Hall for the benefit of the inspectors, which netted about $180.
8. The first Woman's Congress, afterwards called the Association for the Advancement of Women, was organized during the autumn of this year. To the call were appended the names of most of the noted women of the day, but Miss Anthony's was conspicuously absent. Her most intimate friends being among the signers, and supposing she was to be also, made inquiry as to the reason and received this answer: 1st, Her name beginning with A would have had to head the list; 2d, Her title as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association would have had to be given; 3d, She could not be managed. Miss Anthony was so greatly amused at these reasons that she quite forgave the omission of her name.
9. And yet on November 4 she stole away long enough to go to the polling-place and again offer her vote. It was refused, she found her name had been struck from the register, and thus ended that battle.
10. Three of the brave Rochester women who went to the polls at the election of 1872, died within one year: Guelma Anthony McLean, Mary B.F. Curtis and Rhoda De Garmo.
Chapter XXVI:
No Constitutional Right to Jury or Franchise
(1874)
Appeal to Congress to remit fine and declare Right to Trial by Jury; report from House Committee for and against, by Butler and Tremaine; from Senate Committee for and against, by Carpenter and Edmunds; pardon of Inspectors by President Grant; Supreme Court decision in suit of Virginia L. Minor against Inspectors for refusing her vote; Representative Butler and Senator Lapham on Woman Suffrage; President Grant's opinion; letter of Judge A.G. Riddle on chief obstacles; death of Sumner; Miss Anthony's speech and letter on Women's Temperance Crusade; lying telegram and N.Y. Herald's truthful report of convention; letter by Miss Anthony, "honesty best policy;" suffrage campaign in Michigan; Beecher-Tilton case.
Miss Anthony's case continued to attract widespread attention, Judge Hunt's arbitrary action finding few apologists even among opponents of woman suffrage. It was finally decided by her counsel and herself to make an appeal to Congress for the remission of the fine, which, if granted, would be in effect a declaration of the illegality of Judge Hunt's act and a precedent for the future. Judge Selden based his authority for such an appeal on a case in the United States Statutes at Large, chap. 45, p. 802, where a fine of $1,000 and costs, illegally imposed upon Matthew Lyon under the Alien and Sedition Laws, 1799, were refunded with interest to his heirs. Mr. Van Voorhis found an authority also in an act passed by the British Parliament in 1792, correcting the departure from the common law, in respect to the rights of juries, by Lord Mansfield and his associates in the cases of Woodfall and Shipley. This act was passed through the exertions of Lord Camden and Mr. Fox in order to prevent the erroneous decisions of the judges from becoming the law of England.
Both of the attorneys keenly resented the action of Judge Hunt, Mr. Selden pronouncing it "the greatest judicial outrage ever perpetrated in the United States;" and Mr. Van Voorhis asserting that "trial by jury was completely annihilated in this case, and there is no remedy except to appeal to the justice of Congress to remit the fine and declare that trial by jury does and shall exist in this country." The appeal, or petition, was prepared and Miss Anthony carried it to Washington when she went to the National Convention, January 15, 1874. It was an able document, reciting the facts in the case and the action of the judge, and concluding:
Your petitioner respectfully submits that, in these proceedings, she has been denied the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all persons accused of crime, the right of trial by jury and the right to have the assistance of counsel for their defense. It is a mockery to call hers a trial by jury; and, unless the assistance of counsel may be limited to the argument of legal questions, without the privilege of saying a word to the jury upon the question of the guilt or innocence in fact of a party charged, or the privilege of ascertaining from the jury whether they do or do not agree to the verdict pronounced by the Court in their name, she has been denied the assistance of counsel for her defense.
Of the decision of the judge upon the question of the right of your petitioner to vote, she makes no complaint. It was a question properly belonging to the Court to decide, was fully and fairly submitted to the judge, and of his decision, whether right or wrong, your petitioner is well aware she can not here complain. But in regard to her conviction of crime, which she insists, for the reasons above given, was in violation of the principles of the common law, of common morality, of the statute under which she was charged, and of the Constitution—a crime of which she was as innocent as the judge by whom she was convicted—she respectfully asks, inasmuch as the law has provided no means of reviewing the decisions of the judge, or of correcting his errors, that the fine imposed upon your petitioner be remitted, as an expression of the sense of this high tribunal that her conviction was unjust.
This was presented in the Senate by A.A. Sargent, of California, and in the House by William Loughridge, of Iowa, and was referred to the judiciary committees. In May, Lyman Tremaine, from the House Judiciary Committee, reported adversely on the petition in a lengthy document, which incorporated a letter from District-Attorney Crowley, urging the committee "not to degrade a just judge and applaud a criminal;" and declaring that "Miss Anthony's trial was fair and constitutional and by an impartial jury." (!) Mr. Tremaine's report said: "Congress can not be converted into a national court of review for any and all criminal convictions where it shall be alleged the judge has committed an error." Thus did he deliberately ignore the point at issue, the refusal of a trial by jury. It concluded by saying: "Since the discussion of this question has arisen in the committee, the President has pardoned Miss Anthony for the offense of which she was convicted and this seems to furnish a conclusive reason why no further action should be taken by the judiciary committee." (!) The learned gentleman probably referred to the pardon of the inspectors by the President. Miss Anthony had not asked executive clemency for herself.
Benjamin F. Butler presented an able and exhaustive minority report which closed with the following declaration: "Therefore, because the fine has been imposed by a court of the United States for an offense triable by jury, without the same being submitted to the jury, and because the court assumed to itself the right to enter a verdict without submitting the case to the jury, and in order that the judgment of the House of Representatives, if it concur with the judgment of the committee, may, in the most signal and impressive form, mark its determination to sustain in its integrity the common law right of trial by jury, your committee recommend that the prayer of the petitioner be granted."
In June George F. Edmunds made an adverse report from the Senate Judiciary Committee in this remarkable language: "That they are not satisfied that the ruling of the judge was precisely as represented in the petition, and that if it were so, the Senate could not legally take any action in the premises, and they move that the committee be discharged from the further consideration of the petition, and that the bill be postponed indefinitely."
Senator Matthew II. Carpenter presented a long and carefully prepared minority report which concluded:
Unfortunately the United States has no "well-ordered system of jurisprudence." A citizen may be tried, condemned and put to death by the erroneous judgment of a single inferior judge, and no court can grant him relief or a new trial. If a citizen have a cause involving the title to his farm, if it exceed $2,000 in value, he may bring his cause to the Supreme Court; but if it involve his liberty or his life, he can not. While we permit this blemish to exist on our judicial system, it behooves us to watch carefully the judgments inferior courts may render; and it is doubly important that we should see to it that twelve
