Sandwiched between the birthdays of U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and George Washington (Feb. 22) is the birthday of another great American – Susan Brownell Anthony – who was born on Feb. 15, 1820.
She deserves national recognition as well.
Susan B. Anthony’s contributions to U.S. history were plentiful. Anthony was a “champion of temperance, abolition, the rights of labor and equal pay for equal work. She became one of the most visible leaders of the women’s suffrage movement,” said historian Nancy Hayward.
Anthony was born to a Quaker father and Baptist mother in Adams, Mass., near the New York and Vermont borders. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to New York state, eventually locating in Gates, a community just west of Rochester near Lake Ontario.
A “brush with the law” thrust Anthony into the national spotlight in 1872 when, at age 52, she voted for the first time, casting her ballot in Rochester’s 8th ward in the presidential election.
However, women were “ineligible” to vote during that time. She was arrested and headed to federal court, facing criminal charges. A grand jury indicted her for “knowingly, wrongfully and unlawfully” voting.
The Historical Society of the New York Courts documented the proceedings.
Justice Ward Hunt of New York, who had only recently been appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to the U.S. Supreme Court, was assigned to preside.
Hunt showed no mercy at the trial. “He did not allow the jurors to discuss the case but instead directed them to find Anthony guilty,” the historical society reported.
He held that “the regulation of the suffrage is conceded to the states as a state’s right”…and turned to the panel and stated: “Gentlemen of the jury, you are discharged.”
After the “verdict,” Hunt granted Anthony her first opportunity to speak, and she responded by delivering what the historical society said was “the most famous speech in the history of the agitation for woman suffrage.”
Here’s just a bit of it:
Hunt: “Has the prisoner
anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?”
Anthony: “Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for…you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored.”
“Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called form of government.”
“Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property and….”
Hunt: “The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.”
Anthony: “But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen’s rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury.”
Hunt: “The prisoner must sit down – the Court cannot allow it.”
She didn’t sit down…or
hush up. Susan B. Anthony was just getting warmed up.
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