How does Anthony use legal arguments and historical examples to challenge the prevailing beliefs regarding citizenship and voting rights as outlined by the founding documents? Do Anthony's interpretations of "the people" align with your understanding of these documents? Why or why not?
How does Anthony's address compare with Ruth Bader Ginsburg's "The Need for the Equal Rights Amendment" (1973), particularly since a century passed between the two documents? What role might Anthony's arguments have played in the eventual push for the Equal Rights Amendment? How do Ginsburg's arguments build upon earlier claims made by Anthony?
Introduction
Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906) dedicated over 50 years to her role as a leader of the women’s suffrage movement and the broader campaign for gender equality throughout America. Raised in a Quaker home, Anthony’s upbringing instilled in her a belief in the equality of all people. Her family’s active participation in the abolition movement further shaped her views and initiated relationships with both William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Two pivotal experiences shifted Anthony’s primary focus from abolition to gender equality. While teaching in New York, Anthony learned of a large pay disparity between male and female teachers. Additionally, at a temperance convention in 1851, Anthony was not permitted to speak because of her gender. In the same year, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Together, they traveled the country advocating for women’s rights.
The ratification of the 14th and amendments following the Civil War generated a division within the women’s rights movement, straining the longtime relationship between Anthony and Douglass. Anthony and several other notable activists were angered by these amendments, which they perceived as a blatant disregard of women. The term “male” in the 14th amendment (Section 2) promoted the idea that suffrage was an exclusively male right, thus denying women the guaranteed rights afforded to American citizens. Anthony challenged this interpretation by voting in the 1872 presidential election in Rochester, New York. Although she successfully submitted her ballot, Anthony was arrested shortly thereafter. Prior to her trial in 1873, Anthony traveled throughout Monroe County, New York, speaking to 28 towns on the topic of “Is it a Crime for a U.S. Citizen to Vote?” Following a two-day trial, Anthony was ultimately found guilty and fined $100, which she refused to pay.
In this address delivered in Rochester, Anthony justifies her actions based on her interpretation of the founding documents. She argues both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution included women as citizens. As such, women are entitled to unalienable rights that the government exists to protect, not simply confer on its citizens. In the second half of her address, Anthony examines the concept of “previous condition of servitude” as mentioned in the 15th amendment. Property, wage, and custody laws, along with societal distinctions of the time, rendered women servile to their husbands, Anthony argued, thus including them under the 15th amendment鈥檚 protections. Anthony concludes with a call to action, urging women to assert their right to vote rather than petition for it through legislative reform, a departure from earlier suffrage speeches and writings. Calling upon the foundational principles of American democracy, and highlighting the continued injustices faced by women, Anthony’s actions and arguments laid the groundwork for the pursuit of gender equality, including women securing the right to vote in 1920.
—Michelle Alderfer
Anthony, Susan B. 鈥淔emale Suffrage. Is It A Crime For A United States Citizen to Vote?鈥� Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 4, 1873. .听
Our democratic鈥搑epublican government is based on the idea of the natural right of each individual member thereof to a voice and a vote in making and executing the laws. We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property. And when 100 or 1,000,000 people enter into a free government, do they barter away their natural rights? I answer No; they simply pledge themselves to protect each other in the enjoyment of them, through prescribed judicial and legislative tribunals. They agree to abandon the methods of brute force in the adjustment of their differences, and adopt those of civilization.
Nor can you find a word in any of the grand documents left us by the fathers that assumes for government the power to create or to confer rights. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the constitutions of the several states and the organic laws of the territories, all alike propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God鈥揼iven rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights.
All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, nor exclusion of any class or men from their full and equal enjoyment. Here is pronounced the right of all men, and 鈥渃onsequently,鈥� as the Quaker preacher said, 鈥渙f all women,鈥� to voice in the government. And here, in this very first paragraph of the declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for, how can 鈥渢he consent of the governed鈥� be given, if the right to vote be denied. Again:
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, ad to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is here clearly implied. For however destructive to their happiness this government might become, a disfranchised class could neither alter nor abolish it, nor institute a new one, except by the old brute force method of insurrection and rebellion. One鈥揾alf of the people of this nation today are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or write there a new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces 鈥渢axation without representation鈥濃�攖hat compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent鈥攖hat imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers, that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of their own persons, wages and children鈥攁re this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the declarations of the framers of this government, every one of which was based on the immutable principle of equal rights to all. By those declarations, kings, priests, popes, aristocrats, were all alike dethroned, and placed on a common level politically, with the lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, men were deprived of their divine right to rule, and placed on a political level with women. And by their practice all class and caste distinction must be abolished; and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all alike, bound from their subject position to the proud platform of equality.
The preamble of the federal constitution says: 鈥淲e, 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 established this constitution for the United States of America.鈥�
It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings or liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people鈥攚omen as well as men. And it is 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鈥搑epublican government.
