ITIZEN ... TO VOTE?"

Charged with the crime of voting illegally, Susan was brought to trial
on June 17, 1873, in the peaceful village of Canandaigua, New York.
Simply dressed and wearing her new bonnet faced with blue silk and
draped with a dotted veil,[304] she stoically climbed the court-house
steps, feeling as if on her shoulders she carried the political
destiny of American women. With her were her counsel, Henry R. Selden
and John Van Voorhis, her sister, Hannah Mosher, most of the women who
had voted with her in Rochester, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose
interest in this case was akin to her own.

In the courtroom on the second floor, seated behind the bar, Susan
watched the curious crowd gather and fill every available seat. She
wondered, as she calmly surveyed the all-male jury, whether they could
possibly understand the humiliation of a woman who had been arrested
for exercising the rights of a citizen. The judge, Ward Hunt, did not
promise well, for he had only recently been appointed to the bench
through the influence of his friend and townsman, Roscoe Conkling, the
undisputed leader of the Republican party in New York and a bitter
opponent of woman suffrage. She tried to fathom this small,
white-haired, colorless judge upon whose fairness so much depended.
Prim and stolid, he sat before her, faultlessly dressed in a suit of
black broadcloth, his neck wound with an immaculate white neckcloth.
He ruled against her at once, refusing to let her testify on her own
behalf.

She was completely satisfied, however, as she listened to Henry
Selden's presentation of her case. Tall and commanding, he stood
before the court with nobility and kindness in his face and eyes,
bringing to mind a handsome cultured Lincoln. So logical, so just was
his reasoning, so impressive were his citations of the law that it
seemed to her they must convince the jury and even the expressionless
judge on the bench.

Pointing out that the only alleged ground of the illegality of Miss
Anthony's vote was that she was a woman, Henry Selden declared, "If
the same act had been done by her brother under the same
circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent and laudable,
but honorable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a
crime.... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has
been arraigned in a criminal court, merely on account of her
sex."[305] He claimed that Miss Anthony had voted in good faith,
bel