She Voted for Grant
On June 18, 1873 (138 years ago today) suffragette Susan B. Anthony was given a $100 fine for trying to vote for President Ulysses Grant. It's too bad the dollar coins with her picture hadn't been minted yet or she could have paid her fine with a hundred of those.
On November 18, 1872, Anthony was arrested by a U.S. Deputy Marshal for voting illegally in the 1872 Presidential Election two weeks earlier. She had written to her friend and fellow suffragette Elizabeth Cady 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. At her trial, she based her submissions on the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment, which read as follows:
"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."
Anthony argued that the privileges of citizenship contained in the Fourteenth Amendment contained no gender qualification, and therefore this 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's conduct of the trial would be considered outrageous today. He 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.
The sentence was a $100 fine, but not imprisonment. Anthony told the court "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty" and she never paid the fine for the rest of her life. An embarrassed U.S. Government took no collection action against her. The trial gave Anthony the opportunity to spread her arguments to a wider audience than ever before.
The more I read about Susan B. Anthony, the more I like her. For example, she toured Europe in 1883 and visited many charitable organizations. She wrote about a poor mother she saw in Killarney that had "six ragged, dirty children" writing 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!"
On November 18, 1872, Anthony was arrested by a U.S. Deputy Marshal for voting illegally in the 1872 Presidential Election two weeks earlier. She had written to her friend and fellow suffragette Elizabeth Cady 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. At her trial, she based her submissions on the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment, which read as follows:
"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."
Anthony argued that the privileges of citizenship contained in the Fourteenth Amendment contained no gender qualification, and therefore this 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's conduct of the trial would be considered outrageous today. He 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.
The sentence was a $100 fine, but not imprisonment. Anthony told the court "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty" and she never paid the fine for the rest of her life. An embarrassed U.S. Government took no collection action against her. The trial gave Anthony the opportunity to spread her arguments to a wider audience than ever before.
The more I read about Susan B. Anthony, the more I like her. For example, she toured Europe in 1883 and visited many charitable organizations. She wrote about a poor mother she saw in Killarney that had "six ragged, dirty children" writing 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!"