Editing Susan B. Anthony (section)

===National suffrage movement===
[[File:Letter by Susan B. Anthony in Support of Women's Suffrage page 1 of 2.jpg|thumb|Letter by Susan B. Anthony to US Congress in favor of Women's Suffrage]]

"By the end of the Civil War," according to historian [[Ann D. Gordon]], "Susan B. Anthony occupied new social and political territory. She was emerging on the national scene as a female leader, something new in American history, and she did so as a single woman in a culture that perceived the spinster as anomalous and unguarded ... By the 1880s, she was among the senior political figures in the United States."<ref>Gordon, Ann D., "Knowing Susan B. Anthony: The Stories We Tell of a Life", in Ridarsky, Christine L. and Huth, Mary M., editors (2012). ''Susan B. Anthony and the Struggle for Equal Rights''. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. pp. 202, 204; {{ISBN|978-1-58046-425-3}}</ref>

After the formation of the NWSA, Anthony dedicated herself fully to the organization and to women's suffrage. She did not draw a salary from either it or its successor, the NAWSA, but on the contrary used her lecture fees to fund those organizations.<ref name="Sherr 1995, pp. 226–27">Sherr (1995), pp. 226–227.</ref> There was no national office, the mailing address being simply that of one of the officers.<ref>Flexner (1959), p. 241.</ref>

That Anthony had remained unmarried gave her an important business advantage in this work. A married woman at that time had the legal status of [[coverture|''feme covert'']], which, among other things, excluded her from signing contracts (her husband could do that for her, if he chose). As Anthony had no husband, she was a [[coverture|''feme sole'']] and could freely sign contracts for convention halls, printed materials, etc.<ref>Barry (1988), pp. 57–58, 259.</ref>
Using fees she earned by lecturing, she paid off the debts she had accumulated while supporting ''The Revolution''. With the press treating her as a celebrity, she proved to be a major draw.<ref>Gordon (2003), [https://books.google.com/books?id=U3diaaiUZjQC&pg=PR21 p. xxi].</ref> Over her career she estimated that she averaged 75 to 100 speeches per year. Travel conditions in the earlier days were sometimes appalling. Once she gave a speech from the top of a billiard table. On another occasion her train was snowbound for days, and she survived on crackers and dried fish.<ref>Sherr (1995), pp. 123–124, 132–133.</ref>

Both Anthony and Stanton joined the lecture circuit about 1870, usually traveling from mid-autumn to spring. The timing was right because the nation was beginning to discuss women's suffrage as a serious matter. Occasionally they traveled together but most often not. Lecture bureaus scheduled their tours and handled the travel arrangements, which generally involved traveling during the day and speaking at night, sometimes for weeks at a time, including weekends. Their lectures brought new recruits into the movement who strengthened suffrage organizations at the local, state and national levels. Their journeys during that decade covered a distance that was unmatched by any other reformer or politician.<ref name=gordon>Ward (1999), "Taking Possession of the Country" by Ann D. Gordon, pp. 163–169.</ref>
Anthony's other suffrage work included organizing national conventions, lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and participating in a seemingly endless series of state suffrage campaigns.

A special opportunity arose in 1876 when the U.S. celebrated its 100th birthday as an independent country. The NWSA asked permission to present a Declaration of Rights for Women at the official ceremony in Philadelphia, but was refused. Undaunted, five women, headed by Anthony, walked onto the platform during the ceremony and handed their Declaration to the startled official in charge. As they left, they handed out copies of it to the crowd. Spotting an unoccupied bandstand outside the hall, Anthony mounted it and read the Declaration to a large crowd. Afterwards she invited everyone to a NWSA convention at the nearby Unitarian church where speakers like [[Lucretia Mott]] and [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]] awaited them.<ref>Flexner (1959), [https://books.google.com/books?id=VjEw6ZnVm1EC&pg=PA163 pp. 163–164].</ref><ref>Bacon (1986), pp. 132–133.</ref>

