Guilty of being a woman

That time Susan B. Anthony fought the law and the law won

On this yesterday, June 17 in 1873, Susan B. Anthony was put on trial for the crime of voting while being a woman. On this day, June 18, 1873, she was found guilty. 

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One of the most punk rock moments in women’s history is the time women all over America went to the polls and illegally cast ballots in order to challenge the prevailing laws that women weren’t allowed to vote.

The year: 1872. The reason: the breathtakingly radical Suff Victoria Woodhull and the completely respectable Suff Virginia Minor both independently started promoting the idea that the U.S. Constitution already enfranchised women with the 14th and 15th Amendments. 

The Constitution defines a person born or naturalized in the United States to be a citizen. It recognizes the right of a citizen to vote. It declares that the right of a citizen to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on the account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. 

Victoria presented her ideas to congressional committee and a week later, they returned their opinion: this was for the courts to decide. The Suff’s next step was obvious: go vote, hopefully get arrested for it, and take the matter to court. Women could be enfranchised with a favorable court decision! Easy!

In Michigan, Sojourner Truth took a group of women to the polls. In New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage took nine friends. All of them were refused. In Missouri, on the arm of her totally supportive husband, Virginia Minor tried to register to vote. They would take the registrar who denied her all the way to the supreme court. 

And, famously, Susan B. Anthony voted with a group of a women. “Well I have gone and done it!” Susan wrote to her bestie, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 

Here’s what I love about this: all these women were middle-aged and “respectable ladies” and they deliberately set out to break the law and to challenge prevailing ideas about what women could and could not do.  Talk about older heroines!

Susan B. Anthony: ”The Woman Who Dared.” Thank you to one of my fav Substacks, Remember The Ladies, for sharing this.

Susan, as everyone is probably vaguely sort of aware, got women the vote. Somehow, someway. From Susan we get the notion of a woman’s rights activist as a shrieking spinster and another day I will write at length about her, and how she was unapologetically unwed and how being single meant she was free to change the world. 

When she was slated to go on trial, Susan lectured in the surrounding areas, asking, “Is it a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?” Some said she was corrupting the jury pool but she just asked “since when was it a crime to lecture about the United States Constitution?” 

Her trial was a total sham. First of all, did not have a jury of her peers because women were not allowed to serve on juries. Secondly, she wasn’t allowed to speak in her own defense. Thirdly, most notably, because the judge penned his decision before even hearing the arguments. He then directed the jury to bring a guilty opinion. 

At the end of it, the judge asked Susan if she would like to say a few words and yes she most certainly did. The trial was over but she still delivered a lecture for a few hours, despite the judge’s pleas that she sit down and stop talking. Always be advocating for the cause! She was fined $100 which she of course she never paid. 

A few years later, the Minor’s case would make it all the way to the Supreme Court with the argument that women are citizens; citizens participate in self-government; the mechanism for self-government is the franchise; women can and should vote. According to the Supreme Court, citizenship does not confer voting rights. 

The courts shut down woman’s suffrage (“Phew, that was a close one!” says Patriarchy.) The Suffs would have to find a way, find a way. And they would—even if it meant going state by state to amend each constitution and it took another 48 years.