The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume I Part 37

or rum-sellers' vote for him makes him a friend and advocate of the liquor traffic. My sense of justice and truth is outraged by the Harpers' cartoons of Greeley and the general falsifying tone of the Republican press. It is not fair for us to join in the cry that everybody who is opposed to the present administration is either a Democrat or an apostate.

I shall try to be "careful and not captious," as you suggest, but more than all, I shall try not to run myself or my cause into the slough of political schemes or schemers. And I pray you, be prudent and conscientious, and do not surrender one iota of true principle or of our philosophy of reform to aid mere Republican partisanship.

Miss Anthony never has abandoned this position and the leading advocates of woman suffrage stand with her squarely upon the ground that no party, whatever its principles, shall have their sanction and advocacy until it shall make an unequivocal declaration in favor of the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women and support this by means of the party press and platform.

There was a desire on the part of many women to test the right to vote which they claimed was conferred on them by the Fourteenth Amendment, and in 1872 a number in different places attempted to cast their ballots at the November election. A few were accepted by the inspectors, but most of them were refused. On Friday morning, November 1, Miss Anthony read, at the head of the editorial columns of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the following strong plea:

Now register! Today and tomorrow are the only remaining opportunities. If you were not permitted to vote, you would fight for the right, undergo all privations for it, face death for it.

You have it now at the cost of five minutes' time to be spent in seeking your place of registration and having your name entered.

And yet, on election day, less than a week hence, hundreds of you are likely to lose your votes because you have not thought it worth while to give the five minutes. Today and tomorrow are your only opportunities. Register now!

There was nothing to indicate that this appeal was made to men only, it said plainly that suffrage was a right for which one would fight and face death, and that it could be had at the cost of five minutes' time.

She was a loyal American citizen, had just conducted a political campaign, was thoroughly conversant with the issues and vitally interested in the results of the election, and certainly competent to vote. She summoned her three faithful sisters and going to the registry office of the Eighth ward (in a barber's shop) they asked to be registered. There was some hesitation, but Miss Anthony read the Fourteenth Amendment and the article in the State const.i.tution in regard to taking the oath, which made no s.e.x-qualification, and at length their names were duly entered by the inspectors, Beverly W.

Jones and Edwin F. Marsh, Republicans; William B. Hall, Democrat, objecting. Miss Anthony then called upon several other women in her ward, urging them to follow her example, and in all fifteen registered.

The evening papers noted this fact and the next day enough women in other wards followed their example to bring the number up to fifty.

The Rochester Express and the Democrat and Chronicle (Republican) noted the circ.u.mstance, expressing no opinion, but the Union and Advertiser (Democratic) denounced the proceeding and declared that "if the votes of these women were received the inspectors should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law." This attack was kept up till the day of election, November 5, with the result of so terrorizing the inspectors that all refused to accept the votes of the women who had registered except those in the Eighth ward where the ballots of the fifteen[65]

were received.

In a letter to Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony says: "Well, I have been and gone and done it, positively voted this morning at 7 o'clock, and swore my vote in at that. Not a jeer, not a rude word, not a disrespectful look has met one woman. Now if all our suffrage women would work to this end of enforcing the const.i.tutional supremacy of National over State law, what strides we might make from now on; but oh, I'm so tired! I've been on the go constantly for five days, but to good purpose, so all right. I hope you too voted."

The news of the acceptance of these votes was sent by the a.s.sociated Press to all parts of the country and created great interest and excitement. There was scarcely a newspaper in the United States which did not contain from one to a dozen editorial comments. Some of these were flippant or abusive, most of them non-committal but respectful, and many earnest, dignified and commendatory;[66] a few, notably the New York Graphic, contained outrageous cartoons.

Immediately after registering Miss Anthony had gone to a number of the leading lawyers in Rochester for advice as to her right to vote on the following Tuesday, but none of them would consider her case. Finally she entered the office of Henry R. Selden, a leading member of the bar and formerly judge of the court of appeals. He listened to her attentively, took the ma.s.s of doc.u.ments which she had brought with her--Benjamin F. Butler's minority report, Francis Minor's resolutions, Judge Riddle's speech made in Washington in a similar case the year previous, various Supreme Court decisions, an incontrovertible array of argument--and told her he would give her an answer on Monday. She called then and he said: "My brother Samuel and I have spent an entire day in examining these papers and we believe that your claim to a right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment is valid. I will protect you in that right to the best of my ability."

