Susan Brownell Anthony (1820–1906) stands as the singular, most recognized figure of the 19th-century American women's suffrage movement. Her name is synonymous with the tireless, decades-long campaign to secure for women a fundamental right of citizenship: the right to vote. While her famous partnership with Elizabeth Cady Stanton provided the intellectual and philosophical foundation for the movement, it was Anthony's unparalleled organizational skill, fierce discipline, and tireless itinerancy that built the movement into a national political force.
Dedicating fifty years of her life to the cause, Anthony transformed from a quiet teacher and temperance organizer into the "Napoleon" of the women's rights movement, leaving behind a legacy so profound that the constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage is still known today as the Susan B Anthony Amendment.
Susan Brownell Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts, the second of eight children born to Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read Anthony. Her birthplace was a small town in the Berkshires, and her upbringing was steeped in the radical Quaker tradition. Her father, Daniel, was a strict but progressive cotton mill owner who believed passionately in self-sufficiency, social equality, and, crucially, the importance of education for all his children, regardless of gender.
The Quaker belief in the "Inner Light"—that everyone, male or female, was equal before God—was the moral compass that guided Anthony her entire life. This principle fostered a deep, innate sense of justice, leading her family to become fervent advocates for the abolition of slavery and the prohibition of alcohol. The Anthony home, particularly after the family moved to a farm near Rochester, New York, in 1845, became a popular meeting place for abolitionists and social reformers, including legendary figures like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. These formative years exposed Susan B Anthony to constant political and moral debate, preparing her for a life on the public stage.
Before fully dedicating herself to women’s rights, Susan B Anthony spent over fifteen years working as a teacher. This career path, though common for women of her class, quickly became a source of frustration and a catalyst for her activism. In 1848, while teaching at the Canajoharie Academy, she discovered that she was paid a mere fraction of the salary earned by her male counterparts. This stark inequality, rooted purely in gender, lit the fuse of her lifelong crusade for equal pay for equal work.
Her first major foray into reform, however, was the Temperance Movement. As a Quaker, Susan B Anthony was opposed to the consumption of alcohol, and she was elected president of the Canajoharie chapter of the Daughters of Temperance in 1848. This work exposed her to the societal and legal vulnerabilities of women: without the right to vote, women could not influence the laws governing the sale of alcohol, which often ruined the lives of wives and children.
The turning point came in 1852 when she attended a state convention of the Sons of Temperance in Albany. When she attempted to speak or introduce a resolution, the presiding officer curtly informed her that:
"The Sisters were not invited to speak, but to listen and learn."
Humiliated and enraged, Anthony walked out, realizing with sudden clarity that women lacked a political voice even in movements dedicated to morality and social good. The refusal served as a brutal awakening: women would never be taken seriously in any reform until they secured the power of the ballot. Soon after, she attended her first women’s rights convention, definitively marking the beginning of her professional life as a women's rights activist.
In 1851, at an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, Anthony was introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton by mutual acquaintance Amelia Bloomer. The meeting was serendipitous, forging one of the most productive and historically significant political partnerships in American history.
Stanton, a wife and mother of seven, was the movement’s brilliant philosopher, writer, and orator. She famously quipped, "I forged the thunderbolts, she fired them." Anthony, who never married, was the tireless organizer, the pragmatic strategist, the meticulous campaigner, and the financial backbone of their joint efforts. They were two halves of an incomparable whole, relying on each other for intellectual sparring, emotional support, and the sheer labor of running a national political campaign with almost no resources.
Prior to the Civil War, Anthony threw herself into the Abolitionist cause. From 1856 to 1861, she worked as a principal agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, traversing the country, arranging meetings, and delivering speeches—often facing hostile, angry mobs and being publicly burned in effigy.
When the Civil War began, Anthony and Stanton put aside their suffrage work to found the Women's National Loyal League (WNLL) in 1863. This organization successfully collected over 400,000 signatures in a massive petition drive supporting the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery. Their work was instrumental in passing the amendment, and it taught them the power of national organization and the petition process.
However, the period immediately following the war brought about the movement’s "Great Disappointment." When the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted to grant citizenship and equal protection to formerly enslaved people, it inserted the word "male" into the Constitution for the first time in reference to voting rights. When the Fifteenth Amendment was proposed to guarantee suffrage regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," it failed to include "sex."
