on women's right to vote susan b anthony speech

03 Nov 2001 Susan B. Anthony on a Woman’s Right to Vote – 1873

Woman’s Rights to the Suffrage

by Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

This speech was delivered in 1873, after Anthony was arrested, tried and fined $100 for voting in the 1872 presidential election. 

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 for ever 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 right 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 in every one against Negroes.

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Pieces of History

Susan B. Anthony: Women’s Right to Vote

The National Archives is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment with the exhibit Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote ,  which runs in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery of the National Archives in Washington, DC, through January 3, 2021. Today’s post comes from Michael J. Hancock in the National Archives History Office.

More than any other woman of her time, Susan B. Anthony recognized that many of the legal disabilities women faced were the result of their inability to vote.

Anthony worked tirelessly her whole adult life fighting for the right to vote, and she was instrumental in bringing the issue to the forefront of American consciousness.

She spoke publicly, petitioned Congress and state legislatures, and published a feminist newspaper for a cause that would not come to fruition until the ratification of the 19th Amendment , 14 years after her death in 1906.

Despite this, she found satisfaction in casting a ballot (albeit illegally) in Rochester, New York, on November 5, 1872. What followed was a trial for illegal voting and a unique opportunity for Anthony to broadcast her arguments for woman suffrage to a wider audience.

Anthony had planned to vote long before 1872. She reasoned that she would take the first opportunity as long as she met the New York state requirement of voters residing in their homes for at least 30 days prior to the election in the district where they cast their vote.  Anthony’s logic was based on the recently adopted 14th Amendment that stated that “all persons born and naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States.” Anthony reasoned that that since women were citizens, and the privileges of citizens of the United States included the right to vote,  states could not exclude women from the electorate.

The 15th Amendment’s reference to the “right of citizens of the United States to vote” suggested women’s right as citizens to vote. Fundamentally, woman suffragists’ objective was to validate their interpretation  through either an act of Congress or a favorable decision in Federal courts.

On November 5, 1872, in the first district of the Eighth Ward of Rochester, New York, Anthony and 14 other women voted in an election that included choosing members of Congress. The women had successfully registered to vote several days earlier but, a poll watcher challenged Anthony’s qualification as a voter.

Taking the steps required by state law when a challenge occurred, the  election inspectors asked Anthony under oath if she was a citizen, if she lived in the district, and if she had accepted bribes for her vote. Anthony answered these questions to their satisfaction, and the inspectors promptly placed her ballot in the boxes.

Nine days after the election, U.S. Commissioner William Storrs, an officer of the Federal courts, issued warrants for the arrest of Anthony and an order to the U.S. Marshal to deliver her to county jail along with the 14 other women who voted in Rochester. Based on the complaint of Sylvester Lewis, a poll watcher who challenged Anthony’s vote, the women were charged with voting for members of the U.S. House of Representatives “without having a lawful right to vote,” a violation of section 19 of the Enforcement Act of 1870.

Anthony’s attorneys researched a way to appeal her arrest and detention to the Supreme Court of the United States. They decided that a petition to the district court for a writ of habeas corpus would ensure it would reach the Supreme Court, even though Congress in 1868 had repealed the provision for appeals on writs of habeas corpus from the lower Federal courts to the Supreme Court. Attorney John Van Voorhis argued that Anthony had a right to vote and petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus that would bring Anthony before the court so that the judge could rule if she were properly held in custody.

Judge Nathan Hall of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York granted the petition. The U.S. attorney announced that he was unprepared for argument, and the judge rescheduled the hearing for January in Albany.

At the district court session in Albany, Anthony’s attorney Henry Selden broadened the argument he made previously and insisted Anthony had a right to vote. He acknowledged that the question of women’s right to vote was still unresolved and that the government had no justification for holding her as a criminal defendant. Anthony’s release from custody was eventually denied.

Anthony’s trial began in Canandaigua, New York, on June 17, 1873. Before a jury of 12 men, Richard Crowley stated the government’s case and called an inspector of election as a witness to confirm that Anthony cast a ballot for congressional candidates.

Henry Selden had himself sworn in as a witness and testified that he advised Anthony that the Constitution validated her capacity to vote. In transcripts of Susan B. Anthony’s testimony in her own defense, it is clear that she was thoughtful and deliberate in her account of how she made the progression from interpretation of the Constitution to affirming her perceived rights under its principles.  

Judge Hunt declared that “The Fourteenth Amendment gives no right to a woman to vote, and the voting by Miss Anthony was in violation of the law.” He rejected Anthony’s argument that her good faith prohibited a finding that she “knowingly” cast an illegal vote and stated that “Assuming that Miss Anthony believed she had a right to vote which was illegal, and thus is subject to the penalty of law.” He surprised Anthony and her attorney by directing the jury deliver a verdict of guilty.  

In her sentencing, Susan B. Anthony was given the opportunity to address the court, and what she said stunned everyone in the courthouse:

Your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural right, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government. 

