An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony Part 26

The Court then asked the defendants if they had anything to say why sentence should not be p.r.o.nounced, in response to which Beverly W. Jones said:

"Your honor has p.r.o.nounced me guilty of crime; the jury had but little to do with it. In the performance of my duties as an inspector of election, which position I have held for the last four years, I acted conscientiously, faithfully and according to the best of my judgment and ability. I did not believe that I had a right to reject the ballot of a citizen who offered to vote, and who took the preliminary and general oaths; and answered all questions prescribed by law. The instructions furnished me by the State authorities declared that I had no such right.

As far as the registry of the names is concerned, they would never have been placed upon the registry, if it had not been for Daniel Warner, the Democratic federal Supervisor of elections, appointed by this Court, who not only advised the registry, but addressed us, saying, 'Young men, do you know the penalty of the law if you refuse to register these names?'

And after discharging my duties faithfully and honestly and to the best of my ability, if it is to vindicate the law that I am to be imprisoned, I willingly submit to the penalty."

And Edwin T. Marsh said:

"In October last, just previous to the time fixed for the sitting of the Board of Registrars in the first district of the eighth ward of Rochester, a vacancy occurred. I was solicited to act, and consenting, was duly appointed by the Common council.

"I had never given the matter a thought until called to the position, and as a consequence knew nothing of the law. On the morning of the first day of the last session of the Board, Miss Anthony and other women presented themselves and claimed the right to be registered. So far as I knew, the question of woman suffrage had never come up in that shape before. We were in a position where we could take no middle course.

"Decide which way we might, we were liable to prosecution. We devoted all the time to acquiring information on the subject, that our duties as Registrars would allow.

"We were expected, it seems, to make an infallible decision, inside of two days, of a question in regard to which some of the best minds of the country are divided. The influences by which we were surrounded, were nearly all in unison with the course we took. I believed then, and believe now, that we acted _lawfully_.

"I faithfully discharged the duties of my office, according to the best of my ability, in strict compliance with the oath administered to me. I consider the argument of our counsel unanswered and unanswerable."

"_The verdict is not the verdict of the jury._

"_I am_ NOT GUILTY _of the charge_."

The Court then sentenced the defendants to pay a fine of $25 each, and the costs of the prosecution.

APPENDIX.

ADDRESS OF

SUSAN B. ANTHONY,

Delivered in twenty-nine of the Post Office Districts of Monroe, and twenty-one of Ontario, in her canva.s.s of those Counties, prior to her trial in June, 1873.

_Friends and Fellow-citizens_: I stand before you to-night, 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 right_, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Const.i.tution, beyond the power of any State to deny.

Our democratic-republican government is based on the idea of the natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and a vote in making and executing the laws. We a.s.sert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property. And when 100 or 1,000,000 people enter into a free government, they do not barter away their natural rights; they simply pledge themselves to protect each other in the enjoyment of them, through prescribed judicial and legislative tribunals. They agree to abandon the methods of brute force in the adjustment of their differences, and adopt those of civilization.

Nor can you find a word in any of the grand doc.u.ments left us by the fathers that a.s.sumes for government the power to create or to confer rights. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Const.i.tution, the const.i.tutions of the several states and the organic laws of the territories, all alike propose to protect the people in the exercise of their G.o.d-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights.

"All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these, governments are inst.i.tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, nor exclusion of any cla.s.s from their full and equal enjoyment. Here is p.r.o.nounced the right of all men, and "consequently," as the Quaker preacher said, "of all women," to a voice in the government. And here, in this very first paragraph of the declaration, is the a.s.sertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for, how can "the consent of the governed" be given, if the right to vote be denied. Again:

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to inst.i.tute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is here clearly implied.

