Suffragist Susan B. Anthony’s Petition to the 43rd Congress

On this date, suffragist Susan B. Anthony’s petition to the 43rd Congress (1873–1875) regarding a fine she received for voting was referred to the House Judiciary Committee. Following the Civil War, Anthony—a lifelong advocate for women’s rights—and other suffragists sought to convince Congress to strike gender-specific language in the Fourteenth Amendment and prevent passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which only prohibited restricting the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”—thereby omitting voting rights protections for women. Meeting little success, they adopted what they referred to as the “new departure” strategy, which interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as granting citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby inherently affirming suffrage rights for American women. Anthony was among several women who voted in Rochester, New York, in the November 5, 1872, election. On November 28, she was arrested on the charge of “knowingly and unlawfully” voting. Anthony used her criminal trial as a platform for her views on women’s suffrage, refusing to pay the $100 fine levied upon her conviction to gain greater publicity for her cause. After a higher court refused to hear her case, Anthony appealed to Congress for help. In her petition, she provided a description of her act of protest and her trial , imploring the House and Senate to waive her fine. Arguing that she voted “in common with hundreds of other American citizens, her neighbors,” Anthony declared “it is a mockery to call [my] trial a trial by jury.” The House Judiciary Committee declined to act on the petition, but Anthony never paid her fine nor served jail time. Fourteen years after Anthony’s death, the states ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote on August 18, 1920.