An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony

Glossary

"

"A Jury Not of My Peers": Anthony's objection, voiced in her final statement, that she was tried by an all-male jury under all-male-made law, arguing that "no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman is entitled to the franchise," so that jury, judge, and counsel alike belonged to what she called "the superior class."; Related: Judge Ward Hunt, Susan B. Anthony
"Resistance to Tyranny Is Obedience to God": The revolutionary maxim Anthony invokes at the close of her sentencing statement, urging women to the "practical recognition" of the principle as she vows to keep voting and encouraging other women to do the same, comparing her defiance of election law to abolitionists' defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law.; Related: Susan B. Anthony, The Hundred-Dollar Fine
"The United States on Trial; Not Susan B. Anthony": The title of Matilda Joslyn Gage's pre-trial address, whose thesis inverts the courtroom proceeding: it is not Anthony's conduct but the government's legitimacy that stands to be judged, since a government exercising power over the unconsenting is itself acting unjustly.; Related: Matilda Joslyn Gage

A

Anthony's Canvass Address: The speech Anthony delivered in twenty-nine Post Office districts of Monroe County and twenty-one of Ontario County in the weeks before her trial, opening with "I stand before you to-night, under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted," and arguing that voting is a natural, pre-governmental right that "governments can [not] give" and therefore cannot lawfully take away from any citizen.; Related: Susan B. Anthony, Fourteenth Amendment

C

Canandaigua: The New York village where Anthony's Circuit Court trial was held before Judge Hunt and a jury on June 17-18, 1873, and where both Anthony's and Matilda Joslyn Gage's pre-trial speeches were delivered to local audiences.; Related: Judge Ward Hunt, Matilda Joslyn Gage
Consent of the Governed: The founding axiom Matilda Joslyn Gage builds her address around: "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," delivered only through the ballot — and since women are taxed, tried, fined, and imprisoned without ever having consented through a vote, government's power over them is, by the republic's own logic, illegitimate.; Related: Matilda Joslyn Gage, The United States on Trial

E

Eighth Ward, Rochester: The election district in Anthony's home city of Rochester, Monroe County, where she registered and cast her ballot on November 5, 1872 — the act that formed the basis of the indictment against both her and the three inspectors of election who accepted her vote.; Related: Susan B. Anthony, Inspectors of Election

H

Henry R. Selden: Lead defense counsel for Anthony, whom she praised in her final statement to the court as having "argued my cause so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably" — even while pointing out that, as a man, he remained her "political sovereign" under the very laws he was contesting.; Related: Susan B. Anthony, John Van Voorhis

J

John Hooker: A Hartford, Connecticut writer whose essay closes the pamphlet, arguing on strict legal grounds — independent of the suffrage question itself — that Judge Hunt's directed verdict was an unlawful violation of the right to trial by jury that ought to concern every reader regardless of their view of women's voting rights.; Related: Right of Trial by Jury, Judge Ward Hunt
John Van Voorhis: Co-counsel alongside Henry R. Selden for Anthony's defense at the Circuit Court trial in Canandaigua.; Related: Henry R. Selden, Susan B. Anthony
Judge Nathan H. Hall: The District Court judge who presided over the grand jury proceedings that produced the indictments against Anthony and, separately, against the three election inspectors, in Albany in January 1873.; Related: Inspectors of Election, Susan B. Anthony
Judge Ward Hunt: The Supreme Court justice presiding over the Circuit Court trial at Canandaigua, whose decision to take the case from the jury and order a verdict of guilty — rather than allow deliberation — became the trial's most controversial feature, condemned at length in John Hooker's closing essay as "so remarkable, so contrary to all rules of law."; Related: Susan B. Anthony, Right of Trial by Jury, John Hooker

M

Matilda Joslyn Gage: A suffragist orator who delivered "The United States on Trial; Not Susan B. Anthony" in Canandaigua and sixteen other Ontario County towns ahead of the trial, arguing that legitimate government rests on "the consent of the governed," and that a government taxing, trying, fining, and imprisoning women while denying them the ballot exercises only "unjust powers, usurped powers, illegal powers."; Related: Susan B. Anthony, The United States on Trial