The work of all segments of the women's suffrage movement began to show clear results. Women won the right to vote in Wyoming in 1869 and in Utah in 1870. Her lectures in Washington and four other states led directly to invitations for her to address the state legislatures there.<ref name=gordon/>

[[National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry|The Grange]], a large advocacy group for farmers, officially supported women's suffrage as early as 1885. The [[Women's Christian Temperance Union]], the largest women's organization in the country, also supported [[suffrage]].<ref>Flexner (1959), [https://books.google.com/books?id=VjEw6ZnVm1EC&pg=PA173 pp. 173–174, 210].</ref>

Anthony's commitment to the movement, her spartan lifestyle, and the fact that she did not seek personal financial gain, made her an effective fund-raiser and won her the admiration of many who did not agree with her goals.<ref name="Sherr 1995, pp. 226–27"/> As her reputation grew, her working and travel conditions improved. She sometimes had the use of the private railroad car of [[Jane Stanford]], a sympathizer whose husband owned a major railroad. While lobbying and preparing for the annual suffrage conventions in Washington, she was provided with a free suite of rooms in the Riggs Hotel, whose owners supported her work.<ref>Sherr (1995), pp. 85, 122.</ref>

To ensure continuity, Anthony trained a group of younger activists, who were known as her "nieces," to assume leadership roles within the organization. Two of them, [[Carrie Chapman Catt]] and [[Anna Howard Shaw]], served as presidents of the NAWSA after Anthony retired from that position.<ref>Flexner (1959), [https://books.google.com/books?id=VjEw6ZnVm1EC&pg=PA231 pp. 229–232].</ref>

====''United States v. Susan B. Anthony''{{anchor|United States v. Susan B. Anthony}}====<!--Wikisource article is linked to this anchor, if renaming please place anchor for this heading name-->
{{main|Trial of Susan B. Anthony}}
The NWSA convention of 1871 adopted a strategy of urging women to attempt to vote, and then, after being turned away, to file suits in federal courts to challenge laws that prevented women from voting. The legal basis for the challenge would be the recently adopted [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]], part of which reads: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States".<ref>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=8 p. 2].</ref>

Following the example set by Anthony and her sisters shortly before election day, a total of nearly fifty women in Rochester registered to vote in the [[1872 United States presidential election|presidential election of 1872]]. On election day, Anthony and fourteen other women from her [[ward (electoral subdivision)|ward]] convinced the election inspectors to allow them to cast ballots, but women in other wards were turned back.<ref>Barry (1988), pp. 249–251.</ref> Anthony was arrested on November 18, 1872, by a U.S. Deputy Marshal and charged with illegally voting. The other women who had voted were also arrested but released pending the outcome of Anthony's trial.<ref>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=17 pp. 11, 13, 29.]</ref>
Anthony's trial generated a national controversy and became a major step in the transition of the broader women's rights movement into the women's suffrage movement.<ref>Hewitt (2001), [https://books.google.com/books?id=Izg05RynLZgC&pg=PA212 p. 212.]</ref>

Anthony spoke throughout [[Monroe County, New York]], where her trial was to be held and from where the jurors for her trial would be chosen. Her speech was entitled "Is it a Crime for a U.S. Citizen to Vote?" She said, "We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote. We appeal to women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected 'citizen's right to vote.{{' "}}<ref>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=73 pp. 63, 67.]</ref>
The U.S. Attorney arranged for the trial to be moved to the [[United States circuit court|federal circuit court]], which would soon sit in neighboring Ontario County with a jury drawn from that county's inhabitants. Anthony responded by speaking throughout that county also before the trial began.<ref>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=40 p. 34.]</ref>

Responsibility for that federal circuit was in the hands of Justice [[Ward Hunt]], who had recently been appointed to the U.S. [[United States Supreme Court|Supreme Court]]. Hunt had never served as a trial judge; originally a politician, he had begun his judicial career by being elected to the [[New York Court of Appeals]].<ref>Hull (2012), pp. 115–16, 158.</ref>

