The Woman Who Dared to Vote

Just as the polls opened on November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony arrived and filled out her “ticket” for the various candidates. But before it could be placed in the ballot box, a poll watcher objected, claiming her action violated the laws of New York and the state constitution. Anthony vehemently protested that as a citizen of the United States and the state of New York she was entitled to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. The poll watchers gave in and allowed Anthony to deposit her ballots. Anthony was arrested, charged with a federal crime, and tried in court. Primarily represented within document collections and broader accounts of the fight for woman suffrage, Anthony’s controversial trial—as a landmark narrative in the annals of American law—remains a relatively neglected subject. N. E. H. Hull provides the first book-length engagement with the legal dimensions of that narrative and in the process illuminates the laws, politics, and personalities at the heart of the