ttempted to prove that the "ancient legal rights of females" were
still valid and entitled women property holders to vote for
representatives in Parliament, and who claimed that the word "man" in
Parliamentary statutes should be interpreted to include women. In the
case of the 5,346 householders of Manchester, the court held that
"every woman is personally incapable" in a legal sense.[288] This
legal contest had been fully reported in _The Revolution_, and
disappointing as the verdict was, Susan looked upon this attempt to
establish justice as an indication of a great awakening and uprising
among women.

There had also been heartening signs in her own country, which she
hoped were the preparation for more successful militancy to come. She
had exulted in _The Revolution_ in 1868 over the attempt of women to
vote in Vineland, New Jersey. Encouraged by the enfranchisement of
women in Wyoming in 1869, Mary Olney Brown and Charlotte Olney French
had cast their votes in Washington Territory. A young widow, Marilla
Ricker, had registered and voted in New Hampshire in 1870, claiming
this right as a property holder, but her vote was refused. In 1871,
Nannette B. Gardner and Catherine Stebbins in Detroit, Catherine V.
White in Illinois, Ellen R. Van Valkenburg in Santa Cruz, California,
and Carrie S. Burnham in Philadelphia registered and attempted to
vote. Only Mrs. Gardner's vote was accepted. That same year, Sarah
Andrews Spencer, Sarah E. Webster, and seventy other women marched to
the polls to register and vote in the District of Columbia. Their
ballots refused, they brought suit against the Board of Election
Inspectors, carrying the case unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court of
the United States.[289] Another test case based on the Fourteenth
Amendment had also been carried to the Supreme Court by Myra Bradwell,
one of the first women lawyers, who had been denied admission to the
Illinois bar because she was a woman.

With the spotlight turned on the Fourteenth Amendment by these women,
lawyers here and there throughout the country were discussing the
legal points involved, many admitting that women had a good case. Even
the press was friendly.

Susan had looked forward to claiming her rights under the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments and was ready to act. She had spent the
thirty days required of voters in Rochester with her family and as she
glanced through the morning paper of November 1, 1872, she read these
challe