Whatever may be said of Susan B. Anthony, there is no doubt but she has kept the public mind of the country agitated upon the woman’s rights question as few others, male or female, could have done.  She has displayed very superior judgment and has seldom been led into acts of even seeming impropriety.  She has won the respect of all classes by her ability, her consistency and her spotless character, and she today stands far in advance of all her co-workers in the estimation of the people.  The fact that she voted at Rochester at the presidential election has created no little commotion on the part of the press, but if women are to become voters, who but the one who has taken the lead in the advocacy of that right should be among the first to cast the vote?—­Toledo Blade.

We pause in the midst of our pressing duties to admire the zeal and courage which find in the course of these ladies a challenge to battle, while evils a thousandfold worse, such as bribery, etc., are permitted to pass unnoticed....  The ladies who voted in this city on the 5th of this month did so from the conviction that they had a constitutional right to the ballot.  In that they may or may not have been mistaken, but they certainly can not be justly classed with the ordinary illegal voter and repeater.  The latter always vote for a pecuniary consideration, knowingly and intentionally violating our laws to get gain.  The former voted for a principle and to assert what, they esteem a right.  The attempt by insinuation to class them among the ordinary illegal voters will react upon its movers.—­Rochester Evening Express.]

[Footnote 67:  Complaint has this day been made by ——­ on oath before me, William C. Storrs, commissioner, charging that Susan B. Anthony, on or about the fifth day of November, 1872, at the city of Rochester, N. Y., at an election held in the Eighth ward of the city of Rochester aforesaid, for a representative in the Congress of the United States, did then and there vote for a representative in the Congress of the United States, without having a lawful right to vote and in violation of Section 19 of an act of Congress approved May 31, 1870, entitled “An act, to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote in the several States of this Union and for other purposes.”]

CHAPTER XXV.

TRIAL FOR VOTING UNDER FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

1873.

In the midst of these harassing circumstances Miss Anthony made the usual preparations for holding the annual woman suffrage convention in Washington, January 16 and 17, 1873, and presided over its deliberations.  In her opening speech she said: