Susan B. Anthony
US History/Napp Name: ______
Biography:
At a Glance:
Possibly more than any other suffragist, Susan B. Anthony inspired the modern feminist movement. As one of the authors of The History of Woman Suffrage, she also helped to provide a detailed record of the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement.
~ Glencoe American Biographies
“It is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the…ballot.” ~ Susan B. Anthony
On November 18, 1872, a United States deputy marshal rang the doorbell at 7 Madison Street in Rochester, New York. When Susan B. Anthony answered, he placed her under arrest for the crime of voting in the November 5 election. At her trial the following year Anthony was found guilty and fined $100, but the government never collected the fine.
Susan B. Anthony was born to a Quaker family in Massachusetts. As a young girl she received a good education, and then became a schoolteacher in New York State from 1835 to 1849. She left teaching to join the temperance and antislavery movements, but found that the male leaders of both movements discriminated against women – especially women who wanted leadership roles. Increasingly she turned to the fledgling women’s rights movement, working with such early feminists as Lucretia Mott, Amelia Bloomer, Lucy Stone, and, most importantly, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
During the 1850s and through the Civil War, most of the emerging women’s rights leaders concentrated their energies on ending slavery. After the Civil War, Anthony and others urged Congress to expand the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to include a woman’s right to vote. Congress was not ready to respond to this request, but Anthony did not give up. From 1868 through 1870, she published a women’s rights weekly, The Revolution, which had as its motto: “The true republic – men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.” When her demands were ignored, she voted – the “crime” that got her arrested and also brought her a great deal of national recognition.
In 1869 Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the National Woman Suffrage Association, which in 1890 merged with the rival American Woman Suffrage Association. Susan B. Anthony served as president of the unified organization, known as the National American Woman Suffrage Association, from 1892 to 1900. She wrote and lectured constantly on the right of women to vote, often to hostile audiences. She traveled extensively, lobbying state legislators to pass suffrage laws. Her ultimate goal was an amendment to the United States Constitution that would recognize a woman’s right to vote in every state.
On Susan B. Anthony’s 86th birthday in 1906, she attended a dinner in her honor and spoke briefly, concluding her remarks with these words: “Failure is impossible!” She was right, but she did not live to see the Nineteenth Amendment that gave women the right to vote ratified in 1920.
Questions:
1-What happened to Susan B. Anthony on November 18, 1872? ______
2-Why was Susan B. Anthony arrested? ______
3-What was Ms. Anthony’s punishment? ______
4-Why do you think the government never collected the fine? ______
5-Describe Susan B. Anthony’s early years. ______
6-Why did Susan B. Anthony leave teaching? ______
7-What upset Susan B. Anthony about the leadership of the temperance and antislavery movements? ______
8-What did Susan B. Anthony do in response to discrimination against women? ______
9-Who were some of the early feminists Susan B. Anthony worked with? ______
10-What did most women’s rights leaders concentrate on during the 1850s and through the Civil War? ______
11-What did Susan B. Anthony urge Congress to do after the Civil War? ______
12-What was Congress’ response to Ms. Anthony’s urging? ______
13-What did Susan B. Anthony publish from 1868 through 1870? ______
14-What was the motto of the weekly? ______
15-Why did Susan B. Anthony vote if women were not allowed to vote? ______
16-Define civil disobedience. Was Ms. Anthony’s act of voting an act of civil disobedience? ______
17-What did Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organize? ______
18-What did Ms. Anthony’s organization merge with in 1890? ______
19-How did Ms. Anthony bring attention to women’s suffrage? ______
20-What was Susan B. Anthony’s ultimate goal? ______
21-What did Susan B. Anthony say on her 86th birthday in 1906? ______
22-What is the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? ______
23-When was the Nineteenth Amendment ratified? ______
24-Did Susan B. Anthony live to see the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment? ______
25-Why was Susan B. Anthony a great American hero? ______
26-Why did the Civil War Amendments draw attention to the plight of women? ______
27-Did women’s rights leaders such as Susan B. Anthony really help to achieve women’s rights, or was the extension of these rights inevitable by the 1920s? ______
28-Do women have full equality today? Explain your answer. ______
29-How does the status of women differ in diverse cultures around the world? ______
30-How can the status of women be improved in the world today? ______
Primary Source:
In the 1800s, women in the United States had few legal rights and did not have the right to vote. This speech was given by Susan B. Anthony after her arrest for casting an illegal vote in the presidential election of 1872. She was tried and then fined $100 but refused to pay.
~ historyplace.com
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 tranquillity, provide for the common defense, 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.
~ Susan B. Anthony – 1873
Questions:
1-Why did Susan B. Anthony give this speech? ______
2-Why did Susan B. Anthony quote the Preamble of the Constitution? ______
3-What is “consent of the governed”? ______
4-Define oligarchy. ______
5-Why did Susan B. Anthony refer to an oligarchy? ______
6-According to Susan B. Anthony, what is the only question left to be settled? ______
7-According to Susan B. Anthony, what is the answer to this question? ______
8-Why is this speech considered one of the great speeches of American history? ______
9-Why is it significant that Susan B. Anthony used the language of the Constitution? ______
10-How did this speech increase support for women’s suffrage? ______
This cartoon shows Susan B. Anthony chasing after President Grover Cleveland in her fight for women's right to vote
CREDIT: Cartoon showing President Grover Cleveland, carrying book “What I know about women's clubs,” being chased with an umbrella by Susan B. Anthony, as Uncle Sam laughs in background, 1892-1896. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-96565
Questions:
1-Identify the images in the political cartoon. ______
2-Identify the words in the political cartoon. ______
3-What is the meaning of the political cartoon? ______