Welcome to the Deep Dive, where we take your
source materials, filter out the noise, and extract
the most surprising and essential nuggets of
knowledge. Today, we are undertaking, well, a
monumental task, examining the life of a figure
who is so often just confined to a single image
on a coin. Right. Or a date on a constitutional
amendment. Susan B. Anthony. Exactly. And what
we found in the sources, it really, I mean, it
fundamentally changes that perception. And that's
our mission for this Deep Dive. We want to explore
the entire radical arc of her career, which spans
from 1820 right up to her death in 1906. Because
to just call her a suffragist, while it's accurate,
it's also profoundly incomplete. Yeah, it completely
misses the incredible force of personality she
was and the strategic genius she brought to so
many different reform movements over, what, six
decades? It absolutely does. Our sources, they
paint her not just as this pivotal women's rights
activist, but as a... a tireless social reformer.
She was so deeply committed to abolition, to
temperance, and to labor rights. She really spent
decades driving social and legislative change
in the U .S. And maybe most importantly, she
provided the organizational framework for modern,
structured political activism. I mean, the kind
of activism we still recognize today. Let's start
with a moment of high drama, a moment she actually
orchestrated herself. Okay. We're flashing forward
to Rochester, New York, 1872. It is November
18th and Susan B. Anthony is arrested and her
crime. The wicked crime of casting a ballot in
the presidential election. A direct. deliberate
violation of the law at the time. She wasn't
just, you know, protesting randomly. This was
a calculated legal challenge. That arrest is
the perfect entry point, I think, to understanding
her uncompromising radicalism. We have sources
that trace her entire path from when she first
started collecting anti -slavery petitions at
just 17 years old. 17. All the way to her death,
which was a full 14 years before the 19th Amendment
was finally ratified in 1920. And that amendment
is now colloquially known as the Susan B. It
is. She literally devoted her entire adult life
to the cause and never lived to see its ultimate
success. So why should you, the learner, invest
this time in understanding the full breadth of
her journey? Because I think she represents one
of the most profound shifts in public perception
in American history. That's a great way to put
it. At first, harshly ridiculed, attacked in
the press, accused of trying to, and I'm quoting,
destroy the institution of marriage, all for
advocating for women's independence. And yet
she persevered long enough to have her 80th birthday
celebrated at the White House. By the sitting
president, William McKinley. That transition
right there from public enemy number one to like
a national icon, that is the heart of her legacy.
It shows the power of relentless, sustained political
pressure. It really does. And it offers a kind
of blueprint for how radical ideas through organization
and persistence can become accepted national
policy. To really get the intensity of her conviction,
you have to go back to the very bedrock of her
upbringing. Her Quaker roots. Her Quaker roots
in Adams, Massachusetts. And this wasn't just
a casual religious background. It was a total
immersion in social reform and a commitment to
equality that just defined her family. That idea
of social equality, which is so fundamental to
the Quaker faith, really was foundational for
her. It was. Her father, Daniel Anthony, was
an abolitionist and a temperance advocate himself.
But the family's radicalism was so strong, it
actually led to a break with their own religious
community. Right. Daniel was formerly disowned
by his traditionalist Quaker congregation, and
it was for two specific acts. The first makes
sense. He married a non -Quaker, which was a
clear religious breach. But the second one is
the one that's really surprising. The second
was allowing a dance school to operate in his
home just to help make ends meet. Dancing was
seen as a worldly, you know, sinful activity
by traditional Quakers. So this act, as small
as it sounds, was a final push for him. It was
a push toward a more liberal, less structured
form of Quakerism. What we might call today an
increasingly radical belief system, one that
was focused on social justice over strict dogma.
That's a key point. Their reformist tendencies
were strong enough to supersede even their core
religious identity. Then, in 1845, the family
relocates to a farm on the outskirts of Rochester,
New York. And that move was so pivotal for Susan's
development. Why there? What was it about Rochester?
Well, the Rochester farm essentially became a
salon for the most progressive thinkers of the
era. It was the Sunday afternoon gathering spot
for local activists, transcendentalists, abolitionists.
And that's where she met Frederick Douglass.
It was. He lived nearby and she developed a crucial
and lifelong friendship with him there. Just
imagine the constant high level intellectual
exposure she had. They weren't just discussing
abolition, but the future of society. labor everything
and her father's vision for his children was
incredibly progressive for the time wasn't it
he really prepared them including the girls for
economic independence he insisted on it all his
children had to be self -supporting and he taught
them business principles making sure they understood
accounting and management so that foundational
belief that women should be financially independent.
That was the spark for her first major realization
about inequality. It was, and that realization
came pretty quickly, forced by circumstance.
