Autographed Books

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Virginia Minor: A Woman in the Hall of Famous Missourians, autographed by editor Margot McMillian. 

The Old Courthouse in St. Louis is rarely remembered for its place in the women's movemnt for the right to vote.  But, indeed, the struggle under the law began here.

On October 15, 1872, Virginia Minor tried to register to vote in the upcoming election, but was refused by St. Louis' sixth district registrar, Reese Happersett. Happersett refused to register Minor because she was female, thus provoking a civil suit brought by Virginia and her lawyer husband, Francis Minor. Minor's action was part of a nation-wide pattern of civil disobedience, in which hundreds of women across the country attempted to vote. Susan B. Anthony led a small delegation of women to the polls in Rochester, New York, and was successful in casting her vote for Ulysses S. Grant. Three weeks later, however, on Thanksgiving Day, Anthony was arrested on the charge of voting fraud. Anthony was a celebrity who was used by the judicial system as an example and a warning to all women in the United States. When Anthony's case came to trial early in 1873, the judge had written his opinion before the trial started, and directed the jury to find a guilty verdict. Anthony was ordered to pay a fine of $100, which she refused to do.

Virginia Minor's case was different in that she was not prosecuted criminally for trying to vote, but brought suit (through her husband; married women could not sue in Missouri courts until after the passage of the Married Women's Act of 1889) in a civil action against the registrar because he would not allow her to register to vote. Minor contended that women were U.S. citizens under the 14th amendment to the Constitution, which "nowhere gives [states] the power to prevent" a citizen from voting.

The Minor's petition was presented to the court as a written statement on January 2, 1873. Reese Happersett's lawyer, Smith P. Galt, objected to the Minor's version of the events and filed a demurrer and appealed to have the case heard during the General Term of the Circuit Court. This hearing took place on February 3, 1873 in Circuit Court #5, which is today the park library, Old Courthouse room 212. By agreement, both sides submitted their arguments in writing. There was no trial or jury in the Virginia Minor case. The Minors were represented by John B. Henderson, John M. Krum and Francis Minor. Henderson was the author of the 13th Amendment and an agitator for the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Minors quickly lost their case in the lower court, but appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court.

Francis Minor was the clerk of the Missouri Supreme Court, but was removed or voluntarily stepped down on May 1, 1873. On May 7, 1873, the Missouri Supreme Court heard Minor's case in their chambers on the second floor, west side of the south wing of the Old Courthouse (where the park's administrative offices are today). The state supreme court said that the purpose of the 14th Amendment (which guaranteed the rights of citizenship and equal protection under the law to people born or naturalized in the United States), was meant to extend voting rights to the newly freed slaves, giving African Americans "the right to vote and thus protect themselves against oppression...." The court continued by saying that "There could have been no intention [in the amendment] to abridge the power of the States to limit the right of suffrage to the male inhabitants."

The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Francis Minor made the presentation. He claimed that denial of suffrage in the states was a matter of practice rather than law. For instance, women had voted in New Jersey between 1787 and 1807 when a new state constitution made no mention of woman suffrage. Minor stated that "the plaintiff has sought by this action for the establishment of a great principle of fundamental right, applicable not only to herself but to the class to which she belongs, for the principles here laid down, (as in the Dred Scott case,) extend far beyond the limits of the particular suit and embrace the rights of millions of others, who are thus represented through her. . . . It is impossible that this can be a republican government, in which one-half the citizens thereof are forever disenfranchised."

In October 1874 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a unanimous decision handed down by Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, that "the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone," because suffrage was not coexistent with citizenship. The courts ducked the issue of defining a woman's place in society, and refrained from discussing the fact that although women were full citizens under the law, they did not enjoy the same rights and privileges of citizenship as men did. The courts merely upheld the right of individual states to decide which citizens could vote within their borders

Paper, 61 pages, Grades 5 - Adult

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