Armed with this authority she cast her vote the next day, and advised the other women to do the same. As the inspectors hesitated to receive the votes, Miss Anthony a.s.sured them that should they be prosecuted she herself would bear all the expenses of the suit. They had been advised not to register the women by Silas J. Wagner, Republican supervisor.

All three of the inspectors and also a bystander declared under oath that Daniel J. Warner, the Democratic supervisor, had advised them to register the names of the women; but on election day this same man attempted to challenge their votes. This, however, already had been done by one Sylvester Lewis, who testified later that he acted for the Democratic central committee. The general belief that these ladies voted the Republican ticket may have influenced this action.

About two weeks after election, Monday, November 18, Miss Anthony received a call from Deputy United States Marshal E.J. Keeney who, amid many blushes and much hesitation and stammering, announced that it was his unpleasant duty to arrest her. "Is this your usual method of serving a warrant?" she calmly inquired. The marshal, thus encouraged, produced the necessary legal doc.u.ment.[67] As she wished to make some change in her dress, he told her she could come down alone to the commissioner's office, but she refused to take herself to court, so he waited until she was ready and then declined her suggestion that he put handcuffs on her. She had intended to have suit brought against those inspectors who refused to register the women, but it never had occurred to her that those who voted would themselves be arrested.

Under date of November 27, Judge Selden wrote her: "I suppose the commissioner will, as a matter of course, hold you for trial at the circuit court, _whatever your rights may be in the matter._ In my opinion, the idea that you can be charged with a _crime_ on account of voting, or offering to vote, when you honestly believed yourself ent.i.tled to vote, is simply preposterous, whether your belief _were right or wrong_. However, the learned gentlemen engaged in this movement seem to suppose they can make a crime out of your honest deposit of your ballot, and _perhaps_ they can find a respectable court or jury that will be of their opinion. If they do so I shall be greatly disappointed."

Miss Anthony and the fourteen other ladies who voted, went before U. S.

Commissioner Storrs, U. S. District-Attorney Crowley and a.s.sistant U.

S. District-Attorney Pond, and were ordered to appear for examination Friday, November 29. Following is a portion of the examination of Miss Anthony by the commissioner:

Previous to voting at the 1st district poll in the Eighth ward, did you take the advice of counsel upon your voting?--Yes, sir.--Who was it you talked with?--Judge Henry E. Selden.--What did he advise you in reference to your legal right to vote?--He said it was the only way to find out what the law was upon the subject--to bring it to a test case.--Did he advise you to offer your vote?--Yes, sir.--State whether or not, prior to such advice, you had retained Mr. Selden. No, sir.--Have you anything further to say upon Judge Selden's advice?--I think it was sound.--Did he give you an opinion upon the subject?--He was like the rest of you lawyers--he had not studied the question.--What did he advise you?--He left me with this opinion: That he was a conscientious man; that he would thoroughly study the subject of woman's right to vote and decide according to the law.--Did you have any doubt yourself of your right to vote?--Not a particle.

Cross-examination--Would you not have made the same efforts to vote that you did, if you had not consulted with Judge Selden?--Yes, sir.--Were you influenced in the matter by his advice at all?--No, sir.--You went into this matter for the purpose of testing the question?--Yes, sir; I had been resolved for three years to vote at the first election when I had been at home for thirty days before.

It is an incident worthy of note that this examination took place and the commissioner's decision was rendered in the same dingy little room where, in the olden days, fugitive slaves were examined and returned to their masters. While the attorneys were endeavoring to agree upon a date for the hearing of arguments, Miss Anthony remarked that she should be engaged lecturing in central Ohio until December 10. "But you are supposed to be in custody all this time," said the district-attorney. "Oh, is that so? I had forgotten all about that,"

she replied. That night she wrote in her diary: "A hard day and a sad anniversary! Ten years ago our dear father was laid to rest. This evening at 7 o'clock my old friend Horace Greeley died. A giant intellect suddenly gone out!"

The second hearing took place December 23 in the common council chamber, in the presence of a large audience which included many ladies, the newspapers stating that it had rather the appearance of a social gathering than an arraignment of criminals. Of those on trial one paper said: "The majority of these law-breakers were elderly, matronly-looking women with thoughtful faces, just the sort one would like to see in charge of one's sick-room, considerate, patient, kindly."

At Judge Selden's request, Hon. John Van Voorhis, one of the ablest lawyers in Rochester, had been a.s.sociated with himself for the defense.

