Trial+of+Susan+B.+Anthony

Susan B. Anthony voted in the presidential election of 1872, almost 50 years before the passage of the 19th Amendment. She was later arrested and charged with illegally voting in a federal election. She had hoped to use her case to secure a Supreme Court ruling that the "citizenship" and "privileges and immunities" provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all women as well as to all men. Although she was unsuccessful in this attempt, she did succeed in using this opportunity to promote women’s through the distribution of a transcript of the trial proceedings and through speaking engagements about her experience.

Best Website: [|The Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Papers Project]

This is a great site because it contains a multitude of resources for classroom use by students. Students can access: a narrative of events, an explanation of Federal court system, a chronology of events, a legal issues section, lawyers arguments, biographies of key people, media coverage information, documents and a bibliography.

Primary Source: The Susan B. Anthony Trial http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/anthony/sbahome.html

This primary source, specifically, the Letter from Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, November 5, 1872 also found at url: http://www.fjc.gov/history/anthony.nsf/autoframe?openform&header=/history/anthony.nsf/page/header&nav=/history/anthony.nsf/page/nav_documents&content=/history/anthony.nsf/page/anthonyletter

provides students with the opportunity to read a letter from Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and to form their own opinions as to whether she felt she legally registered to vote and legally voted.

This particular source and the website that contains it is paired best with the benchmark connection of "understanding historical debate and controversy." The questions as to whether Susan B. Anthony knowingly violated voting regulations and, more importantly, the question of whether the 14th Amendment provides specific rights not formerly held by various groups, in this instance voting rights for women, are of key importance in this case. A contemporary correlary, however controversial,is the question: "Do laws and constitutions that prohibit same-sex marriage violate the 14th Amendment?" has a direct correlation to the argument related to woman's suffrage brought about by Susan B. Anthony's actions in this case. As we know, courts often overturn previous precedent setting interpretations, such as with the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings with Plessy v. Fergusen later reinterpreted by Brown v. Board of Education. It would be interesting to have students draw connections to this specific correlation among others found in contemporary society.

COMMENTS?

The letter from Anthony to Stanton is an excellent source, and very approachable and engaging for students. It shows the zeal of this first generation of suffrage leaders and their willingness to carry out civil disobedience for their cause. A contemporary resonance for me is the tactic today of Saudi women driving in order to challenge a law they see as unjust. Thanks, Jayne! SZ