Jailed for Freedom

Pioneer-Sus

g proclaimed only as the magnificent pioneer that few realize that she

llowers; more often they were solitary protests. Perhaps it is because of their isolation that they stand ou

by one her followers deserted her. She was unable to keep even a tiny handful steadfast to this position. She became finally the only figure in the nation appealing for the rights of women when the rights of black men were agitating the public mind. Ardent abolitionist as she was, sh

llion over and the

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d in this agitation, urging all women to claim the right to vote under this amendment. In the national election of 187'2 she voted in

traordinary case, so reminiscent is it of the cases of the suffrage pick

tten before the case had been heard, and directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty. The jury was dismissed wit

tand up)-Has the prisoner anything to s

ts, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen t

rsal of argument which the prisoner's counsel

, I am not arguing the question, but

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sent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one taxed, the denial of my right to a trial b

rt cannot allow th

upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November this is the fi

er must sit down, the

the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns . . . . Precisely as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon the jury and no woman is entitled to the fr

he prisoner has been tried accordi

ed by men, in favor of men and against women; and hence your Honor's ordered verdict of guilty, ag

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er or under or through the unjust forms of the law, precisely so now must women take it to get their

the prisoner to sit down. It

nt amendments, which should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis . . . . But failing to get this justi

ner will stand up. (Here Miss Anthony rose again.) The sentence of the C

. . . And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical

will not order you stand com

d was never imprisoned. I believe th

n. The nation was celebrating its first centenary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at Independence Square, Philadelphia. A

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the center aisle of the platform to address the chairman, who pale with fright and powerless to stop the demonstration had to accept her document. Instantly the platform, graced as it was by national dignitaries and crow

of a century she appealed to Congress for action and to party. conventions for suffrage endorsement. When, however, she saw that Congress was obdurate, as an able and intensely practical leader she temporarily directed the main energy of

women who would yield to party expediency as advised by men, or be diverted int

le with the weightier discussions of our' sovereign masters. It will be quite time

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y, when men shall recognize us a

for Women,' we should become at once the moral balance of power which could not fail to compel the party of highest intelligence to proclaim woman suffrage the chief plank of its platform . . . . U

She did not live to turn this power upon an unwilling Congress. But she stood to the last, despite this temporary change of pro

r aggressive attack and her objective-the enfranchisement of women by Congress. They did not sustain her tactical wisdom. This reform movement, like all others when stretched over a long period of time, f

n appreciation of the fact that the attention of the nation mu

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her militant spirit were revived in suffrage history in 1913 when Alice Paul, also of Quak

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