November 5, 1872– In defiance of the law, Susan B. Anthony votes for POTUS, and is eventually fined $100.

Anthony cast a ballot in the presidential election, though women at the time were prohibited from doing so. The NY Times caught the tone of the court proceedings by reporting that:

“It was conceded that the defendant was, on the 5th November, 1872, a woman.”

Some backstory: Anthony did not anticipate that she would be allowed to vote. She expected to be denied registration as a voter and she would then sue for her right to vote in Federal Court. Election inspectors initially refused to register Anthony, but she argued for over an hour. Finally, after threatening to take the matter to court, she convinced the election inspectors to register her along with other 14 women.

Four days later, Anthony arrived at her polling place in Rochester to cast her vote. Anthony voted for the Republican on the ballot, Ulysses S. Grant. Two of the three inspectors decided to allow her to vote, making it official.

On November 14, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Anthony and the 14 other women for voting “without having a lawful right to vote”. The three election inspectors also received warrants.

On November 18, a marshal went Anthony’s home and asked that she turn herself in at the courthouse. Instead, she demanded that she be “arrested properly”, forcing the marshal to handcuff her and take her to court. In January 1873, a grand jury indicted Anthony.

Out on bail, Anthony gave speeches on Women’s Rights:

“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 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.”

At her trial, Anthony’s attorney argued that she did not violate the Enforcement Act, which specifies that a person cannot “knowingly” vote illegally, because she believed that she had the right to vote. He also used the trial as a chance to speak about the beliefs of the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

Following the law during that era which prevented criminal defendants in Federal Courts from testifying, the judge refused to allow Anthony to speak until after the verdict had been delivered. On the second day of the trial, after both sides had presented their cases, Judge Ward Hunt delivered his opinion, which he had put in writing. In the most controversial aspect of the trial, Hunt directed the jury to deliver a guilty verdict.

Hunt asked Anthony whether she had anything to say. She responded with the most famous speech in the history Women’s Suffrage. Repeatedly ignoring the judge’s order to stop talking and sit down, she protested what she called:

“This high-handed outrage upon my citizen’s rights… you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored.”

She scolded the judge for denying her a trial by jury, stating that even if he had allowed the jury to discuss the case, she still would have been denied a trial by a jury of her peers because women were not allowed to be jurors. Hunt sentenced Anthony to pay a fine of $100. She responded: “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty”, and she never did. If Hunt had ordered her to be imprisoned until she paid the fine, Anthony could have appealed her case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hunt announced he would not order her taken into custody, denying Anthony legal recourse.

In a separate trial, the election inspectors were also issued $100 fines, which they also refused to pay. They were arrested and jailed for a month, when President Grant issued them pardons.

It would take another 50 years until the Nineteenth Amendment passed in 1920, granting women the right to vote.