Her family suffered major financial ruin during
the Panic of 1837. Which basically forced her
to start working to help support them. Exactly.
She taught for years and eventually rose to become
headmistress of the female department at Kanerjah
Harry Academy. She became a working woman by
necessity. Her first public speech, though, came
pretty early. was at a Daughters of Temperance
meeting in 1849. It was. But the real aha moment
that propelled her fully into the women's rights
fight wasn't about the ballot, not at first.
She later admitted, I wasn't ready to vote, didn't
want to vote, but I did want equal pay for equal
work. So it was a very practical, immediate focus
rooted right in her professional experience.
The distress over being paid so much less than
men in similar teaching jobs, that daily injustice,
that's what solidified her focus on economic
rights first. That's a key distinction that's
often lost. For Anthony, political rights were
a tool to achieve economic equality and legal
autonomy. So by 1849, the academy closed, and
she made a drastic commitment. She left the family
farm? She left the farm to become, in her words,
fully engaged in reform work. For the rest of
her life, she lived almost entirely on the fees
she earned as a speaker and organizer. That level
of professionalization is just astonishing for
the time. She wasn't some activist hobbyist.
No. This was her career. This was her income,
which meant she had to be constantly effective
and constantly on the move. Precisely. And she
embraced controversy immediately. She was so
willing to experiment with public image. You're
talking about the bloomer dress. The famous bloomer
dress. She adopted it for a year, which was revolutionary.
A short skirt worn over loose trousers. She found
it far more sensible than the traditional heavy
dresses that dragged on the ground. But the sources
say she stopped wearing it, even though it was
more practical. Yeah. Why make that calculated
retreat? Well, it was a fascinating lesson for
her in the strategic public image. She reluctantly
stopped because her opponents and the press,
they just seized on it. Right. It was all they
would talk about. They mocked her constantly,
focusing their ridicule entirely on her clothes
rather than her political arguments. She realized
the outfit was obscuring her message. So she
understood that sometimes, you know. practicality
has to yield to political necessity just to make
sure the core message is heard. This brings us
to the formation of, I mean, arguably the most
enduring and consequential political partnership
in American history. 1851. In 1851, Anthony was
introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Amelia
Bloomer herself, the woman who lent her name
to the dress. And this was a genuine inflection
point for the whole women's movement. It was.
Their skills were just perfectly complementary.
They established this highly dynamic and effective
division of labor, especially when you consider
their very different personal circumstances.
Let's break down that famous division of labor.
Stanton was the mind, right? The writer. the
rhetorician often stuck at home in Seneca Falls.
Correct. Stanton excelled at the intellectual
stuff, the philosophy, the rhetoric, the heavy
lifting of writing. She famously forged the thunderbolts.
And Anthony, meanwhile, she was the physical
engine. The one who took those ideas and mobilized
them. She fired them. She excelled at organizing,
speaking, managing, raising funds. And less glamorously,
she stirred the puddings of everyday logistics.
And the logistical reality of that partnership
required a deeply personal commitment from Anthony,
right? I mean, Stanton was often homebound with
seven children. The commitment was total. One
biographer noted that Anthony was, quote, almost
another mother to Mrs. Stanton's children. Wow.
would literally move into the Stanton household
for weeks or months at a time, supervising the
children, running errands, just keeping the house
quiet while Stanton was upstairs writing the
seminal speeches and articles that would define
the movement. Was that type of deep personal
sacrifice, I mean, literally embedding yourself
in a friend's family life, was that common for
activists back then? Or does it just underscore
the extraordinary lengths they had to go to?
I think it was extraordinary and it really speaks
to the necessary desperation of 19th century
female activism. They had no institutional support,
no central office, certainly no political staff.
They had to invent their own support structure.
They did. And Anthony's constant presence is
what allowed those thunderbolts to be forged
in the first place. It's what led the New York
state movement to become the most sophisticated
in the entire country by 1854. Their early victories
were focused on tangible legislative change,
what we might call material feminism. Right,
specifically married women's property rights.
This wasn't abstract political theory. This was
about economic autonomy and family survival.
Because before these laws, a married woman was
considered fiend covert. Which legally meant
she ceased to exist outside of her husband's
identity. Any property she brought into the marriage,
any wages she earned, it all belonged to him.
And Anthony understood that property rights rights
were the key the key to unlocking freedom so
she organized this massive physical campaign
to change it She did. She organized a lecture
and petition campaign in almost every single
county in New York in 1855. And she was traveling
relentlessly through difficult terrain, often
in harsh weather. The sources talk about the
sheer tenacity it required just to reach these
remote areas in the horse and buggy days. And
all that hard physical work culminated in the
1860 Married Women's Property Act. It was a huge
leap forward. It gave wives the right to own
separate property, to enter into contracts, and
crucially, it gave them joint guardianship of
their children. A foundation of legal personhood.