Ultimately, Anthony was fined $100 and the cost of prosecution. In steadfast defiance, she declared that she would never pay a penny of her fine, and the government never made a serious effort to collect. In the end, Susan B. Anthony’s protest echoed the old revolutionary adage that “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”

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Very interesting info, thank you!

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I’m lucky enough to live right across the street from Mount Hope Cemetery where this tremendous patriotic women has been buried along with her family. We visit her every week & will especially visit her today & ask her to PLEASE watch over & bless this country and city she loved so very much🇺🇸 Thank you Susan

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Susan B. Anthony

Champion of temperance, abolition, the rights of labor, and equal pay for equal work, Susan Brownell Anthony became one of the most visible leaders of the women’s suffrage movement . Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton , she traveled around the country delivering speeches in favor of women's suffrage.

Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father, Daniel, was a farmer and later a cotton mill owner and manager and was raised as a Quaker. Her mother, Lucy, came from a family that fought in the American Revolution and served in the Massachusetts state government. From an early age, Anthony was inspired by the Quaker belief that everyone was equal under God. That idea guided her throughout her life. She had seven brothers and sisters, many of whom became activists for justice and emancipation of slaves. 

After many years of teaching, Anthony returned to her family who had moved to New York State. There she met William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass , who were friends of her father. Listening to them moved Susan to want to do more to help end slavery. She became an abolition activist, even though most people thought it was improper for women to give speeches in public. Anthony made many passionate speeches against slavery.

In 1848, a group of women held a convention at Seneca Falls , New York. It was the first Women’s Rights Convention in the United States and began the Suffrage movement. Her mother and sister attended the convention but Anthony did not. In 1851, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. T he two women became good friends and worked together for over 50 years fighting for women’s rights. They traveled the country and Anthony gave speeches demanding that women be given the right to vote. At times, she risked being arrested for sharing her ideas in public.

Anthony was good at strategy. Her discipline, energy, and ability to organize made her a strong and successful leader. Anthony and Stanton co-founded the American Equal Rights Association. In 1868 they became editors of the Association’s newspaper, The Revolution , which helped to spread the ideas of equality and rights for women. Anthony began to lecture to raise money for publishing the newspaper and to support the suffrage movement. She became famous throughout the county. Many people admired her, yet others hated her ideas.

When Congress passed the 14 th and 15 th amendments  which give voting rights to African American men, Anthony and Stanton were angry and opposed the legislation because it did not include the right to vote for women. Their belief led them to split from other suffragists. They thought the amendments should also have given women the right to vote. They formed the National Woman Suffrage Association , to push for a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote.

In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting. She was tried and fined $100 for her crime. This made many people angry and brought national attention to the suffrage movement. In 1876, she led a protest at the 1876 Centennial of our nation’s independence. She gave a speech—“Declaration of Rights”—written by Stanton and another suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage.

“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”

Anthony spent her life working for women’s rights. In 1888, she helped to merge the two largest suffrage associations into one, the National American Women’s Suffrage Association . She led the group until 1900. She traveled around the country giving speeches, gathering thousands of signatures on petitions, and lobbying Congress every year for women. Anthony died in 1906, 14 years before women were given the right to vote with the passage of the 19 th Amendment in 1920.

• Anthony, Susan. “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States by the National Woman Suffrage Association, July 4th, 1876.” The Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Papers Project. http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/decl.html . Accessed May 2016. 
• “Biography of Susan B. Anthony.” National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House. http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/her-story/biography.php . Accessed May 2016.
• Lange, Allison. “Suffragist Organize: National Woman Suffrage Association.” National Women’s History Musuem. http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nwsa-organize/ . Accessed May 2016. 
• Lange, Allison. “Suffragist Unite: National American Woman Suffrage Association.” National Women’s History Museum. http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united/ . Accessed May 2016.
• Mayo, Edith. “Rights for Women: The Suffrage Movement and Its Leaders.” National Women’s History Museum. https://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/rightsforwomen/index.html . Accessed May 2016.   
• “Susan B. Anthony.” National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/susan-b-anthony.htm . Accessed May 2016.
• PHOTO:  Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University .

MLA – Hayward, Nancy. “Susan B. Anthony.” National Women’s History Museum, 2017. Date accessed.

Chicago – Hayward, Nancy. “Susan B. Anthony.” National Women’s History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/susan-brownell-anthony.

