Posthumous Pardon for Susan B. Anthony

 Posthumous Pardon for Susan B. Anthony

President Trump announced Tuesday morning he will give a posthumous pardon to Susan B. Anthony, one of history's biggest figures in the women's suffrage movement.

The announcement came 100 years to the day after the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Anthony, a strong anti-slavery pioneer who died in 1906, had been arrested in 1872 for violating laws that had permitted only men to vote in the presidential election. She was then indicted, tried and convicted for voting illegally and sentenced to pay a fine of $100 and court costs.

The historic New Yorker described her two-day trial in June 1873 as "the greatest judicial outrage history has ever recorded," according to The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

The University of Rochester, in Anthony's western New York hometown, has acquired a trove of 19th-century letters she wrote to a fellow leader in the women's rights movement. The letters were written between 1869 and 1880 to Isabella Beecher Hooker, a member of a prominent Connecticut family.

While President Ulysses S. Grant had pardoned election inspectors, he never pardoned Anthony and had told her before she cast her ballot that he had "already done more for women than any other president.”

In 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It states that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The amendment was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920.

Susan B. Anthony is now honored in the Capitol Rotunda as part of the women’s suffrage monument. Called the “Portrait Monument,” it depicts three women who fought to secure the vote for women, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

On Monday, President Trump told reporters that he would pardon someone “very, very important," but refused to go into details.

“She was never pardoned. Did you know that? She was never pardoned,” President Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “What took so long?”

“She was guilty for voting,” he said, “and we’re going to be signing a full and complete pardon.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, and conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell were in attendance.

President Trump has pardoned or granted clemency to a number of people in the past; this prerogative of presidents is used frequently.