Editing Susan B. Anthony (section)

====''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>