The Susan B. Anthony Pardon Is Being Criticized. Here's Why
U.S President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he would pardon a "very, very important" person on Tuesday.
Many guessed that the recipient of the said pardon would be leaker Edward Snowden or former National Service agency adviser Michael Flynn.
Trump declined to give further information. He hinted that the pardon's recipients would not be Flynn or Snowden, who is a former U.S National Security contractor.
This proved to be true when Trump announced in a speech at the White House on Tuesday that he would formally pardon Susan B. Anthony.
Anthony was a women's suffragist and was arrested after voting illegally in 1872. She died in 1906.
However, critics argued that Trump should revoke his posthumous pardon of Anthony.
The women's suffragists believed that she did not commit a crime by voting.
Trump said that the notion was brought up a week ago, and he was surprised that it was never done before.
He announced the pardon with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, allowing women the right to vote.
Susan B. Anthony
Anthony was charged with voting illegally, as a woman, in the 1872 presidential election in her hometown of Rochester, New York.
She was tried by an all-male jury, which found her guilty and fined her $100. She refused to pay the said fine.
"It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in this voting, I not only committed no crime but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's right, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the national Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny." Anthony said in a speech at the time.
Anthony's time was a conservative one with the belief that women are the moral centers of the family, and participating in politics was a harsh business for women.
Criticisms About the Pardon
President and CEO of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester, Deborah Hughes, said that Anthony was familiar with the pardon process.
Hughes said that Anthony would not have wanted the issued pardon.
"Anthony was very clear. She felt she had a right to vote as a citizen. She felt that the trial was the greatest miscarriage of justice, as did her lawyers, and to pardon it is to validate the trial," Hughes said.
Historian Ann Gordon also expressed his dismay on the pardon through a tweet.
Gordon is a former Rutgers University professor and editor of "The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony."
Elected officials call on Trump to revoke the pardon, as they claim that it overrides Anthony's wishes.
New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul said that Anthony was not guilty of anything.
Hochul said that she was deeply troubled to learn that Trump went ahead a granted a pardon. She added that Anthony was proud of her arrest to draw attention to the cause of women's rights.
Trump seems to acknowledge that Anthony may not have wanted a pardon.
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