• Crusade for the Vote, National Women's History Museum
• Rights for Women, National Women's History Museum
• Susan B. Anthony House
• 1873 Speech of Susan B. Anthony on woman suffrage
• Susan B. Anthony House, National Park Service
• Susan B. Anthony, National Women's Hall of Fame
• Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Project
• Public Broadcasting System (PBS) - "Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony"
• Trial of Susan B. Anthony
• Anthony, Susan B. The Trial of Susan B. Anthony (Humanity Books, 2003).
• Anthony, Katherine Susan. Susan B. Anthony: Her Personal History and Her Era (Russell & Russell, 1975).
• Barry, Kathleen. Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist (Authorhouse, 2000).
• Dubois, Ellen Carol. The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony Reader: Correspondences, Writings and Speeches (Boston: Northeaster University Press, 1992).
• Harper, Ida. Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Beaufort books - 3 volume set).
• Isaacs, Sally Senzell. America in the Time of Susan B. Anthony: The Story of Our Nation from Coast to Coast (Heinemann Library, 2000).
• Monsell, Helen Albee. Susan B. Anthony: Champion Women's Rights (Aladdin, 1986).
• Sherr, Lynn. Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words (Three Rivers Press, 1996).
• Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Ann De Gordon, and Susan B. Anthony. Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: In the School of Anti-Slavery, 1840-1866 (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
• Ward, Geoffery C. and Ken Burns. Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (Knopf, 2001).

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On Women’s Right to Vote: How Susan B. Anthony’s Famous Speech Changed the World

Looking through the lens of today, it’s absolutely shocking to think about the state of women’s rights a mere 150 years ago. We’re not too far removed from the days when women couldn’t vote and were almost seen as second-class citizens.

Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since those dark days. Women’s rights have changed enormously over the last century and a half.

Still, it’s important to look back and commend the efforts of the women who fought the battles that influenced entire cultures. And when we do that, there are few more prominent names than Susan B. Anthony.

Anthony was a prominent figure in the women’s rights movement in the United States in the late 1800s. She was also an influencer whose speaking technique offers plenty of lessons that today’s storyshowers can take forward.

We’ll look at those lessons in a moment. But first, let’s talk about just how important Susan B. Anthony was.

Who Was Susan B. Anthony?

Born in 1820, Susan B. Anthony grew up in a politically active family. From a young age, she watched her parents fight to end slavery as part of the abolitionist movement. She later grew up to become a part of the Temperance Movement. This group campaigned to limit the supply and distribution of alcohol.

It was during her affiliation with this group that Anthony encountered discrimination due to her gender. She was not allowed to speak at a Temperance Movement convention because she was a woman.

She realised that women would never achieve the respect they deserved in politics if they didn’t have the right to vote.

This revelation led to her co-founding the National Woman Suffrage Association. Alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she campaigned for the vote. Anthony began speaking wherever she could to gain supporters. She also engaged in several acts of rebellion that put her at odds with the laws of the time.

In 1920, the United States finally added the Nineteenth Amendment to its constitution. This gave women the right to vote. Unfortunately, Anthony had passed away 14 years prior and so never got to see her dream come true.

Nevertheless, she played a huge role in the suffrage movement. And with On Women’s Right to Vote, she gave one of the movement’s most influential speeches.

Anthony gave her speech following her arrest for casting an illegal vote in the 1872 presidential election. Here are four reasons why it was so effective.

Reason #1 – She Kept it Short

At Speakers Institute, we often show people the importance of keeping your speech short. As an influencer, you want your message to stick in the minds of your audience members. Going on a long-winded tirade isn’t going to help you do that.

People have limited attention spans and they want you to get to the point as quickly as possible. That’s more evident in the modern day. TED Talks last about 15-20 minutes and many speakers keep their stories short.

This wasn’t so much the case during Anthony’s day. Still, with On Women’s Right to Vote , she kept things short and to the point.

Anthony’s speech clocked in at just over 500 words. That meant that it took just a couple of minutes for her to hit her key threads and show her story.

She also used brevity and concise delivery during several portions of her speech:

“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.”

These short and sharp sentences get straight to the point and allow for rapid-fire delivery.

Keeping her speech short made its key threads more memorable. It also made them easier to digest and ensured she built a connection with her audience quickly.

Reason #2 – The Speech Had Passion

Politicians are well-versed in keeping emotion out of their speeches. Despite her passion for politics, Anthony had no such disposition. She approached her speech with the same passion and fire with which she approached all of her suffrage efforts.

Anthony attacked her oppressors with ferocity and made her anger clear throughout the speech. Take this passage as an example:

“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.”

This is a rare moment where attacking the listener is actually an effective technique. Many of those who heard Anthony speak that day were the very people that she stood against. Using words such as “odious” and “hateful” cast those people as the villains of the piece.

This passion served as a call to arms for the women who heard the speech. It also influenced many of the men who were the indirect subjects of Anthony’s attack. Using her anger, Anthony put a mirror in front of the people who oppressed her based on gender. In doing so, she forced them to confront some uncomfortable truths about the roles they played in holding women back in society.

Emotion is the key to influencing people. It’s crucial in connecting with an audience and it’s important that you don’t hide behind a mask when speaking. Anthony used emotion and passion to drive her key threads home. Her righteous vitriol ensures her speech resonated with everyone who heard it.

Reason #3 – Anthony Was Direct

Anthony made no efforts to hide from the fight that she found herself in. Her speech came at a time when she’d suffered arrest for doing something that every man in the country had a right to do.

