On Women's Right to Vote
Arrested for voting in 1872, Anthony tours two New York counties before her trial arguing she committed no crime: women are persons, persons are citizens, and the Constitution already guarantees citizens the vote.
📖 Read the full textThe complete speech, paired with the StoryBites version of every sectionIn November 1872 Susan B. Anthony voted in the presidential election in Rochester, New York, and was arrested and indicted for voting without a lawful right. Before her trial she carried this speech to dozens of towns and villages, arguing that she had broken no law because the Constitution already made women voters. The version most readers meet, usually titled ‘On Women’s Right to Vote’, is an excerpt of about 530 words; this page prints the whole speech, roughly 10,000 words, as it was published in 1874. The full text shows what the excerpt leaves out: a lawyer’s case built from the Declaration, the Constitution, court rulings and tax laws, flashes of sharp humor, and a bold claim that married women live in a ‘condition of servitude’.
The claim
Voting is a natural right that governments exist to protect, not to grant. Since women are persons, and the Fourteenth Amendment makes all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens, women already have the right to vote, so Anthony’s ballot was lawful and no state may take that right away.
The rhetorical situation who, to whom, when, and why
Monroe and Ontario counties, New York
She gave the speech in twenty-nine post-office districts of Monroe County, home to Rochester, where she had voted, and twenty-one of neighboring Ontario County.
Before June 1873
Between her indictment for voting in the November 1872 presidential election and her trial in June 1873.
What On Women's Right to Vote says
Anthony opens by saying she stands indicted for voting and will prove she committed no crime. Governments, she argues, do not create rights; they exist to protect rights people already have. The Declaration of Independence rests on the consent of the governed, which cannot be given without a vote, and the Preamble of the Constitution speaks for ‘we, the whole people’, not just men. She quotes framers and statesmen, from Madison to Charles Sumner, who called the vote a natural right. Next she shows that the New York Constitution protects voting carefully and that the federal Constitution lets states set only the qualifications, times and places of elections, never destroy the right itself. Sumner, she says, told her women already had the constitutional right to vote and should prove it in court; when she voted, the courts came to her first, with an indictment. Making sex a qualification creates ‘a hateful oligarchy of sex’. If the masculine pronouns in the laws exclude women from voting, they should also exempt women from taxes and penalties, yet women like the orphaned Pixley sisters pay taxes, and a clerk simply turned ‘he’ into ‘she’ on the papers served on her. The Fourteenth Amendment settles the question: women are persons, so they are citizens, and dictionaries and judges agree that citizens are voters. She attacks the Attorney General’s opinion that a citizen is only a member of the nation and warns that letting states deny the vote to one class endangers every class. Even if the Fifteenth Amendment covers only race, color and ‘previous condition of servitude’, married women fall under servitude, since the law gives husbands control of their persons, earnings and children; and all women, taxed without representation, share the grievance of 1776. She ends by citing both parties’ pledges of equal rights, calling on women to vote, officials to accept their ballots, juries to acquit and judges to favor liberty.
The line of reasoning how the argument moves
- States the charge and the thesisParagraph 1 names the indictment and promises to prove that voting was her ‘citizen’s right’. Opening with her own case makes a legal argument personal and gives every later paragraph a single job: proving her innocence.
- Grounds the vote in natural rightsParagraphs 2 to 24 argue that governments only secure rights, then read the Declaration, the Preamble and the framers to show that consent requires the ballot. Starting from the founding documents makes her opponents argue against the nation’s own principles.
- Clears away the state and pronoun objectionsParagraphs 25 to 61 show that neither the New York nor the federal Constitution lets a state abolish a citizen’s vote, and that masculine pronouns in the laws cannot mean ‘men only’ when women are taxed and punished under them. Removing the common objections prepares the ground for her main proof.
- Proves women are voting citizensParagraphs 62 to 96 turn to the Fourteenth Amendment: all persons are citizens, women are persons, and citizenship carries the vote. The syllogism is the heart of the speech, supported by dictionaries, judges and a warning about where the opposite rule would lead.
