Susan B. Anthony's vote, trial, and unpaid fine

Susan B. Anthony registered to vote in Rochester's Eighth Ward on November 1, 1872. Four days later, she cast a ballot at 81 West Avenue. Election inspector Edwin P. Marsh later testified at her preliminary examination that he had seen her vote.

She was not alone. Testimony in the examination describes fifteen women voting and names the inspectors who registered them and accepted their ballots. Anthony testified that she had consulted Henry R. Selden for legal advice before voting.

Federal records date her indictment to January 24, 1873. The case reached the federal circuit court in Canandaigua, where the trial opened on June 17. Justice Ward Hunt directed the jury to return a guilty verdict instead of allowing it to decide Anthony's intent.

The sentence was a $100 fine plus prosecution costs. In a letter printed in an 1874 House Judiciary Committee report, United States Attorney Richard Crowley itemized $104.41 in taxed costs in addition to the fine.

Crowley also described the attempt to collect. An execution issued in July 1873 was returned by the marshal nulla bona, meaning that no property had been found to satisfy it. Crowley reported that nothing had been collected.

The proceeding remained contested in print. Congressional committee reports and the suffrage movement's published account preserved competing views of Hunt's directed verdict and the request to remit the fine. Those sources took positions; they cannot be read as interchangeable neutral transcripts.

The record follows the case from a Rochester polling place through examination and indictment to the Canandaigua courtroom, then into collection proceedings and congressional debate. Keeping those stages together gives a fuller account of what followed the ballot.

About this account

The sources establish the documented sequence and preserve disagreement about the proceeding. This account does not turn the competing congressional and movement arguments into a single agreed legal judgment.

Source note

The voting and registration details come from the National Archives' Exhibit B, transcript of the preliminary examination, NARA identifier 278300, especially transcript pages 1–12. The National Archives' case-file teaching page identifies the indictment, Exhibit B, and record of conviction as Record Group 21 items 278295, 278300, and 278304.

The Canandaigua chronology and directed-verdict procedure are cross-checked against Ann D. Gordon's Federal Judicial Center study, The Trial of Susan B. Anthony, printed pages 1–13. The fine, costs, attempted collection, and institutional disagreement are recorded in House Report 648, 43rd Congress, 1st session, especially printed pages 1 and 4, and Senate Report 472, printed pages 1–16. The reports preserve institutional arguments and are identified as such rather than treated as neutral adjudications.