Susan B Anthony - Infinite Women

Born: 15 February 1820, United States
Died: 13 March 1906
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

This biography is reprinted in full with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). It was edited by Nancy Hayward (2018). NWHM biographies are generously supported by Susan D. Whiting. All rights reserved.

Champion of temperance, abolition, the rights of labor, and equal pay for equal work, Susan Brownell Anthony became one of the most visible leaders of the women’s suffrage movement. Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she traveled around the country delivering speeches in favor of women’s suffrage.
Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father, Daniel, was a farmer and later a cotton mill owner and manager and was raised as a Quaker. Her mother, Lucy, came from a family that fought in the American Revolution and served in the Massachusetts state government. From an early age, Anthony was inspired by the Quaker belief that everyone was equal under God. That idea guided her throughout her life. She had seven brothers and sisters, many of whom became activists for justice and emancipation of slaves.
After many years of teaching, Anthony returned to her family who had moved to New York State. There she met William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, who were friends of her father. Listening to them moved Susan to want to do more to help end slavery. She became an abolition activist, even though most people thought it was improper for women to give speeches in public. Anthony made many passionate speeches against slavery.
In 1848, a group of women held a convention at Seneca Falls, New York. It was the first Women’s Rights Convention in the United States and began the Suffrage movement. Her mother and sister attended the convention but Anthony did not. In 1851, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two women became good friends and worked together for over 50 years fighting for women’s rights. They traveled the country and Anthony gave speeches demanding that women be given the right to vote. At times, she risked being arrested for sharing her ideas in public.
Anthony was good at strategy. Her discipline, energy, and ability to organize made her a strong and successful leader. Anthony and Stanton co-founded the American Equal Rights Association. In 1868 they became editors of the Association’s newspaper, The Revolution, which helped to spread the ideas of equality and rights for women. Anthony began to lecture to raise money for publishing the newspaper and to support the suffrage movement. She became famous throughout the county. Many people admired her, yet others hated her ideas.
When Congress passed the 14th and 15th amendments which give voting rights to African American men, Anthony and Stanton were angry and opposed the legislation because it did not include the right to vote for women. Their belief led them to split from other suffragists. They thought the amendments should also have given women the right to vote. They formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, to push for a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote.
In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting. She was tried and fined $100 for her crime. This made many people angry and brought national attention to the suffrage movement. In 1876, she led a protest at the 1876 Centennial of our nation’s independence. She gave a speech—“Declaration of Rights”—written by Stanton and another suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage.
“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”
Anthony spent her life working for women’s rights. In 1888, she helped to merge the two largest suffrage associations into one, the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. She led the group until 1900. She traveled around the country giving speeches, gathering thousands of signatures on petitions, and lobbying Congress every year for women. Anthony died in 1906, 14 years before women were given the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

IW note: Although Stanton and Anthony were abolitionists, both were known to use racist rhetoric in their pursuit of women’s suffrage – trying to convince white Southerners that white women would help uphold white supremacy – and, as noted above, both opposed the 14th and 15th amendments.

The following is excerpted from A Woman of the Century, edited by Frances E. Willard and Mary A Livermore, published in 1893 by Charles Wells Moulton.

