a full schedule of lectures in Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois, and also the usual annual Washington and New York woman
suffrage conventions at which she told the story of her voting, her
arrest, and her pending trial, and where she received enthusiastic
support.

Because she wanted the people to understand the legal points on which
she based her right to vote, Susan spoke on "The Equal Right of All
Citizens to the Ballot" in every district in Monroe County. So
thorough and convincing was she that the district attorney asked for a
change of venue, fearing that any Monroe County jury, sitting in
Rochester, would be prejudiced in her favor. When her case was
transferred to the United States Circuit Court in Canandaigua, to be
heard a month later, she immediately descended upon Ontario County
with her speech, "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to
Vote?" and Matilda Joslyn Gage joined her, speaking on "The United
States on Trial, Not Susan B. Anthony."

On the lecture platform Susan wore a gray silk dress with a soft,
white lace collar. Her hair, now graying, was smoothed back and
twisted neatly into a tight knot. Everything about her indicated
refinement and sincerity, and most of her audiences felt this.

"Our democratic-republican government is based on the idea of the
natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and vote
in making and executing the laws," she declared as she looked into the
faces of the men and women who had gathered to hear her, farmers,
storekeepers, lawyers, and housewives, rich and poor, a cross section
of America.

Repeating to them salient passages from the Declaration of
Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution, she added, "It was
we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male
citizens: but we the whole people, who formed this Union. And we
formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them;
not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the
whole people--women as well as men."[298]

She asked, "Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities
of citizens? I think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state
prisoners will agree with me that it is not only one of them, but the
one without which all the others are nothing."[299]

Quoting for them the Fifteenth Amendment, she told them it had settled
forever the question of the citizen's right to vote. The Fifteenth
Amendment, she reason