“The right which woman needed above every other,” argued Susan B. Anthony, “The one indeed which would secure to her all the others, was the right of suffrage.” A woman of great aspirations, Anthony’s entreaties were not so much counterargued as ignored, and the amendment bill she was trying to push through Congress was stalling. Anthony decided to force the issue with a trial, by going out to deliberately break the unjust law.

On this day, November 5, in 1872, Susan B. Anthony left her home in New York to cast a ballot for President Grant in the presidential elections, in full defiance of the unwritten law forbidding women to vote.

Two weeks later, as expected, Anthony was taken from her home and arrested for voting without a right. Preliminary proceedings found there was enough reason to hold her in custody, and Anthony took advantage of the situation to raise funds and file with her lawyers a writ of habeas corpus, challenging her detention, in hopes she could bring her case to the Supreme Court. She argued eloquently on her behalf, but lost the case in legal grounds. Still, the $100 fine she was ordered to pay was never collected, and women all over the country were energized by Anthony’s brave act.