During the Presidential election of 1872,
Susan B. Anthony cast what was considered
an “illegal vote” because she was a woman.
She was then tried and fined $100, of which,
she refused to pay.
To understand the significance of this fine,
one must consider that $100 in 1872 would
be roughly $1,900 today in 2015.
The following is her speech after her arrest
for her “illegal act” on the issue of
Women’s Right to Vote.
It was lecture that she performed during a
speaking tour of the towns and villages of
Monroe and Ontario counties.
The title of her lecture was: “Is it a Crime
for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?”
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.
Susan B. Anthony – 1873
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