@prashanthamine
Mumbai: For a feisty lady who fought hard to ensure universal suffrage for American women more than a century ago, US President Donald J Trump on August 18 last month announced that he was going to grant Presidential Pardon to Susan B Anthony then aged 52 for defying the male only voting right in 1872, it seems to be too little, too late. But it was her crusade that led to American women being granted the right to vote via the 19th Amendment that came into effect on August 18, 1920, a good 14 years after her death in 1906.
The Presidential pardon has come a good 100 years after the 19th Amendment was ratified by the US Congress. It is a far cry from India where women were granted universal suffrage right at the time of Independence in 1947.
Very few of the early 150 odd women who under the leadership of Susan B Anthony had led the fight were alive in 1920 when the US Congress voted to allow all women the right to vote. “Susan B Anthony is not on trial, the United States is on trial”, is how one Matilda Joslyn Gage summed up the mood among American women when the trial began on June 17, 1873 in Canandaigua in Ontario county of New York. She was charged for illegally voting in the US Presidential elections on November 5, 1872.
It was not that she did something suddenly out of the blue. She had been advocating for the right since 1852. She first raised the demand at the women’s rights convention that was held in Syracuse city in New York State.
Just days prior to the US Presidential elections, Susan B Anthony and her three sisters on November 1, 1872 entered a voter registration office that was set up in a local barbers shop and demanded that they be registered as voters. Election Inspector E T Marsh then allowed their names to be registered as voters. In all names of about 14 women were registered as voters on that day.
But no sooner had he done that there were calls made for arrest of the voting inspectors who had allowed the women to be enrolled as voters. Anthony had then cast her ballot in Rochester, New York on November 5, 1872 in favor of US Grant and other Republicans. A salt manufacturer from Rochester, New York, named Sylvester Lewis, a Democrat poll watcher had then filed a complaint charging Anthony of casting an illegal ballot.
The then US Commissioner William C Stross issued an arrest warrant for Susan B Anthony on November 14. The warrant charged Anthony with voting in a federal election without having a lawful right to vote and in violation of section of an act of the Congress enacted in 1870 (14th Amendment). The Enforcement Act carried a maximum penalty of US $500 or three years imprisonment.
Anthony refused to accept bail and was held in custody until the grand jury met in January 1873. Her Attorney Henry Selden had argued before US District Judge in Albany, Nathan Hall to issue a warrant of Habeas Corpus ordering the release of Anthony. To the contrary, the judge raised the penalty for Anthony from $500 to $1000, which Anthony again refused to pay.
Selden had tried to pay for the fine, over which Anthony expressed her displeasure as it prevented her case from reaching the US Supreme Court. After her release from custody she went about giving lectures on the topic ‘Is it a crime for a citizen of the United States to Vote?’
On January 24, 1873, a grand jury of 20 men returned an indictment against Anthony charging her with ‘knowingly, wrongfully and unlawfully’ voting for a member of the Congress ‘without having a lawful right to vote’.
As per records available of those days, the actual two day trial of Susan B Anthony was held from June 17 to June 18, 1873. US Supreme Court judge Ward Hunt was supposed to hear Anthony’s case. Midway through the trial, Judge Ward Hunt pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and declared “the Fourteenth Amendment gives no right to a woman to vote, and the voting by Miss Anthony was in violation of the law”.
Anthony later in her diary wrote “the greatest judicial outrage history has ever recorded”. Judge Hunt then had concluded “Madam the court will not order you committed until the fine is paid”. Anthony never paid the fine. Her petition to the Congress to remit the fine was never acted upon.
About 150 women then had tried to vote in 1872 and one woman Virginia Minor was unsuccessful in casting her ballot at St Louis. She later sued voter registrar Reese Happersett. The US Supreme Court had then ruled that under the 14th Amendment, the term citizenship meant – ‘membership in a nation and nothing more”. The Minor vs Happersett would be the law for nearly half a century until the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
Regretfully she did not live to see the day of August 18, 1920 when women in the US were granted the right to vote in elections. At a function held at the White House to mark 100 years of the signing of the 19th Amendment, US President Donald J Trump announced that he will pardon Susan B Anthony, the leader of women’s suffrage movement who was arrested for violating male-only voting laws in 1872.
The act of pardon is being seen as finally absolving late Susan B Anthony of a federal crime in 1872 and the fact that she had not paid the fine of $1000. It brings closure and restores the honor of Susan B Anthony who is regarded as being instrumental in ensuring that American women got their right to vote.
