Susan B. Anthony’s Ballot: A Portrait, a Trial and the Campaign That Continued

Elizabeth Cady Stanton sits beside Susan B. Anthony in Napoleon Sarony’s portrait, made around 1870. Their collaboration joined writing, organizing and public argument. By the time Anthony voted in Rochester, the two women had established the National Woman Suffrage Association and were pressing for federal protection of women’s voting rights.

The Daily Graphic put this caricature on its June 5, 1873, front page, shortly before Anthony’s trial. Thomas Wust dressed her in a mixture of masculine and feminine clothing, while other figures acted out anxieties about changing gender roles. The humor was hostile: a woman claiming political authority became a spectacle.

This court record is dated June 28, 1873, after the June trial. It formalizes the conviction and $100 fine. The document’s neat legal form gives little sense of the controversy surrounding a judge who directed the verdict and prevented the jury from considering the case for itself.

The final page of this petition carries the names of Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Stanton. Sent to Congress around January 1873, while Anthony’s prosecution was underway, it shows the campaign working through more than one institution. A court challenge and a congressional petition could be pursued at the same time.

Anthony and Stanton addressed this petition to the Senate in December 1874. It asked legislators to secure women’s voting rights. The courtroom defeat had not ended the campaign. Such documents made an individual act of voting part of an extended effort to change national law.