- Turns the Fifteenth Amendment to women’s sideParagraphs 97 to 116 argue that even the narrowest reading helps her, because married women, and in a sense all women, live in a ‘condition of servitude’. This fallback shows the audience that her case survives even if they reject her main argument.
- Rests on national power and calls for actionParagraphs 117 to 142 cite Republicans and Democrats who say the amendments guarantee equal rights, then appeal to women, election inspectors, juries and judges. The speech ends by asking her listeners to act on the principles they have just heard.
Section by section what each part does
- 1
Rights come before governments
Anthony states that she is under indictment for voting and will prove she committed no crime. She argues that governments exist to secure natural rights, not to grant them, and reads the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of the Constitution to show that consent of the governed requires the ballot for ‘the whole people’. She then quotes the Articles of Confederation, Luther Martin, James Madison, Thaddeus Stevens, B. Gratz Brown and Charles Sumner on suffrage as a natural right.
Why it mattersBeginning with the nation’s founding texts puts her on the side of American principle and makes her prosecutors seem to stand against it. The chain of quoted statesmen builds ethos she could not claim alone.
- 2
Constitutions, pronouns and taxes
The New York Constitution guards voting closely, and its one clause about ‘male’ citizens, Anthony argues, cannot lawfully exclude women. The federal Constitution lets states regulate elections but not destroy the right to vote. Anthony tells how Senator Sumner urged women to claim their right through the courts, and calls rule by sex ‘a hateful oligarchy of sex’. She answers the pronoun argument with taxpaying women, from the orphaned Pixley sisters to women who refuse to pay until they can vote, and with the clerk who turned ‘he’ into ‘she’ on her own legal papers. A Supreme Court land case shows that ‘single man’ can include an unmarried woman.
Why it mattersThis section clears away objections one by one. Concrete stories of taxed women turn a dry legal point about pronouns into a question of fairness any listener can judge.
- 3
Are women persons?
The Fourteenth Amendment makes all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens and forbids states to abridge their privileges. Since women are persons, they are citizens, and dictionaries and judges, even the Dred Scott decision, treat citizens as voters. Anthony attacks Attorney General Bates’s opinion that a citizen is merely a member of the nation, argues that the amendments were meant to secure the vote, and warns that letting states deny it to one class could someday be used against any class.
Why it mattersThe central proof is a simple syllogism, put as a question the audience can hardly answer ‘no’. Her warning about precedent widens the stakes from women to every citizen in the room.
- 4
A condition of servitude
Anthony argues that married women fall under the Fifteenth Amendment’s ‘previous condition of servitude’, since the law gives husbands control of their wives’ persons, earnings and children, and can even keep wives off the witness stand. All women, taxed without representation, share the grievance of the Revolution, as she shows by reading Franklin’s words in the feminine gender. She cites leaders of both parties on equal rights and says the National Woman Suffrage Association no longer petitions but asks women to vote, inspectors to accept their votes, juries to acquit and judges to favor liberty.
Why it mattersThe fallback argument turns the amendment’s narrowest phrase into a door for women. The closing appeals give each part of her audience, including possible jurors, a specific thing to do.
Rhetorical choices what the writer does, and why it works
Appeal to founding documents
Anthony quotes the Declaration of Independence in paragraphs 4 and 6 and the Preamble in paragraph 9, then reads them closely: ‘how can “the consent of the governed” be given, if the right to vote be denied’ (paragraph 5). For an audience that revered these texts, her claim becomes a demand that the nation keep its own word.
Repetition with correction
Paragraph 10 repeats ‘we’ while narrowing and then widening it: ‘not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people’. Each restatement rejects a smaller reading of the Preamble until only the whole people is left.
Hypophora
In paragraph 67 Anthony asks ‘Are women persons?’ and answers that no opponent will ‘have the hardihood to say they are not’. Paragraph 68 does the same with ‘Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities of citizens?’ Asking and answering lets her walk listeners through each step of the proof.
