Anthony, Susan Brownell (1820-1906). Anthony was one of the most important and influential

American activists for human, civil, and political rights in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. While she worked as a reformer for temperance and the abolition of slavery, she spent the major part of her career as a prominent advocate and pioneer of women's rights, especially women's right to vote.

Life and Achievements

Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts, and in 1826 the family moved to Battenville, New York. She was the second of eight children born to her Quaker father and Baptist mother, Daniel and Lucy Anthony. Her father was a farmer and also owner of a small cotton mill which he staffed with local young women, so Anthony was surrounded by women who earned their own livelihoods. She once substituted at one of her father's looms for two weeks, earning three dollars. Anthony attended the district school, and, when she complained that her male teacher wouldn't let her study long division as the boys did, her father removed her from public school and started his own home school for his children; he taught classes himself and also hired a series of teachers including Mary Perkins, who had been trained by the educational pioneer, Mary Lyon. When Anthony was 17, Daniel sent her to a Quaker boarding school near Philadelphia. He wanted his daughter to get a serious and equal education, and there she studied math, literature, chemistry, philosophy, physiology, and bookkeeping. The famous Quaker abolitionist, Lucretia Mott, made an impression on Anthony when she spoke to the students of the importance of improving their intellect and of social and civic responsibility. Qualities which Anthony would inherit from her parents and from Quaker teachings included belief in the equality of all human beings in the eyes of God, belief in God's being within each individual (the Inner Light), and the importance of service and usefulness to others.

At age 15, Anthony had begun teaching in the local school to help to support her family, earning $1.50 a week, which was about one-fourth of the salary that had been paid to the men whom she and her sister replaced; she later had vivid memories of the inequities in pay. In 1839 she left home to teach, first at the Friends' Seminary in New Rochelle, New York, and in 1846 at Canajoharie Academy in Rochester, New York, where she served as headmistress of the Female Department. A growing feeling that she wanted her service in the world to have a wider impact led her, in 1849, to resign from teaching and return home to help manage the family farm (which her father had bought four years earlier, outside Rochester, New York) and to plan her future. There she found that her home was a meeting place for anti-slavery and temperance leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Abby Kelly Foster, and Stephen Foster. Her family also aided runaway slaves as part of the Underground Railroad. Anthony determined to try to find a way to work full time in the reform movements of the day, including temperance, anti-slavery, and women's rights.

When Anthony was 25, she received a proposal of marriage from a Quaker widower. There was another proposal and other suitors in subsequent years. At age 35, a widower who admired her proposed marriage. Anthony chose not to marry. She seemed to feel that, due to the requirements of marriage in her day, she would not have been able to devote herself to the life's work which she had chosen. There were many times that she stayed with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her dear friend and co-worker, and helped to care for her children so that Stanton could do important writing of articles and speeches. Anthony in later life said, in an interview with Nellie Bly, that a true marriage of souls in which the husband and wife take each other on terms of perfect equality, was a beautiful thing. However, she said that when she was young, if a girl married poor, she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealth, she became a pet and a doll. Neither of those options was what Anthony wanted for herself. Anthony always remained close to her parents, sisters and brothers, and they supported her in her work for equal rights. She remained self-supporting all of her life.

In 1848, the first organization that Anthony had helped to form in New York was a local chapter of the Daughters of Temperance, and there she delivered her first public address. Anthony's conversations and work with women who had been beaten and abused by their drunken husbands had led her to believe that she must do something to help their plight. Her later support of legislation for women to be able to divorce their husbands stemmed from her belief that divorce was just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters. Anthony first met Stanton in 1851 when Amelia Bloomer introduced them to each other in Seneca Falls, New York following a lecture by William Lloyd Garrison. Anthony and Stanton worked together for many campaigns and causes, especially those involving equal rights for women. Their first joint venture was to form a Women's New York State Temperance Society. In 1852, after attending a state Sons of Temperance meeting, and finding that women were not allowed to speak, she and other women left the meeting. Anthony organized another meeting, invited the press, and announced that the protesting women were forming their own independent organization. Anthony asked Stanton to serve as president. Anthony was chosen as secretary and general agent. Anthony began lecturing, organizing, petitioning, and raising funds throughout the state as the agent of her society.

In the years prior to the Civil War, Anthony worked to secure speakers, arrange dates, raise money, organize New York State women's rights conventions, and implement county-by county canvasses to obtain signatures on petitions demanding suffrage and property rights for women. [Anthony realized that the reform movements could not be funded by women due to their being mostly dependent on their husbands for money. There was no true freedom without the possession of equal property rights, and these could be obtained only through legislation and petitions of the legislature.](?) In 1860, Anthony and Stanton collaborated on a speech for married women's property rights which was presented before the state legislature. Anthony wrote the speech, and Stanton delivered it. The bill was adopted by the legislature. For the first time, married women were granted the right to own separate property, to carry on business in their own names, to enter into contracts, to sue and be sued, and to be joint guardian of their children.

