), p. 138
New Departure strategy In 1869, Francis and Virginia Minor, husband and wife suffragists from Missouri, developed a strategy that became known as the New Departure, which engaged the suffrage movement for several years. This strategy was based on the belief that the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, together with the pending Fifteenth Amendment, implicitly enfranchised women. The primary purpose of these amendments was to establish the newly freed slaves as citizens with voting rights. In the process of doing so, these amendments defined citizenship in a way that clearly included women, prohibited the states from abridging "the privileges or immunities of citizens", and transferred partial control over voting rights from the state to the federal level. The Minors cited Corfield v. Coryell, a case in 1823 in which a federal circuit court ruled that voting rights were included in the privileges and immunities of citizens. They also cited the preamble to the Constitution to support their assertion that the basic rights of citizens were natural rights that provided the foundation for constitutional authority. According to the New Departure strategy, the main task of the suffrage movement was to establish through court action that these principles taken together implied that women had the right to vote.DuBois (1998), pp. 98–99
In 1871 Victoria Woodhull, a stockbroker with little previous connection to the women's movement, presented a modified version of the New Departure strategy to a committee of Congress. Instead of asking the courts to rule that the Constitution implicitly enfranchised women, she asked Congress to pass a declaratory act to accomplish the same goal. The committee rejected her proposal.DuBois (1998), pp. 100, 122
In early 1871, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) officially adopted the New Departure strategy. It encouraged women to attempt to vote and to file federal lawsuits if denied that right.DuBois (1998), p. 100 The NWSA, organized by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1869, was the first national women's rights organization. A rival organization called the American Woman Suffrage Association, which was created a few months later, did not adopt the New Departure strategy but instead campaigned for state laws that would enable women to vote.DuBois (1998), p. 120
Soon hundreds of women attempted to vote in dozens of localities.DuBois (1998), p. 119 Accompanied by Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist leader and a supporter of women's rights, sixty-four women unsuccessfully tried to register in Washington, D.C. in the spring of 1871, and more than seventy attempted to vote.Gordon (2000), p. 526, footnote 4 In November 1871, the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia ruled against lawsuits brought by these women. It ruled that citizenship did not imply the right to vote, saying that "the legal vindication of the natural right of all citizens to vote would, at this stage of popular intelligence, involve the destruction of civil government" and that "The fact that the practical working of the assumed right would be destructive of civilization is decisive that the right does not exist."Cox, Rowland (ed.), "The American Law Times", The American Law Times Association (1871), Vol 4, pp. 199–200
Arrest and conviction for voting Vote in 1872 election The reaction of the authorities was muted in these unsuccessful attempts to vote. The reaction was sharply different when Susan B. Anthony succeeded in voting in the presidential election of 1872 in Rochester, New York. Anthony was a nationally known figure. She and Stanton had founded the Women's Loyal National League, the first national women's political organization in the U.S., in 1863 during the American Civil War. Anthony was the chief organizer of the League's petition drive against slavery, which collected nearly 400,000 signatures in the largest petition drive in U.S. history up to that time.Barry (1988), p. 153Venet (1991), p. 148. She and Stanton were the leaders of National Woman Suffrage Association. At the time when she cast her ballot, Anthony was the nation's best-known advocate of the right of women to vote.Anthony was the nation's "best-known advocate of woman suffrage" per Gordon (2005), p. 1. Ann D. Gordon is the editor of the six-volume Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Similarly, Ellen Carol DuBois, an historian of the women's suffrage movement, said that at this time Anthony "was the most famous women suffragist in the nation", per DuBois (1998) p. 129
On November 1, 1872, Anthony walked with her sisters Guelma, Hannah, and Mary to a voter registration office in a nearby barber shop and demanded to be registered. Anthony quoted the Fourteenth Amendment to the election inspectors to justify their demand and threatened to sue the inspectors personally if they refused. The inspectors consulted a prominent local lawyer, John Van Voorhis (a strong supporter of women's suffrage), who advised them to register the women after they took the standard oaths of registry, which, he said, "would put the entire onus of the affair on them".Quoted in Barry (1988), p. 250
A skilled publicist, Anthony then went to a newspaper office to provide an interview about what had just happened.Gordon (2005), p. 33 News of the women's registration appeared in the afternoon newspapers, with some of them calling for the arrest of the inspectors who had registered the women. Anthony returned to the voter registration office to ask the inspectors to stand firm and to assure them that she would cover any legal costs they might incur. Other women in Rochester began to register, bringing the total to nearly fifty.Barry (1988), pp. 249–51
On election day, November 5, Anthony and fourteen other women from her ward went to the polling place to cast their ballots. Sylvester Lewis, a poll watcher, challenged their right to vote, thereby triggering a requirement that they take an oath stating that they were qualified to vote, which they did. The election inspectors were now in a difficult position. They were at risk of violating state law if they turned the women away because state law did not give them the authority to refuse the ballot to anyone who took the required oath. Federal law, however, made it illegal to receive the ballot of an ineligible voter. Moreover, federal law prescribed the same punishments for accepting the ballot of an ineligible voter as for refusing the ballot of an eligible voter. The inspectors decided to allow the women to vote.Gordon (2005), pp. 1–2, 29–30. After she voted, Anthony wrote to her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton, saying, "Well I have been & gone & done it!!—positively voted the Republican ticket—strait." That letter is archived at the Huntington Library, which provides a digital scan of Anthony's letter. The negative publicity of the previous days had influenced the officials in the other wards, who turned the other registered women away.
Arrest Anthony had not expected to vote, according to Ann D. Gordon, a historian of the women's movement. Instead, she had expected to be turned away from the polls, after which she planned to file a suit in federal court in pursuit of her right to vote. She didn't expect to be arrested either.Gordon (2005), pp. 2, 61