Great Speeches: Susan B. Anthony on Women's Right to Vote

susan

b

anthony

speech on

women

's

right

to

vote

1873 this speech was delivered by

susan

b

anthony

before court in defense of

women

's suffrage she was arrested for casting an illegal

vote

in the presidential election of 1872 friends and fellow citizens i stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having

vote

d 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 the svaty i not only

committed 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 and

establish 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 down

right

mockery to talk to

women

of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they had denied the use of the only

means 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 this

government 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

women

's subjects carries dissension discord and rebellion into every home of the nation Webster Worcester and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States entitled to

vote

and hold office the only question left to be settled now is our

women

persons and I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say that they are not being persons then

women

are citizens and no state has a

right

to make any law or to enforce any old laws that shall abridge their privileges or immunities hence every discrimination against

women

in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void precisely as is everyone against Negroes