Susan B. Anthony

In 1872, Susan B. Anthony, a cofounder of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and sixteen other women registered to vote in the presidential election. They argued that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution made all U.S.-born Americans—men and women alike—citizens. Since voting is an important citizenship right, Anthony believed that the Fourteenth Amendment automatically granted women the right to vote. While all seventeen women were arrested after casting their ballots, only Anthony was actually taken to trial, indicating her importance in the women’s suffrage movement.

Leading up to her trial, which was held in June 1873, Anthony delivered versions of this speech throughout New York to proclaim her innocence and to champion the cause of women’s suffrage. The judge in her trial ordered the jury...