5 November—This day in 1872 was Election Day, so in Rochester, New York, Susan B. Anthony voted, along with 14 other women who accompanied her. Problem was, back then it was illegal for women to vote. (The 19^th Amendment, which gave women the vote, wasn’t ratified until 1920, 14 years after Susan had died. Also back then, real voter fraud wasn’t uncommon.)

Since Susan and her supporters had to register beforehand, as part a national putsch that included about 50 women in Rochester, on 1 November she and a few of her sisters-in-suffrage from her ward were able to register at a barbershop serving as the registration office (before you ask, the barber wasn’t the registrar of voters) by threatening to sue the bastards for violating the four-year-old 14^th Amendment (which dealt with citizenship) if they weren’t allowed to sign up. The women in the other wards evidently couldn’t scare the bastards, so they didn’t get to redister. Of course, Susan publicized her brazen assault on male dominance—starting with invading the sanctum of a so-called “shaving saloon.”

You may wonder why Miss Anthony didn’t threaten to sue the bastards for violating the two-year-old 15^th Amendment, which dealt specifically with voting. Well, the male chauvinist congressional pigs who drafted it limited its coverage to citizens’ “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” cleverly neglecting to mention gender. This was driven home by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in 1875 in Minor v. Happersett.

So on Election Day in 1872 Rochester the 15 suffragettes went to the polling venue, were given ballots, and voted. And all were arrested. Along with the male so-called election inspectors who had registered the women and allowed them to cast ballots. Susan’s distaff pals were never tried. The election inspectors were tried, convicted, fined, jailed when they refused to pay the hundred-dollar fines, and pardoned by President Grant.

Although Susan was arrested for a New York State crime, the U.S. attorney had her case moved to the federal circuit, so she was indicted in January 1873 for “wrongfully and unlawfully” casting a vote and tried in June—United States v. Susan B. Anthony—in federal court in Canandaigua, New York, Judge Ward Hunt presiding. Hunt, a successful lawyer and politician who naturally moved in the right circles and had been chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court), had recently been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court and was riding the circuit, as SCOTUS justices were required to do in the old days.

The trial, which was closely followed by the press, was a classic kangaroo-court travesty of justice. Long story short, Hunt refused to allow Susan to speak, didn’t allow the jury to discuss the case, delivered his opinion—written before the trial had begun—on the second day, directed a guilty verdict, and refused to poll the jury.

So Hunt fined Susan $100. She naturally refused to pay it. Had he ordered her to be jailed until she paid the fine, she could have taken her case to the Supreme Court on a writ of habeas corpus. Not that it would have gone the right way—or anywhere, to be sure, but it would have given her some great press. In all events, Hunt didn’t order custody, doubtless only for public relations, so Susan B. Anthony never got to the SCOTUS forum.

And, yes, at SCOTUS in 1875 Justice Hunt was to enthusiastically concur in Minor v. Happersett. And, yes yes, Ward Hunt learned his law at the Litchfield Law School on South Street . . .