hts leader Elizabeth!
             Cady Stanton . Together they formed a deep personal friendship and a political bond that would last for the rest of their lives. From this point on, Anthony worked tirelessly for the women's suffrage movement. She lectured on women's rights and organized a series of state and national conventions on the issue. She collected signatures for a petition to grant women the right to vote and to own property. Her efforts were rewarded. In 1860 the New York state legislature passed the Married Women's Property Act. It allowed women to enter into contracts and to control their own earnings and property. During the Civil War, Anthony and most other members of the women's movement worked toward the emancipation of the slaves. In 1863 she helped form the Women's Loyal League, which supported U.S. president Abraham Lincoln's policies. After the war Anthony and others tried to link women's suffrage with that of the freed slaves. They were unsuccessful. The Fifteenth Amendment , finally a!
             dopted in 1870, extended voting rights only to black men. Now without abolitionist support, Anthony and Stanton formed their own organization, the National Woman Suffrage Association. The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, had declared that all people born in the United States were citizens and that no legal privileges could be denied to any citizen. Anthony decided to challenge this amendment. Saying that women were citizens and the amendment did not restrict the privilege of voting to men, she registered to vote in Rochester, New York, on November 1, 1872. Four days later she and fifteen other women voted in the presidential election. All sixteen women were arrested three weeks later, but only Anthony was brought before a court. Her trial, United States v. Susan B. Anthony , began on June 17, 1873. The presiding judge opposed women's suffrage and wrote his decision before the trial had even started. Refusing to let Anthony testify...