Reductio ad absurdum
Paragraph 46 accepts the claim that masculine pronouns mean only men, then shows its absurd result: women would have to be exempt from taxes and criminal penalties. Paragraph 131 does the same with President Grant’s count of four million new voters: ‘How could four millions negroes be made voters if two millions were not included?’
Irony and humor
Paragraph 56 describes the clerk who added a caret and an ‘s’ to turn ‘he’ into ‘she’ on the papers served on her, and paragraph 104 tells of a wife ruled off the witness stand because her false teeth were ‘joint interest’ with her husband. The comedy exposes how the law bends for convenience and gives an audience reason to laugh with the defendant.
Extended analogy
Paragraph 99 says that under Southern law the enslaved man had no right to the custody and control of his person, and paragraph 100 repeats the same structure for the married woman, who ‘has no right to the custody and control of her person’. Paragraphs 101 to 104 carry the comparison on to earnings, children and the courts. The matching sentences support her claim that wives fall under a ‘condition of servitude’. The comparison was meant to shock, and modern readers often question it.
People & audiences
Susan B. Anthony
Speaker and defendant
A suffrage leader under federal indictment for voting, who argues her own case to the public before her trial.
Her listeners
Audience
The ‘Friends and Fellow-citizens’ of Monroe and Ontario counties, including men who might sit on a jury. Paragraph 140 asks juries not to return verdicts of ‘guilty’.
Charles Sumner
Authority she follows
The Massachusetts senator who, she says in paragraphs 39 and 40, told her in 1871 that women already had the constitutional right to vote and should prove it through the courts.
The election inspectors
Allies
The ‘eighth ward inspectors’ of paragraph 139 who accepted her vote, whom she calls ‘intelligent, worthy young men’ in paragraph 140.
Attorney General Bates and the judges who follow him
Opponents
Bates’s opinion that a citizen is merely ‘a member of the nation’ (paragraph 79) is, she says, the basis of every argument against her, and she names the congressmen and judges who rely on it (paragraph 83).
The revolutionary fathers
Quoted authorities
Madison, Franklin, Paine and James Otis, whose words about taxation, consent and slavery she turns into arguments for women.
Big ideas in On Women's Right to Vote
Rights precede government
Paragraph 2 says ‘We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights.’ If rights exist before government, then denying women the vote is not a policy choice but a violation.
Citizenship means the vote
The speech’s central equation, stated in paragraph 70: ‘To be a person was to be a citizen, and to be a citizen was to be a voter.’ Paragraph 80 insists that American citizenship means ‘equal rights, civil and political’.
Taxation without representation
Anthony returns again and again to the grievance of 1776, from the United States officer who takes six dollars a night from the Pixley sisters (paragraph 47) to the ‘three-penny tax on tea’ (paragraph 109). Women, she argues, are in the position the colonists rebelled against.
Marriage and legal servitude
Paragraphs 98 to 106 describe how the law of the time gave husbands control of their wives’ persons, wages, property and children, summed up in Blackstone’s ‘husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband’.
Equal rights as the only safe principle
Paragraph 95 warns that any exclusion can be turned against its makers and concludes that ‘There is, and can be, but one safe principle of government—equal rights to all.’
Key images
The ballot
Called ‘the only means of securing’ liberty in paragraph 10 and ‘the one without which all the others are nothing’ in paragraph 68. Paragraph 68 even rewrites a Gospel verse: ‘Seek first the kingdom of the ballot’.
The clerk’s caret
The little mark that turns ‘he’ into ‘she’ on her legal papers (paragraph 56) stands for a government that edits its own language when it wants to punish women but not when they claim rights.
Repeated words and ideas
Citizen. The word runs through every section, from ‘my citizen’s right’ in paragraph 1 to ‘all United States citizens’ in the last sentence. Anthony keeps returning to it because her whole case depends on what it means.
The revolutionary fathers. The framers and patriots of 1776 appear as authorities from paragraph 3 to paragraph 114, and paragraph 42 adds ‘revolutionary mothers’. Anthony casts women as the heirs of the Revolution, not its opponents.