Regarding her work for the abolition of slavery, Anthony served from 1856 until the Civil War as the principal New York agent for Garrison's Anti-Slavery Society, traveling and giving speeches against slavery and arranging speaking tours for many other anti-slavery speakers. Anthony received a small salary for this. In 1863, Anthony, with Stanton, Lucy Stone, and others organized the Women's National Loyal League. With Anthony as chief organizer, and supervising the work of 2000 volunteers across the country, they secured hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions [calling for the complete abolition of slavery.](?) to support Senator Charles Sumner's Constitutional amendment freeing all slaves in the North and South. The 13^th Amendment was passed in 1865. After the war, Anthony and others campaigned to gain women's inclusion for the right to vote along with African-American males.

For the next 40 years, Anthony focused her primary mission on working for women's rights, and particularly their right to vote. She became more and more convinced that, if women had the right to vote, they could then achieve equality for other rights and opportunities. Anthony and Stanton helped to found, in 1866, the American Equal Rights Association in order to work for woman's suffrage. They invited members of the Anti-Slavery Society to join them. However, the men in that society would not support women's citizenship rights and right to vote being included in the wording of the proposed 14^th and 15^th Amendments, claiming that this would cause problems and prevent passage of the amendments. Consequently, in 1869 Anthony and Stanton established the National Woman Suffrage Association; Stanton was president at first,

and three years later Anthony became president. Later in 1869, a group who opposed women's suffrage being part of the 15^th Amendment formed a second national organization-the American Woman Suffrage Association. The two organizations would coexist separately for twenty years and then would merge. Anthony's national organization worked in the forefront of the suffrage movement throughout the remainder of the 19^th century and into the 20^th. They supported the inclusion of women's suffrage in the 15^th Amendment, but that was not to be. They also supported a separate amendment for women's suffrage, an eight-hour work day and equal pay for women, the unionization of working women, and divorce reform.

Between 1868 and 1871, Anthony published The Revolution, a weekly newspaper devoted to the women's rights cause. Anthony wanted to educate women-and men-to change unjust laws which taxed, fined, imprisoned, and hanged women, while denying them the right of representation in government. She also encouraged wage-earning single women to own homes of their own, combining economic independence with domesticity. In 1868, Anthony organized the Working Women's Association and started two groups-one at the office of The Revolution, consisting of typesetters and clerks employed by the newspaper, and one at a boarding house where many factory girls lived. Anthony had applied for membership in the National Labor Union, which excluded women from its ranks. Anthony and Stanton went to the NLU convention later that year, Anthony as delegate from the Working Women's Association and Stanton as delegate from the National Woman Suffrage Association. The women had not been invited to the convention, but, after considerable objection and controversy, they were seated as delegates. Anthony's strategy had succeeded in opening the National Labor Union to women.

For the next thirty years, Anthony traveled continually throughout the United States for many months at a time to take the case for women's suffrage to the people, working for a federal suffrage amendment and in various state campaigns. She spoke to many audiences, typically charging 25 cents for a lecture, barely enough to cover her expenses. There was now widespread discussion of women's suffrage and the beginnings of serious political support for it. [Anthony, and Stanton too, signed up with several lecture bureaus and agencies.](?) In 1870, Anthony did a typical (for her) lecture circuit across the United States. In just 12 months, she gave 171 lectures and also debated; [in Bloomington, Illinois, she debated a college professor-the opera house was filled to capacity, and the newspaper published the debate verbatim.](?) She traveled 13,000 miles and had gross receipts of $4,318. After expenses, Anthony would put most of the money back into in next campaign. [State politicians who heard Anthony speak then extended invitations for her to address their legislatures. On Anthony's trip to Olympia, Washington Territory, in 1871, and states in the west and midwest, she addressed legislatures to inform them for their debates on a measure for women's suffrage.](?) She gradually built a network of friends and supporters for women's rights who were organized via various local and state organizations and conventions and reinforced by each year's national convention. [She also carried on a huge correspondence, both public and private. Both men and women wrote to her, appealing for advice and assistance.](?) She worked tirelessly and had a nearly infinite capacity for work.

In 1872, in a test case, Anthony led 50 women to polling places in Rochester, New York, where they registered to vote. On election day, she and 14 other women in her ward voted. The inspectors in the other wards were afraid of prosecution and did not allow the other women to vote. Within two weeks, she and the others were arrested and charged with voting illegally under a statute which carried a possible three-year jail term. To alert and educate the people in her county of the injustice that had been done, including enlightening men who might possible serve as jurors, Anthony presented her speech entitled "Is It a Crime for a United States Citizen to Vote?" 21 times in the 22 days before her trial. She reasoned that women already had the right to vote and now needed to exercise this right, since the Constitution applied to all citizens, both male and female. [Anthony was so persuasive that her trial was moved to Canandaigua.](?) After the all-male jury had heard the testimony, the judge presiding over the trial took a previously written decision from his pocket and directed the jury to find Anthony guilty. She was fined $100 but said she would never pay it. [a dollar of the unjust penalty.]