The trial, ''[[Trial of Susan B. Anthony|United States v. Susan B. Anthony]]'', began on June 17, 1873, and was closely followed by the national press. Following a rule of [[common law]] at that time which prevented criminal defendants in federal courts from testifying, Hunt refused to allow Anthony to speak until the verdict had been delivered. On the second day of the trial, after both sides had presented their cases, Justice Hunt delivered his lengthy opinion, which he had put in writing. In the most controversial aspect of the trial, Hunt directed the jury to deliver a guilty verdict.<ref>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=11 pp. 5–6, 13, 48 ].</ref>

On the second day of the trial, Hunt asked Anthony if she had anything to say. She responded with "the most famous speech in the history of the agitation for woman suffrage", according to [[Ann D. Gordon]], a historian of the women's movement.<ref>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=13 p. 7].</ref>
Repeatedly ignoring the judge's order to stop talking and sit down, she protested what she called "this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights", saying, "you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored."<ref name=Gordon-2005-46>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=52 p. 46].</ref>
She castigated Justice Hunt for denying her a trial by jury, but said that even if he had allowed the jury to discuss the case, she still would have been denied a trial by a jury of her peers because women were not allowed to be jurors.<ref name=Gordon-2005-46/>

{{quote box
 |title = On the centennial of the [[Boston Tea Party]]
 |quote = {{font |font=Times New Roman | size=15px | {{nbsp|5}} I stand before you tonight a convicted criminal... convicted by a [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] Judge... and sentenced to pay $100 fine and costs. For what? For asserting my right to representation in a government, based upon the one idea of the right of every person governed to participate in that government. This is the result at the close of 100 years of this government, that I, a native born American citizen, am found guilty of neither lunacy nor idiocy, but of a crime—simply because I exercised our right to vote.}}
 |source = Speech to the Union League Club, N.Y.<br>December 16, 1873<ref name=NYHerald_TeaPartySpeech_18731217>{{cite news |title=Tea Party Teachings / Woman's Freedom Dawning / No Taxation Without Representation |url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:18731217_Tea_Party_Teachings_-_Woman%27s_Freedom_Dawning_-_The_New_York_Herald.jpg |work=The New York Herald |date=December 17, 1873 |pages=10 }}</ref>
 |align = right  |width = 40% |border = 1px |fontsize = 100% |bgcolor = #fafafa |title_bg = #fafafa |title_fnt = #202060 |qalign = left |salign = right
}}
When Justice Hunt sentenced Anthony to pay a fine of $100 ({{Inflation|US|100|1873|r=-2|fmt=eq}}), she responded, "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty",<ref>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=53 p. 47.]</ref> and she never did.
If Hunt had ordered her to be jailed until she paid the fine, Anthony could have taken her case to the Supreme Court. Hunt instead announced he would not order her taken into custody, closing off that legal avenue.<ref>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=24 p. 18.]</ref>

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1875 put an end to the strategy of trying to achieve women's suffrage through the court system when it ruled in ''[[Minor v. Happersett]]'' that "the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone".<ref>Gordon (2005), [https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf#page=25 pp. 18–19]. This article points out that Supreme Court rulings did not establish the connection between citizenship and voting rights until the mid-twentieth century.</ref> The NWSA decided to pursue the far more difficult strategy of campaigning for a constitutional amendment to achieve voting rights for women.