It was. But we have to emphasize how precarious
these victories were. During the Civil War, many
of the protective elements of that 1860 Act were
tragically rolled back in 1862. Which must have
been devastating. And it demonstrated to Anthony
that rights given by a legislature can be quickly
taken away. That instability probably just reinforced
her dedication to securing rights at the highest
level for the Constitution. So as that partnership
with Stanton solidified, the early 1850s saw
Anthony juggling these three major reform pillars
all at the same time. Temperance, teachers' rights,
and anti -slavery. And each battle gave her a
pretty painful education in political organizing
and public opposition. Temperance in particular
was the gateway issue for so many women because
it was so acutely tied to their legal helplessness.
Right. Why was temperance considered a women's
rights issue? Because the law gave husbands complete
control over everything, family finances, property,
child custody. If a husband was an alcoholic,
he could legally drink the family into destitution,
abuse his wife. And she would have virtually
no legal power to leave him or protect her children.
Exactly. And Anthony's professional involvement
started with this moment of just severe institutional
sexism. A textbook example. She was elected as
a delegate to a state temperance convention in
1852, only to be told by the chairman that women
delegates were only there to listen and learn.
So Anthony and the other women, they immediately
walked out, announced their own meeting, and
formed the Women's State Temperance Society with
Stanton as president. And they demonstrated real
political muscle right away. They did. They collected
28 ,000 signatures for a prohibition petition,
which was a massive number for the time. This
resulted in the first formal hearing initiated
by a group of women before the New York legislature.
But that initial success was, it was quickly
derailed by internal conservative forces. It
was fragile. And it was fragile because it strayed
from the narrow goal of prohibition. At the organization's
convention the next year, conservative members
attacked Stanton for her radical advocacy of
divorce rights for the wives of alcoholics. And
Stanton was voted out. which led both her and
Anthony to resign in frustration. And that whole
episode taught Anthony a crucial lesson, which
was that any issue focusing on women's subservient
status, whether to alcohol or to conservative
men, would be met with swift and harsh opposition,
even from within the reform movement itself.
The education system offered a similar very public
venue for confrontation. At the 1853 New York
State Teachers Association meeting, her attempt
to speak triggered this dramatic and lengthy
debate. The sources say the men debated for half
an hour just about the propriety of a woman speaking
publicly at all. It was less about what she had
to say and more about policing gender roles in
a public space. And when she was finally allowed
to continue, she delivered that famous retort.
challenging the entire professional structure
of the male teachers. Oh, she hit them right
where it hurt their professional identity. She
basically challenged the men by saying, if society
believes women have plenty of ability to teach
but are incompetent to be lawyers or doctors,
then any man who chooses the teaching profession
is tacitly admitting he has no more brains than
a woman. That is just pure intellectual strategy,
taking their own logic and turning it right back
against them. She was absolutely uncompromising,
and she used that platform to insist on tangible
changes. Equal pay for female teachers, allowing
women to serve as officers in the association,
and pushing aggressively for coeducation at all
levels, including colleges. And her push for
coeducation, which was incredibly radical, was
dismissed by opponents as, what, a vast social
evil. A vast social evil. The first step in the
school which seeks to abolish marriage. That's
what they called it. Wow. Beyond these professional
battles, Anthony's anti -slavery work was concurrent
and deeply personal. She was collecting petitions
against the gag rule as a teenager. And by 1856,
she became the New York state agent for the American
Anti -Slavery Society. Her personal commitment
involved dangerous direct action. We know from
the sources she was directly connected to the
Underground Railroad. There's that diary entry.
In 1861, she noted in her diary fitting out a
fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet
Tubman, who was a lifelong friend and fellow
activist. And the risk she took in her public
anti -slavery advocacy was immense, especially
as tensions escalated right before the Civil
War. It took tremendous moral courage. Mob action
was a frequent occurrence. In early 1861, her
meetings were shut down in nearly every town
from Buffalo to Albany. And the local authorities
often refused to protect them. That's right.
She frequently required police... You mentioned
the violence in Syracuse. Can you paint a picture
for us of what she was facing on the lecture
circuit? It was terrifying. Newspapers reported
that in Syracuse, rotten eggs were thrown, benches
broken, and knives and pistols gleamed in every
direction. The opposition wasn't just disagreement.