Anthony was a fluent and eloquent speaker, lecturing frequently in the United States and in England and often speaking before Congressional committees and taking part in state political campaigns. Her earlier lectures were written, but she later preferred to lecture extemporaneously, speaking from only a few notes. Anthony's speaking has been described by various writers and newspaper reporters as clear, direct, forceful and passionate with conviction. Her speeches revealed her intelligence and extraordinary logical powers, her tact, and her wit and sense of humor. In the early years, when Anthony and other reformers spoke in public, they were often pelted with rotten eggs and even threatened with weapons. In later years she was given bouquets of flowers and was widely revered.

In 1876, Anthony and four colleagues dramatically presented a Declaration of Rights for Women, written by Stanton and herself, at the Fourth of July ceremonies at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The women had been denied permission to read their declaration at the celebration. Having obtained a press pass [from her brother] and four tickets [from a friend](?), the women were admitted to the ceremonies. They quickly walked up front in Independence Hall, presented a copy of their declaration to a Mr. Ferry at the speaker's stand, and distributed copies to many audience members as they marched out; Anthony then read the address aloud outside to the crowd that had gathered to hear her.

[In 1878, United States Senator Arlen Sargent of California introduced a newly worded 16^th Amendment to the Constitution: "The right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States on account of sex." This amendment had to be reintroduced each year for the next 42 years, until it was finally passed by both Senate and House in 1920. Anthony saw to it that the National Woman Suffrage Association held its Convention in Washington D.C. almost every winter. She and other members visited congressmen and testified before legislative committees. If a member of Congress promised to do something, such as introduce a certain measure on a certain day, Anthony was there in the gallery and followed up afterward.] By the late 1880s, women had won the vote in school-board and municipal elections in places across the country. By 1900, women had full voting rights in four states-Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho.

Anthony helped to compile, write, and edit the first four volumes of the six-volume work, The History of Woman Suffrage. She, Stanton, and Matilda J. Gage wrote the first three volumes between 1876 and 1887; she and Ida H. Harper wrote the fourth volume. [In 1896, Anthony asked Harper, an Indiana reporter, to write her official biography. Harper agreed and returned with Anthony to Rochester. Anthony convinced her to stay on after finishing the biography and write the fourth volume of the suffrage history, with much assistance from Anthony.](?)

Anthony believed in equal education for men and women and also in coeducation rather than separation of the sexes. In 1898, officials of the University of Rochester agreed to admit women if Anthony and others could raise $50,000 to cover the additional instructional costs for women students. They gave the women a year to raise the money and then extended the deadline a year. In 1900, Anthony won the victory of getting women admitted to the University. With all but $2000 raised, she pledged her own life insurance to cover the last $2000.

In 1899, at age 79, Anthony wrote a letter to Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, urging that large organizations of men should assist the cause of women's suffrage, that they should permit women to present that subject to their conventions, and should petition Congress for an amendment which would enable women to vote. Gompers answered her letter cordially and assured her she would have the opportunity to speak. Two months later, Anthony traveled to Detroit and addressed the convention, with the result that the 400 delegates voted to adopt a strong resolution demanding that Congress take the necessary steps for enfranchising women. The next year, when Anthony spoke in Rochester, by invitation, at the convention of the Bricklayers' and Masons' International Union, the members passed strong women's suffrage resolutions and signed the petition for a 16^th amendment granting suffrage to women.

In 1890, when the two national suffrage organizations merged, henceforth to be called the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), Anthony urged that they vote for Stanton for President; Anthony was Vice President at Large; Lucy Stone chaired the executive committee. In 1892, Stanton resigned and Anthony became president. In the late 1880s, Anthony had traveled to Europe and began to meet with women in several countries. She determined to form a great united sisterhood for women's rights. With Stanton, she invited them to Washington D.C. in 1888 to found and participate in the International Council of Women. Her purpose was to convey the message that the position of women anywhere affects their position everywhere. Women from nine countries attended. From 1892 to 1900, Anthony was President of the NAWSA. Then in 1900, at age 80, she resigned as president. She had arranged to present as her successor Carrie Chapman Catt, whose skills at organizing and fund-raising had helped to win the vote in Colorado, and she felt that it was those skills, not oratory, that the national association needed most. Also at this convention, Anthony told the members about the fund she was starting and her plans to raise money to further their work; she encouraged them to contribute to this fund as well. Anthony's 80^th birthday celebration followed the next day, and William Lloyd Garrison had written her a poem of tribute. President McKinley, to honor Anthony, welcomed the national organization to a reception at the White House.

