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The Sentencing Colloquy

Susan B. Anthony and Judge Ward Hunt · the United States Circuit Court, Canandaigua, New York · June 19, 1873
text: Project Gutenberg, from An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony (1874) · published before 1931, in the public domain · the sentencing colloquy, complete
colour carries the act's function; a dashed underline marks a predicted misfire; hover or focus any span for its filing

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 degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.

JUDGE HUNT--The Court cannot listen to a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

MISS ANTHONY--May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers, as an offender against law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property and--

JUDGE HUNT--The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.

MISS ANTHONY--But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury--

JUDGE HUNT--The prisoner must sit down--the Court cannot allow it.

MISS ANTHONY--All of my prosecutors, from the 8th ward corner grocery politician, who entered the complaint, to the United States Marshal, Commissioner, District Attorney, District Judge, your honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even then I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of Lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men. Even my counsel, the Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably before your honor, is my political sovereign. Precisely as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman is entitled to the franchise, so, none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the bar--hence, jury, judge, counsel, must all be of the superior class.

JUDGE HUNT--The Court must insist--the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

MISS ANTHONY--Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women; and hence, your honor's ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of "_that citizen's right to vote_," simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But, yesterday, the same man made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then, the slaves who got their freedom must take it over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so, now, must women, to get their right to a voice in this government, take it; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every possible opportunity.

JUDGE HUNT--The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word.

MISS ANTHONY--When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis--that should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice--failing, even, to get a trial by a jury _not_ of my peers--I ask not leniency at your hands--but rather the full rigors of the law.

JUDGE HUNT--The Court must insist--

(Here the prisoner sat down.)

JUDGE HUNT--The prisoner will stand up.

(Here Miss Anthony arose again.)

The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of the prosecution.

MISS ANTHONY--May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper--_The Revolution_--four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the government; and I shall work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

JUDGE HUNT--Madam, the Court will not order you committed until the fine is paid.

The divergences

"Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?" — the bench files a Question with one expected answer, a form of words that clears the way for sentence. Anthony files an invitation and opens with "Yes, your honor, I have many things to say." They part on scope. Every one of the Court's next six utterances works to withdraw the question, which is what a narrow filing looks like once someone has acted on the wide one. The colloquy exists because the form obliges the Court to ask, and nothing in the form obliges it to listen.

"you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government" — the movement files a Frame-break: the verdict was directed, the jury was discharged without deliberating, so on this construal there is nothing to sentence and the party under judgment changes seats. The bench files an out-of-order Assertion, and files it as repetition — "a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting." They part on target, and this page can settle what happened rather than argue it, because the uptake is printed two lines below. The frame holds. The Court is still the Court in the next sentence and she is still the prisoner.

"The Court cannot listen to a rehearsal of arguments" — the bench issues an Order; what reaches the floor is a report of the Court's own incapacity, in the third person, with a description attached to say what kind of speech is barred. Anthony takes up the description and disputes it: "I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot, in justice, be pronounced against me." They part on function. Her reply is also compliance, read narrowly — what the Court refused to hear was argument, and she has reclassified rather than stopped. Not one of the seven orders from this bench is an imperative, and the only uptake the transcript records in its own voice is bodily: "(Here the prisoner sat down.)", "(Here Miss Anthony arose again.)".

"the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law" — read narrow, the procedure was regular; read wide, the forms settle whether the trial was just. They part on scope. Anthony concedes the narrow reading in her first word and answers the wide one in her second: "Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women." Her clause has no main verb; it finishes his sentence instead of starting hers. This is the only exchange where the bench gives a reason, and the Court's next utterance drops reasons for the word "orders." Forty-five years on, a President tells the Senate that "no disputable principle is involved but only a question of the method by which the suffrage is to be extended to women" — the same move from the other end of the government, ruling the objection out of order by calling it procedure. Wilson never says the word vote. Anthony says it twice, and the second time in quotation marks, because the phrase belongs to the charge she was convicted on.

"It will not allow another word." — the Court files a commitment about its own conduct; the record files it against what follows. They part on orientation. Eighty-five words follow, and the bench does not speak again until she has reached her own full stop. A prediction and its refutation stand four lines apart in the same transcript, which is what a dialogue gives this archive and a monologue cannot: the misfire is not inferred from the coordinates, it is on the page.

"I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty" — supporters file a Promise, entered directly against the Declaration above it, the one answer a sentence has no procedure for absorbing; the bench can file an Assertion about intention, which the marshal's office would test. They part on function, and the test never came: she never paid, and the fine was never collected. What she closes on is quoted rather than composed — "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God" — attributed to nobody, dated only as "the old revolutionary maxim," and made binding by the undertaking wrapped around it, "I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of" it. Relayed, it is a maxim from the Revolution the court draws its authority from. Promised, it is a commitment to spread a doctrine of disobedience, given to a judge in the minute after he sentenced her.

"Madam, the Court will not order you committed until the fine is paid" — the room files mercy; Anthony had asked for the opposite before the sentence was pronounced, "I ask not leniency at your hands--but rather the full rigors of the law." They part on target. Her refusal needed enforcement to answer it, and the Court supplies none: no commitment means no imprisonment, no imprisonment means no writ to bring the case up, and it went no higher than this room. Debs stood in the same posture in Cleveland in 1918 and made the same refusal — "I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity" — and the bench answered with ten years, which carried his statement to the country. This bench answers by ending the proceeding without touching her, and the last word on the page belongs to the man who declines to act.