Born: 20 January 1838, United States
Died: 29 June 1909
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
With the simple question quoted below, Carrie S. Burnham began her argument, made before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on April 3 and April 4, 1873, for her right to vote. “It is not simply,” Burhnam reasoned, “whether I shall be protected in the exercise of my inalienable right and duty of self-government, but whether a government, the mere agent of the people, …can deny to any portion of its intelligent, adult citizens participation therein and still hold them amenable to its laws…”
Have women citizens the right of suffrage under the Constitution of the United States and of this particular State of Pennsylvania?
Carrie S. Burnham, Woman Suffrage: The Argument of Carrie S. Burnham…. Philadelphia: Citizen’s Suffrage Association, 1873. National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection. Rare Book & Special Collections Division
Carrie Burnham’s protest against the exclusion of women from the electorate began in September 1871, when she took measures to comply with local election laws in the Fourteenth Ward of the City of Philadelphia. She attempted to vote on October 10, 1871.
When polling officials rejected her ballot, Burnham petitioned the Court of Common Pleas for the right to vote on the grounds that she met the legal definition of a “freeman” and a citizen of the United States. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania disagreed. Woman Suffrage: The Argument of Carrie S. Burnham… includes the full text of Burnham’s argument as well as a history of the case (beginning on page 88), and the text of the opinion of the Honorable George Sharswood (beginning on page 94). Sharswood’s opinion, delivered on December 30, 1871, was upheld by the Supreme Court on April 5, 1873.
The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.
Carrie Burnham Kilgore, the first woman admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania. In 1864 she was graduated with the degree of doctor of medicine, and a year later came back to Philadelphia and began reading Blackstone. When she appeared as a lawyer, the innovation excited the ridicule of the press, bar and bench.
When she argued before the State Supreme Court her right to the elective franchise, the chief justice pronounced her address “an able and exhaustive argument.”
In 1886 she was admitted to the federal courts, and in 1890 to the United States Supreme Court.