Susan B. Anthony on the First Women to Challenge the Prohibition on Women Voting

Women had always been deprived of the right to vote in the United States, but in the last half of the 19th century challenges to this policy arose. Susan B. Anthony was the most prominent leader in this new women’s rights movement, and she devoted more than fifty years of her life to the cause of woman suffrage. She, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association in 1869, which advocated and agitated for giving women the right to vote.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became effective in 1868. Anthony believed it gave women the constitutional right to vote. The Amendment said that “all persons born and naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States,” and as citizens were entitled to the “privileges” of citizens of the United States. She believed one of those privileges was voting. As Anthony wrote in her “History of Woman Suffrage”, “By a fair interpretation of the XIV Amendment women were logically secured in their right to vote.”

Encouraged by the opinions of able lawyers and judges, Anthony and other women promptly made a practical test of this question by registering and voting. Anthony identifies the first woman to offer her vote as Marilla M. Ricker of Dover, New Hampshire. This was during the 1870 election. Later Ricker noted that her name was on the voter registry list, and her vote was received without opposition. The next woman to vote was Nannette B. Gardner of Detroit, Michigan. She registered her name in that city March 25, 1871, and voted, unquestioned, April 3rd. That’s how things stood until the 1872 Presidential election.

Bright and early on the morning of November 5, 1872, Anthony (in her hometown of Rochester, New York) and six other women presented themselves at the polling booth. The women went early to avoid any disturbance which might result from so novel a scene if it took place when the streets were crowded. Each of these new voters was in turn challenged, and each swore in her vote, except Rhoda De Garmo, who in true Quaker fashion refused either to “swear” or to “affirm,” simply saying “I will tell the truth.” Nevertheless her vote was also received.

After casting her ballot in the 1872 election Anthony was arrested and indicted for voting illegally. At her two-day trial in June 1873, which she later described as “the greatest judicial outrage history has ever recorded,” she was convicted and sentenced to pay a fine of $100 and court costs. The suffrage movement went on, but it was not until 1920, almost a half a century later, that the 19th Amendment was passed. Widely known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, it provided that “the right to vote shall not be denied on account of sex”.

Autograph letter signed, while staying with a friend at 48 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, January 23, 1897, to an unknown correspondent, about the first women to vote. “I was not the first woman who ever voted — you will find a full record of my voting, and of those who preceded me — in the Chapter on Trials — in Vol. II — of the History of Woman Suffrage. I voted in 1872 – others in 1870 — but there was not so much if any prosecution. Respectfully, Susan B. Anthony.” In the added note on the verso she writes, “The History is in several of the Chicago Libraries…corner of Division & Lake Shore Drive — have sets of it — S. B. A.” 

This is the first letter we can recall seeing in which Anthony discussed the first women to challenge the prohibition on women voting. It is a piece of history of true importance.