Her point was simple. Women should have the same right to vote that men do. Because they didn’t, they were not adequately represented in the American government.

Anthony challenged her opponents with almost every word of her speech. Nowhere is that more evident than when she gives the reasons why the suffrage movement is so important.

“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.”

Here, Antony directly attacks the concept of “liberty” and how it only applied to a small portion of the population in 1872. She makes a clear point – it’s “we, the people”, not just “we, the men.”

Anthony continues by further attacking the false “liberty” that women had during the time period.

“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.”

Here, Anthony makes the point that it’s unconstitutional to deny women the right to vote. She is direct in pointing out the ridiculousness of claiming that women have liberty when they can’t vote.

Again, this shows how Anthony refused to hide behind false pretences. She made no effort to “negotiate” with her oppressors. She slammed them with the wrongness of their actions.

Reason #4 – She Used Logic As Well as Passion

If Anthony’s speech was nothing but an attack, it may not have influenced anybody. People do not like to feel as though you’re berating them. Men, in particular, may have felt a temptation to ignore Anthony’s words because of her directness and passionate attack.

Anthony recognised this, which is why she tempered her speech with a simple rhetorical question.

“Are women persons?”

Prior to this question, she gave the definition of a United States citizen:

“Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.”

This is an extremely clever technique. Anthony uses several respected sources before asking a question that nobody could answer “no” to.

She goes on to talk about how a woman’s status as a person makes her a citizen. And as a citizen, she should have the right to vote.

Anthony uses this simple logic to make the audience think. She again highlights the injustice of the situation. Only this time, she does it in a way that encourages those listening to change their thinking.

The Final Word

Unfortunately, Susan B. Anthony didn’t live to see women attain the right to vote. But her rebellious nature and impassioned speaking played huge roles in the suffrage movement. Anthony influenced an entire generation of people and inspired them to stand up against an unjust system.

Her passion made her one of the most effective storyshowers of her era. As importantly, her ability to temper her passion with logic and evidence made it difficult for others to argue against her.

All influencers can look to Susan B. Anthony to help them to make more powerful speeches.

And with Speakers Institute, you can learn how to put these techniques into practice. We encourage everyone reading this to do the following:

Head to the GREENROOM . The #1OnlineHub connecting you to the world’s leading Influencers, Training and Curriculum.

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Susan B. Anthony fought for women’s suffrage in the face of ridicule

This leading suffragist devoted her life to the movement but never got to vote—legally at least.

Susan B. Anthony was a leading force in the early suffragist movement and spent most of her life advocating for equal rights for women.

They called her “the woman who dared.” A tireless activist who crisscrossed the nation agitating for women’s rights in the 19th century, Susan B. Anthony devoted most of her 86 years to helping women get the vote. Though she was mocked, ridiculed, and often ignored, Anthony became one of the best known voices of the suffragist movement.

Born on February 15, 1820, Anthony was a member of an activist Quaker family. At first, Anthony was more interested in abolitionism than suffrage. She was first drawn to the nascent women’s rights movement by a different issue—pay equity—when she learned male teachers were paid four times her monthly salary.

Susan B. Anthony, left, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were lifelong friends and activists. In a 1902 letter , Anthony wrote Stanton, “It is fifty-one years since we first met, and we have been busy through every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of women.”

Over time, Anthony became increasingly involved with social issues such as temperance and abolition. She agitated for more comfortable, less restrictive fashions for women along with feminist activist Amelia Bloomer, and in 1851 Bloomer introduced her to suffrage advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They forged a lifelong friendship and collaborated on many reform issues.

Along the way, they encountered constant resistance to the idea of women speaking in public. Anthony, who had been raised to speak her mind, was incensed by being told to “listen and learn” at conventions in which males were encouraged to be vocal. She began to advocate for things like property rights and a woman’s right to divorce.

At first, Anthony continued her abolitionist activism, facing down riots and even being burned in effigy for speaking out against slavery. In 1866, she and Stanton founded the American Equal Rights Association, a group devoted to securing equal rights for all American citizens. (Related: Will the Equal Rights Amendment ever be ratified? )

But after the passage of the 14th Amendment guaranteeing formerly enslaved men the right to vote, a rift formed between those who thought that black men should be enfranchised before white women and those who wanted to prioritize women’s suffrage instead. Anthony interpreted Frederick Douglass ’s support of black male suffrage as an affront to women and split bitterly with him and his supporters, using racist rhetoric and saying “let…woman be first…and the negro last.”

After the split, Anthony devoted herself to women’s rights full time, publishing a feminist newspaper called the Revolution and eventually forming the National Woman Suffrage Association. She traveled the country much of the year , delivering impassioned lectures on women’s suffrage and lobbying state governments to extend the vote to women. She became a nationally recognizable (and much mocked) face of the suffrage movement.

In 1872, Anthony became even more visible when she was arrested and tried for voting in the presidential election. She was indicted by an all-male grand jury, tried by a judge who instructed the jury to find her guilty, and slapped with a $100 fine she refused to pay.

Six suffragists at the 1920 Republican National Convention in Chicago hold a banner with a quote from Anthony. Although Anthony died 14 years before women gained the right to vote, her message and drive carried on to the next generation of suffragists.

The trial was Anthony’s most controversial and public moment, but it did not stop her agitation on behalf of women’s rights. Throughout her later years, she co-wrote a history of women’s suffrage, helped broker a merger between the split national women’s suffrage groups, and continued to travel the country and even the globe speaking out for the right to vote. She ultimately reconciled with Douglass before his death in 1895.

“If I could only live another century!” she said in 1902. “I do so want to see the fruition of the work for women in the past century.” Four years later, Anthony died.

It would take until 1920 for the first women to legally vote in federal elections in the United States. Now, more than a century after her death, women bring their “I Voted” stickers to Anthony’s grave in Rochester on election days—a small but fitting tribute to the leader whose tireless work helped pave the way for women’s political rights.

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August 18, 2020

Susan B. Anthony: On Women's Right 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." – Opening line of Susan B. Anthony's speech "On Women's Right To Vote"

Despite a lifetime devoted to advancing women's rights - and particularly women's right to vote - Susan B. Anthony didn't live to see the 19th amendment ratified. She died 14 years before its passage in 1920.

Anthony pushed for equality on many fronts, including women's access to the podium. In 1853, she showed up to speak at the New York Teachers' Association to advocate for equal pay. A group of men debated for a half hour about whether it was proper for a woman to speak in public.

Anthony wound up earning her living as a public speaker, traveling the U.S. and delivering as many as 100 speeches a year. She frequently collaborated on the text of her speeches with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton once said, "I forged the thunderbolts, she fired them."

In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting in her hometown of Rochester, N.Y. The speech she gave after her arrest, " On Women's Right to Vote ," is widely regarded as one of her best--as well as one of the finest speeches in American history. Time magazine named it one of the ten best speeches of all time.

Anthony used an approach similar to her friend, the brilliant orator  Frederick Douglass , who challenged the nation's failure to extend its vaunted freedoms to Black citizens.

Of women and voting, Anthony said in her speech:

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.

Find the full text of Anthony's speech here .

For an analysis of the speech, see this article from The Eloquent Woman .

Find more inspiration from another powerful female speaker who asked "Ain't I a Woman," Sojourner Truth .

For a look at how another suffragist spoke for women's rights, using humor, see this article about the speech "Should Men Vote?"

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Susan B. Anthony, Icon of the Women's Suffrage Movement

Published: March 25, 2019

“It is fifty-one years since we first met, and we have been busy through every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of women." Susan B. Anthony to her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1902, Source: National Endowment for the Humanities

Anthony was born in 1820 near Adams, Massachusetts to a family of Quakers. At an early age, she was already aware of injustices witnessing her father’s refusal to purchase cotton from slave labor. As a teacher, she noticed that she was paid a fraction of her male counterparts. "Anthony’s experience with the teacher’s union, temperance and antislavery reforms, and Quaker upbringing, laid fertile ground for a career in women’s rights reform to grow." (NPS)

Anthony became lifelong friends with Elizabeth Cady Stanton , another staunch women’s rights activist. In 1848, Canton presented the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments at the Seneca Falls Convention which took place in upstate New York. This convention kicked off the women’s rights movement. Several activists were present including social reformer Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass escaped slave and abolitionist.

During the Civil War and the years that lead up to it, there was some strife as the suffragists were told to put their crusade aside since enslaved individuals were worse off than privileged white women. Anthony conceded that point, but reminded everyone that half the slaves were also women. This sentiment was echoed by former slave and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth. Anthony helped fugitive slaves escape and held an anti-slavery rally. She and Stanton gathered signatures to pass the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution formally abolishing slavery. In 1870, the passage of the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution caused additional rifts because it eliminated voting restrictions due to race or color, but not gender.

Despite the setback, Anthony and Stanton continued to speak out for women’s rights. Anthony "envisioned a Nation where women helped make the laws and elect the lawmakers. She envisioned a Nation that protected the rights and privileges of all Americans, regardless of skin color, sex, or any other physical characteristics." (whitehouse.gov) Anthony lived in Washington, DC, meeting regularly with Congressmen and traveling around the country giving talks. Some of the states and U.S. territories were already giving women more rights including voting, property rights, running for office, and serving on juries.

With other activists, Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. In November 1872, Anthony and other women registered as voters. Ironically, she expected to be denied registration as this had been the case for most other women who tried. On November 5, she cast her ballot and there was no uproar. A few weeks later, she was arrested. At her trial in Canandaigua, New York on June 17, 1873, Anthony was found guilty by a jury of twelve men and fined $100. She challenged the judge to hold her in custody until she paid the fine; he never did knowing this would enable her to take her case to the Supreme Court. Anthony never paid the fine. (NPS)

Susan B. Anthony saw several improvements to the lives of women: more women were going to college, controlling their own property, getting better job opportunities, and leaving abusive husbands. After her death in 1906 in Rochester, New York, the suffragists’ momentum continued. Once New York State gave women the right to vote in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson supported a constitutional amendment. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women’s Right to Vote passed the House and Senate. The 19th Amendment became known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Sources: National Park Service , Library of Congress , National Archives, The White House

Related Publications

Honoring Susan B. Anthony - 151 Cong. Rec. 2880

Remarks by Congress member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on February 17, 2005.

