Susan B. Anthony in Reconstruction

Susan B. Anthony in Reconstruction

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) was co-leader of the American suffrage movement along with her good friend and colleague, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was also an advocate for abolition and temperance.

In 1863, Anthony co-organized the Women's Loyal League to support Abraham Lincoln's government, especially his emancipation policy. Stanton and Anthony then established the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, dedicated to the goal of universal suffrage. Men, women, Blacks, and whites alike could be members, and both Stanton and Anthony opposed granting suffrage to freedmen without also giving it to women. This issue splintered the movement into two factions, one of which was the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) that the two women organized in 1869. 

In 1872, Anthony was arrested in Rochester, New York, for attempting to vote. She was sentenced to pay a fine, which she refused to do. In 1890, the NWSA united with its opposition group, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), of which Anthony was president from 1892 to 1900. She didn't live to see women enfranchised at the national level.