Susan B. Anthony Biography

Susan B. Anthony was born February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. She was raised in a Quaker family with strong social justice traditions. Her father and brothers were abolitionists and when the family moved to Rochester, New York in 1845, their home became a meeting place for reformers and activists including Frederick Douglass who became a lifelong friend.

At the age of 17, Anthony collected anti-slavery petitions. Dedicated to the abolition of slavery, she eventually became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society and participated in the Underground Railroad. “Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman,” read one of her diary entries. “To forever blot out slavery is the only possible compensation for this merciless war,” read another.

In 1851, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two formed a deep relationship that would have an enormous impact on the women’s movement. At the time, alcoholism among men was quite common, often resulting in domestic abuse. Laws, however, granted husbands sweeping ownership of family finances, custody of children, and general impunity in cases of spousal abuse. Thus, many of the early efforts of Stanton and Anthony were in support of temperance, including their co-creation of the Women’s State Temperance Society in Rochester, New York.

In 1863, Anthony and Stanton organized the Woman’s Loyal National League to campaign for an amendment to abolish slavery. The league organized the largest petition drive to date, substantially impacting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery.

In 1868, Anthony and Stanton launched a weekly newspaper called The Revolution. Subversive and combative in tone, the paper focused on women’s rights issues. The paper remained in print for four years. In these years following the Civil War, the women’s movement split over whether to support a constitutional amendment that would grant blacks the right to vote but not women. Anthony and Stanton could not justify the inconsistency and so formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) for members of the movement who took the same position.

Anthony now focused her attention on women’s suffrage. She remained unmarried, dedicating herself exclusively to the cause with relentless energy while deflecting withering abuse from detractors. She traveled extensively, giving lectures at a breakneck pace and recruiting new adherents to the movement while lobbying Congress and organizing conventions. 

Anthony now focused her attention on women’s suffrage. She remained unmarried, dedicating herself exclusively to the cause with relentless energy while deflecting withering abuse from detractors.

In a historic act of civil disobedience, Anthony and dozens of other women attempted to vote in the 1872 presidential election. Anthony was arrested, found guilty in a high-profile trial, and sentenced to pay a $100 fine. She told the judge in response, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.” She never did, but it was becoming clear that legal attacks would not likely achieve the end goal of women’s suffrage. The daunting challenge of a constitutional amendment would need to be pursued. For the next three decades, Anthony worked well into her eighties, attempting in vain to realize that goal. 

Susan B. Anthony dollar, Years minted: 1979-1981, 1999

Image courtesy of the United States Mint

The noted women’s studies scholar Eleanor Flexner wrote that Anthony was the “incomparable organizer” of the women’s suffrage movement “who gave it force and direction for half a century. Though Anthony did not witness national women’s suffrage, at the time of her passing, women had been granted suffrage in four states with others soon to follow. Momentum had been established not only in the voting arena but women also achieved notable progress in employment, education, and legal rights.

Susan B. Anthony died on March 13, 1906. A few days prior to her death, a frail Anthony spoke at her birthday celebration in Washington, D.C. She acknowledged the legions of people who had devoted themselves to women’s rights and the cause of suffrage. She closed by saying, “Failure is impossible!” These last public words of hers would become the motto of the suffrage movement going forward.