The Famous Susan B Anthony Speech of 1873


    The Susan B Anthony oratory on women’s right to vote was delivered in June 1873 at the U.S. Supreme Court. It is built on logical and persuasive reasoning and popular public speaking topics related to women’s rights. The text of the speech follows:

    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 tranquility, 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.

Effects of the Susan B Anthony Speech:

    Susan Brownell Anthony, born February 15, 1820, was an American civil rights leader who worked tirelessly for the rights of women in America. She performed thousands of public speaking engagements and gave persuasive speeches on topics related to women's rights throughout her lifetime.
    For her audacity to vote in violation of the voting statues during the 1872 Presidential election she was brought to trial and the judge sentenced her to pay $100 fine which she never paid. The government never pursued her for nonpayment of the fine, after this powerful delivery of her now famous speech. Susan B. Anthony believed women to be persons and she worked toward the full citizenship of women within their homeland.
    The ratification of the 19th Amendment occurred one hundred years after her birth and fourteen years after her famous speech given in 1873. The vote and ratification of the 19th Amendment was the result of organized and methodical actions by the brave women who suffered humiliation, torment, and abuse during this dark time in American history.