Susan B. Anthony's "On Women's Right to Vote"

In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886), Justice Matthews, writing for the Supreme Court, said that voting "is regarded as a fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights." But when Justice Matthews wrote those words, women had no constitutionally protected voting rights. States could—and did—make it a crime for women to cast a ballot.

It would be more than three decades before the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, remedied that injustice.

Susan B. Anthony and the Women's Suffrage Movement

Susan B. Anthony was a pioneer of the women's suffrage movement. She, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, which advocated giving women full voting rights.

Anthony's "On Women's Right to Vote"

But for Anthony, the fight wasn't simply about advocacy and arguments. She put her ideas into action. In 1872, Anthony and 14 other women voted in the presidential election. For this act, all of them were arrested under federal law. Anthony was the only one who eventually would be tried for her alleged crime.

After being arrested, Anthony delivered her now-famous speech, "On Women's Right to Vote." In it, she invoked the Preamble to the Constitution, pointing out that it addresses "We the people" not "We the male citizens." It was a mockery, she argued, to speak to women about the "Blessings of Liberty" while denying them the right to secure those blessings at the ballot box.

At the end of her brief but powerful speech, she challenged her detractors to answer this question: Are women persons?

Anthony's Trial and Beyond

During her trial, the judge wouldn't let Anthony testify on her own behalf. Instead, Anthony's male lawyer presented her arguments. In an extraordinary step, the judge refused to let jurors deliberate. Instead, he ordered them to find Anthony guilty.

Anthony was convicted of casting an illegal vote and fined $100. She refused to pay, practically challenging the judge to throw her in jail. The judge never ordered her imprisoned, because doing so would have given Anthony a chance to appeal her custody to the United States Supreme Court. The case was already a publicity disaster for the government, and he didn't want to give Anthony an even more prominent platform.

Anthony's trial made it possible for her to make her arguments for women's suffrage to a much larger audience. Though she wouldn't live to see it—Anthony died in 1906 at the age of 86—her speech and her continued advocacy paved the way for eventual ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Susan B. Anthony: "On Women's Right to Vote"

Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful 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 Preamble 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 defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain 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 enjoyment 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 ballot.

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 violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the Blessings of Liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity.

To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy—a hateful oligarchy 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 ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, 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 abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.

Learn More

You can learn much more about Susan B. Anthony's life, her women's rights work, voting rights advocacy, and her trial, including through historical newspaper articles chronicling her beliefs and her activities.

Here's a recorded performance of "On Women's Right to Vote."