On This Day: 15 women arrested for voting, landmark trial follows - November 18, 1872
Last edited Sat Nov 18, 2023, 08:35 AM - Edit history (1)
(edited from Wikipedia)
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The New Departure
In 1869, Francis and Virginia Minor, husband and wife suffragists from Missouri, developed a strategy that became known as the New Departure, which engaged the suffrage movement for several years. This strategy was based on the belief that the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, together with the pending Fifteenth Amendment, implicitly enfranchised women, [due to citizenship].
[As a result of this strategy, over the next three years,] hundreds of women attempted to vote, [or register to vote] in dozens of localities.
Accompanied by Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist leader and a supporter of women's rights, sixty-four women unsuccessfully tried to register in Washington, D.C. in the spring of 1871, and more than seventy attempted to vote. In November 1871, the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia ruled against lawsuits brought by these women. It ruled that citizenship did not imply the right to vote, saying that "the legal vindication of the natural right of all citizens to vote would, at this stage of popular intelligence, involve the destruction of civil government" and that "The fact that the practical working of the assumed right would be destructive of civilization is decisive that the right does not exist."
[Susan B. Anthony]
The reaction of the authorities was muted in these unsuccessful attempts to vote. The reaction was sharply different when Susan B. Anthony succeeded in voting in the presidential election of 1872 in Rochester, New York. Anthony was a nationally known figure. She and Stanton had founded the Women's Loyal National League, the first national women's political organization in the U.S., in 1863 during the American Civil War. Anthony was the chief organizer of the League's petition drive against slavery, which collected nearly 400,000 signatures in the largest petition drive in U.S. history up to that time. She and Stanton were the leaders of National Woman Suffrage Association. At the time when she cast her ballot, Anthony was the nation's best-known advocate of the right of women to vote.
[The Anthony sisters register]
On November 1, 1872, Anthony walked with her sisters Guelma, Hannah, and Mary to a voter registration office in a nearby barber shop and demanded to be registered. Anthony quoted the Fourteenth Amendment to the election inspectors to justify their demand and threatened to sue the inspectors personally if they refused. The inspectors consulted a prominent local lawyer, John Van Voorhis (a strong supporter of women's suffrage), who advised them to register the women after they took the standard oaths of registry, which, he said, "would put the entire onus of the affair on them".
A skilled publicist, Anthony then went to a newspaper office to provide an interview about what had just happened. News of the women's registration appeared in the afternoon newspapers, with some of them calling for the arrest of the inspectors who had registered the women. Anthony returned to the voter registration office to ask the inspectors to stand firm and to assure them that she would cover any legal costs they might incur. Other women in Rochester began to register, bringing the total to nearly fifty.
[Election Day]
On election day, November 5, Anthony and fourteen other women from her ward went to the polling place to cast their ballots. Sylvester Lewis, a poll watcher, challenged their right to vote, thereby triggering a requirement that they take an oath stating that they were qualified to vote, which they did. The election inspectors were now in a difficult position. They were at risk of violating state law if they turned the women away because state law did not give them the authority to refuse the ballot to anyone who took the required oath. Federal law, however, made it illegal to receive the ballot of an ineligible voter. Moreover, federal law prescribed the same punishments for accepting the ballot of an ineligible voter as for refusing the ballot of an eligible voter. The inspectors decided to allow the women to vote. The negative publicity of the previous days had influenced the officials in the other wards, who turned the other registered women away.
Arrest
Anthony had not expected to vote, according to Ann D. Gordon, a historian of the women's movement. Instead, she had expected to be turned away from the polls, after which she planned to file a suit in federal court in pursuit of her right to vote. She didn't expect to be arrested either.
On November 14, warrants for the arrest of the women who had voted, and the election inspectors who had allowed them to do so, were drawn up and shown to the press. William C. Storrs, one of the commissioners for the U.S. Circuit Court for the Rochester area, sent word to Anthony asking her to meet him in his office. Anthony replied that she "had no social acquaintance with him and didn't wish to call on him".
On November 18, a deputy U.S. Marshal came to her house and said that Commissioner Storrs wished to see her in his office. When Anthony asked why, the officer replied that Storrs wanted to arrest her. Anthony said that men weren't arrested that way and demanded to be arrested properly. The deputy then produced the warrant and arrested her. Told that she was required to go with him, Anthony replied that she wasn't prepared to go immediately. The deputy said he would go on ahead, and she could follow when she was ready. Anthony said she would refuse to take herself to court, so the deputy waited while she changed her dress. Anthony then held out her wrists to be handcuffed, but the officer declined, saying he did not think that would be necessary.
[More arrests]
Fourteen [other] women who had voted and were subsequently arrested. The election inspectors who had allowed them to vote were arrested also.
The women who were arrested were held to $500 bail. Everyone posted bail except Anthony, who refused. Storrs issued a commitment authorizing the U.S. marshal to place her in the Albany County jail, but she was never actually held there.
Pre-trial speaking tour
Anthony's arrest generated national news, which she turned into an opportunity to generate publicity for the suffrage movement. She spoke in 29 towns and villages of Monroe County, New York, where her trial was to be held and which would provide the jurors for her trial.
Anthony ... argued that,
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 new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities.
Her speech was printed in its entirety in one of the Rochester daily newspapers, which further spread her message to potential jurors.
She drew attention to the inconsistent way that gendered words were used in the law. She pointed out that the New York tax laws referred only to "he", "him" and "his", yet taxes were collected from women.
Other pre-trial activity
On January 24, [prosecutor] Crowley presented the proposed indictments to the grand jury at the District Court in Albany, which indicted the women voters. Anthony again pleaded not guilty and was held on bail for $1000. Selden, [her attorney] posted Anthony's bail over her protest.
