On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony cast a ballot in the presidential election in Rochester, New York, challenging women’s exclusion from voting. Days earlier, she had persuaded local election inspectors to register her, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment protected her right to vote as an American citizen. Anthony and fourteen other women ultimately cast ballots in her Rochester district, turning a constitutional argument into a direct challenge to the voting restrictions of the day.
Anthony was arrested on November 18 and later prosecuted in federal court for voting without a lawful right to do so. Her trial began in Canandaigua, New York, on June 17, 1873. Presiding Justice Ward Hunt denied her request to testify on her own behalf and directed the jury to return a guilty verdict without deliberation—an action her defense challenged as a denial of her right to trial by jury.
When Hunt sentenced her to a $100 fine and the costs of prosecution, Anthony declared, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.” She never paid the fine. Although her constitutional argument failed in court, her vote and prosecution brought public attention to a fundamental question: how could women be citizens of the United States yet remain excluded from the ballot box? Her defiance became a memorable episode in the long struggle for women’s suffrage.
