The Susan B. Anthony Women's Voting Rights Trial

When Susan B. Anthony cast her vote in New York in 1872 she broke a New York State law that prohibited women from voting. Succeeding in her effort to vote caused her to be tried under a law that empowered the federal government to prosecute violations of state voting laws. Her trial and her punishment set in motion the beginnings of the suffragist movement. It was the beginning of a long effort toward the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women throughout the United States the right to vote.