Jailed for Freedom | Page 2

Milholland Boissevain Scene of
Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol Scenes on the Picket Line
Monster Picket-March 4, 1917 Officer Arrests Pickets Women Put into
Police Patrol Suffragists in Prison Costume Fellow Prisoners Sewing
Room at Occoquan Workhouse Riotous Scenes on Picket Line Dudley
Field Malone Lucy Burns Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket Miss
Matilda Young, Youngest Picket Forty-One Women Face Jail Prisoners
Released “Lafayette We Are Here” Wholesale Arrests Suffragists
March to LaFayette Monument Torch-Bearer, and Escorts
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Some Public Men Who Protested Against Imprisonment of Suffragists
Abandoned Jail Prisoners on Straw Pallets on Jail Floor Pickets at
Capitol Senate Pages and Capitol Police Attack Pickets The Urn
Guarded by Miss Berthe Arnold The Bell Which Tolled the Change of
Watch Watchfire “Legal” Watchfire Scattered by Police-Dr. Caroline
Spencer Rebuilding it One Hundred Women Hold Public Conflagration
Pickets in Front of Reviewing Stand, Boston Mrs. Louise Sykes
Burning President Wilson’s Speech on Boston Common Suffrage
Prisoners
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“I do pray, and that most earnestly and constantly, for some terrific
shock to startle the women o f the nation into a self- respect which mill
compel them to, see the absolute degradation o f their present position;
which will compel them to break their yoke of bondage and give them
faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their allegiance to
women first . . . . The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude
is all the more debasing because they do not realize it. O to compel
them to see and feel and to give them the courage and the conscience to
speak and act for their own freedom, though they face the scorn and

contempt of all the world for doing it!"
Susan B. Anthony, 1872.
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Part I
Leadership
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Chapter 1
A Militant Pioneer-Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony was the first militant suffragist. She has been so long
proclaimed only as the magnificent pioneer that few realize that she
was the first woman to defy the law for the political liberty of her sex.
The militant spirit was in her many early protests. Sometimes these
protests were supported by one or two followers; more often they were
solitary protests. Perhaps it is because of their isolation that they stand
out so strong and beautiful in a turbulent time in our history when all
those about her were making compromises.
It was this spirit which impelled her to keep alive the cause of the
enfranchisement of women during the passionate years of the Civil War.

She held to the last possible moment that no national exigency was
great enough to warrant abandonment of woman's fight for
independence. But one by one her followers deserted her. She was
unable to keep even a tiny handful steadfast to this position. She
became finally the only figure in the nation appealing for the rights of
women when the rights of black men were agitating the public mind.
Ardent abolitionist as she was, she could not tolerate without indignant
protest the exclusion of women in all discussions of emancipation. The
suffrage war policy of Miss Anthony can be compared to that of the
militants a half century later when confronted with the problem of this
country's entrance into the world war.
The war of the rebellion over and the emancipation of the
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negro man written into the constitution, women contended they had a
right to vote under the new fourteenth amendment. Miss Anthony led in
this agitation, urging all women to claim the right to vote under this
amendment. In the national election of 187'2 she voted in Rochester,
New York, her home city, was arrested, tried and convicted of the
crime of "voting without having a lawful right to vote."
I cannot resist giving a brief excerpt from the court records of this
extraordinary case, so reminiscent is it of the cases of the suffrage
pickets tried nearly fifty years later in the courts of the national capital.
After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government's case,
Judge Hunt read his opinion, said to have been written before the case
had been heard, and directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty. The
jury was dismissed without deliberation and a new trial was refused.
On the following day this scene took place in that New York court
room.
JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner
anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
Miss ANTHONY-Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in

your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital
principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my
political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the
fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am