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Susan Brownell Anthony

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Susan B. Anthony.

Susan Brownell Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was a prominent, independent and well-educated American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to secure women's suffrage in the United States. She traveled thousands of miles throughout the United States and Europe, and gave 75 to 100 speeches per year on women's rights for some 45 years. Susan B. Anthony died in Rochester, New York, on March 13, 1906, and is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery. 

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National suffrage organizations

In 1869, Anthony and Stanton founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA), an organization dedicated to gaining women's suffrage. Anthony was vice-president-at-large of the NWSA from the date of its organization until 1892, when she became president.

In the early years of the NWSA, Anthony made attempts to unite women in the labor movement with the suffragist cause, but with little success. She and Stanton were delegates at the 1868 convention of the National Labor Union. However, Anthony inadvertently alienated the labor movement not only because suffrage was seen as a concern for middle-class rather than working-class women, but because she openly encouraged women to achieve economic independence by entering the printing trades, where male workers were on strike at the time. Anthony was later expelled from the National Labor Union over this controversy.

In 1890, Anthony orchestrated the merger of the NWSA with the more conservative American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), creating the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Prior to the controversial merge, Anthony had created a special NWSA executive committee to vote on whether they should merge with the AWSA, despite the fact that using a committee instead of an all-member vote went against the NWSA constitution. Motions to make it possible for members to vote by mail were strenuously opposed by Anthony and her adherents, and the committee was stacked with members who favored the merger. (Two members who voted against the merger were asked to resign).

Anthony's pursuit of alliances with moderate and conservative suffragists created long lasting tension between herself and more radical suffragists like Stanton. Anthony felt strongly that a moderate rather than radical approach to women's rights was more realistic, and would consequently serve to gain more for women in the long-run. Anthony's strategy was to unite the suffrage movement wherever possible and to then concentrate strictly on gaining the vote, temporarily postponing other efforts related to women's rights in order to focus attention on a singular cause. Stanton openly criticized Anthony's stance, writing that Anthony and AWSA leader Lucy Stone, "see suffrage only. They do not see woman's religious and social bondage." Anthony responded to Stanton: "We number over 10,000 women and each one has opinions...we can only hold them together to work for the ballot by letting alone their whims and prejudices on other subjects."

The creation of the NAWSA effectively marginalized the more radical elements within the women's movement, including Stanton. Anthony pushed for Stanton to be voted in as the first NAWSA president, and stood by her as Stanton was belittled by the large conservative factions within the new organization.

In collaboration with Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, Anthony published The History of Woman Suffrage (4 vols., New York, 1884–1887). Anthony also befriended Josephine Brawley Hughes, an advocate of women's rights and of alcohol abolition in Arizona, and Carrie Chapman Catt, whom Anthony endorsed for the presidency of the NAWSA when Anthony formally retired in 1900.

United States vs. Susan B. Anthony

For casting a vote in the presidential election held on November 5, 1872, in Rochester, New York, Anthony was arrested on November 18 and pled not guilty, asserting that the 14th amendment entitled her to vote because, unlike the original Constitution, it provides that all "persons" (which includes females) born in the US are "citizens" who shall not be denied the "privileges" of citizenship (which includes voting).

She was defended at trial by Matilda Joslyn Gage, who asserted that it was the United States that was truly on trial, not Anthony. At the trial, Anthony made her famous On Women's Right to Vote speech (see in the next section below), which asserted that casting her vote in the previous presidential election was not a crime but the legal right of a United States citizen. Citing the Constitution, her speech was a strong attempt to persuade the federal government that she was not unlawful in her action, and if she were male, her behavior would have never been questioned.

However, her defense was all for naught. The judge, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ward Hunt, explicitly instructed the jury to deliver a guilty verdict, refused to poll the jury, delivered an opinion he had written before trial had even begun, and on June 18 1873, sentenced her to pay a $100 fine. Anthony responded, "May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty." She never did pay the fine, and the government never pursued her for nonpayment.

The court speech on women's right to vote

In 1873, Susan B. Anthony recited a now famous speech before court, in defense of women's suffrage. The following is a summary of her remarks:

Susan B. Anthony

"Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.

The preamble of the Federal Constitution says: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot.

For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.

Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes."

Legacy

A Susan B. Anthony dollar coin

Susan B. Anthony was honored as the first real (non-allegorical) American woman on circulating U.S. coinage with her appearance on the Susan B. Anthony dollar. The coin, approximately the size of a U.S. quarter, was minted for only four years, 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1999. Anthony dollars were produced at the Philadelphia and Denver mints for all four of these years, and at the San Francisco mint for all production years except 1999.

Anthony's birthplace in Adams was purchased in 2006 by Carol Crossed, affiliated with both Democrats for Life of America and Feminists for Life. She has stated that efforts will be made to open the home to the public in the near future.[1]

The American composer Virgil Thomson and poet Gertrude Stein wrote an opera, The Mother of Us All, that abstractly explores Anthony's life and mission.

Quotes

  • The men and women of the North are slaveholders, those of the South slaveowners. The guilt rests on the North equally with the South.
    • Speech on No Union with Slaveholders (1857)
  • Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation.
    • On the Campaign for Divorce Law Reform (1860)
  • Many Abolitionists have yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights.
    • Journal (June 1860)
  • Make [your employers] understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women.
    • The Revolution, Women's Suffrage Newspaper (8 October 1868)
  • Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work.
    • The Revolution (18 March 1869)
  • No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death, but oh, thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation that impelled her to the crime!
    • On abortion in The Revolution IV, No. 1 (8 July 1869)
  • Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.
    • Speech in San Francisco (July 1871)
  • I shall work for the Republican party and call on all women to join me, precisely...for what that party has done and promises to do for women, nothing more, nothing less.
  • Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration [of Independence], is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can "the consent of the governed" be given, if the right to vote be denied?
    • Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote? Speech, before her trial for voting (1873)
  • We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights.
    • An account of the proceedings on the trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the charge of illegal voting, at the presidential election in Nov. 1872, and on the trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh and William B. Hall, the inspectors of election by whom her vote was received. [1]
  • One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one.
    • An account of the proceedings on the trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the charge of illegal voting, at the presidential election in Nov. 1872, and on the trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh and William B. Hall, the inspectors of election by whom her vote was received.
  • Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life.
    • Speech on Social Purity (Spring 1875)
  • Failure is impossible.
    • At her eighty-sixth birthday celebration (15 February 1906)
  • The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.
    • S. B. Anthony defense of Stanton at 1896 Convention, HWS, IV (1902), 263
  • The true woman will not be the exponent of another, or allow another to be such for her. She will be her own individual self. Do her own individual work. Stand or fall by her own individual wisdom or strength. Woman, equally with man, was made for her own individual happiness, to develop every talent given to her by God, in the great work of life. To the best advantage of herself and the race.
    • S. B. Anthony during a speech in the 1850s.

Matilda Joslyn Gage to Editor, 20 June 1873, Kansas Leavenworth Times (3 July 1873)

  • My every right, constitutional, civil, political and judicial has been tramped upon.
  • The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do.
  • I do not ask the clemency of the court. I came into it to get justice, having failed in this, I demand the full rigors of the law.

An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting (1874)

  • Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of Lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men.
  • But, yesterday, the same man-made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing.
  • I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."


References

  1. ↑ Suffragist leader's home sold for $164K

External links

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