PDF Details

Susan B. Anthony Dollar Coin Act - 92 Stat. 1072

Public Law 95-447 was approved October 10, 1978.

Statute Compilation of Voting Rights Act of 1965 ( What's a Statute Compilation? )

Joint resolution expressing the sense of Congress with respect to the women suffragists who fought for and won the right of women to vote in the United States - 119 Stat. 457

Public Law 109-49 was approved August 2, 2005.

Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation

The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation , popularly known as the Constitution Annotated, encompasses the U.S. Constitution and analysis and interpretation of the U.S. Constitution with in-text annotations of cases decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The following are from the Constitution Annotated Centennial Edition Interim Edition : Analysis of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to August 26, 2017, S. Doc. 112-9.

Thirteenth Amendment - Slavery and Involuntary Servitude

Fifteenth Amendment - Rights of Citizens to Vote

Nineteenth Amendment - Women's Suffrage Rights

Additional Resources

• Presidential Message on Susan B. Anthony Day, 2019 (The White House)
• The 19th Amendment (National Archives)
• Susan B. Anthony Collection (Library of Congress)
• Susan B. Anthony the Struggle for Suffrage (National Archives)
• LOC Collecion: Susan B. Anthony Papers
• Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan. B. Anthony (Architect of the Capitol)
• Plan your visit to Susan B. Anthony’s birthplace (National Park Service)
• Old Friends Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony made History Together (Architect of the Capitol)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers (Library of Congress)
• Read and learn about the case, U.S. vs. Susan B. Anthony: The Fight for Women’s Suffrage , and check out the teaching resources. (Federal Judicial Center)
• U.S. Census Bureau History: Women's Suffrage

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 tranquillity, 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

Post-note: Following her death in 1906, after five decades of tireless work, the Democratic and Republican parties both endorsed women's right to vote. In August of 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was finally ratified, allowing women to vote.

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Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote

By: History.com Editors

Updated: September 14, 2022 | Original: October 14, 2009

Women gained the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment. On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exercised this right for the first time. But for almost 100 years, women (and men) had been fighting for women’s suffrage: They had made speeches, signed petitions, marched in parades and argued over and over again that women, like men, deserved all of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The leaders of this campaign—women like Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Ida B. Wells—did not always agree with one another, but each was committed to the enfranchisement of all American women.

WATCH: Women's History Documentaries on HISTORY Vault   

Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906

Perhaps the most well-known women’s rights activist in history, Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, to a Quaker family in Massachusetts . Anthony was raised to be independent and outspoken: Her parents, like many Quakers , believed that men and women should study, live and work as equals and should commit themselves equally to the eradication of cruelty and injustice in the world.

Did you know? Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton lived in a part of upstate New York that would become known as the “Burnt District” or the “Burned-Over District” because it was home to so many religious revivals, utopian crusades and reform movements: They swept through the region, people said, as unstoppably as a forest fire.

Before she joined the campaign for woman suffrage, Anthony was a temperance activist in Rochester, New York , where she was a teacher at a girls’ school. As a Quaker, she believed that drinking alcohol was a sin; moreover, she believed that (male) drunkenness was particularly hurtful to the innocent women and children who suffered from the poverty and violence it caused.

However, Anthony found that few politicians took her anti-liquor crusade seriously, both because she was a woman and because she was advocating on behalf of a “women’s issue.” Women needed the vote, she concluded, so that they could make certain that the government kept women’s interests in mind.

In 1853, Anthony began to campaign for the expansion of married women’s property rights; in 1856, she joined the American Anti-Slavery Society , delivering abolitionist lectures across New York State. Though Anthony was dedicated to the abolitionist cause and genuinely believed that Black men and women deserved the right to vote, after the Civil War ended she refused to support any suffrage amendments to the Constitution unless they granted the franchise to women as well as men.

This led to a dramatic schism in the women’s rights movement between activists like Anthony, who believed that no amendment granting the vote to Black Americans should be ratified unless it also granted the vote to women (proponents of this point of view formed a group called the National Woman Suffrage Association).

Opposing them were those who were willing to support an immediate expansion of the citizenship rights of former enslaved persons , even if it meant they had to keep fighting for universal suffrage. (Proponents of this point of view formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association.)

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups joined to form a new women’s suffrage organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association—Anthony was its second president. She continued to fight for the vote until she died on March 13, 1906.