It was physical, organized violence designed
to silence her. Yet she refused to stop. She
refused. And despite all this overwhelming opposition,
she maintained a vision of a racially integrated
society that was far more radical than the mainstream
abolition movement's goals at the time. Absolutely.
Many abolitionists, including Lincoln at first,
were focused just on ending slavery or sending
formerly enslaved people to colonies outside
the US. But Anthony, in an 1861 speech, she articulated
a full vision of racial integration. She demanded
the opening of all schools. all shops, all business
avocations to the colored man. And she explicitly
demanded the extension of all the rights of citizenship.
Yes. This was a full -throated demand for equality,
anticipating the post -war amendments, but advocating
for true social integration decades before it
became a political reality. So, the start of
the Civil War. It forces Anthony and Stanton
to make a strategic pivot. They had to. They...
temporarily shelved the women's rights focus
to concentrate entirely on abolition, which in
the end actually solidified their organizational
prowess. With the Women's Loyal National League
in 1863. This was a brilliant tactical decision.
They understood that the most immediate crisis
was slavery. The League was organized to campaign
for the 13th Amendment, and it became the first
national women's political organization in the
U .S. And it leveraged all the skills they had
learned in those smaller New York campaigns.
It did. And the sheer scale of the work they
accomplished during that time, it really demonstrated
the political potential of women as a national
force, even without the vote. It resulted in
the largest petition drive in U .S. history up
to that point. Gathering nearly 400 ,000 signatures,
which for context was about one in every 24 adults
in the northern states. The political lesson
was crystal clear. Women could mobilize on a
massive scale. It proved the power of a formal
structure. And it provided women with a practical,
powerful vehicle for political action at a time
when petitioning was their only legal tool. But
once the war ended, that unity between abolition
and women's rights, which had been cemented in
the American Equal Rights Association or AERA,
it crumbled pretty quickly. It did. And this
led directly to the critical political moment
known as the male crisis. This is where political
idealism collided brutally with legislative pragmatism.
The crisis was the proposed 14th Amendment. Right.
Which aimed to guarantee citizenship rights.
But, and this is the crucial part, for the first
time, it would introduce the word male into the
Constitution when defining voting rights. Why
was that one word so devastating for the women's
movement? Because up until that point, the Constitution
had been silent on sex. Adding the word male
would legally enshrine a gender barrier. It would
make women's suffrage infinitely harder to achieve.
And Stanton saw it coming. She sounded the alarm,
warning that if that word male be inserted, it
will take us a century at least to get it out.
And she was precisely right. It took 52 more
years. Abolitionist leaders like Horace Greeley
urged them to accept the 14th and 15th Amendments,
arguing this was the Negro's hour and that women's
rights could wait. And Anthony's response was
just legendary in its uncompromising radicalism.
It really represents the breaking point between
coalition politics and ideological purity. What
did she say? She refused to prioritize black
male suffrage over universal suffrage, declaring,
I would sooner cut off my right hand than ask
for the ballot for the black man and not for
women. Wow. For Anthony, having fought so hard
for universal freedom, allowing the Constitution
to explicitly establish an aristocracy of sex
by enfranchising all men while excluding all
women was just morally unacceptable. To articulate
this uncompromising position, they needed their
own platform. An independent platform. So they
launched the Revolution Weekly newspaper in 1868.
And its motto perfectly captured their spirit
of defiance. Men, their rights, and nothing more.
Women, their rights, and nothing less. Anthony
managed the business subscriptions, printing,
distribution while Stanton and Parker Pillsbury
edited. They really envisioned it as this vital
political instrument. They hoped it would become
a daily paper owned and operated by women. countering
the increasingly conservative reform periodicals
of the time. But running a radical paper with
no institutional backing is a massive undertaking,
and the funding evaporated almost immediately.
It did. Their initial and very controversial
funder, George Francis Train, was jailed. So
the financing collapsed. And Anthony, as the
business manager, took on all the debt. All of
it. Mounting debt that ultimately totaled around
$10 ,000, a huge sum for the time, maybe a quarter
of a million dollars today. And she spent the
next six years of her life in constant motion,
lecturing relentlessly across the country to
pay off every single dollar herself. That just
highlights her incredible personal sacrifice
and commitment to financial independence, even
when it meant carrying this disastrous financial
burden. It really does. Before the final split
in the movement, though, they made this critical
attempt to form a massive coalition with the
labor movement. The National Labor Union, or
NLU, they envisioned a triple power of producers.
Working men, women, and Negroes, all uniting
to wrest power from non -producers. It sounds
so powerful on paper. Why did that alliance also
fail? It failed because of a fundamental clash
between gender and class loyalty. The breaking
point was the printer strike in 1869. Anthony,
who was so focused on securing employment for
women in skilled trades, a major goal of the
revolution, she supported an employer -sponsored
program to train women as printers. Which was
seen by the NLU as supporting strikebreakers.
Exactly. The male unionists viewed her actions
as undermining solidarity, even though Anthony
argued she was just giving working women access
to profitable, skilled jobs that had previously
been reserved only for men. That political miscalculation
cost her dearly. She was quickly unseated as
a delegate at the next NLU conference. Congress
and that powerful labor alliance just collapsed.
Despite that failure, they did use their newfound
platform to secure a victory in the labor sphere,
right? With Hester Vaughn. That win showed their
political effectiveness in legal advocacy. They
won a pardon for Hester Vaughn, a domestic worker
convicted of infanticide, by arguing that the
social and legal system treated working women
unfairly and denied her fair representation.
But that one win aside. The political differences
over the 15th Amendment proved too great. It
did. It led to the formal dissolution of the
AERA in 1869 and the infamous split. So let's
clearly define that schism for the listener.
We ended up with the National Woman Suffrage
Association, or NWSA. Led by Anthony and Scanton.
And the American Woman Suffrage Association,
or AWSA. Led by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe.
The core difference, as we said, was the 15th
Amendment. The NWSA opposed it. They opposed
the 15th Amendment because it prohibited the
denial of suffrage based on race but not on sex.
Anthony articulated this as creating an oligarchy
of sex, which makes the men of every household
sovereigns, masters, the women subjects, slaves.
She saw the political elevation of all men as
the constitutional subjugation of all women.
And their strategies were different, too. The
NWSA focused its energy on a national constitutional
amendment and maintained political independence.
They refused to ally with any party that didn't
support their goal. And the AWSA. They were more
pragmatic. They supported the 15th Amendment.
They preferred a state -by -state strategy to
win local victories. And they initially maintained
close ties with the Republican Party. The hostility
was intense. fueled by personal ambition, strategy,
and ideology. It was. Yet, two decades later,
Anthony was the driving force behind healing
that rift. How did she, the person who stood
for ideological purity, manage to bridge that
gap? At the end of the day, she was the ultimate
pragmatist when it came to organizational structure.
By the late 1880s, Anthony recognized that the
hostility was just draining the movement's resources
and effectiveness. So she personally engineered
the unification. She did, in 1890. forming the
National American Woman Suffrage Association,
or NASA. She focused less on past ideological
arguments and more on future organizational strength,
and she later served as NASA's president. She
understood that victory required a single, united
front. After that bitter political split, Anthony
and the NWSA adopted this radical new legal strategy
to force the issue. Yes, the attempt to vote
and then challenge the laws under the 14th Amendment.
They asserted that voting was a privilege or
immunity of... citizens that the states couldn't
abridge. It was a brilliant piece of civil disobedience
designed to force the courts to interpret the
rights conferred by postwar citizenship and the
sequence of events in Rochester in 1872. It just
shows Anthony's meticulous planning. She and
nearly 50 other women registered to vote, arguing
they met the definition of citizens on Election
Day. She and 14 others successfully convinced
hesitant inspectors to allow them to cast their
ballots. They succeeded in voting, but the legal
system struck back on. On November 18, 1872,
a U .S. deputy marshal arrested Anthony. She
was charged with illegally voting. But knowing
that her ultimate goal wasn't acquittal but public
education, she used the months before her trial
to maximum effect. She basically pre -campaigned
to the jury pool. Exactly. She toured Monroe
and Ontario counties where the potential jurors
resided, asking this pointed question in her
speeches. Is it a crime for a U .S. citizen to
vote? She was appealing directly to women everywhere
to exercise their too long neglected citizens'
right to vote. She turned her criminal case into
a national political rally. The actual trial.
Oh, it was a profound miscarriage of justice.
The trial was presided over by Justice Ward Hunt,
who had just been appointed to the U .S. Supreme
Court but had virtually no experience as a trial
judge. And to make it worse, Hunt refused to
allow Anthony to testify in her own defense.
Which, while technically legal under common law
at the time for criminal defendants, meant she
was completely unable to challenge the prosecution's
narrative. But the moment that really defines
the trial is when Judge Hunt took the verdict
out of the jury's hands entirely. Can you explain
the legal gravity of that move, the directed
verdict? Wow. That sounds like a complete violation
of due process. It is. It essentially turned
the courtroom into a stage for the government
to impose a political judgment, removing the
cornerstone of the Anglo - American legal tradition,
the jury's right to determine guilt. And this
high -handed action just amplified the feeling
of political persecution among her supporters.