The early journals of Congress show that when the committee reported to that body the original articles of confederation, the very first article which became the subject of discussion was that respecting equality of suffrage.
Article 4 said: 鈥淭he better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different states of this Union, the free inhabitants of each of the states (paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted) shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the free citizens of the several states.鈥�
Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of the universal application of the great principle of equal rights to all in order to produce the desired result鈥攁 harmonious Union and a homogeneous people. . . .
And to this principle every republican said amen when applied to black men by Senator Sumner1 in his great speeches for equal rights for all, from 1865 to 1869; and when, in 1871, I asked the Senator to declare the power of the United States Constitution to protect women in their right to vote鈥攁s he had done for black men鈥攈e handed me a copy of all his speeches during that reconstruction period, and said:
Miss Anthony, put 鈥渟ex鈥� where I have 鈥渞ace鈥� or 鈥渃olor,鈥� and you have here the best and strongest argument I can make for woman. There is not a doubt but women have the constitutional right to vote, and I will never vote for a sixteenth amendment to guarantee it to them. I voted for both the fourteenth and fifteenth under protest. Would never have done it but for the pressing emergency; would have insisted that the power of the original Constitution to protect all citizens in the equal enjoyment of their rights should have been vindicated through the courts. But the newly鈥揻reed men had neither the intelligence, wealth, nor time to wait that slow process. Women possess all these, and I insist that they shall appeal to the courts, and through them establish the powers of our American magna carta to protect every citizen of the republic.
Senator Sumner said:
Qualifications cannot be in their nature permanent of insurmountable. Sex cannot be a qualification any more than size, race, color, or previous condition of servitude. A permanent or insurmountable qualification is equivalent to a deprivation of the suffrage. In other words it is the tyranny of taxation without representation, against which our revolutionary mothers as well as fathers rebelled.
For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of an entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. The blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their posterity. To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To women this government is not a democracy; it is not a republic; it is an odious aristocracy鈥攁 hateful oligarchy of sex! And this, too, in the face of section 4, of article 4, which says:
The United States shall guarantee to every state in the Union a republican form of government.
What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference between the inhabitants of a monarchical and those of a republican form of government, save that in the monarchical the people are subjects鈥� helpless, powerless鈥攂ound to obey laws made by superiors. while in the Republican, the people are citizens鈥攊ndividual sovereigns鈥攁ll clothed with equal power to make and unmake both their laws and law makers.
The moment you deprive a person of his right to a voice in the government鈥攜ou degrade him from the status of a citizen of the republic鈥攖o that of a subject鈥攁nd it matters little to him whether his monarch be an individual tyrant or a 15,000,000 headed monster鈥攈e is a powerless subject, serf or slave鈥攏ot a citizen.
But is urged, the use of the masculine pronouns he, his and him, in all the constitutions, is proof that only men were meant to be included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the letter of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent, and accept the other horn of the dilemma 鈥攚hich would compel you to exempt women from taxation for the support of the government, and from penalties for the violation of laws. . . .
In all the penalties and burdens of the government (except the military) women are reckoned as citizens, equally with men. Also, in all the privileges and immunities save those of the jury box and ballot box, the two fundamental privileges on which rest all others. The United States government not only taxes, fines, imprisons and hangs women, but it allows them to preempt lands, register ships and take out passport and naturalization papers. . . .
The only question left to be settled here 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鈥攁nd no state has a right to make any new law, or 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鈥攑recisely as is every one against negroes.
Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities of citizens? I think the disfranchised ex鈥搑ebels, and the ex鈥搒tate prisoners will agree with me, that it is not only one of the them, but the one, without which all the others are nothing. Seek first kingdom of the ballot and all things else shall be given thee, is the political injunction.
Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define citizen to be a person in the united states, entitled to vote and hold office.
Prior to the adoption of the thirteenth amendment, by which slavery was forever abolished and black men transformed from property to persons, the judicial opinions of the country had always been in harmony with these definitions. To be a person was to be a citizen, and to be a citizen was to be a voter. . . .
Even the 鈥淒red Scott鈥� decision, pronounced by Abolitionists and Republicans infamous, because it virtually declared 鈥渂lack men had no rights white men were bound to respect,鈥� gave this true and logical conclusion, that to be one of the people was to be a citizen and a voter.
Chief Judge Daniel2 蝉补颈诲:听
There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of writers on government, or in any actual experiment heretofore tried, an exposition of the term citizen, which has not been considered as conferring the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political.
Associate Justice Taney3 蝉补颈诲:听
The words 鈥榩eople of the United States鈥� and 鈥榗itizens鈥� are synonymous terms and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body, who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the government, through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign people, and every citizen is one of this great people and a constituent member of this sovereignty.
