Susan B. Anthony Quotes
So long as State constitutions say that all may vote when twenty-one, save idiots, lunatics, convicts and women, you are brought down politically to the level of those others disfranchised.
Harper, Ida Husted. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. Vol. 2, The Bowen-Merrill Company, 1898.
Having passed this law, the state legislature turned down subsequent efforts to expand the female voting franchise, and Wisconsin women had to wait until all American women finally got the right to vote.
The issue was the voting franchise for Negroes in the aftermath of the Civil War.
America is almost unique among nations in that the methods of elections are different in each state, but at the time even the right to vote was uniquely controlled by the states—even for Federal officials. Even in modern times individual states have controlled the right to vote in many instances. For example in some states convicted felons may not vote while in others they can.
Also in a letter to a newspaper, June 13, 1836
It would be over 30 years more before American women could vote for President. Lockwood never could.
Even after the South was defeated in the Civil War, most Southern politicians strove to keep the newly freed Blacks from voting. The vehicle they chose to attain that purpose was the concept of States’ Rights where the states were the sole determiners of who could and could not vote. The majority of the country rejected that view and the Constitution was amended to allow Black men to vote. After reconstruction Black voting in the South was curtailed substantiality by devices such as poll taxes and literacy requirements and terror and intimidation. It was not until the latter part of the 20th century that most Blacks could vote in the Southern States.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