On August 18, 2020—the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment—President [[Donald Trump]] announced that he would pardon Anthony, 148 years after her conviction.<ref name="The New York Times">{{Cite news|last1=Haberman|first1=Maggie|last2=Rogers|first2=Katie|date=August 18, 2020|title=On Centennial of 19th Amendment, Trump Pardons Susan B. Anthony|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/us/politics/trump-susan-b-anthony-pardon.html|access-date=August 18, 2020|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> The president of the [[Susan B. Anthony House|National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House]] wrote to "decline" the offer of a pardon on the principle that, to accept a pardon would wrongly "validate" the trial proceedings in the same manner that paying the $100 fine would have.<ref name=MuseumDeclinesPardon>{{cite news |last1=Ulaby |first1=Neda |title=Susan B. Anthony Museum Rejects President Trump's Pardon Of The Suffragist |url=https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904321406/susan-b-anthony-museum-rejects-president-trumps-pardon-of-the-suffragette |publisher=NPR |date=August 20, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200821134913/https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904321406/susan-b-anthony-museum-rejects-president-trumps-pardon-of-the-suffragette |archive-date=August 21, 2020 |url-status=live }} ● {{cite web |last1=Hughes |first1=Deborah L. |title=On News of a Presidential Pardon for Susan B. Anthony on August 18, 2020 |url=https://susanb.org/on-news-of-a-presidential-pardon-for-susan-b-anthony-on-august-18-2020/ |website=SusanB.org |publisher=The National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200821170246/https://susanb.org/on-news-of-a-presidential-pardon-for-susan-b-anthony-on-august-18-2020/ |archive-date=August 21, 2020 |date=August 18, 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref>

====''History of Woman Suffrage''====
[[File:Life Magazine 1913-02-20 ppmsca.02943.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Cover of ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' magazine in 1913. Titled "Ancient History", it shows an Anthony-like figure in classical dress leading a protest for women's rights]]
Anthony and Stanton initiated the project of writing a history of the women's suffrage movement in 1876. Anthony had for years saved letters, newspaper clippings, and other materials of historical value to the women's movement. In 1876, she moved into the Stanton household in New Jersey along with several trunks and boxes of these materials to begin working with Stanton on the ''[[History of Woman Suffrage]]''.<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n553/mode/2up p. 480.]</ref>

Anthony hated this type of work. In her letters, she said the project "makes me feel growly all the time ... No warhorse ever panted for the rush of battle more than I for outside work. I love to make history but hate to write it."<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 2, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa01harpgoog#page/n123/mode/2up p. 602.]</ref>
The work absorbed much of her time for several years although she continued to work on other women's suffrage activities. She acted as her own publisher, which presented several problems, including finding space for the inventory. She was forced to limit the number of books she was storing in the attic of her sister's house because the weight was threatening to collapse the structure.<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 3, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa02harpgoog#page/n209/mode/2up p. 1277].</ref>

Originally envisioned as a modest publication that could be produced quickly,<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, footnote on [https://archive.org/details/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog/page/480/mode/2up?view=theater p. 481].</ref> the history evolved into a six-volume work of more than 5700 pages written over a period of 41 years. The first three volumes, which cover the movement up to 1885, were published between 1881 and 1886 and were produced by Stanton, Anthony and [[Matilda Joslyn Gage]]. Anthony handled the production details and the extensive correspondence with contributors. Anthony published Volume 4, which covers the period from 1883 to 1900, in 1902, after Stanton's death, with the help of [[Ida Husted Harper]], Anthony's designated biographer. The last two volumes, which bring the history up to 1920, were completed in 1922 by Harper after Anthony's death.

The ''History of Woman Suffrage'' preserves an enormous amount of material that might have been lost forever. Written by leaders of one wing of the divided women's movement (Lucy Stone, their main rival, refused to have anything to do with the project), it does not, however, give a balanced view of events where their rivals are concerned. It overstates the role of Anthony and Stanton, and it understates or ignores the roles of Stone and other activists who did not fit into the historical narrative that Anthony and Stanton developed. Because it was for years the main source of documentation about the suffrage movement, historians have had to uncover other sources to provide a more balanced view.<ref>Cullen-DuPont (2000) [https://books.google.com/books?id=oIro7MtiFuYC&pg=PA115 p. 115] ''History of Woman Suffrage''.</ref><ref>Tetrault (2014), [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZYZgAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA125 pp. 125–140]. Tetrault says she describes the Seneca Falls story as a "myth" not to indicate that it is false but in the technical sense of "a venerated and celebrated story used to give meaning to the world." See Tetrault (2014), [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZYZgAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA5 p. 5].</ref>