Both made strong, logical arguments, and Miss Anthony herself spoke most earnestly in behalf of the three inspectors, who also had been arrested. The commissioner held all of them guilty, fixed their bail at $500 each, and gave them until the following Monday to furnish it. All did so except Miss Anthony, who refused to give bail and applied for a writ of habeas corpus from U. S. District-Judge N. K. Hall. The Rochester Express, which stood n.o.bly by her through this ordeal, said editorially:

Miss Anthony had a loftier end in view than the making of a sensation when she registered her name and cast her vote. The act was in harmony with a life steadily consecrated to a high purpose from which she has never wavered, though she has met a storm of invective, personal taunt and false accusation, more than enough to justify any person less courageous than she in giving up a warfare securing her only ingrat.i.tude and abuse. But Miss Anthony has no morbid sentiment in her nature. There is at least one woman in the land--and we believe there are a good many more--who does not whine others into helping her over a hard spot, or even plead for help, but bravely helps herself and puts her hand to the plough without turning back. Those who are now regarding her as practically condemned to State prison or the payment of a fine of $500, need not waste their sympathy, for she would suffer either penalty with heroic cheerfulness if thereby she might help bring about the day when the principle "no taxation without representation" meant something more than it does. In writing lately to a friend, she thus expressed herself:

"Yes, I hope you will be present at the examination, to witness the grave spectacle of fifteen native born citizens, of sound mind and not convicted of any crime, arraigned in the United States criminal courts to answer for the offense of illegal voting, when the United States Const.i.tution, the supreme law of this land, says, 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States ... are citizens; no State shall deny or abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens;' and 'The right of citizens to vote shall not be denied.'

The one question to be settled is, are personal freedom and personal representation inherent rights and privileges under democratic-republican inst.i.tutions, or are they things of legislation, precisely as under old monarchical governments, to be given and taken at the option of a ruling cla.s.s or of a majority vote? If the former, then is our country free indeed; if the latter, then is our country a despotism, and we women its victims!"

Under date of December 12, Benjamin F. Butler, then a member of Congress, wrote Miss Anthony regarding her case:

I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that the Const.i.tution authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as it authorizes trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to citizens.

But the difficulty is, the courts long since decided that the const.i.tutional provisions do not act upon the citizens, except as guarantees, ex proprio vigore, and in order to give practical force to them there must be legislation. As, for example, in trial by jury, a man can invoke the Const.i.tution to prevent his being tried, in a proper case, by any other tribunal than a jury; but if there is no legislation, congressional or other, to give him a trial by jury, I think, under the decisions, it would be very difficult to see how it might be done. Therefore, the point is for the friends of woman suffrage to get congressional legislation.

[Autograph: Benjamin F. Butler]

The results of the trial showed that General Butler was right in thinking that further legislation would be required to enable women to vote under the Const.i.tution of the United States. It proved also that a judge could set aside the right of a citizen to a trial by jury, supposed to be guaranteed by every safeguard which could be thrown around it by this same Const.i.tution.

[Footnote 63: Present, Lyman Trumbull, Illinois, chairman; Roscoe Conkling, New York; F.F. Frelinghuysen, New Jersey; Matthew H.

Carpenter, Wisconsin.]

[Footnote 64: See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, pp. 499 and 506.]

[Footnote 65: Susan B. Anthony, Mary S. Anthony, Guelma Anthony McLean, Hannah Anthony Mosher, Rhoda De Garmo, Sarah Truesdale, Mary Pulver, Lottie B. Anthony, Nancy M. Chapman, Susan M. Hough, Hannah Chatfield, Margaret Leyden, Mary Culver, Ellen S. Baker, Mary L. Hebard (wife of the editor of the Express).]

[Footnote 66: When a jurist as eminent as Judge Henry R. Selden testifies that he told Miss Anthony before election that she had a right to vote, and this after a careful examination of the question, the whole subject a.s.sumes new importance.... How grateful to Judge Selden must all the suffragists be! He has struck the strongest and most promising blow in their behalf that has yet been given. Dred Scott was the pivot on which the Const.i.tution turned before the war. Miss Anthony seems likely to occupy a similar position now.--New York Commercial Advertiser.

The arrest of the fifteen women of Rochester, and the imprisonment of the renowned Miss Susan B. Anthony, for voting at the November election, afford a curious ill.u.s.tration of the extent to which the United States government is stretching its hand in these matters. If these women violated any law at all by voting, it was clearly a statute of the State of New York, and that State might safely be left to vindicate the majesty of its own laws. It is only by an over-strained stretch of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that the national government can force its long finger into the Rochester case at all.--New York Sun.