ANTHONY, Miss Susan B., woman suffragist, born in South Adams, Mass., 15th February, 1820. If locality and religious heritage have any influence in determining fate, what might be predicted for Susan B. Anthony? Born in Massachusetts, brought up in New York, of Quaker father and Baptist mother, she has by heritage a strongly marked individuality and native strength. In girlish years Susan belonged to Quaker meeting, with aspirations toward “high-seat” dignity, but this was modified by the severe treatment accorded to her father, who, having been publicly reprimanded twice, the first time for marrying a Baptist, the second for wearing a comfortable cloak with a large cape, was finally expelled from “meeting” because he allowed the use of one of his rooms for the instruction of a class in dancing, in order that the youth might not be subject to the temptations of a liquor-selling public house. Though Mr. Anthony was a cotton manufacturer and one of the wealthiest men in Washington county, N. Y., he desired that his daughters, as his sons, should be trained for some profession. Accordingly they were fitted, in the best of private schools, for teachers, the only vocation then thought of for girls, and at fifteen Susan found herself teaching a Quaker family school at one dollar a week and board. When the financial crash of 1837 caused his failure, they were not only teaching and supporting themselves, but were able to help their father in his efforts to retrieve his fortunes. With a natural aptitude for the work, conscientious and prompt in all her duties, Susan was soon pronounced a successful teacher, and to that profession she devoted fifteen years of her life. She was an active member of die New York State Teachers’ Association and in their conventions made many effective pleas for higher wages and for the recognition of the principle of equal rights for women in all the honors and responsibilities of the association. The women teachers from Maine to Oregon owe Miss Anthony a debt of gratitude for the improved position they hold to-day. Miss Anthony has been from a child deeply interested in the subject of temperance. In 1847 she joined the Daughters of Temperance, and in 1852 organized the New York State Woman’s Temperance Association, the first open temperance organization of women. Of this Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was president As secretary Miss Anthony for several years gave her earnest efforts to the temperance cause, but she soon saw that woman was utterly powerless to change conditions without the ballot. Since she identified herself with the suffrage movement in 1852 she has left others to remedy individual wrongs, while she has been working for the weapon by which, as she believes, women will be able to do away with the producing causes She says she has “no time to dip out vice with a teaspoon while the wrongly-adjusted forces of society are pouring it in by the bucketful.” With all her family, Miss Anthony was a pronounced and active Abolitionist. During the war, with her life-long friend and co-worker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other coadjutors, she rolled up nearly 400,000 petitions to Congress for the abolition of slavery. Those petitions circulated in every northern and western State, served the double purpose of rousing the people to thought and furnishing the friends of the slave in Congress opportunities for speech. In Charles Sumner’s letters to Miss Anthony we find the frequent appeals, “Send on the petitions; they furnish the only background for my demands.” The most hamsging, though most satisfactory, enterprise Miss Anthony ever undertook was the publication (or three years of a weekly paper, “The Revolution.” This formed an epoch in the woman’s rights movement and roused widespread thought on the question. Ably edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, with the finest intellects in the Nation among its contributors, dealing pungently with passing events, and rising immediately to a recognized position among the papers of the Nation, there was no reason why there should not have been 9 financial success, save that Miss Anthony’s duties kept her almost entirely from the lecture field, and those who were on the platform, in the pulpit and in all the lucrative positions which this work was opening to women, could not and did not feel that the cause was their own. Alter three years of toil and worry a debt of $10,000 had accumulated. “The Revolution” was transferred to other hands but did not long survive. Miss Anthony set bravely about the task of earning money to pay the debt, every cent of which was duly paid from the earnings of her lectures. Miss Anthony has always been in great demand on the platform and has lectured in almost every city and hamlet in the North. She has made constitutional arguments before congressional committees and spoken impromptu to assemblies in all sorts of places. Whether it be a good word in introducing a speaker, the short speech to awaken a convention, the dosing appeal to set people to work, the full hour address of argument or the helpful talk at suffrage meetings, she always says the right thing and never wearies her audience. There is no hurry, no superfluity in her discourse, no sentiment, no poetry, save that of self-forgetfulness in devotion to the noblest principles that can actuate human motive. A fine sense of humor pervades her arguments, and by the reductio ad absurdum she disarms and wins her opponent The most dramatic event of Miss Anthony’s life was her arrest and trial for voting at the presidential election of 1872. Owing to the mistaken kindness of her counsel, who was unwilling that she should be imprisoned, she gave bonds, winch prevented her taking her case to the Supreme Court, a fact she always regretted. When asked by the judge, “You voted as a woman, did you not?” she replied, “No, sir, I voted as a citizen of the United States.” The date and place of trial being set, Miss Anthony thoroughly canvassed her county so as to make sure that all of the jurors were instructed in a citizen’s rights. Change of venue was ordered to another county, setting the date three weeks ahead. In twenty-four hours Miss Anthony had her plans made, dates set, and posters sent out for a series of meetings in that county. After the argument had been presented to the jury, the judge took the case out of their hands, saying it was a question of law and not of fart, and pronounced Miss Anthony guilty, fining her $100 and costs. She said to the judge, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. and I shall never pay a penny of this unjust claim,” and she glories in never having done so. The inspectors, who received the ballots from herself and friends, were fined and imprisoned, but were pardoned by President Grant. Miss Anthony has had from the beginning the kindly sympathy and cooperation of her entire family, all taking deep interest in the reforms for which she has labored. Especially is this true of her youngest sister, Miss Mary S. Anthony, who has freed her eldest sister from domestic responsibilities. A wonderful memory which carries the legislative history of each State, the formation and progress of political parties, the parts played by prominent men in our National life, and whatever has been done the world over to ameliorate conditions for women, makes Miss Anthony a genial and instructive companion, while her unfailing sympathy makes her as good a listener as talker. The change in public sentiment towards woman suffrage is well indicated by the change in the popular estimate of Miss Anthony. Where once it was the fashion of the press to ridicule and jeer, now the best reporters are sent to interview her, and to put her sentiments before the world with the most respectful and laudatory personal comment. Society, too, throws open its doors, and into many distinguished gatherings she carries a refreshing breath of sincerity and earnestness. Her seventieth birthday, celebrated by the National Woman Suffrage Association, of which she was vice-president-at-large from its formation in 1869 until its convention in 1892, when she was elected president, was the occasion of a spontaneous outburst of gratitude which is, perhaps, unparalleled in the history of any living individual. Miss Anthony is still of undiminished vigor and activity, and, having in a most remarkable degree the power to rally around her for united action the ever-increasing hosts of the woman suffrage organization, of which she is now the head, she is a powerful factor in molding public opinion in the direction of equal rights and opportunities for women. She is one of the most heroic figures in American history. The future will place her name with the greatest of our statesmen, and in her life-time she enjoys the reward of being esteemed by men and loved by women.

Works cited
Anthony, Susan. “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States by the National Woman Suffrage Association, July 4th, 1876.” The Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Papers Project. http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/decl.html. Accessed May 2016.
“Biography of Susan B. Anthony.” National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House. http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/her-story/biography.php. Accessed May 2016.
Lange, Allison. “Suffragist Organize: National Woman Suffrage Association.” National Women’s History Musuem. http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nwsa-organize/. Accessed May 2016.
Lange, Allison. “Suffragist Unite: National American Woman Suffrage Association.” National Women’s History Museum. http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united/. Accessed May 2016.
Mayo, Edith. “Rights for Women: The Suffrage Movement and Its Leaders.” National Women’s History Museum. https://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/rightsforwomen/index.html. Accessed May 2016.
“Susan B. Anthony.” National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/susan-b-anthony.htm. Accessed May 2016.