In 1902, Anthony helped to found the International Woman Suffrage Alliance; she herself was chosen as President and Catt as secretary. Its purpose was to unite the friends of women's suffrage throughout the world in organized cooperation and helpfulness and to secure the right to vote for women in all nations. In 1904, at the International Council of Women's Berlin convention, the members formed a Standing Committee on Woman Suffrage that called for women's suffrage around the world. Anthony said that this was the climax of her career. Also she felt that she had done everything she could to get matters in order for those who would follow her and continue her work. She now felt satisfied that her work would be carried to victory.

In February, 1906 Anthony attended her last national convention in Baltimore, having developed a severe cold and neuralgia on the trip. She was anxious about the organization's finances. She talked with her friends M. Carey Thomas, President of Bryn Mawr College, and Thomas' friend, strong suffrage supporter and philanthropist, Mary Garrett. They promised to raise $60,000, $12,000 to be used by the organization each year for the next five years, and they were true to their word. By the time Anthony returned home to Rochester, she had double pneumonia. She recovered from the pneumonia, but she had a weak heart due to a valvular heart problem, and she died on March 13, 1906, at the age of 86. Flags in Rochester flew at half mast. Ten thousand people came to mourn her death. Anthony willed all the money she had-a little over $3,000- to her national suffrage organization.

Anthony became a legend in her own time. She was a charismatic leader because of to her commitment to her causes, her firm principles, and her personal strength. She compelled people to action and inspired countless women to work for the cause of equal rights and opportunities for women. Tributes written in scores of newspapers at her death gave testimony to Anthony's remarkable career, abilities, accomplishments, and character.

Contributions to Western Culture

Anthony's contributions to western culture are monumental. Her legacy is that her work literally influenced history. She changed the lives of American women-and men-with her vision of equality. Anthony was a driving force in securing equal rights for women-social, civil and political rights. Her work for and impact on the abolition of slavery was very significant, contributing to all United States citizens' being recognized as equals before the law. In the earlier years of the women's movement, some women did not feel that they needed any more rights, including the right to vote. Anthony gradually educated women and men all over the United States about other possibilities. Even people who disagreed with some of her ideas respected her courage, tenacity, generosity to her opponents, and dignity. Although she worked with a network of other people, she had remarkable first-hand influence and impact in many areas of women's lives. She helped to make it respectable for women to speak in public. Her ceaseless work and travel made women's suffrage a recognized cause in both America and Europe. By 1900, women had full voting rights in four states, the right to vote in municipal elections in a few, a vote on school questions in 25, and some form of suffrage in four others. Anthony inspired others so greatly that the younger women in the National American Woman Suffrage Association who carried on Anthony's work were able to ultimately win the vote for women just 14 years after her death. In 1914, Alice Paul began to refer to the pending suffrage amendment as the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment," and that label caught on. On November 2, 1920, for the first time in history, more than eight million American women went to the polls and voted [or- and exercised their newly won right to vote]. [In 1921, when a group of African-American suffragists wanted to call attention to the mounting obstacles they faced in enjoying , in fact, the right to vote that they had just been granted by law, they named themselves the Women's Anthony League in her honor.

There were several other areas in which Anthony's contributions had impact. It was due largely to Anthony's determination that the University of Rochester became coeducational. Across the country, more and more women were able to complete a college education and enter various professions. President Thomas of Bryn Mawr stated that, by 1906, there were 5,749 women studying in women's colleges and 24,863 in coeducational colleges and universities. Anthony also opened labor unions to women, enabled more women to join the labor force, and helped to make women's wages more equal with those of men. Furthermore, through her work for married women's property rights, and direct influence in New York State, married women were able to inherit money and property in their own name, own and sell property, enter into contracts, sue and be sued, and have equal guardianship of their own children. Also, she and her colleagues made some progress on divorce laws in cases of women who were abused by their husbands.

Anthony also left a legacy of writings and speeches. The History of Woman Suffrage is invaluable for students of the suffrage movement and contains some of Anthony's speeches as well. Anthony also wrote two invited articles about the progress made in women's rights - "Women's Half-Century of Evolution" for the North American Review in 1902 and "Achievement of Women" for Collier's in 1903.

Anthony's final words spoken in public, at her 86^th birthday celebration at the 1906 national suffrage association convention, expressed the indomitable spirit of this great reformer and leader-"Failure is impossible!"

-by Kristin L. Marshall

Bibliography

K. Barry, Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist, 1988.

I. H. Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, 1983.

G. C. Ward and K. Burns, Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, 1999.