Tensions and counterarguments
Counterargument. Opponents say the Constitution lets states choose who votes and that the laws’ masculine pronouns exclude women. Anthony answers in paragraphs 35 to 39 that states may regulate but not ‘annihilate’, and in paragraphs 46 to 56 that pronouns cannot exclude women from voting while including them in taxes and punishment.
Law vs. principle. She is charged under a statute meant, she says, ‘to hinder the rebels from voting’ (paragraph 56). The speech sets the letter of that law against the principles of the Declaration and the amendments.
Universal principle vs. ranked appeals. The speech calls for ‘equal rights to all’ (paragraph 95), yet paragraph 43 says an ‘oligarchy of race’ might be ‘endured’, and paragraph 87 quotes a judge contrasting ‘our most ignorant fellow-citizens’ with ‘more educated and better informed’ women. Readers today often note the tension between her universal principle and these comparisons.
Key quotes
“Friends and Fellow-citizens: I stand before you to-night, under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote.”
“It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union.”
“To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex.”
“to make them applicable to me, the Clerk of the Court made a little carat at the left of “he” and placed an “s” over it, thus making she out of he.”
“The only question left to be settled, now, is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not.”
“We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote.”
The conclusion of On Women's Right to Vote, explained
The last section moves from argument to action. Paragraphs 117 to 137 gather statements from both parties: Senator Frelinghuysen, the Republican platform, Stanley Mathews (whom she calls ‘a substantial Ohio democrat’), President Grant and Benjamin Butler all say the amendments secure equal rights. Anthony uses Grant’s words with pointed wit. If the Fifteenth Amendment made ‘four millions of people voters’, she asks how that could be true ‘if two millions were not included’: Grant’s figure only works if black women were counted. Paragraph 138 names the National Woman Suffrage Association, and paragraph 139 announces its strategy: ‘We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote.’ Women should vote, inspectors should accept their ballots, and marshals should arrest the inspectors who refuse. Then comes the boldest line for a defendant on tour before her own trial. Paragraph 140 asks juries ‘to fail to return verdicts of “guilty”’ against citizens who vote and inspectors who count their votes. Paragraph 141 asks judges to give the benefit of the doubt to liberty, and paragraph 142 promises a battle fought ‘all peaceably, but nevertheless persistently’. History did not follow her plan. At the trial in June 1873, Justice Ward Hunt directed the jury to find her guilty and fined her $100, which she refused to pay. In 1875 the Supreme Court ruled in Minor v. Happersett that citizenship alone did not carry the right to vote. Women won that right nationally with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, fourteen years after Anthony’s death.
Common misreadings
MythThe short speech called ‘On Women’s Right to Vote’ in textbooks is the whole speech.
ActuallyThe familiar version, about 530 words, is an excerpt from this speech of roughly 10,000 words. It is assembled from a few passages: paragraph 1, the Preamble passage of paragraphs 8 to 10, most of the ‘oligarchy of sex’ passage in paragraph 43, the dictionary definitions of paragraph 69 and ‘Are women persons?’ from paragraph 67. It modernizes the 1874 spelling and punctuation (its opening reads ‘tonight’ for ‘to-night’) and changes a few words, for example ‘citizen’s rights’ for ‘citizen’s right’ (paragraph 1) and ‘any law’ for ‘any new law’ (paragraph 67). Everything else here, including the legal authorities, the tax stories and the whole ‘condition of servitude’ argument, is left out.
MythAnthony admits she broke the law and argues that breaking it was justified.
ActuallyShe argues the opposite. Paragraph 1 says she ‘committed no crime’ and ‘simply exercised my citizen’s right’, and the whole speech tries to prove that the Constitution already allowed her vote.
MythHer argument won, and women got the vote because of her case.
ActuallyShe was convicted in June 1873, and in 1875 the Supreme Court rejected the idea that citizenship alone gave women the vote. The right came only with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, after her death in 1906.
AP practice a rhetorical analysis prompt in the exam's style
In the months before her 1873 trial for voting in a presidential election, Susan B. Anthony delivered this speech in dozens of towns near Rochester, New York. Read the speech carefully. Then write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Anthony makes to convince her audience that her vote was lawful and that women already possessed the right to vote.