Thus does Judge Taney鈥檚 decision, which was such a terrible ban to the black man while he was a slave, now, that he is a person, no longer property, pronounce him a citizen, possessed of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political. And not only the black man, but the black woman, and all women as well. . . .
If we once establish the false principle that United States citizenship does not carry with it the right to vote in every state in this Union, there is no end to the petty freaks and cunning devices that will be resorted to to exclude one and another class of citizens from suffrage.
It will not always be men combining to disfranchise all women; native born men combining to abridge the rights of all naturalized citizens, as in Rhode Island. It will not always be the rich and educated who may combine to cast off the poor and ignorant. But we may live to see the poor, hard working uncultivated day laborers, foreign and native born, learning the power of the ballot and their vast majority of numbers, combine and amend state constitutions to disfranchise the Vanderbilts and A. T. Stewarts, the Conklings and Fentons. It is a poor rule indeed that won鈥檛 work both ways. Indeed, establish this precedent, admit this right to deny suffrage to the states, and there is no power to foresee the confusion, discord, and disruption that awaits us. There is, and can be, but one safe principle of government鈥攅qual rights to all. Any and every discrimination against any class, whether on account of color, race, nativity, sex, property, or culture, embitters and disappoints that class, and thereby endangers the safety of the whole people.
Clearly, then, the national government must not only define the rights of citizens, but it must stretch its power and protect them in every state in this union.
But if you will insist that the fifteenth amendment鈥檚 emphatic interdiction against robbing United States citizens of their right to vote, 鈥渙n account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,鈥� is a recognition of the right, either of the United States, or any state, to rob citizens of that right for any or all other reasons, I will prove to you that the class of citizens for which I now plead, and to which I belong, may be and are, by all the principles of our government, and many of the laws of the states, included under the term of 鈥減revious condition of servitude.鈥�
First鈥擳he married women and their legal status. What is servitude? 鈥淭he condition of a slave.鈥� What is a slave? 鈥淎 person who is robbed of the proceeds of his labor; A person who is subject to the will of another. . . .鈥�
By the law of every state in this Union today, North as well as South, the married woman has no right to the custody and control of her person. The wife belongs to her husband; and if she refuses obedience to his will, he may use moderate correction; and if she doesn鈥檛 like his moderate correction and attempts to leave his 鈥渂ed and board,鈥� the husband may use moderate coercion to bring her back. The little word 鈥渕oderate,鈥� you see, is the saving clause for the wife, and would doubtless be overstepped should her offended husband administer his correction with the 鈥渃at-o鈥�-nine-tails鈥�; or accomplish his coercion with bloodhounds.
Again, the slave had no right to the earnings of his hands鈥攖hey belonged to his master; no right to the custody of his children鈥攏o right to sue or be sued, or testify in the courts. If he committed a crime, it was the master who must sue or be sued.
In many of the states there has been special legislation giving to married woman the right to property inherited, or received by bequest or earned by the pursuit of any avocation outside of the home; also giving her the right to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such separate property; but not a single state of this Union has ever secured the wife in the enjoyment of her right to the joint ownership of the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership. And since, in the nature of things, the vast majority of married women never earn a dollar by work outside of their families, nor inherit a dollar from their fathers, it follows that from the day of their marriage to the day of the death of their husbands, not one of these every has a dollar, except it shall please her husband to let her have it.
In some of the states, also, there have been laws passed giving to the mother a joint right with the father in the guardianship of the children. But twenty years ago, when our woman鈥檚 rights movement commenced, by the laws of the State of New York and all the states, the father had the sole custody and control of the children. No matter if he were a brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the mother鈥檚 consent, to apprentice her sons to rum鈥搒ellers, or her daughters to brothel鈥搆eepers. He could even will away an unborn child to some other person than the mother. And in many of the states the law still prevails, and the mothers are utterly powerless under the common law. . . .
There is an old saying that 鈥渁 rose by any other name would smell as sweet,鈥� and I submit it the depravation by law of the right to the ownership of one鈥檚 own person, wages, property, children; the denial of the right of an individual to sue and be sued in the courts, is not a condition of servitude most bitter and absolute, though under the sacred name of marriage. Does any lawyer doubt my statement of the legal status of women? I will remind him of the fact that the old common law of England prevails in every state in this Union, except where the legislature has enacted special laws annulling it. And and I am ashamed that not one state has yet blotted from its statue books the old common law of marriage, by which Blackstone summed up in the fewest words possible that the husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband!