Whatever may be said of Susan B. Anthony, there is no doubt but she has kept the public mind of the country agitated upon the woman's rights question as few others, male or female, could have done. She has displayed very superior judgment and has seldom been led into acts of even seeming impropriety. She has won the respect of all cla.s.ses by her ability, her consistency and her spotless character, and she today stands far in advance of all her co-workers in the estimation of the people. The fact that she voted at Rochester at the presidential election has created no little commotion on the part of the press, but if women are to become voters, who but the one who has taken the lead in the advocacy of that right should be among the first to cast the vote?--Toledo Blade.

We pause in the midst of our pressing duties to admire the zeal and courage which find in the course of these ladies a challenge to battle, while evils a thousandfold worse, such as bribery, etc., are permitted to pa.s.s unnoticed.... The ladies who voted in this city on the 5th of this month did so from the conviction that they had a const.i.tutional right to the ballot. In that they may or may not have been mistaken, but they certainly can not be justly cla.s.sed with the ordinary illegal voter and repeater. The latter always vote for a pecuniary consideration, knowingly and intentionally violating our laws to get gain. The former voted for a principle and to a.s.sert what, they esteem a right. The attempt by insinuation to cla.s.s them among the ordinary illegal voters will react upon its movers.--Rochester Evening Express.]

[Footnote 67: Complaint has this day been made by ---- on oath before me, William C. Storrs, commissioner, charging that Susan B. Anthony, on or about the fifth day of November, 1872, at the city of Rochester, N.

Y., at an election held in the Eighth ward of the city of Rochester aforesaid, for a representative in the Congress of the United States, did then and there vote for a representative in the Congress of the United States, without having a lawful right to vote and in violation of Section 19 of an act of Congress approved May 31, 1870, ent.i.tled "An act, to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote in the several States of this Union and for other purposes."]

CHAPTER XXV.

TRIAL FOR VOTING UNDER FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

1873.

In the midst of these hara.s.sing circ.u.mstances Miss Anthony made the usual preparations for holding the annual woman suffrage convention in Washington, January 16 and 17, 1873, and presided over its deliberations. In her opening speech she said:

There are three methods of extending suffrage to new cla.s.ses. The first is for the legislatures of the several States to submit the question to those already voters. Before the war this was the only way thought of, and during all those years we pet.i.tioned the legislatures to submit an amendment striking the word "male" from the suffrage clause of the State const.i.tutions. The second method is for Congress to submit to the several legislatures a proposition for a Sixteenth Amendment which shall prohibit the States from depriving women citizens of their right to vote. The third plan is for women to take their right under the Fourteenth Amendment of the National Const.i.tution, which declares that all persons are citizens, and no State shall deny or abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens.

Again, there are two ways of securing the right of suffrage under the Const.i.tution as it is, one by a declaratory act of Congress instructing the officers of election to receive the votes of women; the other by bringing suits before the courts, as women already have done, in order to secure a judicial decision on the broad interpretation of the Const.i.tution that all persons are citizens, and all citizens voters. The vaults in yonder Capitol hold the pet.i.tions of 100,000 women for a declaratory act, and the calendars of our courts show that many are already testing their right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. I stand here under indictment for having exercised my right as a citizen to vote at the last election; and by a fiction of the law, I am now in custody and not a free person on this platform.

Among the forcible resolutions adopted were one a.s.serting "that States may regulate all local questions of property, taxation, etc., but the inalienable personal rights of citizenship must be declared by the Const.i.tution, interpreted by the Supreme Court, protected by Congress, and enforced by the arm of the Executive;" and another declaring "that the criminal prosecution of Susan B. Anthony by the United States, for the alleged crime of exercising the citizen's right of suffrage, is an act of arbitrary and unconst.i.tutional authority and a blow at the liberties of every citizen of this nation." Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, Rev. Olympia Brown and others made ringing speeches on the right of women to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, defended the course of Miss Anthony and denounced her arrest. This was the tenor of all the addresses. She was unanimously elected president for the ensuing year, notwithstanding prison walls loomed up before her; and then she hastened back to prepare for her legal battle.

Miss Anthony met her counsel at Albany, and on January 21 Judge Selden made a masterly argument before U.S. District-Judge N.K. Hall, in support of her demand for a writ of habeas corpus, and asked the discharge of the prisoner on the grounds: 1st, That in the act complained of she discharged a duty or, at all events, exercised a right, instead of committing a crime; that she had a const.i.tutional and lawful right to offer her ballot and to have it received and counted; that she, as well as her brothers, was ent.i.tled to express her choice as to the persons who should make, and those who should execute the laws, inasmuch as she, as well as they, would be bound to observe them.