Alice Paul, 1885-1977

Alice Paul was the leader of the most militant wing of the woman suffrage movement. Born in 1885 to a wealthy Quaker family in New Jersey , Paul was well-educated—she earned an undergraduate degree in biology from Swarthmore College and a PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania —and was determined to win the vote by any means necessary.

While she was in graduate school, Paul spent time in London , where she joined the suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst’s radical, confrontational Women’s Social and Political Union and learned how to use civil disobedience and other “unladylike” tactics to draw attention to her cause.

When she returned to the United States in 1910, Paul brought those militant tactics to the well-established National American Woman Suffrage Association. There, as the chair of NAWSA’s Congressional Committee, she began to agitate for the passage of a federal suffrage amendment to the Constitution like the one her hero Susan B. Anthony had wanted so badly to see.

On March 3, 1913, Paul and her colleagues coordinated an enormous suffrage parade to coincide with—and distract from—the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson . More marches and protests followed.

The more conservative women at NAWSA soon grew frustrated with publicity stunts like these, and in 1914 Paul left the organization and started her own, the Congressional Union (which soon became the National Woman’s Party). Even after the U.S. entered World War I , the NWP kept up its flamboyant protests, even staging a seven-month picket in front of the White House .

For this “unpatriotic” act, Paul and the rest of the NWP suffragists were arrested and imprisoned. Along with some of the other activists, Paul was placed in solitary confinement; then, when they went on a hunger strike to protest this unfair treatment, the women were force-fed for as long as three weeks. These abuses did not have their intended effect: Once news of the mistreatment got out, public sympathy swung to the side of the imprisoned activists and they soon were released.

In January 1918, President Wilson announced his support for a constitutional amendment that would give all female citizens the right to vote. In August, ratification came down to a vote in the conservative Southern state of Tennessee . The battle over ratification in Tennessee was known as the “War of the Roses” because suffragists and their supporters wore yellow roses and “Antis” wore red.

While the resolution passed easily in the Tennessee Senate, the House was bitterly divided. It passed by one vote, a tie-breaking reversal by Harry Burn, a young red-rose wearing representative who had received a pro-suffrage plea from his mother . On August 26, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, making it law.

In 1920, Alice Paul proposed an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution. (“Men and women,” it read, “shall have equal rights throughout the United States.”) The ERA has never been ratified.

READ MORE: How Suffragists Pioneered Aggressive New Tactics to Push for the Vote

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902

WATCH: The Seneca Falls Convention

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the foremost women’s-rights activists and philosophers of the 19th century. Born on November 12, 1815, to a prominent family in upstate New York, she was surrounded by reform movements of all kinds. Soon after her marriage to abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840, the pair traveled to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where they were turned away: Female delegates, they were told, were unwelcome.

This injustice convinced Stanton that women needed to pursue equality for themselves before they could seek it for others. In the summer of 1848, she—along with the abolitionist and temperance activist Lucretia Mott and a handful of other reformers—organized the first women’s-rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Some 240 men and women gathered to discuss what Stanton and Mott called “the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.”

One hundred of the delegates—68 women and 32 men—signed a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence , declaring that women were citizens equal to men with “an inalienable right to the elective franchise.” The Seneca Falls Convention marked the beginning of the campaign for woman suffrage.

Like Susan B. Anthony, Stanton was a committed abolitionist; however, she too refused to compromise on the principle of universal suffrage. As a result, she campaigned against the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed Black men the right to vote but denied it to women.

After the fight over the 14th and 15th Amendments, Stanton continued to push for women’s political equality, but she believed in a much broader vision of women’s rights. She advocated for the reform of marriage and divorce laws, the expansion of educational opportunities for girls and even the adoption of less confining clothing (such as the pants-and-tunic ensemble popularized by the activist Amelia Bloomer) so that women could be more active. She also campaigned against the oppression of women in the name of religion: “From the inauguration of the movement for woman’s emancipation,” she wrote, “ the Bible has been used to hold her in the ‘divinely ordained sphere.’” In 1895 she published the first volume of a more egalitarian Woman’s Bible.

Stanton died in 1902. Today, a statue of Stanton, with fellow women’s rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott, stands in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

WATCH: The 19th Amendment

Lucy Stone, 1818-1893

Lucy Stone, born in Massachusetts in 1818, was a pioneering abolitionist and women’s-rights activist, but she is perhaps best known for refusing to change her last name when she married the abolitionist Henry Blackwell in 1855. (This tradition, the couple declared, “refuse[d] to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being” and “confer[red] on the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority.”)

After she graduated from Oberlin College in 1847, Stone became a traveling lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society–advocating, she said, “not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex.” She continued her activism on behalf of abolitionism and women’s rights until 1857, when she retired from the anti-slavery lecture circuit to care for her baby daughter.

After the Civil War, advocates of woman suffrage faced a dilemma: Should they hold firm to their demand for universal suffrage or should they endorse—even celebrate—the 15th Amendment while they kept up their own campaign for the franchise? Some suffragists, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, chose the former, scorning the 15th Amendment while forming the National Woman Suffrage Association to try and win the passage of a federal universal-suffrage amendment.

