Great Speeches: Susan B. Anthony on Women's Right to Vote
susan
banthony
speech onwomen
'sright
tovote
1873 this speech was delivered bysusan
banthony
before court in defense ofwomen
's suffrage she was arrested for casting an illegalvote
in the presidential election of 1872 friends and fellow citizens i stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of havingvote
d at the last presidential election without having a lawfulright
tovote
it shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in the svaty i not onlycommitted no crime but instead simply exercised by citizen's
right
s guaranteed to me and all united states citizens by the national constitution beyond the power of any state to deny the preamble of the federal constitution says we the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union establish justice ensure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain andestablish this constitution 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 the 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 a downright
mockery to talk towomen
of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they had denied the use of the onlymeans of securing them provided by this Democratic Republican government the ballot for any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the distant of one entire half of the people is to pass a bill of attainder or an ex post facto law and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land by it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from
women
and their female posterity to them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed to them thisgovernment is not a democracy it is not a republic it is an odious aristocracy a hateful oligarchy of sex the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe and oligarchy of wealth whether rich governed the poor an Oleg our key of learning where the educated governed the ignorant or even at an oligarchy of race where the Saxon rules the African might be endured but this Oleg our key of sex which makes father brothers husband sons the oligarchs over the mother and sisters the
wife and daughters of every household which retains all men sovereigns all