For however destructive to their happiness this government might become, a disfranchised cla.s.s could neither alter nor abolish it, nor inst.i.tute a new one, except by the old brute force method of insurrection and rebellion. One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces taxation without representation,--that compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent,--that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers, that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of their own persons, wages and children,--are this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the declarations of the framers of this government, every one of which was based on the immutable principle of equal rights to all. By those declarations, kings, priests, popes, aristocrats, were all alike dethroned, and placed on a common level, politically, with the lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, men, as such, were deprived of their divine right to rule, and placed on a political level with women. By the practice of those declarations all cla.s.s and caste distinction will be abolished; and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all alike, bound from their subject position to the proud platform of equality.

The preamble of the federal const.i.tution 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 defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this const.i.tution 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 this 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 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.

The early journals of Congress show that when the committee reported to that body the original articles of confederation, the very first article which became the subject of discussion was that respecting equality of suffrage. Article 4th said:

"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friends.h.i.+p and intercourse between the people of the different States of this Union, the free inhabitants of each of the States, (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted,) shall be ent.i.tled to all the privileges and immunities of the free citizens of the several States."

Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of the universal application of the great principle of equal rights to all--in order to produce the desired result--a harmonious union and a h.o.m.ogeneous people.

Luther Martin, attorney-general of Maryland, in his report to the Legislature of that State of the convention that framed the United States Const.i.tution, said:

"Those who advocated the equality of suffrage took the matter up on the original principles of government: that the reason why each individual man in forming a State government should have an equal vote, is because each individual, before he enters into government, is equally free and equally independent."

James Madison said:

"Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that the ma.s.s of the citizens should not be without a voice in making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the magistrates who are to administer them." Also, "Let it be remembered, finally, that it has ever been the pride and the boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature."

And these a.s.sertions of the framers of the United States Const.i.tution of the equal and natural rights of all the people to a voice in the government, have been affirmed and reaffirmed by the leading statesmen of the nation, throughout the entire history of our government.

Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said in 1866:

"I have made up my mind that the elective franchise is one of the inalienable rights meant to be secured by the declaration of independence."

B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three days' discussion in the United States Senate in 1866, on Senator Cowan's motion to strike "male" from the District of Columbia suffrage bill, said:

"Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and as a matter of fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of race or s.e.x. I will go farther and say, that I recognize the right of franchise as being intrinsically a natural right. I do not believe that society is authorized to impose any limitations upon it that do not spring out of the necessities of the social state itself. Sir, I have been shocked, in the course of this debate, to hear Senators declare this right only a conventional and political arrangement, a privilege yielded to you and me and others; not a right in any sense, only a concession! Mr. President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine, whenever you crystalize that idea in the public mind of this country, you ring the death-knell of American liberties."

Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, insisted that, so soon as by the thirteenth amendment the slaves became free men, the original powers of the United States Const.i.tution guaranteed to them equal rights--the right to vote and to be voted for. In closing one of his great speeches he said:

"I do not hesitate to say that when the slaves of our country became 'citizens' they took their place in the body politic as a component part of the 'people,' ent.i.tled to equal rights, and under the protection of these two guardian principles: First--That all just governments stand on the consent of the governed; and second, that taxation without representation is tyranny; and these rights it is the duty of Congress to guarantee as essential to the idea of a Republic."

The preamble of the Const.i.tution of the State of New York declares the same purpose. It says:

"We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty G.o.d for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish this Const.i.tution."

Here is not the slightest intimation, either of receiving freedom from the United States Const.i.tution, or of the State conferring the blessings of liberty upon the people; and the same is true of every one of the thirty-six State Const.i.tutions. Each and all, alike declare rights G.o.d-given, and that to secure the people in the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, is their one and only object in ordaining and establis.h.i.+ng government. And all of the State Const.i.tutions are equally emphatic in their recognition of the ballot as the means of securing the people in the enjoyment of these rights.

Article 1 of the New York State Const.i.tution says:

"No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land, or the judgment of his peers."

And so carefully guarded is the citizen's right to vote, that the Const.i.tution makes special mention of all who may be excluded. It says:

"Laws may be pa.s.sed excluding from the right of suffrage all persons who have been or may be convicted of bribery, larceny or any infamous crime."