Susan B. Anthony Casts Illegal Ballot

Context

Following the Civil War, Congress ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 to define citizenship and guarantee equal protection under the law. Women's rights advocates, including those in the National Woman Suffrage Association, contended that the amendment's privileges-or-immunities clause encompassed the right to vote for all citizens, regardless of sex. This interpretation emerged amid ongoing debates over Reconstruction amendments and the limits of state authority over elections.

Susan B. Anthony had spent decades in reform work, first in abolition and temperance before focusing on suffrage. After the Fifteenth Amendment granted voting rights to Black men in 1870, she and allies rejected compromises that excluded women and instead pursued direct action to force judicial clarification of citizenship rights. Rochester, New York, became a testing ground because local election procedures required inspectors to accept ballots from those who swore an oath of eligibility.

What Happened

On November 1, 1872, Anthony, accompanied by her sister Mary and a small group of women, approached election inspectors at a barbershop serving as a registration site in Rochester's Eighth Ward. She cited the Fourteenth Amendment and demanded registration despite New York law limiting the franchise to men. After discussion among the inspectors, including Republican Beverly W. Jones and Democrat William B. Hall, the names were entered.

Four days later, on November 5, Anthony returned with fourteen other women from the ward to vote in the presidential contest between Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley. A poll watcher challenged their eligibility, prompting the women to swear the required oath affirming their qualifications. The inspectors accepted the ballots to avoid personal liability under conflicting state and federal statutes. None of the women encountered physical resistance or public disorder at the polls.

Aftermath

Anthony was arrested at her Rochester home on November 18, 1872, by a deputy U.S. marshal following warrants issued days earlier. She and the election inspectors faced preliminary examination; only Anthony was ultimately indicted under the federal Enforcement Act of 1870 for illegal voting in a congressional election. She was committed to jail on December 26 pending trial.

Her case reached federal court in Canandaigua, New York, in June 1873. Defense attorney Henry R. Selden argued that the Fourteenth Amendment conferred the vote. Judge Ward Hunt directed the jury to return a guilty verdict without deliberation. Anthony was fined one hundred dollars, a penalty she publicly refused to pay, turning the proceeding into a platform for continued advocacy.

Legacy

The trial and Anthony's subsequent lecture tours amplified public discussion of women's citizenship and voting rights at a time when the suffrage movement remained divided. Her published account of the proceedings circulated widely and preserved legal arguments that later suffragists referenced. While the Supreme Court would reject similar claims in Minor v. Happersett in 1875, the episode illustrated the effectiveness of civil disobedience in highlighting constitutional contradictions.

Anthony's 1872 vote is now viewed as an early instance of strategic law-breaking that contributed to the long campaign ending with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Historians note it underscored tensions between federal citizenship guarantees and state election control that persisted into the twentieth century.