Lovingly Yours
  C S Lozier]

It was conceded that Miss Anthony was a woman and that she voted on November 5, 1872.  Judge Selden, for the second time in all his practice, offered himself as a witness, and testified that he advised her to vote, believing that the laws and Constitution of the United States gave her full authority.  He then proposed to call Miss Anthony to testify as to the intention or belief under which she voted, but the Court held she was not competent as a witness in her own behalf.  After making this decision, the Court then admitted all the testimony, as reported, which she gave on the preliminary examination before the commissioner, in spite of her counsel’s protest against accepting the version which that officer took of her evidence.  The prosecution simply alleged the fact of her having voted.  Mr. Selden then addressed the judge and jury in a masterly argument of over three hours’ duration, beginning: 

The defendant is indicted under the 19th Section of the Act of Congress of May 31, 1870 (16th St. at L., 144), for “voting without having a lawful right to vote.”  The words of the statute, so far as they are material in this case, are as follows: 

“If at any election for representative or delegate in the Congress of the United States, any person shall knowingly ... vote without having a lawful right to vote ... every such person shall be deemed guilty of a crime ... and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $500, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or by both, in the discretion of the Court, and shall pay the costs of prosecution.”

The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant’s vote is that she is a woman.  If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a crime.  The crime therefore consists not in the act done but in the simple fact that the person doing it was a woman and not a man.  I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court merely on account of her sex....

Women have the same interest that men have in the establishment and maintenance of good government; they are to the same extent as men bound to obey the laws; they suffer to the same extent by bad laws, and profit to the same extent by good laws; and upon principles of equal justice, as it would seem, should be allowed, equally with men, to express their preference in the choice of law-makers and rulers.  But however that may be, no greater absurdity, to use no harsher term, could be presented, than that of rewarding men and punishing women for the same act, without giving to women any voice in the question which should he rewarded and which punished.

I am aware, however, that we are here