But that judicial fiasco led to one of the most
famous speeches in the history of the women's
rights movement. When Anthony was asked if she
had anything to say before sentencing, she refused
to stop talking. She delivered a masterpiece
of defiance, repeatedly ignoring the judge's
orders to sit down. She protested what she called
a high -handed outrage upon my citizens' rights.
She went even further. She dismantled the very
system that had convicted her by pointing out
the deep irony. She was denied a trial by a jury
of her peers precisely because women were prohibited
from serving on juries. So she argued the entire
process was fundamentally corrupt. Exactly. Because
it was administered by men for men. And when
Justice Hunt sentenced her to a $100 fine, about
$2 ,600 in today's money, her refusal was absolute.
I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty,
she declared, and she kept that promise until
her death. But here's the strategic brilliance
of the judge. Okay. Hunt refused to order her
taken into custody for nonpayment. Why was that
a strategic move by the judge? If she was jailed,
she could have appealed the case, couldn't she?
Exactly. If she had been jailed for nonpayment,
she would have had a clear path to appeal her
case, potentially all the way to the Supreme
Court. By fining her and then refusing to enforce
the sentence through incarceration, Hunt closed
off her legal avenue for challenge. Ensuring
the verdicts stood without a review by the nation's
highest court. That's right. And the Supreme
Court itself ended the judicial strategy two
years later anyway. In 1875, they ruled in Minor
v. Happersett that the Constitution of the United
States does not confer the right of suffrage
upon anyone. Which ended any hope of winning
the vote through the courts. It did. And it confirmed
that the only path forward was the one Anthony
had already started, campaigning for a constitutional
amendment. With the courts closed off, Anthony's
focus shifted again. The battle wasn't just political
anymore, it was also historical. Yes, she dedicated
herself to chronicling the past and globalizing
the struggle. She wanted to ensure her fight
wasn't forgotten and to lay the groundwork for
future generations. So, starting around 1876,
Anthony, Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage began
this mammoth task of compiling the history of
woman suffrage. And this wasn't just some fun
side project. It was a desperate, self -funded
attempt to preserve the movement's records before
they were lost and, you know, to establish the
movement's authoritative narrative. The sheer
scale of this work is legendary. Six volumes,
over 5 ,700 pages, spanning 41 years of publication.
And the sources say Anthony, the great organizer,
She absolutely hated the sedentary nature of
the work. She physically despised being tied
to a desk. She handled all the production details,
the research, the correspondence, and she often
wrote in her letters that the project makes me
feel growly all the time. She famously stated,
That quote is perfect. And we know the physical
reality of the work was immense. She even had
to limit the number of books she was storing
in her sister's attic because the was literally
threatening to collapse the structure. That anecdote
really brings home the physical reality of historical
preservation back then. But we have to address
the critical context here. While the history
preserved all this irreplaceable material, it
was inherently biased, wasn't it? Oh, absolutely.
Because it was written by the leaders of the
NWSA faction, Anthony and Stanton, the history
necessarily overstakes their roles and minimizes
or entirely ignores rivals like Lucy Stone and
the A .W .S .A. So for decades, this massive
text. was the primary source for historians.
Meaning it actively shaped the historical narrative
and required later historians to work really
hard to balance the record. It was as much a
political document as a historical one. So Anthony's
strategy then moved outward. She started looking
beyond U .S. borders with a nine month tour of
Europe in 1883. Her focus was on creating a formalized
international structure to connect women's movements
globally. And this led directly to the founding
of the International Council of Women in Washington
in 1888. This was a hugely significant event.
It brought together delegates from 53 organizations
across nine countries. And what's crucial about
the ICW is that it wasn't just a suffrage group.
No, it demonstrated this broad support for women's
concerns. It included non -suffrage groups like
professional groups, literary clubs, charitable
organizations. It was a coalition designed to
show that women were organized and powerful across
various spheres of public life, not just at the
ballot box. And this movement gained serious
high -level political credibility almost immediately.
It opened doors. President Cleveland hosted a
reception for the delegates at the White House.
And Queen Victoria hosted one for a later Congress
in London. Anthony was being recognized as a
major global political figure, moving seamlessly
between different heads of state. One of her
most clever acts of political maneuvering involved
the World's Congress of Representative Women
at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. She ensured
women were recognized without rousing conservative
opposition. How does she pull that off? She worked
quietly and strategically behind the scenes.
She knew that a public campaign by known suffragists
would immediately draw opposition from conservative
religious and political groups. So she covertly
initiated a petition. Not from the radical suffragists,
but signed by the wives and daughters of powerful
figures. Supreme Court judges, senators, cabinet
members. Using the social status of these political
elites as cover. Precisely. This political maneuvering
ensured the exposition officially recognized
the role of women. The resulting event was huge,
hosting delegates from 27 countries, and suffrage
was discussed in almost all of the 81 sessions.
It proved that women's voices could not be silenced,
even on the grandest stage. And finally, we see
her planning for the movement's long -term future
through this global suffrage work, ensuring continuity.
The capstone was the International Woman Suffrage
Alliance, IWSA, founded in Berlin in 1904. This
is primarily by Carrie Chapman Catt, one of Anthony's
proteges. A pure suffered organization designed
for the final global push. Anthony was named
the honorary president and first member, an honor
which gave her profound satisfaction in her final
years. She knew the cause would continue under
dedicated, trained leaders. That mentorship model
was so key to her success. In 1891, at age 71,
she finally settled into her sister Mary Stafford
Anthony's home in Rochester after decades of
living out of hotels and friends' houses. But
she was still tireless. Her physical energy was
legendary, even into her 70s. Sources mention
her traveling extensively, even touring Yosemite
on the back of a mule at age 75. But she made
sure the next generation, the younger activists
known as her nieces, including Kat and Anna Howard
Shaw, were fully prepared to take the reins.
Ensuring the movement's leadership didn't die
with the founding generation. And she demonstrated
this remarkable practical commitment to education,
showing she fought not just for the right to
vote, but for the necessary tools for women to
succeed. She played a key role in raising funds
for the University of Rochester to finally admit
women students. And when the campaign stalled,
she personally pledged her life insurance policy
to close the final funding gap. This act just
shows her absolute dedication to ensuring women
had access to higher education. She saw it as
critical to empowerment as the ballot itself.
And the arc of public opinion finally caught
up to her, culminating in that celebration at
the White House for her 80th birthday, hosted
by President William McKinley. It is the ultimate
contrast. The woman who was once mobbed in Syracuse
and arrested for the crime of voting was now
being celebrated by the political elite. She
transitioned from a radical extremist to a venerated
senior political figure within her own lifetime,
which is a rare feat for any revolutionary. Moving
beyond her political biography, let's look at
Anthony's personal philosophy, particularly her
complex views on religion, which shaped her approach
to work and her, uh, her famously single status.
She was raised a Quaker, but her path was far
from traditional. Her religious heritage was
mixed by necessity. Her family moved from the
traditional Quaker sect to a more liberal branch,
and they eventually settled on attending the
first Unitarian Church of Rochester. And Elizabeth
Cady Stanton later described Anthony as an agnostic.
She did. Though Anthony herself continued to
identify with her Quaker roots, she valued the
faith's commitment to internal moral guidance
over external dogma. She seems to have had a
very utilitarian approach to faith, almost equating
work with worship. She articulated her personal
theology by saying, work and worship are one
with me. I cannot imagine a God of the universe
made happy by my getting down on my knees and
calling him great. Her focus was entirely on
visible, demonstrable action and social improvement.
And this spiritual honesty meant she refused
to adopt a facade of belief. She stated pointedly
that she could not dash her faith with my doubts
when she was comforting her dying sister. Her
views on marriage and her decision to remain
single are particularly insightful. They're so
deeply rooted in the legal and economic constraints
women faced back then. Was this a conscious political
choice or is it simply a matter of preference?
I think it was overwhelmingly a conscious political
choice, driven by necessity and legal status.
We discussed the concept of femme covert earlier,
the legal non -existence of a married woman.
So Anthony recognized that as a single woman,
a femme soul, she maintained her legal rights.
She could sign contracts, manage money, travel
freely without a husband's permission. Which
was absolutely essential for running a national
political movement. It was non -negotiable. Marrying
meant surrendering the very autonomy required
to be the orc. organizational engine of the women's
rights movement. And her personal statements
about singleness were defiantly strong. She stated
she never found a man necessary to my happiness.
And to a journalist, she explained her rationale
for avoiding marriage very clearly. She said
had she married young, she would have been a
drudge or a doll for 59 years. Think of it. that
quote just perfectly encapsulates the high stakes
of marriage for 19th century women it often meant
the total cessation of a public professional
life and she saw this as a systemic issue In
1877, she predicted an epoch of single women
if women would not accept marriage with subjugation.
She was signaling that until the legal relationship
between husband and wife was based on equality,
marriage itself remained a political trap for
ambitious women. Finally, we really must address
the modern dispute surrounding her views on abortion.
It's a topic that has often been politicized
using her name. What does the scholarly consensus
based on the full body of her papers tell us?
Yeah, it is crucial here to rely on the findings
of experts who work directly with the primary
source material. I'm talking about the decades
-long project that compiled and edited the Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony papers. Andy
Golden and Lynn Scher, lead researchers on that
project, have stated very clearly that Anthony
never voiced an opinion about the sanctity of
fetal life or about using state power to require
pregnancies to be carried to term. So when modern
groups cite her as an outspoken critic of abortion,
What is the scholarly consensus on the sources
they are using? Are they authentic? The consensus
among these primary source scholars is complex.
They agree that the statements often cited are
either misattributed entirely, taken drastically
out of context, or most commonly referred to
the desperate social circumstances that drove
women to seek abortions in the 19th century.
So Anthony and her colleagues saw abortion as
a tragic symptom of women's subjugation. Exactly.
Their lack of legal control over their bodies,
their finances, their marriage contracts. She
focused on removing the root causes, the lack
of rights, rather than advocating for state prohibition
of the act itself. Her goal was women's control
and empowerment, not state interference. Susan
B. Anthony's final years were characterized by
this unwavering certainty in the ultimate victory.
She died on March 13, 1906, at age 86, from heart
failure and pneumonia. still 14 years shy of
the 19th Amendment's ratification. Her final
public words, which she delivered at her birthday
celebration just days earlier, became the rallying
cry that defined the movement's final push. What
did she say? She acknowledged the vast network
of women who had committed themselves, stating,
There have been others also just as true and
devoted to the cause I wish I could name everyone,
but with such women consecrating their lives,
failure is impossible. She never saw the national
victory, but she witnessed enormous progress
in cultural acceptance. She expressed pride in
the greater revolution than in the sphere of
woman during this 50 years. By the time of her
death, women had achieved full suffrage in four
Western states, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and
Idaho. And more broadly, legal rights for married
women had been established in most states, undoing
that theme covert status she fought so hard against.
And there was a colossal shift in education.
36 ,000 women were attending colleges and universities,
up from almost zero in the mid -1800s. She fought
for the right to be a full person, not just the
right to cast a ballot. Her legacy was almost
immediately solidified. The 19th Amendment, ratified
in 1920, was justly known as the Susan B. Anthony
Amendment. And she became the first female citizen
to be depicted on U .S. coinage with the 1979
dollar coin, cementing her role as a primary
figure in American history. The first physical
memorial dedicated to Anthony was established
by African -American women. It is a profound
historical testament. In 1907, Hester C. Jeffrey,
the president of the Susan B. Anthony Club, an
organization of African -American women in Rochester,
installed a stained glass window in a local AME
Zion church. And Jeffrey noted that Anthony stood
by the Negroes when it meant almost death to
be a friend of the colored people. This memorial,
it just underscores the cross -racial coalition
she prioritized and maintained despite the painful
political schism over the 15th Amendment. And
finally, that defiant spirit from the 1873 trial,
that refusal to submit to an unjust system, it
resurfaced recently during the 2020 posthumous
pardon controversy. It did. When a posthumous
presidential pardon was announced, the president
of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House
declined the offer. They argued that accepting
the pardon would wrongly validate the unjust
1873 trial. A very outcome Anthony fought against.
So her original refusal to pay the fine remains
this powerful, active symbol of moral victory
over a corrupt legal process. The incredible
complexity of her life, the tireless organizer,
the massive debtor, the friend of Frederick Douglass
and Harriet Tubman, the agitator. who battled
mobs and the strategist who invented modern lobbying,
it's overwhelming. Her life was defined by the
intensity of the struggle. And she clearly foresaw
the danger of future generations taking her hard
-won liberties for granted. She did. In 1894,
she voiced this very fear. She said, we shall
someday be heated, and when we shall have our
amendment. Everybody will think it was always
so. They have no idea of how every single inch
of ground that she stands upon today has been
gained by the hard work of some little handful
of women of the past. That brings us to our closing
thought for you. When we look at the immense
battles she fought, from establishing equal pay
and coeducation to securing basic property rights,
what area of social justice today might we similarly
be taking for granted, assuming they were always
so? What forgotten battles from the past are
shaping the very institutions and liberties we
rely on now? You should think about Anthony's
most crucial tools. Persistence, the creation
of clear organizational structure, and the power
of radical, uncompromising friendship. Her blueprint
for sustained, decades -long activism is still
so relevant. We have to ask ourselves, what fundamental
rights are being fought for right now that future
generations will simply assume were always there?
Consider the current value of the incomparable
organizer's approach. We hope this deep dive
into the historical sources has provided you
with a new appreciation for the long game of
social change.