June 18, 1873: Susan B. Anthony found guilty

On this day in 1873, Susan B. Anthony was found guilty for attempting to vote in the 1872 election.

Anthony felt that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause (that seems to come up a lot, doesn’t it?) made her a citizen, and that the rights of a citizen included voting. She cast her ballot in Rochester, New York on November 5, 1872, for the incumbent U.S. Grant and the Republican ticket.

The day after the guilty verdict was rendered, but before the sentence was read, Anthony gave a moving speech as to why her sentence was unjust, concluding with: “May it please Your Honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.”

Women would get the vote nearly half a century later, with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

For more on Anthony’s historic vote, check out this post from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Image: image c. 1855 from History of Woman Suffrage by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Volume I (1881) via Wikimedia Commons