Stone, on the other hand, supported the 15th Amendment; at the same time, she helped found the American Woman Suffrage Association, which fought for woman suffrage on a state-by-state basis.

In 1871, Stone and Blackwell began to publish the weekly feminist newspaper The Woman’ s Journal . Stone died in 1893, 27 years before American women won the right to vote. The Woman’ s Journal survived until 1931.

Ida B. Wells, 1862-1931

Ida B. Wells, born in Mississippi in 1862, is perhaps best known for her work as a crusading journalist and anti-lynching activist. While working as a schoolteacher in Memphis, Wells wrote for the city’s Black newspaper, The Free Speech .

Her writings exposed and condemned the inequalities and injustices that were so common in the Jim Crow South: disfranchisement, segregation, lack of educational and economic opportunity for African Americans, and especially the arbitrary violence that white racists used to intimidate and control their Black neighbors.

Wells’s insistence on publicizing the evils of lynching, in particular, won her many enemies in the South, and in 1892 she left Memphis for good when an angry mob wrecked the offices of The Free Speech and warned that they would kill her if she ever came back.

Wells moved north but kept writing about racist violence in the former Confederate states , campaigning for federal anti-lynching laws (which were never passed until 2022) and organizing on behalf of many civil rights causes, including woman suffrage.

In March 1913, as Wells prepared to join the suffrage parade through President Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural celebration, organizers asked her to stay out of the procession: Some of the white suffragists refused to march alongside Black people .

Early suffrage activists had generally supported racial equality—in fact, most had been abolitionists before they were feminists—but by the beginning of the 20th century, that was rarely the case. In fact, many middle-class white people embraced the suffragists’ cause because they believed that the enfranchisement of “their” women would guarantee white supremacy by neutralizing the Black vote.

Wells joined the march anyway, but her experience showed that to many white suffragists, “equality” did not apply to everyone. Wells continued to fight for civil rights for all until she died in 1931.

READ MORE: 5 Black Suffragists Who Fought for the 19th Amendment—And Much More

Frances E.W. Harper (1825–1911)

Born to free Black parents in Maryland, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was orphaned while she was still very young. She was raised by her aunt and uncle, William Watkins, an abolitionist who set up his own school, the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth. Harper attended the academy, began writing poetry as a teenager and later became a teacher at schools in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Barred from returning to Maryland by an 1854 law mandating that free Blacks who entered the South would be forced into slavery, she moved in with her uncles’ friends, whose home served as a station on the Underground Railroad .

Through her poetry, which dealt with issues of slavery and abolition, Harper became a leading voice of the abolitionist cause. She began traveling the country, lecturing on behalf of anti-slavery groups, and advocating for women’s rights and temperance causes. She also continued to write fiction and poetry, including short stories and a novel, Iola Leroy (1892), one of the first to be published by a Black woman in the United States.

In the latter half of the 19th century, Harper was one of only a few Black women included in the growing women’s rights movement. In 1866, she delivered a famous speech at the National Woman’s Rights Convention in New York, in which she urged white suffragists to include Black women in their fight for the vote.

During the debate over the 15th Amendment (which Harper supported), she and other abolitionists split with white suffragist leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and helped form the American Women Suffrage Association (AWSA). In 1896, Harper and others founded the National Association of Colored Women Clubs (NACWC), which advocated for a number of rights and advancements for Black women, including the right to vote.

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)

Terrell grew up in an affluent family in Tennessee; her formerly enslaved parents both owned successful businesses, and her father, Robert Reed Church, was one of the South’s first Black millionaires. After graduating from Oberlin College , she began working as a teacher in Washington D.C. , and became involved in the women’s rights movement.

Terrell joined Ida B. Wells in her anti-lynching campaign in the early 1890s, and later co-founded the National Association of Colored Women Clubs (NACWC) with Wells and other activists. Terrell served as the organization’s first president until 1901, writing and speaking extensively on women’s suffrage as well as issues such as equal pay and educational opportunities for African Americans.

Terrell joined Alice Paul and other members of the National Women’s Party in picketing for women’s voting rights outside Woodrow Wilson’s White House. In her view , Black women should be dedicated to the suffrage cause, as “the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount...both sex and race.”

As a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples ( NAACP ), Terrell remained an outspoken fighter on behalf of civil rights after passage of the 19th Amendment. In her 80s, she and several other activists sued a D.C. restaurant after being refused service, a legal battle that led to the court-ordered desegregation of the capital’s restaurants in 1953.

Life Story: Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931). New-York Historical Society Museum & Library . Mary Church Terrell. National Park Service . Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. National Women’s History Museum . Lucy Stone. Iowa State University: Archives of Women’s Political Communication . For Stanton, All Women Were Not Created Equal. NPR . Who Was Alice Paul? Alice Paul Institute . Her Life. The National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House . 

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