Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906): Download the PDF
Susan B. Anthony is the most widely revered leader of the American woman’s suffrage movement.
“Failure is impossible.”
– Susan B. Anthony at her 86th birthday celebration.
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- Library of Congress
15th Amendment Controversy
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment, granting suffrage to black men, because it did not include women. Other suffragists supported the amendment, splitting the movement. After several decades suffragists reunited in the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Ontario County Courthouse
- Daniel Case
Arrested
Anthony was arrested for voting in the 1872 Presidential election. Tried at the Ontario County Courthouse in Canandaigua, N.Y., Judge Ward Hunt directed the jury to find her guilty. Assessed a $100 fine, she refused to pay. To avoid the possibility of appeal, the judge did not order that she be jailed.
Although “retired” at her home in Rochester, NY, Susan B. Anthony remained active in the suffrage movement and traveled extensively until her mid-eighties. (The National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House.)
- Dmadeo
This cartoon satirizes Anthony’s impatience with President Grover Cleveland. Eventually Anthony became a respected figure, invited to the White House by President McKinley for her 80th birthday.
- Library of Congress.
A Reform Sensibility
Susan B. Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father’s Quaker values were a lifelong influence. Moving to New York the family became involved in the abolitionist movement and welcomed Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison to their farm near Rochester
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed a close and enduring collaboration. Stanton maintained a room for Anthony in every house she ever owned.
- Library of Congress
Anthony and Stanton In 1851
Amelia Bloomer introduced her to Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls, New York. Stanton and Anthony began a life-long partnership. When Stanton’s children were young she wrote articles and prepared arguments for Anthony to deliver on the lecture circuit. Although remaining friends and allies throughout life, Anthony chose to focus in a single minded way on suffrage while Stanton, more radical for the time, made a broader critique of society’s restrictions on women.
“Thus closes 1871,”
- wrote Anthony in her journal “a year of hard work, six months east, six months west of the Rocky Mountains: 171 lectures; 13,000 miles of travel.”
” Indefatigable
In 1892 Susan B. Anthony became President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. A tireless speaker she also became an essential organizing presence behind suffrage campaigns in individual states across the country. Spending six months of every year lobbying in Washington, D.C., Anthony became a well-known national figure. She was irrepressible in the face of defeat and became an inspiration and mentor to younger suffragists who affectionately called her “Aunt Susan.”
The Susan B. Anthony
Amendment Susan B. Anthony did not live to see the passage of the 19th Amendment although suffragists began referring to it as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment shortly after her death. “The ages to come will revere her name,” wrote suffragist Anna Howard Shaw at her passing. In 1979 the U. S. Treasury Department issued a coin with Anthony’s likeness, the first woman to be so honored.