Susan B. Anthony: “Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?”

Glossary

• Assembly the legislature
• Chinamen a term for Asians in general and persons of Chinese origin in particular common at the time and not considered a racial slur
• disfranchised often rendered as disenfranchised and referring to having been denied the vote
• doctors of the law lawyers
• electors elected representatives from each state whose vote, in the Electoral College, decides presidential elections
• enfranchising giving people the vote
• ex post facto Latin for “after the fact,” a term for a retroactive law, or a law that changes the consequences for specific acts that occurred prior to the time the law was adopted
• the fathers the Founding Fathers
• the grand old charter of the fathers the Constitution
• hardihood audacity or daring
• horn of the dilemma the position of being forced to choose between two equally unacceptable alternatives
• interdiction prohibition
• letter of the law the provisions of the law as written, without any attempt to interpret it in light of particular situations
• lumbered with its unwieldy proportions cluttered up so much that it became too wordy to be useful or effective
• magistrates government officials
• the most numerous branch of the State legislature in most cases, the “lower house,” equivalent to the House of Representatives in Congress
• odious aristocracy a terrible system of rule by the wealthy and powerful
• old regime the U.S. government prior to the Civil War and the freeing of slaves
• oligarchy a government in which a small group of people exercise dictatorial control
• organic laws original, fundamental laws
• prescribed … tribunals legally and formally chosen courts of review
• privileges or immunities rights of citizens to enjoy the same constitutional freedoms in any state of the United States, as provided in Article IV of the Constitution
• province responsibility
• suffrage the right to vote