P

Privileges and Immunities: The Fourteenth Amendment language at the center of Anthony's defense — the claim that the right to vote was among the "privileges and immunities" of United States citizenship that no state could abridge, an argument Judge Hunt rejected in his written opinion delivered before the jury could deliberate.; Related: Fourteenth Amendment, Judge Ward Hunt

R

Richard Crowley: The United States District Attorney who prosecuted Anthony, opening the case by stating plainly that the only real question was one of law, not fact, since "at that time she was a woman" was not itself in dispute.; Related: Judge Ward Hunt, Susan B. Anthony
Right of Trial by Jury: The constitutional guarantee John Hooker argues Judge Hunt violated by ordering a guilty verdict instead of submitting the case to the jury for deliberation, calling the decision "subversive of the system of jury trials in criminal cases" regardless of one's view of the underlying suffrage question.; Related: John Hooker, Judge Ward Hunt, The Ordered Verdict of Guilty

S

Susan B. Anthony: The defendant, who voted in the November 1872 presidential election in the eighth ward of Rochester, New York, claiming the right as a citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment. She was indicted, tried, convicted, and fined $100, which she vowed "I shall never pay a dollar of" — a vow she kept.; Related: Fourteenth Amendment, Judge Ward Hunt, The Revolution

T

The Enforcement Act: The federal election statute under which Anthony and the three inspectors were prosecuted, which made it a crime to vote, or to knowingly receive a vote, without lawful right — the same statute Gage's address argues was being applied to punish women for an act (voting) that the government itself refused to recognize as a right.; Related: The Indictment, Inspectors of Election
The Fourteenth Amendment: The constitutional provision Anthony and her counsel relied on to argue she had a lawful right to vote, on the theory that voting was among the "privileges and immunities" of citizenship guaranteed to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. Judge Hunt's rejection of this argument is the legal crux of the whole proceeding.; Related: Susan B. Anthony, Henry R. Selden, Judge Ward Hunt
The Fugitive Slave Law Parallel: Anthony's comparison, in her sentencing statement, between women defying voting laws to claim their rights and abolitionists who defied the Fugitive Slave Law by sheltering escaping enslaved people — both, in her framing, cases of ordinary people breaking unjust, man-made law in service of a higher justice.; Related: Resistance to Tyranny Is Obedience to God, Susan B. Anthony
The Hundred-Dollar Fine: The sentence Judge Hunt imposed on Anthony after the ordered guilty verdict. She refused outright to pay it, declaring "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty," and the government, notably, never pursued collection — leaving the fine permanently unpaid.; Related: Judge Ward Hunt, Susan B. Anthony
The Indictment: The formal criminal charge returned by a grand jury in Albany in January 1873, accusing Anthony of "knowingly voting without having a lawful right to vote" in violation of federal election law, reproduced in full in Chapter 2 of the pamphlet.; Related: Nathan H. Hall, Susan B. Anthony
The Inspectors of Election: Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, the three local election officials who accepted Anthony's ballot and were themselves separately indicted and convicted for "knowingly and wilfully receiving" the vote of a person not entitled to cast one — even though the court held that their good-faith belief in her right to vote was no defense.; Related: Susan B. Anthony, Nathan H. Hall
The Ordered Verdict of Guilty: Judge Hunt's act of directing the jury to find Anthony guilty without permitting deliberation or even a formal poll, which Anthony denounced from the dock as a verdict rendered "by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women." The propriety of this directed verdict is the subject of John Hooker's entire closing essay.; Related: Judge Ward Hunt, Right of Trial by Jury
The Revolution: The newspaper Anthony had published four years before her trial, whose publication left her with a $10,000 debt she declared she would keep working to pay off — while refusing, on principle, to pay "a penny" of the court's $100 fine.; Related: Susan B. Anthony