Susan B. Anthony

February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906

Firing Thunderbolts

18 x 24 inches • oil on wood panel • artist Steve Simon

Biography

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About the Painting

Selected Quote

Overview

Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. She worked very closely with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the women’s suffrage movement. Stanton provided the creative input and direction and Anthony the energy and tenacity to put plans into action. The painting features Anthony firing the thunderbolt Stanton had figuratively alluded to forging in a famous quote of hers. Anthony worked tirelessly, well into her eighties for the expressed goal of amending the constitution to guarantee women the right to vote. She did not see her vision come to fruition, but her efforts were not in vain. Other suffragists continued her effort to achieve what became known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Susan B. Anthony Biography

Susan B. Anthony was born February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. She was raised in a Quaker family with strong social justice traditions. Her father and brothers were abolitionists and when the family moved to Rochester, New York in 1845, their home became a meeting place for reformers and activists including Frederick Douglass who became a lifelong friend.

At the age of 17, Anthony collected anti-slavery petitions. Dedicated to the abolition of slavery, she eventually became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society and participated in the Underground Railroad. “Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman,” read one of her diary entries. “To forever blot out slavery is the only possible compensation for this merciless war,” read another.

In 1851, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two formed a deep relationship that would have an enormous impact on the women’s movement. At the time, alcoholism among men was quite common, often resulting in domestic abuse. Laws, however, granted husbands sweeping ownership of family finances, custody of children, and general impunity in cases of spousal abuse. Thus, many of the early efforts of Stanton and Anthony were in support of temperance, including their co-creation of the Women’s State Temperance Society in Rochester, New York.

In 1863, Anthony and Stanton organized the Woman’s Loyal National League to campaign for an amendment to abolish slavery. The league organized the largest petition drive to date, substantially impacting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery.

In 1868, Anthony and Stanton launched a weekly newspaper called The Revolution. Subversive and combative in tone, the paper focused on women’s rights issues. The paper remained in print for four years. In these years following the Civil War, the women’s movement split over whether to support a constitutional amendment that would grant blacks the right to vote but not women. Anthony and Stanton could not justify the inconsistency and so formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) for members of the movement who took the same position.

Anthony now focused her attention on women’s suffrage. She remained unmarried, dedicating herself exclusively to the cause with relentless energy while deflecting withering abuse from detractors. She traveled extensively, giving lectures at a breakneck pace and recruiting new adherents to the movement while lobbying Congress and organizing conventions. 

Anthony now focused her attention on women’s suffrage. She remained unmarried, dedicating herself exclusively to the cause with relentless energy while deflecting withering abuse from detractors.

In a historic act of civil disobedience, Anthony and dozens of other women attempted to vote in the 1872 presidential election. Anthony was arrested, found guilty in a high-profile trial, and sentenced to pay a $100 fine. She told the judge in response, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.” She never did, but it was becoming clear that legal attacks would not likely achieve the end goal of women’s suffrage. The daunting challenge of a constitutional amendment would need to be pursued. For the next three decades, Anthony worked well into her eighties, attempting in vain to realize that goal. 

susan-b-anthony-coin
Susan B. Anthony dollar, Years minted: 1979-1981, 1999
Image courtesy of the United States Mint

The noted women’s studies scholar Eleanor Flexner wrote that Anthony was the “incomparable organizer” of the women’s suffrage movement “who gave it force and direction for half a century. Though Anthony did not witness national women’s suffrage, at the time of her passing, women had been granted suffrage in four states with others soon to follow. Momentum had been established not only in the voting arena but women also achieved notable progress in employment, education, and legal rights.

Susan B. Anthony died on March 13, 1906. A few days prior to her death, a frail Anthony spoke at her birthday celebration in Washington, D.C. She acknowledged the legions of people who had devoted themselves to women’s rights and the cause of suffrage. She closed by saying, “Failure is impossible!” These last public words of hers would become the motto of the suffrage movement going forward.

About the Painting

The women’s rights movement began in earnest with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Three years later, Susan B. Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two women became close friends and formed a powerful and complementary duo in the battle for women’s suffrage. 

Stanton married and had seven children, the last delivered when she was 44. Anthony, on the other hand, remained single her entire life. Anthony would often assist Stanton with feeding the children and tending to their needs so as to free Stanton to write and strategize. Anthony, equipped with Stanton’s creative input, would then hit the road, giving speeches, circulating petitions, and giving the movement its energy. 

The relationship would cause Stanton’s husband, Henry, to wryly remark, “Susan stirred the puddings, Elizabeth stirred up Susan, and then Susan stirs up the world.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton would go on to characterize her relationship with Anthony without any “pudding” reference and with greater dramatic imagery, saying, “I forged the thunderbolts and she fired them.” The composition features a resolute Anthony firing the thunderbolt of equality.

Selected Susan B. Anthony Quote

The day may be approaching when the whole world will recognize woman as the equal of man.

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