When Susan B. Anthony and 14 Other Women Were Arrested for Voting Illegally in a Presidential Election

On November 18, 1872, a deputy federal marshal confronted Susan B. Anthony at her Rochester, New York, home. She was under arrest for the crime of voting in the 1872 presidential election two weeks earlier, and the marshal asked her to come downtown to meet with a commissioner. 

“Is that the way you arrest men?” she later recalled asking. When the marshal told her no, Anthony demanded to be “arrested properly.” 

At the time, voting—like a “proper” arrest—was a privilege only afforded to New York’s men. But before Election Day, Anthony successfully registered to vote, arguing that the 14th Amendment—in particular the section ensuring that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”—gave her the right. 

Usually, suffragists adopting this tactic were stopped before they could actually register. But Anthony and 14 other women in the First Election District of Rochester’s Eighth Ward were surprisingly successful and were permitted to register after discussing the amendment with election workers.  

At the voting site a few days later, the newly registered Anthony attempted to vote for incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant and all other Republicans on the ballot. A poll watcher named Sylvester Lewis asked her if she was a citizen, if she lived in the district and if she had taken bribes for her vote. Her answers were all deemed satisfactory, and she was allowed to cast her ballot. 

Nine days after the election, however, court officials issued warrants for the arrest of Anthony and her fellow “illegal voters” based on a further complaint from Lewis. Though all 15 women were arrested, the prosecution singled out Anthony. Only she was indicted and brought to trial in circuit court. 

What Crime Did Susan B. Anthony Commit?

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The trial began on June 17, 1873, in front of a jury of 12 men and presiding judge Supreme Court Justice Ward Hunt, who sometimes heard federal circuit court cases as part of his duties. The prosecution’s criminal charges rested on two simple facts: Anthony was a woman who had cast a ballot. Since these charges were difficult for Anthony’s defense to deny, her lawyers instead argued that her act of voting lacked “the indispensable ingredient of all crime, a corrupt intention” and that she was simply exercising her rights in good faith.

In the verdict of United States v. Anthony, Hunt ruled that the right to vote was not among the “privileges or immunities” that the 14th Amendment protected, asserting that good faith was not a sufficient defense. Hunt refused to let Anthony testify, insisting that the jury had nothing else to decide and ordering them to find her guilty.

Though the court fined Anthony $100, she refused to pay up. “I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty,” she told Hunt at the closing of the case. “And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, ‘Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.’”

Hunter wanted to avoid the possibility of Anthony appealing the federal case, a move that would have put the issue of women’s suffrage before the U.S. Supreme Court. So he did not jail Anthony for failure to pay the fine, and she never paid. The voting inspectors who allowed the 15 women to register were fined $25 each, but they also refused to pay.

Anthony’s groundbreaking case helped move along her cause, and a few years later, Senator Aaron A. Sargent—husband of suffragist Ellen Clark Sargent—proposed amending the U.S. Constitution in Anthony’s name. But federal lawmakers did not pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a woman’s right to vote until 1919—41 years after it was first proposed and 13 years after Anthony’s death.

On August 18, 2020—the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification—President Donald Trump pardoned Anthony of her federal conviction. But the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester rejected the pardon. In a statement, the museum’s president noted that Anthony never paid a dollar of her $100 fine. “To pay would have been to validate the proceedings,” she said. “To pardon Susan B. Anthony does the same.”

Eli Wizevich | | READ MORE

Eli Wizevich is a history correspondent for Smithsonian. He studied history at the University of Chicago and previously wrote for the El Paso Times.