Today in Herstory: Susan B. Anthony Will Be Sentenced for Voting in November (18 june 1873)
(reading about the way this "trial" was conducted is enough to make one very ill)
Today in Herstory: Susan B. Anthony Will Be Sentenced for Voting in November
June 18, 1873: Susan B. Anthony has been found guilty of having “illegally” voted in last November’s General Election.
She was not convicted by a true jury of her peers, because women cannot serve on juries. Nor was she able to eloquently make her own case to the all-male jury, because the judge ruled in favor of the prosecution when the District Attorney said that as a woman “she is not competent as a witness in her own behalf.” Her conviction did not come about after secret deliberations by an unbiased jury because Judge Ward Hunt, after hearing the evidence, directed the jurors to find her guilty. Even a defense motion to poll the jurors individually after they delivered their verdict was denied. Only the final act of this farce now remains, with sentencing scheduled for tomorrow.
Anthony’s test of whether the 14th Amendment confers the vote upon women began on Friday, November 1st of last year when she, three of her sisters, and a number of other women went into a barber shop in the Eighth Ward of Rochester, New York, to register to vote for the 1872 General Election. Though it took an hour of debate with the Registrars – and the threat of suing them personally if she was refused the right to register – they finally did allow it. Four days later she came back to cast her vote.
As she explained in a letter written to Elizabeth Cady Stanton on election night, November 5th:
Dear Mrs. Stanton:
Well, I have been and gone and done it! Positively voted the Republican ticket – straight – this a.m. at 7 O’clock, and swore my vote in at that. Was registered on Friday, and 15 other women followed suit in this ward, then in sundry other wards. Some 20 or 30 other women tried to register, but all save two were refused.
All my three sisters voted – Rhoda De Garmo, too. Amy Post was rejected and she will immediately bring action for that – similar to the Washington action. Hon. Henry R. Selden will be our counsel; he has read up the law and all of our arguments, and is satisfied that we are right, and ditto the Old Judge Selden, his elder brother. So we are in a fine state of agitation in Rochester on the question.
. . . . . .
A warrant for Anthony’s arrest was issued on November 14th after a ****Democratic **
poll-watcher named Sylvester Lewis fled a complaint. She was charged with voting in a Congressional Election “without having a lawful right to vote and in violation of Section 19 of an Act of Congress.” The Enforcement Act carries a penalty of up to $500 and three years’ imprisonment. Arrest by a U.S. Deputy Marshal followed on November 18th.
. . . .
http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2015/06/18/today-in-herstory-susan-b-anthony-will-be-sentenced-for-voting-in-november/
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