An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872, and on the Trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, the Inspectors of Election by Whom Her Vote was Received.

by Anonymous

As the nation has grown to know the needs of liberty, it has from time to time thrown new safeguards around it, as I have shown in its fifteen progressive steps since 1776. For sixty years there was no change. Slavery had cast its blight upon our country, and the struggle was for State supremacy. Men forgot the rights, and need of freedom; but in 1861, the climax was reached, and then came the bitter struggle between state and national power. Although our underlying principles were all right, freedom required new guards, and the right of all men to liberty, was put in a new form. An especial statute or amendment was added to our National Constitution, declaring that involuntary servitude, unless for crime, could not exist in this republic. This statute created no new rights; it merely affirmed and elucidated rights as old as creation, and which, in a general way, had been recognized at the very first foundation of our government—even as far back as the old Articles of Association, before the Declaration of Independence. This amendment was the sixteenth step in securing the rights of the people, but it was not enough. Our country differs from every other country, in that we have two kinds of citizenship. First, we have national citizenship, based upon equal political rights. A person born a citizen of the United States, is, by the very circumstances of birth, endowed with certain political rights. In this respect, the circumstances of birth are very different from those of a person born in Great Britain. A person born in Great Britain is not endowed with political rights, simply because born in that country. Political rights in Great Britain are not based upon personal rights; they are based upon property rights. In England, persons are not represented; only property is represented. That is the very great political difference between England and the United States. In the United States, representation is based upon individual, personal rights—therefore, every person born in the United States—every person,—not every white person, nor every male person, but every person is born with political rights. The naturalization of foreigners also secures to them the exercise of political rights, because it secures to them citizenship, and they obtain naturalization through national law. The war brought about a distinct and new recognition of the rights of national citizenship. States had assumed to be superior to the nation in this very underlying national basis of voting rights, but when certain States boldly attempted to thwart national power, and vote themselves out of the Union,—when by this attempt they virtually said, there is no nation, a new protection was thrown around individual, personal, political rights, by a seventeenth step, known to the world by the Fourteenth Amendment, which defined, (not created) citizenship. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," thus recognizing United States citizenship as the first and superior citizenship.

Miss Anthony was not only born in the United States, but the United States also has jurisdiction over her, as is shown by this suit, under which she was arrested in Rochester, and held there to examination in the same little room in which fugitive slaves were once examined. From Rochester she was taken to Albany, from Albany back to Rochester, and now from Rochester to Canandaigua, where she is soon to be tried. She has thus been fully acknowledged by the United States as one of its citizens, and also as a citizen of the State in which she resides.

In order to become a citizen of a State, and enjoy the privileges and immunities of States, a citizen of the United States must reside in a State. Citizenship of the United States secures nothing over the citizenship of other countries, unless it secures the right of self-government. State laws may hereafter regulate suffrage, but the difference between regulating and prohibiting, is as great as the difference between state and national citizenship. The question of the war was the question of State rights; it was the negro, vs. State rights, or the power of States over the ballot. The question to-day is, woman, vs. United States rights, or the power of the United over the ballot. The moral battle now waging will settle the question of the power of the United States over the rights of citizens. By the civil war, the United States was proven to be stronger than the States. It was proven we were a nation in so far that States were but parts of the whole. The woman question, of which in this pending trial, Miss Anthony stands as the exponent, is to settle the question of United States power over the individual political rights of the people; it is a question of a monarchy or a republic. The United States may usurp power, as did the States, but it has no rights in a sovereign capacity, not given it by the Constitution, or in other words, BY THE PEOPLE. By the Preamble we have discovered who are its people, and for what purpose its Constitution was instituted. Each and every amendment—the first ten, the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, are only parts of the grand whole, and must, each and every one, be examined in the light of the Preamble.

Each added amendment makes this change in the status of the People, in that it gives new guaranties of freedom, and removes all pretense of right from any existing usurped power. People are slow to comprehend the change which has been effected by the decision as to State rights. One, claims that only the negro, or persons of African descent, were affected by it. Others claim, and among them, some prominent Republicans, that every civil right is by these amendments, thrown under national control. Recently, two or three suits have come before the United States on this apprehension. One of these, known as the Slaughter House Case, came up from New Orleans in the suit of certain persons against the State of Louisiana. A permit had been given certain parties to erect sole buildings for slaughter, and in other ways control that entire business in the city of New Orleans for a certain number of years. A suit upon it was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, on the ground of the change in the power of States, by, and through the last three amendments, and on the supposition that all the civil power of the States had thus been destroyed.

The Court decided it had no jurisdiction, though in its decision it proclaimed the far-reaching character of these amendments. In reference to the Thirteenth Amendment, the Court used this language:

We do not say that no one else but the negro can share in this protection. Both the language and spirit of these articles are to have their full and just weight in any question of construction. Undoubtedly while negro slavery alone was in the minds of the Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it forbids any kind of slavery, now, or hereafter. If Mexican peonage, or the Chinese cooley labor system shall develop slavery of the Mexican or Chinese race within our territory, this amendment may be safely trusted to make it void."

This is the language used by the Supreme Court of the United States in reference to this thirteenth amendment; prohibiting any, all, and every kind of slavery, not only now, but in the hereafter, and this, although the decision, also acknowledges the fact that only African slavery was intended to be covered by this amendment.

The Court further said, "And so if other rights are assailed by the States, which properly and necessarily fall within the protection of these articles, that protection will apply, though the party interested may not be of African descent."

What "other rights fall within the protection of these articles?" What "other rights" do these amendments cover? The fourteenth article, after declaring who are citizens of the United States, and of States, still further says, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction, the equal protection of the laws." This comprises the first section of that amendment. The jurisdiction and protection of the general government applies to United States citizens. By its prosecution of Miss Anthony, the general government acknowledges her as a citizen of the United States, and what is much more, it acknowledges its own jurisdiction over the ballot—over the chief—chief, did I say,—over the only political right of its citizens. This prosecution is an admission of United States jurisdiction, instead of State jurisdiction. This whole amendment, with the exception of the first clause of the first section, which simply declares who are citizens of the United States and States, is directed against the interference of States in the rights of citizens. But in Miss Anthony's case, the State of New York has not interfered with her right to vote. She voted under local laws, and the State said not a word,—has taken no action in the case, consequently the United States has had no occasion to interfere on that ground. The question of State rights was not as great a question as this: What are United States rights? Can the United States, in its sovereign capacity, overthrow the rights of its own citizens? No, it cannot; for the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution specifically declares "The right of citizens of the United States to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

This fifteenth Amendment has been seriously misapprehended by many people, who have understood it to mean that women could be excluded from voting, simply because they are women. I have shown you that Statutes and Constitutions are always general in their character; that from generals we must argue down to particulars, and that if there is any doubt as to the interpretation of a statute, it must be defined in the interests of liberty. But as to the interpretation of this statute there can be no doubt. Had it read, "The right of citizens of the United States to take out passports, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," no person would interpret it to mean that such right to take out passport could be denied on account of female sex, or on account of male sex. We will read it now, first in the light of the Declaration; second, in that of the Preamble to the Constitution, and the Constitution itself, and its various amendments, to which I have referred: the first, sixth, ninth and tenth, which would have been interpreted male, had the Constitution meant men alone, but which have always been defined to cover, and include woman—to cover and include the rights of the whole people to freedom of conscience, to freedom of speech, to the right of a speedy and public trial, &c., &c., and this, although in the Sixth Amendment, the terms him and his are alone used. The Courts long ago decided that Statutes were of general bearing, as is fully true of the Declaration and Constitution, which are supreme statutes. The Fifteenth Amendment does not specifically exclude right of male citizens to vote, because they are male citizens, therefore, male citizens are of necessity included in the right of voting. It does not specifically exclude female citizens from the right of voting, because they are female citizens, therefore, female citizens are of necessity included in the right of voting—a right which the United States cannot abridge. No male citizen can claim that he, as a male citizen, is included, save by implication, and save on the general grounds that he is not specifically excluded, he is necessarily included. Can the United States, at pleasure, take from its own citizens the right of voting, or abridge that right? Has it the right to take from citizens of States the right of voting? Are citizens of States simply protected against States, and can the United States now, at will, step in and deny or abridge the right of voting to all its male citizens simply because they are male? If it has that power over its female citizens, it has the same power over its male citizens. You cannot fail to see that the question brought up by Miss Anthony's prosecution and trial by the United States for the act of voting, has developed the most important question of United States rights; a larger, most pregnant, more momentous question by far, than that of State rights. The liberties of the people are much more closely involved when the United States is the aggressor, than when the States are aggressors.