Anthony and Stanton were devastated and grew increasingly uncompromising. They opposed both amendments, believing that this was the opportune moment to secure universal suffrage for all citizens, both black and white, male and female. This stance created a bitter and painful rift with many of their former abolitionist allies, including Frederick Douglass, who argued that it was "the Negro's hour," and that women should wait. This division led to a formal schism in the suffrage movement.
In 1869, the conflict solidified into two competing organizations:
Simultaneously, Anthony and Stanton launched a controversial newspaper, The Revolution, in 1868 with the radical motto: "Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less." Though plagued by financial debt, the paper served as the mouthpiece for their uncompromising vision and radical ideas for a full five years.
Anthony's most audacious act of civil disobedience occurred during the 1872 Presidential Election. Building on the premise that the recently ratified Fourteenth Amendment, which defined all persons born or naturalized in the United States as citizens, implicitly granted women the right to vote, Anthony and fourteen other women registered and cast their ballots in Rochester, New York.
Anthony famously wrote in a letter:
“I have been & gone & done it!!—positively voted the Republican ticket—straight…”
Two weeks later, on November 18, 1872, a federal marshal appeared at her home to arrest her for "having voted without having a lawful right to vote." Anthony insisted on being arrested properly and was taken to the police station. She refused to pay the bail, hoping to take her case to the Supreme Court, but a sympathetic judge paid it for her.
Before her trial in June 1873, Anthony seized the national spotlight by speaking in every district of Monroe County, New York, where the trial was to be held, asking citizens the electrifying question: "Is it a crime for a U.S. citizen to vote?"
The trial itself, United States v. Susan B Anthony, was a national scandal. Presided over by Supreme Court Justice Ward Hunt, who had political motivations to quash the suffrage argument, the trial was a sham. Justice Hunt refused to allow Anthony to testify on her own behalf, directed the all-male jury to find her guilty (a judicial outrage that denied her a fair trial), and sentenced her to a fine of $100.
When the judge asked if she had anything to say, Anthony delivered one of the most powerful and defiant speeches of her life, stating:
"May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that ‘Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.’"
Justice Hunt, knowing that if he jailed her for non-payment she could take the case to the Supreme Court, chose not to force the issue. Anthony never paid the fine, and no action was ever taken to collect it.
Anthony spent the next three decades of her life essentially living out of a suitcase, crisscrossing the nation to organize, lecture, and petition. She traveled by stagecoach, train, and boat, through blizzards and scorching heat, giving 75 to 100 speeches a year to secure state-level suffrage and build support for a federal amendment.
Her work involved:
As Anthony aged, her public perception shifted from a ridiculed radical to a revered national icon. She was warmly received at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. She also dedicated herself to building a worldwide movement for women's rights.
In 1888, she helped establish the International Council of Women, and in 1904, she played a key role in founding the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Berlin, serving as its honorary president until her death.
Even in her final years, she continued to work on other issues of equality. In 1900, she personally campaigned for the admittance of women to the University of Rochester, ultimately raising the necessary funding by pledging the cash value of her own life insurance policy—a final testament to her belief in education and women's self-sufficiency.
Susan B Anthony died on March 13, 1906, at her home in Rochester, New York, at the age of 86, from heart failure and pneumonia. She had spent 54 years in ceaseless, relentless advocacy. In her final public address at her 86th birthday celebration, she famously pronounced the movement's creed to the next generation of suffragists:
"Failure is impossible."
She passed away fourteen years before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which was ratified on August 18, 1920. In final tribute to her life's work, the amendment was promptly and permanently nicknamed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.
Though she did not live to cast a legal ballot, her organizational genius, iron will, and steadfast dedication transformed the women's rights movement from a fringe intellectual pursuit into a powerful, sophisticated political campaign. Susan B. Anthony’s life was not just a fight for the right to vote; it was a half-century-long argument for a foundational principle: that in a self-governing republic, citizenship without the ballot is meaningless, and true democracy must be built upon the equality and full participation of every single person. Her legacy is not merely the vote, but the entire blueprint for how a marginalized group can organize, persevere, and ultimately change the U.S. Constitution.
