Anthony, who had not previously been permitted to speak, responded with what one historian of the women's movement has called "the most famous speech in the history of the agitation for woman suffrage".

Hunt then announced that Anthony would not be jailed for failure to pay the fine, a move that had the effect of preventing her from taking her case to the Supreme Court.

In Vineland, New Jersey, a center for radical spiritualists, nearly 200 women placed their ballots into a separate box and attempted to have them counted during the 1868 elections, but without success.

[5] In 1869, Francis and Virginia Minor, husband and wife suffragists from Missouri, developed a strategy that became known as the New Departure, which engaged the suffrage movement for several years.

The Minors cited Corfield v. Coryell, a case in 1823 in which a federal circuit court ruled that voting rights were included in the privileges and immunities of citizens.

A rival organization called the American Woman Suffrage Association, which was created a few months later, did not adopt the New Departure strategy but instead campaigned for state laws that would enable women to vote.

[15] On November 1, 1872, Anthony walked with her sisters Guelma, Hannah, and Mary to a voter registration office in a nearby barber shop and demanded to be registered.

Anthony returned to the voter registration office to ask the inspectors to stand firm and to assure them that she would cover any legal costs they might incur.

The New York Commercial Advertiser said that Anthony's trial had taken on new importance now that Selden had agreed to take her case, and it suggested that men might need to reconsider their opinion on women's suffrage.

Anthony also frequently consulted the lawyer for the election inspectors, John Van Voorhis, who had previously served as Rochester City Attorney.

Her official record of commitment was written with masculine pronouns, but the Clerk of the Court had inserted an "s" above "he" in the printed form to make it into "she", and similarly had altered to "his" to "her".

"[31] On January 21, 1873, at a hearing before the U.S. District Court in Albany, the capital of New York state, Selden presented detailed arguments in support of Anthony's case.

Without giving U.S. Attorney Richard Crowley a chance to make the government's case, Judge Nathan K. Hall ruled that Anthony would remain in custody.

[32] Anthony published Selden's arguments before this court as a pamphlet and distributed 3000 copies, some of which she mailed to newspaper editors in several states with requests to reprint them.

He cited the Slaughter-House Cases and Bradwell v. Illinois, Supreme Court rulings made only weeks earlier that had narrowly defined the rights of U.S. citizenship.

In the most controversial aspect of the trial, Hunt ruled that the defense had conceded the facts of the case, and he directed the jury to deliver a guilty verdict.

[48] These moves were controversial because the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution begins with the words, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury".

Hull said, "Whether that meant he had written out his opinion before the trial commenced or whether he waited to hear if any arguments or evidence on that first day might influence his decision, one will never know.

[53] Repeatedly ignoring the judge's order to stop talking and sit down, Anthony protested what she called "this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights", saying "you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government.

If Hunt had ordered her to be jailed until she paid the fine, Anthony could have filed a writ of habeas corpus to gain a hearing before the Supreme Court.

The Rochester Evening Express said on February 26, 1874, "The arrest and imprisonment in our city jail of the Election Inspectors who received the votes of Susan B. Anthony and the other ladies, at the polls of the Eight Ward, some months ago, is a petty but malicious act of tyranny.

On June 21, 1873, after Anthony's trial, the prosecutor entered motions of nolle prosequi in the circuit court to signal that the government would not pursue their case any further.

"[62] Shortly before the trial began, the New York Daily Graphic ran a full-page caricature of Anthony on its front cover with the title "The Woman Who Dared".

Senator Matthew Carpenter condemned Justice Hunt's ruling, saying that it was "altogether a departure from, and a most dangerous innovation upon, the well-settled method of jury-trial in criminal cases.

[64] The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) continued to pursue the New Departure strategy even though Anthony had been blocked in her attempt to bring her voting rights case before the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court rulings did not establish the connection between citizenship and voting rights until the mid-twentieth century, with such decisions as Reynolds v. Sims and Wesberry v. Sanders, both in 1964.

In 1895, in Sparf v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal judge could not direct a jury to return a guilty verdict in a criminal trial.

[70] The place where the arrested women voted now has a bronze sculpture of a locked ballot box flanked by two pillars, which is called the 1872 Monument, and was dedicated in August 2009, on the 89th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment.

"[74] In 2001, the New York University Law Review published an article called "A Revolution Too Soon: Woman Suffragists and the 'Living Constitution'", which included a section on Anthony's trial.

Its author, Deborah Enix-Ross, chair of the ABA's Center for Human Rights, said the trial touched on many issues other than women's suffrage, "including the laws that supported Reconstruction, the competing authority of federal and state governments and courts, criminal proceedings in federal courts, the right to trial by jury and the lack of provisions to appeal criminal convictions.