Rochester, November 27, 1872.
Miss Anthony—Dear Madam: The District Attorney says he can not attend to your case on any day but Friday. So it will be indispensable for you to be ready Friday morning, and I will do the best I can to attend to it.
I suppose the Commissioner will, as a matter of course, hold you for trial at the Circuit Court, whatever your rights may be in the matter.
In my opinion, however, the idea that you can be charged with a crime on account of voting, or offering to vote, when you honestly believed yourself to be a voter, is simply preposterous, whether your belief was right or wrong.
However, the learned (!) gentlemen engaged in this movement seem to suppose they can make a crime out of your honest deposit of your ballot, and perhaps they can find a respectable court or jury that will be of their opinion. If they do so I shall be greatly disappointed.
H. R. Selden.
Yours, truly,
(Boston Transcript.)
The last work came on the New York Calender; a person is discovered to have voted who had no right to; this is believed to be the first case of the kind ever heard of in New York, and its heinousness is perhaps aggravated by the fact that the perpetrator is a woman, who, in the vigorous language of the Court, "must have known when she did it that she was a woman." We await in breathless suspense the impending sentence.
The Rochester Evening Express of Friday, May 23, 1873, under the heading of "An Amiable Consideration of Miss Anthony's Case," said: United States District Attorney Crowley is a gallant gentleman, as gallant indeed as District Attorneys can afford to be, but he confesses himself no match for Miss Anthony. That lady has stumped Monroe County in behalf of impartial suffrage, and it appears that the Government very prudently declines to give her case to the jury in this county. The fact is, it is morally certain that no jury could be obtained in Monroe that would convict the lady of wrongdoing in voting, while it is highly probable that four juries out of five would acquit her. It is understood, of course, that the Court and prosecuting officers are merely fulfilling their official functions in recognizing this departure from ordinary practice at the polls, but would feel as deeply astonished at a verdict of guilty as the general public. The District Attorney is fortunate in having as a contestant (defendant, he would professionally call her) in this friendly little duel, a lady who is the embodiment of American common sense, courage, and ability; and we are certain that after this tournament is adjourned he will accept, with his usual urbanity, the aid of ladies' ballots to lift him to some other place where his conceded abilities shall be more widely known.