Thus may all married women, wives and widows, by the laws of the several states, be technically included in the fifteenth amendment鈥檚 specification of 鈥渃ondition of servitude,鈥� present or previous. And not only married women, but I will also prove to you that by all the great fundamental principles of our free government, the entire womanhood of the nation is in 鈥渃ondition of servitude鈥� as surely as were our revolutionary fathers, when they rebelled against old King George. Women are taxed without representation, governed without their consent, tried, convicted and punished without a jury of their peers. And is all this tyranny any less humiliating and degrading to women under our democratic鈥搑epublic government today, than it was to men under their aristocratic, monarchical government a hundred years ago? There is not an utterance of old John Adams, John Hancock or Patrick Henry but finds a living response in the soul of every intelligent, patriotic woman of the nation. Bring to me a common鈥搒ense woman property鈥揾older, and I will show you one whose soul is fired with all the indignation of 1776 every time the tax鈥揼atherer presents himself at her door. You will not find one such but feels her condition of servitude as galling as did old James Otis4, when he 蝉补颈诲:听
The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights, and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right. For, what one civil right is worth a rush after a man鈥檚 property is subject to be taken from him at pleasure, without his consent? If a man is not his own assessor, in person or by deputy, his liberty is gone, or he is wholly at the mercy of others.
What was the three鈥損enny tax on tea, or the paltry tax on paper and sugar to which our revolutionary fathers were subjected, when compared with the taxation of the women of this republic? . . . to show you that disfranchisement was precisely the slavery of which the fathers complained, allow me to cite to you old Ben Franklin5, who in those olden times was admitted to be a good authority, not merely in domestic economy, but in political as well:聽
That every man of the commonality, except infants, insane persons and criminals, in, of common rights and the law of God, a freedman and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. That liberty or freedom consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who frame the laws, and who are to be the guardians of every man; life, property and peace. For the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more need to have representatives in the legislature than the rich one. That they who have no voice or vote in the electing of representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and to be subject to laws made by representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.鈥� . . .
And yet one more authority; that of Thomas Paine6, than whom, not one of the revolutionary patriots more ably vindicated the principles upon which our government is founded.
The right of voting for representation is the primary right, by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce man to a state of slavery; for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another; and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives in this case. The proposal, therefore, to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property.
Is anything further needed to prove woman鈥檚 condition of servitude sufficiently orthodox to entitle her to the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment? . . .
Benjamin F. Butler7, in a recent letter to me 蝉补颈诲:听
I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that the Constitution authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as it authorizes trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to citizens.听
And again General Butler said:
It is not laws we want; there are plenty of laws鈥攇ood enough too. Administrative ability to enforce law is the great want of the age, in this country especially. Everybody talks of law, law. If everybody would insist on the enforcement of law, the government would stand on a firmer basis, and questions would settle themselves.听
We no longer petition legislature nor congress to give us the right to vote. We appeal to the women everywhere to assume their too long neglected 鈥渃itizen鈥檚 right to vote.鈥� We appeal to the inspectors of elections everywhere to receive the votes of all United States citizens as it is their duty to do. We appeal to United States commissioners and marshals to arrest the inspectors who reject the names and votes of United States citizens, as it is their duty to do, and leave alone those who, like our eighth ward inspectors, perform their duties faithfully and well.
We ask the courts to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law, and wherever there is room for a doubt to give its benefit on the side of liberty and equal rights to all citizens, remembering that 鈥渢he true rule of interpretation under our national constitution, especially since its amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional, everything against human rights unconstitutional.鈥�
We ask the juries to fail to return a verdict of 鈥済uilty鈥� against honest, law鈥揳biding, tax paying United States citizens for offering their votes, at our elections. Or against intelligent, worthy young men, inspectors of elections, for receiving and counting such citizens鈥� votes.
And it is on this line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot鈥攁ll peaceably, but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before the law.
Footnotes
- 1. Charles Sumner (1811鈥�1874). A senator from Massachusetts who served from 1851 to 1874.
- 2. Peter Daniel (1784鈥�1860). Daniel served on the U.S. Supreme Court beginning in 1847 during the tenure or Chief Justice Taney.
- 3. Roger Taney (1777鈥�1864). Taney served as U.S. Attorney General during the Jackson Administration before being appointed to the Supreme Court in 1836. He served as the Chief Justice for 28 years.
- 4. James Otis (1725鈥�1783). A lawyer by trade, Otis was a prominent activist in the years preceding the Revolutionary War. He inspired the phrase 鈥淣o taxation without representation.鈥�
- 5. Benjamin Franklin (1706鈥�1790). A notable Founding Father, Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence and later served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.
- 6. Thomas Paine (1737鈥�1809). Paine was a pamphleteer during the late 18th century who advocated for independence. He is most known for Common Sense and Rights of Man.
- 7. Benjamin F. Butler (1818鈥�1893). Butler was as an officer in the Civil War before serving in the House of Representatives from 1867鈥�75 and 1877鈥�79.
Next Document
Annual Message to Congress (1873)
December 01, 1873
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