After Being Convicted Of Voting In The 1872 Presidential Ele

After Being Convicted Of Voting In The 1872 Presidential Election
Famous Speech by Susan B. Anthony
Stump Speech in all 29 postal¹ districts of Monroe County, New York, in 1873

Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment² for the alleged³ crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful⁴ right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution,
beyond the power of any state to deny.

The preamble⁵ of the Federal Constitution says:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense⁶, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings⁷ of liberty to ourselves and our posterity⁸, do ordain⁹ and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment¹⁰ of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot¹¹.

For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation¹² of the supreme¹³ law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld¹⁴ from women and their female posterity.

To them this government has no just powers derived¹⁵ from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious¹⁶ aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy¹⁷ of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household - which ordains¹⁸ all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord¹⁹, and rebellion
into every home of the nation.

Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States,
entitled to vote and hold office.

The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge²⁰ their privileges or immunities²¹. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely²² as is every one against Negroes.