On March 4, Anthony voted once again at an election in Rochester. This time, however, she was the only woman to do so.
At an arraignment on May 22, Crowley requested the transfer of the case from the federal district court to the federal circuit court for the Northern New York District.
Trial
Justice Ward Hunt, a U.S. Supreme Court justice, presided over the trial in the federal Circuit Court. Hunt had never served as a trial judge. Originally a politician, he had begun his judicial career by being elected to the New York Court of Appeals.
The trial, United States v. Susan B. Anthony, began on June 17, 1873, in Canandaigua, New York, and was closely followed by the national press. The case was being viewed as having some farcical aspects, and the press was ready for more. The New York Times reported that, "It was conceded that the defendant was, on the 5th November, 1872, a woman."
Justice Hunt presided alone, which was contrary to established practice.
Directed verdict
After both sides had presented their cases on the second day of the trial, Justice Hunt delivered his written opinion. He had written it beforehand.
In the most controversial aspect of the trial, Hunt ruled that the defense had conceded the facts of the case, and he directed the jury to deliver a guilty verdict. He denied Selden's request to poll the jury to get their opinions on what the verdict should be. These moves were controversial because the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution begins with the words, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury".
Anthony's address to court after directed verdict
On the second day and final day of the trial, in what is ordinarily a routine move, Hunt asked Anthony if she had anything to say. She responded with "the most famous speech in the history of the agitation for woman suffrage", according to Ann D. Gordon, a historian of the women's movement.
Repeatedly ignoring the judge's order to stop talking and sit down, Anthony protested what she called "this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights", saying "you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored."
She castigated Justice Hunt for denying her a trial by jury. She also declared that even if he had allowed the jury to discuss the case, she still would have been denied her right to a trial by a jury of her peers because women were not allowed to be jurors. She said that in the same way that slaves obtained their freedom by taking it "over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law", now for women to get their right to a voice in government, they must "take it; as I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every possible opportunity."
Blocked path to Supreme Court
When Justice Hunt sentenced Anthony to pay a fine of $100, she responded, "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty" and she never did. If Hunt had ordered her to be jailed until she paid the fine, Anthony could have filed a writ of habeas corpus to gain a hearing before the Supreme Court. Hunt instead announced he would not order her taken into custody, closing off that legal avenue. Because appeals to the Supreme Court in criminal court cases were not permitted at that time, Anthony was blocked from taking her case any further.
Attempt to collect Anthony's fine
A month after the trial, a deputy federal marshal was dispatched to collect Anthony's fine. He reported that a careful search had failed to find any property that could be seized to pay the fine. The court took no further action.
Election inspectors' trial [and imprisonment]
The trial of the election inspectors who had allowed Anthony and the other fourteen women to vote was held immediately after Anthony's trial. The inspectors were found guilty of violating the Enforcement Act of 1870 and fined. They refused to pay their fines and were eventually jailed.
There was public sympathy for the inspectors, who had been in a no-win situation, facing adverse legal action if they allowed the women to vote and also if they turned them away. The jailed inspectors received food, coffee and a steady stream of visits from their supporters, including the women whom they allowed to vote. Anthony appealed to her friends in Congress for their release, and they in turn appealed to President Ulysses S. Grant, who pardoned the men on March 3, 1874. The inspectors were reelected to their offices in elections that were held on that same day.
Women voter codefendants
The fourteen women who had been arrested with Anthony were indicted in January, 1873. On May 22, they were released on their own recognizance after U.S. Attorney Crowley announced that Anthony's case would be made into a test case.
Press coverage
The Associated Press provided daily reports of the trial that were printed in newspapers across the country. In some cases, newspapers filled several columns with the arguments prepared by the lawyers and with the judge's rulings. Some newspapers were harshly critical of the women voters.
Effect on the women's movement
The trial of Susan B. Anthony helped make women's suffrage a national issue. It was a major step in the transition of the women's rights movement from one that encompassed a number of issues into one that focused primarily on women's suffrage.
Unfortunately for the suffrage movement, in 1875 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Minor v. Happersett that the Constitution did not implicitly support women's suffrage, stating that "the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone"
The Happersett decision put an end to the New Departure strategy of trying to achieve women's suffrage through the courts.
Continuing debate over directed verdicts
The controversy within the legal community over Justice Hunt's directed verdict continued for years. In 1882, a month after Justice Hunt's retirement from the Supreme Court, a circuit court judge ruled that it was wrong for a judge to direct a jury to deliver a verdict of guilty. In 1895, in Sparf v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal judge could not direct a jury to return a guilty verdict in a criminal trial.
[Donald Trump]
On August 18, 2020, President Donald Trump symbolically pardoned Susan B. Anthony on the 100th Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The pardon was symbolic because there was no-one to accept it on Anthony's behalf; and it was publicly rejected by at least one of the late feminist's contemporary representatives, the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House.
Legal commentary
"10 Trials that Changed the World", a group of articles published in 2013 in the ABA Journal (an organ of the American Bar Association), included an article called "Susan B. Anthony is Convicted for Casting a Ballot". Its author, Deborah Enix-Ross, chair of the ABA's Center for Human Rights, said the trial touched on many issues other than women's suffrage, "including the laws that supported Reconstruction, the competing authority of federal and state governments and courts, criminal proceedings in federal courts, the right to trial by jury and the lack of provisions to appeal criminal convictions." She said that, "Justice Hunt's decision to direct the jury to find Anthony guilty—without allowing the jurors to deliberate and without polling them—was so egregious that lawyers, politicians and the press spoke out against his violation of the constitutional guarantee of trial by jury." She also said, "Anthony's role in providing impetus for protecting a defendant's rights in jury trials should not be overlooked."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Susan_B._Anthony
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