What a strong response notices
- The opening of paragraph 1, where ‘alleged’ and ‘Fellow-citizens’ reject the charge before the argument begins.
- The appeal to the Declaration and the Preamble in paragraphs 4 to 10, especially the correction of ‘we’ in paragraph 10.
- The reductio ad absurdum of the pronoun argument in paragraph 46 and the comic clerk’s caret in paragraph 56.
- The syllogism built on ‘Are women persons?’ in paragraph 67 and the definitions of citizen in paragraphs 69 and 70.
- The call to action in paragraphs 139 to 142, including the direct appeal to juries in paragraph 140.
Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Language free-response guide for how answers are scored.
Test yourself
1. What is Anthony under indictment for, according to paragraph 1?
She stands ‘under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote’.
2. What does Anthony say Senator Sumner told her in 1871?
In paragraph 40 Sumner says ‘women have the constitutional right to vote’, that he will never vote for a sixteenth amendment, and that women should appeal to the courts.
3. Which amendment’s first sentence does Anthony say ‘settled that question forever’ by defining who is a citizen?
Paragraph 64 quotes the Fourteenth Amendment: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States ... are citizens of the United States’.
4. Under what phrase in the Fifteenth Amendment does Anthony argue married women are included?
Paragraph 97 promises to prove that women are ‘included under the term “previous condition of servitude”’, which paragraphs 98 to 115 argue.
5. What does paragraph 139 say women will no longer do?
‘We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote.’ Instead women are urged to exercise the right they already have.
Flashcards flip, self-grade, and the deck remembers what you know
Nice work.
In 1872 Susan B. Anthony voted for president, even though women were not allowed to. She was arrested. Before her trial, she traveled from town to town giving this speech. She said the Constitution says ‘we, the people’, and women are people too. She also said women pay taxes, so they should get a say in the laws, just like the American colonists wanted. She lost her trial and was fined $100, but she never paid it, and American women finally won the vote in 1920.
Compare & connect
Declaration of Sentiments
The 1848 document by Anthony’s closest ally also rewrites founding language to include women. Stanton borrows the Declaration’s form; Anthony reads the Constitution’s words and argues women were in them all along.
The Declaration of Independence
Anthony quotes it in paragraphs 4 and 6 and builds her first argument on ‘the consent of the governed’. Reading the source shows how she turns its principles into a case for women’s votes.
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Both reformers answer critics while facing punishment for their actions. King defends breaking an unjust law; Anthony insists she broke no law at all, because the Constitution already protected her vote.
Discussion and essay prompts:
💬 Discussion questions
- What is the main argument of Susan B. Anthony’s On Women’s Right to Vote
- Why was Susan B. Anthony arrested for voting
- Is On Women’s Right to Vote the full speech or an excerpt
- How does On Women's Right to Vote explore the theme of rights precede government?
- How does On Women's Right to Vote explore the theme of citizenship means the vote?
- What is the central conflict in On Women's Right to Vote, and how does it shape the ending?
✎ Essay prompts
- Analyze how Susan B. Anthony develops the theme of rights precede government in On Women's Right to Vote. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
- Examine the significance of the ballot in On Women's Right to Vote. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
- How does Susan B. Anthony use appeal to founding documents to shape the reader’s experience of On Women's Right to Vote?
- Some readers assume that the short speech called ‘On Women’s Right to Vote’ in textbooks is the whole speech. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.
Key questions students ask
- What is the main argument of Susan B. Anthony’s On Women’s Right to Vote
- Why was Susan B. Anthony arrested for voting
- Is On Women’s Right to Vote the full speech or an excerpt
- What does Are women persons mean in Susan B. Anthony’s speech
- How does Susan B. Anthony use the Constitution in her speech
- What happened at Susan B. Anthony’s trial
Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The full text and quotations follow the speech as printed in 1874 in the appendix to An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting (Rochester, New York), checked page by page against images of two copies of that book, with ten obvious printer’s errors corrected. The 1874 book prints it without a title; it is also known as ‘Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?’. It is in the public domain.